thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
March 25th, 2012
The Cosmological argument attempts to show that God exists by considering what caused the universe. The universe couldn’t cause itself to exist, the argument says, nor could it exist for no reason, so an external agent must have caused it. And what else could that external agent be than God? Despite various attempts to refute […]
March 22nd, 2012
Over the past two centuries, historical scholars have argued over what we can know about Jesus. Virtually all scholars (regardless of religion) now agree Jesus was a real person whose life followed the general outline in the gospels. However enthusiastic amateurs are still promoting the idea that Jesus didn’t exist. Books have been published and […]
March 18th, 2012
It is almost a truism that atheists in western countries have ‘come out of the closet’, and are now enthusiastically pressing christians and other believers to recognise that their faith is unjustifiable. So what are the arguments they mostly use to support this conclusion? Over the past 6 years, I have engaged in discussions with […]
March 15th, 2012
Easter’s coming soon, and if you live in the west as I do, you’ll probably be eating your share of easter eggs. But what if the eggs came from cocoa grown using child labour, that is effectively slave labour?
March 4th, 2012
Former atheist Anthony Flew called it “the best attested miracle claim in history”. But can we really believe Jesus was raised from death? Is the evidence strong enough to support this belief? What was actually going on in Jerusalem back then?
February 29th, 2012
When we think about the question of “Is there a God?”, I guess we mostly think of arguments for and against. How did the universe get here if it wasn’t created? Does the suffering in the world prove there is no God? But there is another way to look at it.
February 23rd, 2012
Spam is ubiquitous on the internet. Offer an email address or a comment box and a spambot will attempt to make use of it. If you can’t beat them, at least find some humour! Recent spam comments on this blog (which don’t make it through) have been on behalf of a bewildering variety of commercial […]
February 22nd, 2012
I’m always interested in people’s stories, and I’m always on the lookout for ways in which God may make himself known to us. So I have done some research on people having visions of Jesus – whether there are credible stories, and what they tell us.
February 16th, 2012
We have known for years that, contrary to what our culture and advertising tell us, money and possessions do not make people happy (unless they are very poor), and real happiness and satisfaction in life come from good, loving relationships, meaningful work (voluntary is even better than paid) and living for a cause greater than […]
February 8th, 2012
I came across this the other day, on The official blog of University of Missouri Skeptics, Atheists, Secular Humanists, & Agnostics
A list of all blog posts, in reverse chronological order, is on the Blog archive page.