thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
October 27th, 2014
We human beings are aware of ourselves in ways that robots and computers are not, we can think in ways they cannot, and we firmly believe some things are truly right or wrong. Granted humans have evolved by natural selection, science finds it difficult to produce an explanation of these facts – how does a […]
October 14th, 2014
Benjamin Corey’s Formerly Fundie blog is one I read regularly. Benjamin mostly writes, from a slightly radical perspective, about christianity and church in America. But his latest blog (Why I Just Couldn’t Be An Atheist, Even If I Wanted To) discussed how he and an atheist friend sometimes discuss their respective beliefs.
October 6th, 2014
Previously I wrote about recent research on Ways we can try to find happiness, but in the end they don’t seem to work. So psychologists have found that pleasure seeking and materialism may provide short term pleasure but they don’t make for a happy or satisfied life. So what does?
September 30th, 2014
Initial note This is unfortunately a sometimes negative post, and slightly longer than usual. I’m sorry about that. I have tried to be fair and positive, but I think it was important to address this issue. Both christians and non-believers seem to want to prove that their belief makes for a better society and the […]
September 22nd, 2014
I’ve long been interested in the science of what makes people happy, and what doesn’t, and have written about it often on this blog and website. It’s a subject of important research, and new studies and reports are appearing all the time. Here’s the results of some significant studies that have been reported in the […]
September 14th, 2014
The christian religion has lost numbers in most western countries over the past half century, but there are still people becoming christians too. But what leads them to believe in Jesus? Do they just believe what they were brought up to believe? Do they sift the evidence? Or do they experience God in some way? […]
September 8th, 2014
When considering a contentious question, it can be helpful to see how much thoughtful protagonists concede to the other side, for this is an indicator of the range of reasonable views. For example, if a thoughtful and knowledgable christian concedes an area of doubt about Jesus, there is a fair chance that doubt has some […]
September 2nd, 2014
“The moon rose over an open field.” Teen angst. Most of us experienced it at one time. The teenage years, and into our early 20s are a time of new experiences that can often lead to feelings of extreme helplessness, alienation, even suicide. Most of us get over it in time – most of the […]
August 30th, 2014
I seem to be getting into quite a few discussions about universal fine-tuning lately. Only recently I discussed the argument for the existence of God based on the science of fine-tuning, and before that I discussed the science. Here, I want to give some quotes and references to cosmologists who have written on this topic.
August 24th, 2014
Not long after christianity began, a critic named Celsus argued that Jesus couldn’t have been divine, for he missed the opportunity to prove his divinity by disappearing from the cross. I find this an unsatisfactory argument, because it assumes that Celsus knew what God’s purpose was. And I find similarly unsatisfactory arguments being used today.
A list of all blog posts, in reverse chronological order, is on the Blog archive page.