May 24th, 2012
Almost exactly a year ago, I posted on the meaning of the word “gospel” (Good news?) and prepared a more detailed page on what seems to me to be a better understanding of the core of our faith and message (What message?). I still think this is one of the most misunderstood aspects of christianity, […]
May 19th, 2012
Another common argument used against christian belief is that the New Testament is unreliable and historically inaccurate. The argument focuses on a number of apparent inconsistencies in the gospel accounts, which, it is said, make the accounts unbelievable. Is there any substance to these claims?
May 16th, 2012
I have previously reported on the ethical dilemmas posed by eating chocolate, due to the trafficking and exploitation of children in growing cocoa in West Africa (see My pleasure, their misery? and Easter eggs and slavery), and on the responses to my letters to chocolate manufacturers (see Fair Trade chocolate – report 1). I have […]
May 11th, 2012
Bart Ehrman, a respected New Testament scholar who is not a christian, has recently written: “Jesus is best understood as a Jewish apocalypticist from the backwaters of a rural part of the Roman empire, a Jewish preacher who got on the wrong side of the law and was executed for crimes against the state, how […]
May 5th, 2012
I’ve always been interested in astronomy and cosmology, and sometimes wish I’d studied it. I find the universe fascinating and amazing to look at, think about and learn about. Cosmology has also always been of interest to theists, as it seems to point to the existence of a creator God. The cosmological argument and, in […]
April 27th, 2012
Another common argument used against christian belief is that the New Testament has been significantly changed since it was first written, so we cannot have any confidence in we are reading. Who knows if it is an accurate reflection of what the original authors wrote? Eminent scholar Bart Ehrman’s 2005 book Misquoting Jesus outlines his […]
April 22nd, 2012
Continuing my discussion of common arguments used against christians. This post: arguments that seek to undermine faith in Jesus by arguing that the gospels aren’t reliable as history, or that we can know little factual about Jesus, or that Jesus could not have been divine.
April 14th, 2012
We can read the statistics which show that, in most western countries, church attendance has fallen in the last century. In some cases it is still falling, though in others it has levelled out. The ‘leavers’ are not necessarily giving up all belief in God – many list themselves as ‘not committed’ – but some […]
April 9th, 2012
In philosophy, an idea is incoherent if it is self contradictory, and cannot even be properly defined. There are many things about the idea of God that some atheists think are incoherent. Here is a brief summary and comment on seven arguments, all of which I have seen presented, sometimes by philosophers, as serious and […]
April 6th, 2012
“God Prefers Kind Atheists Over Hateful Christians” said the article and the photo, and it caught my attention as it caught many others’ (as it was aimed at doing). Is it true?
A list of all blog posts, in reverse chronological order, is on the Blog archive page.