thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
Alvin Plantinga is an eminent philosopher, and a christian. He recently released a new book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism Thomas Nagel is an eminent philosopher, and an atheist. He recently reviewed Plantinga’s book. Judging by the behaviour on both sides of much discourse between atheists and christians, you might expect […]
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.
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 […]
Michael Ruse is a philosopher specialising in the philosophy of science, especially biology and evolution. He is an atheist, but one with more respect for religious belief than many prominent atheists today. Ruse has some interesting things to say about science, belief in God and his more militant atheist colleagues.
I’ve been discussing with atheists and other non-believers on the internet for about 6 years now, and patterns start to emerge. One pattern relates to the evidence required to believe in God. Generally, atheists say that beliefs should be based on evidence, and nothing else. Yet I see approaches to evidence that don’t conform to […]
Atheists sometimes characterise christians as people who believe in myths and magic, based on faith, which is the opposite of reason. I think this can be shown to generally be a mis-characterisation (see Is faith the opposite of reason? and Science, faith and certainty). But what if the tables were turned? What if many atheists […]
I came across another story of an apparently miraculous healing the other day. But can I believe it really happened and it was really a miracle? How can we avoid both naive gullibility and closed-minded scepticism? Does it really matter?
Many modern atheists oppose the teaching of religion to children. Richard Dawkins has famously said that teaching religion to children is a form of child abuse. In 2004 he wrote: “Isn’t it a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about?”. And in […]
The Cosmological argument attempts to show that God exists by considering what caused the universe. The universe couldn’t cause itself to exist, the argument says, nor could it exist for no reason, so an external agent must have caused it. And what else could that external agent be than God? Despite various attempts to refute […]
In a recent talk, Richard Dawkins spoke about education, atheism and intelligence. His comments are interesting.