Jerry Coyne: why we don’t have free will

January 6th, 2012

Jerry Coyne is a Professor of biology at the University of Chicago, probably best known for his book Why evolution is true. In a recent column in USA Today, he presents the case for the unpalatable reality that our apparent ability to freely make choices is in fact an illusion. The column raises some interesting […]

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Did Jesus claim to be the son of God?

January 1st, 2012

There is an old argument, used for example by CS Lewis, that Jesus claimed to be divine, something a good and sane person would not do. Therefore Jesus must either have not been good, or not sane, or he was indeed divine. But the argument depends on Jesus actually claiming to be divine, which critics […]

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Jesus and God, honesty and hope

December 26th, 2011

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.

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Fair Trade chocolate – report 2

December 25th, 2011

Back in November I reported on exploitation in the world cocoa trade in My pleasure, their misery?. At that time I wrote about this to two prominent chocolate manufacturers. I subsequently reported (Fair Trade chocolate – report 1) that I had received a reply from Cadbury indicating their ongoing support for Fair Trade products. I […]

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The cosmological argument for the existence of God

December 18th, 2011

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 […]

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Enjoy your spam!!!

December 14th, 2011

One of the occupational hazards of blogging is spam comments. You’d expect them to be from the usual sleazy suspects, but more often they’re from small businesses selling laptop batteries, obscure medicinals, and search engine optimisation, etc, hoping they’ll get a link from my site to theirs. Many have a very generic comment praising the […]

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Books: the philosophy of God

December 14th, 2011

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 […]

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Bible reading and social attitudes

December 13th, 2011

Are christians more likely to be socially and politically conservative or liberal/progressive? If you asked most people’s opinion, I reckon they would think christians are generally conservative. But some new surveys suggest this isn’t the full story.

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Don’t believe everything you read on the internet!

December 9th, 2011

A constant problem in searching for information on the internet is judging the value of the information you find and the expertise and bias of the writers. One site which appears to be authoritative and neutral is The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Its aims look good: Disseminating accurate religious information, Exposing religious fraud, hatred […]

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Fair Trade chocolate – report 1

December 8th, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I outlined some facts about exploitation in the growing of cocoa for chocolate (see My pleasure, their misery?) and at the same time wrote to two prominent chocolate manufacturers expressing my concerns and asking them to make more concerted moves to only source cocoa from growers who were paid a […]

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