thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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.
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 […]
In a recent talk, Richard Dawkins spoke about education, atheism and intelligence. His comments are interesting.
Christians and other theists sometimes argue for God’s existence based on facts about the universe that science cannot explain, or has not yet explained. But non-believers sometimes accuse these arguments of being fallacious, because they use ‘God of the Gaps’ reasoning. Is this a problem?
One of the enjoyable things about writing a blog is the things you learn when researching a topic. I have read a little on the big bang and the fundamental laws that underpin our universe and I agree with the suggestion that the universe didn’t get the way it is by chance. But in preparing […]
There is an old argument, used for example by CS Lewis, that Jesus claimed to be divine, something a good and sane person would not do. Therefore Jesus must either have not been good, or not sane, or he was indeed divine. But the argument depends on Jesus actually claiming to be divine, which critics […]
Tom Chivers is a journalist for the Telegraph newspaper in the UK, and an atheist. He has written recently about God and Jesus in a refreshingly honest way.