Tag: Belief

When a pastor can’t keep the faith

The headline said “Former Pastor Decides To Spend A Year Without God”. A christian pastor was going to try living as an atheist for a year, and see what happened. Like many, I was interested in what led to this radical step, and where it would lead. Not long ago, a year later, he announced […]

God is a matchmaker? (Three stories)

I enjoy hearing people’s stories, especially when they have a happy ending. So here’s three more …. three individuals finding a new purpose in life through God.

Believing in Jesus in an age of scepticism

It’s Christmas Eve. At a time when there’s so much scepticism about Jesus, as I discussed in my last post, is it reasonable to still believe?

Shock! Horror! Turn off the Xmas lights! We shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas at all!
Long long journey through the darkness

I like to collect stories, especially stories of people finding God. (He wasn’t lost of course, just lost to them! 🙂 ) I enjoy reading (or hearing in conversation) people’s stories simply to get to know them better, but also because I like to learn from others’ experiences. These two stories both concern Professors of […]

Theists and non-theists think differently about morality

Are theists more moral than non-theists, or is it the other way round? Do theists and non-theists think very differently about ethics? It used to be easy to argue about these questions because everyone had a story to tell and no-one had any scientific evidence. But nowadays psychologists and others are undertaking scientific studies of […]

Do atheists pretend to know things they don’t know?

Last post I offered some thoughts on faith, based on Peter Boghossian’s idea that faith is “pretending to know things you don’t know”. I suggested that he was mistaken in what many christians think about faith. So, do atheists think very differently to christians on this?

What is faith? (Peter Boghossian vs the Oxford Dictionary)

Last post I discussed philosopher and educator Peter Boghossian’s ‘crusade’ to help atheists wean christians off their dependence on faith. But is Boghossian’s understanding of faith correct? What do christians mean when they use this word?

Who’s afraid of Peter Boghossian?

You may not have heard of Peter Boghossian. But one thoughtful christian blogger (Tom Gilson at Thinking Christian) thinks he’s a “dangerous man” and wonders whether his 2013 book (A Manual for Creating Atheists) might be seen as “a turning point in the decline of Christianity in the West”. Perhaps Tom has been a bit […]

Is the human mind evidence of God?

We human beings are aware of ourselves in ways that robots and computers are not, we can think in ways they cannot, and we firmly believe some things are truly right or wrong. Granted humans have evolved by natural selection, science finds it difficult to produce an explanation of these facts – how does a […]