thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
July 20th, 2012
It isn’t uncommon on the internet to find claims that christianity is just a copy of some pagan religion, and Jesus is no more historical than some mythical pagan god. I want to look at what the experts say about these claims – today, Mithras.
July 18th, 2012
There has been a long campaign for chocolate companies to only source their cocoa from farms that don’t use trafficked child labour, and who pay the workers a fair wage. And progress has been slow. I have previously reported how I have joined many others in writing to chocolate companies here in Australia asking them […]
July 2nd, 2012
Christians believe Jesus existed, the gospels record his words and deeds with reasonable accuracy (at least), and that the best way to understand Jesus is that he was divine, God’s son establishing God’s kingdom. Non-believers contest some, sometimes all, of these claims. Sometimes scholars give definitive answers to these questions, sometimes they don’t.
June 24th, 2012
Almost one billion people, an eighth of the world’s population, are hungry as you read this. Why?
June 19th, 2012
Most people believe some things are right (e.g. helping others or being honest) and other things are wrong (e.g. rape, genocide or pedophilia). And if you tried to defend any of those “wrong” behaviours, most people would think you had lost your humanity. They think those things really are wrong. But what makes them wrong? […]
June 11th, 2012
In a previous post (7 things I ‘know’ about God) I said I was convinced of the following as truths about God and the universe: Science tells us truths about our universe Only God can explain the universe I trust Jesus Reason and ethics give true insights The world is not always a safe place […]
June 7th, 2012
You have probably noticed that the appearance of my blog has changed, and possibly keeps changing. I wanted to have a different design, and I wanted the blog, and eventually the entire site, to be easily read on mobile devices with smaller screens. The easiest way to achieve these two aims was to buy a […]
June 6th, 2012
I’ve been a christian discussing belief with atheists and agnostics on the internet for about 7 years now. Many times I’ve been asked why I believe, what possible evidence could I have? These discussions have led me to re-examine many things that I believe, and while I haven’t changed all that much, I have certainly […]
June 1st, 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 28th, 2012
Not so very long ago, many internet critics of christianity were pointing out that there was no archaeological evidence of settlements at Bethlehem and Nazareth in the first century. This demonstrates, they said, despite the fact that few scholars agreed with them, that these towns didn’t exist, and that therefore the Bible accounts are not […]
A list of all blog posts, in reverse chronological order, is on the Blog archive page.