thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
“The moon rose over an open field.” Teen angst. Most of us experienced it at one time. The teenage years, and into our early 20s are a time of new experiences that can often lead to feelings of extreme helplessness, alienation, even suicide. Most of us get over it in time – most of the […]
I’m not sure how seriously I take this story, but it is interesting – attempting to measure something intangible. How certain are writers about what they say about God and ethics? And how open-minded do they think they are? So I hope it’s worth a look.
This comment was made on a blog I was visiting recently: “None of us are born with any smattering of whether or not there is a god, or for that matter, even what a god is (or is not) – we have to be taught that” I was interested, for I knew of some scientific […]
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms “faith” in the dignity and worth of the human person and declares all humans are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Is this true, or is it just a legal fiction?
Today is World Day Against the Death Penalty.
We all like to think we are thoughtful, rational people. In our modern scientific world, it has become an ideal. To label someone as ‘irrational’ is a severe insult. But have we taken this ideal a little too far?
My post on Your brain, faith and disbelief generated some critical comment. The problem wasn’t so much with the main point of the post (that neuroplasticity appears to explain some of why believers and unbelievers are so polarised about God) but a side comment that there are demonstrated mental and physical health advantages in belief […]
Last post I looked at recent discoveries in neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to restructure itself under certain circumstances. If we focus on some particular way of thinking, our brain can restructure itself to facilitate that thinking, but make us less able to think differently. Thus it appears that both believers and non-believers may make […]
How can believers and unbelievers disagree so strongly? We all experience the same world, we have the same information from science and history. If it was anything else but religious belief, you might expect opinions to be a little less polarised. But highly educated people like Richard Dawkins and William Lane Craig disagree profoundly even […]
Alex Rosenberg is a philosopher and an atheist. He was one of those participating in the Moving Naturalism Forwards workshop, so he is apparently well-respected by his fellow atheists. I previously blogged about his thinking in Atheism: reality or illusion …. or both? In 2011 Rosenberg published a book, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying […]