thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
Before we read a book, we will often want to know who wrote it and whether we can trust them to give us accurate information. It is therefore understandable that people might wonder who wrote the 27 books of the New Testament. Last post I discussed the writings of New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman. One […]
Bart Ehrman is an eminent New Testament scholar, a successful writer and a thorn in the side of conservative christians. I have been reading a few more of his books lately (those shown in the picture above), to see what makes him simultaneously so popular and unpopular. Some clear themes emerge, and I think they […]
It is good, every now and again, to reflect on what we believe and why, and to review if there is any reason to change our minds. I think it is good, too, for a blog author to remind their readers of what the blog is all about. So here’s my summary – what I […]
Most of the scholars who write about Jesus would be considered to be New Testament historians. But there are other historians interested in that period. There are classical historians, who study the history of Greece and Rome. Christianity is very important for this study, because it was a major movement that eventually affected the entire […]
Evidence and conflict resolution It is no secret that believers and unbelievers argue a lot on the internet. But it is helpful to consider the nature of the disagreement. Experts on conflict resolution have identified a number of different sources of conflict, one of which is a “data conflict”, that is, a disagreement about the […]
I was reading my favourite atheist blog recently when I saw a commenter make an argument against the resurrection that went something like this: There are natural explanations of the resurrection (e.g. “It is possible that grave robbers stole the body of Jesus [and] …. that the alleged post-death appearances of Jesus were simply vivid […]
I have always found astronomy and cosmology fascinating since I was a boy, and so I follow several science blogs. Recently two of them published interesting blog posts on probability and Bayes Theorem. Even if you’re not much interested in maths, I think there’s plenty worth looking at in these posts.
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 […]
Terrorism is on many people’s minds at the moment, and many connect it with religion. Several years ago I wrote a page on this website about religion and terrorism, and it is one of the pages I have had to update most often, because of new understandings. I have just updated it again, with new […]
Science and history are both complex disciplines that require significant knowledge and skills to do well. A research scientist has to have a good theoretical background in their branch of science, keep up with others working in his or her field, probably have a good working understanding of mathematics and statistics and be able to […]