James Frederick Ivey

BIOGRAPHY

I was born April 30, 1939, the son of a pharmacist who was greatly interested in science, particularly astronomy. My mother's father was a lawyer who was also interested in astronomy and did calculus as a hobby; his playing the violin and piano, along with my parents' insistence that I take piano lessons, led to a multi-generational love for music, though I did not appreciate mathematics as the basis of the universe or music as an excellent example of physics and the finest of the arts until I was well into adulthood.

My first wife, Nancy, had no understanding of doubt with regard to her Christian faith. She said, "I know that I know that I know that Jesus is real." We went together beginning when we were 16. In high school, she was elected student Moderator of the Presbyterian church for the state of Florida. She aspired first to be a missionary and, later, to become a minister or a missionary. I am afraid I got in into the way of these goals. My esteem for her is virtually limitless.

Nancy stimulated my growing commitment to Christianity. It took quite a bit longer for me to become interested in philosophy and history, and to realize their importance. When I did, it soon became apparent to me that the thought of Socrates/Plato, along with theoretical physics, melded something like seamlessly with the Old Testament and the Gospel.

Love for the outdoors led me and my growing family to move to Alaska in 1969. There I established a solo family practice and learned that one could participate in practically any part of the workings of that state due to its small population. While in that great state, we added two more children to the three we already had. My oldest is a wonderful woman and the rest are the finest sons one could ever dream of.

In Alaska, I did outpatient, inpatient, and nursing home work and exercised my interest in alcoholism, as my practice gradually evolved into one of adult medicine and geriatrics. I did obstetrics for fifteen years. At home, my family and I lived the frontier life of hunting for meat, gathering berries, and gardening. We moved back to Florida in 1991.

There I began to study my side interests in earnest, particularly after I discovered The Teaching Company (www.Teach12.com.) and purchased numerous DVD's, CD's and tapes from that source, which boasts the best college professors in the United States.

My Christian faith then grew rapidly, and I exponentially began to note its tremendous correlation with other endeavors and disciplines of humankind.

After my first wife died in 2004, I married another wonderful lady. She was the administrator of two Veteran's Administration Hospitals, but has now retired. She is very helpful to me in my writing.

I have a beautiful life, practicing part-time medicine, playing golf, shooting skeet, hunting, and fishing. It is directed, insofar as I am concerned, by the Biblical God.

While in Alaska, I had written two books on Christian apologetics, with an emphasis on quantum physics, Relativity, and Plato. I revised these, creating The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible and Science, Philosophy, and Jesus Christ, which consist of combining the first half of Things Are Not as They Seem with the last half of Our Origin and Our Immortality and the first half of the latter with the last half of the former and inserting some additional information. These form a series that I call The Inevitable Truth. I have gotten a couple of good endorsements for The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible; these are from Dr. Charles Taliaferro, Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at St. Olaf College, and David Kaufman, a retired professor of physiology at the University of Florida. I have also received numerous complimentary reviews on Amazon re both.

Meanwhile, I am Medical Director Emeritus of Palms Medical Group, a multi-specialty group headquartered in High Springs, Florida, and I carry a courtesy professorship at the University of Florida.

In 2014, I was in Alaska for a month in July and did my usual salmon fishing and visiting friends. While I was there, all five of my children and their children joined me except for my oldest grandchild and her two children. Thus, sixteen offspring came to Alaska to celebrate my seventy-fifth birthday. They saturated me with musical presentations and built up my ego with compliments. Among them, I have five terrific pianists, a super opera singer, an excellent french horn player, a violinist, a trumpeter, and several terrific singers of various genres. My wife and I returned to Alaska this year (2015) and caught a lot of king salmon. One of my sons is a fish biologist there. His work and his family are something dreams are made of. His wife has written an novel full of Alaskana, The Snow Child, that was a Pulitzer finalist and the best book I have ever read.

As a child, I prayed that I would have a long, full, happy, and useful life, and I have been answered in spades (assuming I am useful).:)