thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
We all have different experiences of life and form different views about everything we think about. We bring these perspectives to different questions and challenges we are confronted with – our thinking is, the psychologists tell us, more subjective than we’d like to believe. These presuppositions and biases can’t help but affect our conclusions. Different […]
I’m more or less a musical Philistine so I don’t listen to much classical music. But last weekend I went along to the Sydney Opera House to listen to a performance of Handel’s Messiah. It was an excellent afternoon.
A lot of books have been written about Jesus. It’s not really surprising. An obscure boy from nowhere becomes perhaps the most influential person who ever lived. A third of the world believes he was divine. And so the books keep rolling off the presses – or off the keyboards these days when anyone can […]
It is often said that religion causes terrorism. Until recently the facts said otherwise. But now it appears to be true, in five countries at any rate.
When you see the word “mystic”, you may think of medieval mystics like Julian of Norwich or Meister Eckhart. Or you may think of modern mysticism, psychics and yogis, self-empowerment or cosmic consciousness. But there are many “ordinary people” who have mystical experiences, and there are many scientists (psychologists and neuroscientists) who have studied the […]
The Turin shroud is a famous piece of cloth which is claimed to have been Jesus’ burial cloth, and contains an image of him. Sceptics say it is a medieval fake. Is there any way to decide who is right?
It is clear that, whether we are believer or unbeliever, our choices about our belief in God are not always as rational as we might like to think. If there is no God, we probably cannot choose at all in any meaningful way. Sometimes (some would say always), we cannot choose our beliefs, they are […]
faith is the most important thing a person needs to maintain a neurologically healthy brain Neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman I couldn’t resist …. I am researching my next post on Choosing our religion, which is taking a bit of work, and I came across this quote by two neuroscientists. Here is the quote […]
We all interpret events different ways, depending mainly on the beliefs we bring to the question. So what are we to make of stories of large scale conversions of Muslims to Christianity, and a smaller number of stories going the other way – and visions associated with both?
The resurrection is obviously a central part of christian belief – some say it is the amazing event that explains everything else, others that it is an impossible to believe event. So is it something that makes christianity harder to believe, or easier?