Does this look like a world created by a good God?

September 8th, 2012

For many of us, most of the time, the world is a beautiful place – sunsets, falling in love, evocative music, a party with friends, pets and the surf, for example. But we know that isn’t the whole story. Animals prey on each other, tsunamis and earthquakes can kill thousands, while war, rape, murder, child […]

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Can we trust our experience?

September 2nd, 2012

Many non-believers argue that the only things we can know are what can be proved by science. Yet many believers say that one of the main reasons they believe is because of their experience of God, something science cannot easily examine. So how can we approach this question reasonably?

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Nazareth re-visited

August 25th, 2012

A few months ago, I wrote about finds that establish, contrary to the views of some sceptics, that Nazareth did indeed exist in Jesus’ day – as a small agricultural village of (probably) just a few hundred inhabitants (Did Bethlehem and Nazareth exist in Jesus’ day?). I obtained the information for that blog from searching […]

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Miracles, evidence and scepticism

August 19th, 2012

I don’t like to take things on faith, without evidence. I like to research things, gather facts, or alleged facts, sort and sift and mull over them – and then come to a conclusion. And over the past year or so I have been looking at the evidence for miraculous healings.

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Is belief in God just subjective?

August 15th, 2012

Objective truth is something that is really true, it corresponds with reality, and can in principle be verified by others. Subjective truth, on the other hand, may be true for you but not for me, and cannot be verified by another. “Dogs have four legs” is an objective truth, but “I like dogs” is subjective. […]

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Why believe?

August 8th, 2012

Why do christians believe? There must be many reasons. Why do I believe? That’s a much easier question to answer. Here’s the briefest summary I can make.

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Visions of Jesus? (again)

August 5th, 2012

Back in February I posted about people who claim to have seen visions of Jesus. The post was a short one, and general. I have now read some more on the subject, and I think it is worth outlining a couple of the stories.

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Jesus vs the pagan gods

July 28th, 2012

Egyptian gods

Is the story of Jesus just a legend, copied from common stories at the time about ‘dying and rising gods’? Some sceptics are saying so, but what are the facts? I have already looked at Mithras, one of the gods most often compared to Jesus, now to consider all the other pagan gods.

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Jesus vs Mithras

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.

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A small victory in the fight against child slavery

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 […]

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A list of all blog posts, in reverse chronological order, is on the Blog archive page.