Science and Religion
Is it rational to believe that consciousness can survive physical death?
Materialists believe that the only reality is the physical reality accessible to our senses. They tell us that belief in consciousness independent of the brain is unscientific and infantile, mere wish fulfilment. They cite the widespread conviction among...
Is There a Why?
John Lennox, Christian apologist and professor emeritus of mathematics at Oxford, reminds us that while science can tell us how our world works, it cannot tell us anything about why we are here. His observation strikes me as unarguably true, but it begs the question...
Evidence and Belief
What the Evidence Says about What’s True Ever since I was old enough to think about the world, I have wanted to understand what is true. I have never been a post-modernist, one of those people who think that reality is nothing but a social construct, devised and...
Why I am a Universalist
I think all who call themselves Christians would assent to certain foundational beliefs: There is a single consciousness – spirit or logos – that has created from nothing all reality: spacetime, energy, a world of unimaginable beauty and complexity, us. We call this...
Hard Truth and Hope in the Story of Job
Ever since I first read the story of Job decades ago, it has bothered me. The oldest story in the Bible, it addresses head-on the question that plagues anyone who takes God seriously: How can a loving God stand by while a good person suffers? The story begins with a...
God and the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ
My wife, Mary, and I are estranged Episcopalians. We both, however, have an interest in understanding whether the story of Christianity is true. If it isn’t, humanity is in trouble at least in the very long run. According to the current scientific understanding of how...
A Meditation on Suffering
A man I knew, a very nice man, recently died after a period of horrible suffering from an aggressive cancer. He was 55. His death got me thinking about how anyone can have faith in a loving God when contemplating the hellish, pervasive suffering we all see, and...
How strong is the case for atheism?
In previous posts we have argued that (1) the Darwinian explanation of how life evolved fails on both evidentiary and logical grounds, and (2) for human life to exist, physical conditions must be fine- tuned to an unimaginably precise degree that could not possibly...
Fine Tuning and Other Mysteries
In my quest to gain an overview of how the world really is, I came across Cosmo Sapiens by John Hands. Tim Crane, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, whose assessment I heartily agree with, summarized Mr. Banks’ endeavor as follows: “John Hands has...
Darwinism Deconstructed
Darwinism is a set of propositions pertaining to the origin and evolution of animal and human species. Among “educated” elites, it is considered “settled science”, immune to challenge. Jonathan Wells, who holds a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from the University...
What science says about the question of God
The more science tells us about ourselves and the universe, the more it becomes obvious, at least to me, that we could not possibly be here by chance. Some unimaginably powerful, intelligent being seems to have created and designed us and the world. The label most use...
Does science support materialism?
The dominant narrative in academia, the mass media, the entertainment industry, and “sophisticated” opinion everywhere can be summarized by the phrase “nothing but”. The mind (consciousness) is nothing but an epiphenomenon (manifestation) of the physical workings of...
If not just physical beings, what are we?
If, as overwhelming evidence seems to indicate, we are not just material beings, then what are we? Researchers at the Division of Perceptual Studies [DOPS] at the University of Virginia, using the protocols of careful empirical investigation and validation, described...