thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
July 22nd, 2011
People may hold their political, religious or ethical beliefs for all sorts of reasons, but we all like to think that we are very rational in the way we come to our own views. But some recent studies suggest few of us are as logical as we might think, as historian John Dickson reported in […]
July 18th, 2011
The Hong Kong walled city The Walled City of Kowloon in Hong Kong was an accident of history. No-one was sure who had jurisdiction over this area as it was on the border between China and Hong Kong, which until a decade ago was administered by Britain. So police and the authorities turned a blind […]
July 17th, 2011
Climate Change Debate Australia is currently engaged in (or suffering under?) a political debate on how we should address the issue of climate change. It isn’t so long ago that many conservatives did not believe the scientific evidence that earth is warming at an alarming rate, and this will have disastrous consequences within a century. […]
July 1st, 2011
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!” Ever since Carl Sagan said it, this aphorism (often abbreviated to the acronym ECREE) has been used to critique claims of miracles or the paranormal. It sounds neat and logical, and it can help you feel you have the ‘high logical ground’, but is it true?
June 25th, 2011
Among many of the more militant atheists, there are a number of common claims made about religion. Some are fair, some are not, but they have become as entrenched as dogma. It is refreshing when one of their own argues for a more thoughtful and nuanced view.
June 19th, 2011
David Sloan Wilson is an eminent evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University in New York. He is an atheist “but a nice atheist”, he assures us, and he is interested in the study of religion from an evolutionary viewpoint and the use of evolutionary principles to develop community development programs. I believe we can all learn […]
June 16th, 2011
When we get desperate, most of us would like to think that miracles are possible, that the incurable disease can be cured and those told they are beyond medical help can be healed. But is there any hope that miracles are really possible? What evidence would it take for you to believe a miracle had […]
June 12th, 2011
A long time ago I read a book which (primarily) examined a bunch of Biblical prophecies which had come true in verifiable history, and attempted to estimate the mathematical probability of this happening by guesswork. The book was Science Speaks, by Peter Stoner, a college professor of mathematics and astronomy, and I have just found […]
June 7th, 2011
The percentage of people believing in God is always of interest to me. What is the latest?
May 30th, 2011
We all like to think we make good choices for good reasons. Those who believe in God like to think they are right in their belief, whereas atheists think believers are mistaken, sometimes even ‘delusional’. Some atheists would like to see all God-belief eliminated because they believe it does so much harm. Yet new scientific […]
A list of all blog posts, in reverse chronological order, is on the Blog archive page.