Jesus of Nazareth, D.D.

Posted on 02/09/2013 by Jon Garvey

An interesting guy visited our church yesterday. He’s a GP and sports doctor, from a Jewish family, and presented a thesis that Jesus, far from being a poor and uneducated man, was likely to have been through the Rabbinic schools in Jerusalem and to be on an educational par with the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees he debated. Even his background as a carpenter (Gk τεκτων), the son of a carpenter, may well indicate high social status and even a family background of theological training. Continue reading →

Posted in Theology | 3 Comments

War postponed

Posted on 30/08/2013 by Jon Garvey

I was as surprised as everybody else that our Parliament has soundly rebuffed the call for airstrikes against Syria in the light of the (so far only probable) use of chemical weapons by Assad. But I’m also glad. Continue reading →

Posted in Politics and sociology | 2 Comments

A puff for TOF

Posted on 30/08/2013 by Jon Garvey

Blogger The OFloinn has started (and not yet completed) a mythbusting and brilliantly written series on the historical transition from Ptolomeic astronomy. Part one of The Great Ptolomeic Smackdown is here, and Part two here. If you like it you can follow his links to subsequent parts as he posts them.

Particularly valuable is the unusually thorough debunking of the scientistic fiction that the unenlightened, stupid (and religious) Old Days gave way to the truth and light of Science. Instead, the consistent mixture of astonishing insight and human shortcomings in every age is made clear. This has obvious lessons for the current debates about evolutionary thought and its complex relationship to science. And it’s hugely entertaining, too.

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Activities on grass

Posted on 27/08/2013 by Jon Garvey

My lack of recent writing activity (which reflects, alas, a lack of reading activity) is largely due to the wedding of the last of my children over the weekend, which entailed a trip to a villa on the Côte d’Azur and the subsequent take-over of the Oxo Tower terrace overlooking the Thames in London. Such are the arduous duties of fatherhood. Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science | 2 Comments

More dissenters

Posted on 20/08/2013 by Jon Garvey

If you look at the way the Wikipedia article on “Noncoding DNA” has settled after much to-ing and fro-ing after the ENCODE papers were published, you’ll see that the final “consensus” is that ENCODE’s figure of 80%+ function for DNA means little, since mere transcription is a poor indicator of function. Naughty ENCODE was careless in playing into the Creationists’ hands.

Uncommon Descent has just pointed to a paper by Mattick and Dinger who clearly belong to that increasing “lunatic fringe” of people with excellent credentials who cast doubt on that wisdom. Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Wright right about Ezra, or wrong about Esdras?

Posted on 07/08/2013 by Jon Garvey

A couple of months ago I embarked on reading (intermittently) through the Old Testament Apocrypha, most of which I’ve not read before, though it contains useful insights into the times between the testaments. Reading 2 Esdras in the New English Bible, I realised it was the same as the “4th Ezra” cited by Tom Wright in the quote I included in this piece on Adam. There he says:

[In Judaism] there isn’t a doctrine of Original Sin until 4th Ezra and 2 Baruch, which were written after the destruction of the temple in AD 70. Where the destruction of the temple has forced them to say ‘we were aware of problems, but now we realize that it must be much worse than we’d ever imagined and maybe it all goes back to Adam after all.’ Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

Tops and turnips

Posted on 02/08/2013 by Jon Garvey

This interesting paper has attracted some attention from the Intelligent Design websites like ENV and UD. And well it might, because it has reversed the usual Darwinian understanding of evolutionary expansion as an increasingly divergent tree, and replaced it with something more like a turnip. “The turnip of life” … doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it? Continue reading →

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Creation in theological context

Posted on 31/07/2013 by Jon Garvey

I thought it worth expanding the comment I made on penman’s quotation from N T Wright in a recent post, because it occurs to me that not everyone sees the creation issue in the same broad context that I (and those like Wright) do. Essentially, this is the context of biblical theology. Continue reading →

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More on being a bat

Posted on 29/07/2013 by Jon Garvey

Investigating a leak in our roof yesterday (expensive!) I came across a long-lost friend:

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Continue reading →

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Wright and wrong

Posted on 25/07/2013 by Jon Garvey

Penman, always helpful in providing useful links, has pointed me to a quotation from an interview with theologian N T Wright. In the wide-ranging interview by Andrew Wilson, he is asked about belief in a historical Adam and Eve. Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology | 10 Comments