Science and Conformity

Posted on 28/02/2011 by Jon Garvey

This article gave me that “I told you so” feeling. Before I retired in 2008 I railed against younger doctors for advising parents to use alternate ibuprofen and paracetamol to bring their kids’ fevers down. My grounds were that fever is physiological and useful, not pathological (surprising how many docs haven’t clocked this), that drugs (especially NSAIDs) have side effects, and that no evidence existed that using two antipyretics does more than one. Indeed, at the time there was no actual research to show that using even one to reduce temperature reduced the only significant complication of fever, convulsion, though it’s highly probable they would. Continue reading →

Posted in Medicine, Science | 1 Comment

Interpreting Genesis myth legitimately

Posted on 28/02/2011 by Jon Garvey

Let’s talk about myth. John Walton’s work on Genesis 1 shows that ANE myth is to be understood functionally, not physically. Genesis 1 describes 7 days in which Yahweh organises the earth as his temple with mankind as his priests. Walton points out how irrelevant this makes it to the evolution debate. It is more to do with revelation than manufacture.

Let’s go further. As an account of human evolution, the Mesopotamian Eridu Genesis is rubbish. It mentions men created as kings, as temple-builders, and the first (named) cities: 100K (or 4.5 bn) year anachronisms as far as physical creation is concerned. Wrong – actually it was written to explain the organisation of Mesopotamian civilisation, and matches archaeology there. The theology is pagan, the physics outmoded – but the history and general timeframe is fine. You only run into trouble if you foolishly apply it to Big Bangs and fossils, and Walton has put that one to bed. Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology | 1 Comment

Catching up

Posted on 27/02/2011 by Jon Garvey

Over the last few months the BioLogos blog has helped me think through an approach to creation that does injustice neither to science or the Bible, taken as the directly inspired word of God. In particular John H Walton’s book on Genesis 1 is a must-read to discover how a functionally conceived view of creation is the literal meaning, removing at a stroke many apparent contradictions with science.

During my postings on that blog I have put my thoughts in a number of essays, to which I would have linked individually here if the blog had existed at the time. Instead, here are the links all together, in no logical order.

A slightly tongue in cheek comparison of the value to science of Babylonian, Hebrew and Modern creation myths is here.

A view of myth as a truthful genre necessary even to science is here.

A look at most recent common ancestor studies to show how a single couple could be common ancestors of the whole present human race, even living within historic times, without violating genetic science – key thinking for a literal Adam – here.

A critique of George Murphy’s view of sin as an emergent product of evolution here.

A critique of the common assumption that Romans 8 teaches a creation greatly altered by the fall here.

And some musings on the surprising geographical specificity of the early part of Genesis here .

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Hello, and welcome

Posted on 27/02/2011 by Jon Garvey

Hi there. I finally got round to creating a blog, partly because a few people asked me to, but mainly because I accidentally moved my website from MS hosting to Linux hosting. It meant rewriting all the scripts on the website, but had a built in WordPress facility which it seemed a pity to waste.

I’ll no doubt have something substantive to say in due course, but here I’ll just explain the name . The hump belongs to Potiphar, my alter-ego, who has always done my writing for me. The title is, I am told, a position in the Kama Sutra but I know nothing about that sort of thing … it does convey the idea that what you think just contains water sometimes harbours real nourishment. There’s also a nice quote that a camel sees only the hump of the camel in front, not its own. Anyway, this is he:

Potiphar

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments