thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
Atheists sometimes characterise christians as people who believe in myths and magic, based on faith, which is the opposite of reason. I think this can be shown to generally be a mis-characterisation (see Is faith the opposite of reason? and Science, faith and certainty). But what if the tables were turned? What if many atheists […]
I came across another story of an apparently miraculous healing the other day. But can I believe it really happened and it was really a miracle? How can we avoid both naive gullibility and closed-minded scepticism? Does it really matter?
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 […]
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?
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 […]
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.
Using philosophical arguments in an attempt to prove the existence of God has a long tradition. Not long ago, these arguments had fallen a little out of favour as non-believers thought they proved nothing and believers often felt they didn’t need to prove anything. But interest in them has grown in recent times, as christian […]
If you’re reading this, you probably think about God a bit – whether in belief or disbelief. There are a lot of ideas around about God (the website that this blog is part of has its fair share!), and on the internet, in particular, it is hard to tell who knows what they are talking […]