Posts tagged as:

faith and reason

Faith based atheism

March 1, 2010

Yesterday Andrew Brown tried an interesting idea of the sort that often becomes a blog meme:

I was prompted by an exchange in comments to wonder whether it was really true, as A. N. Whitehead claimed, that everyone thinks their own beliefs are the summit of western philosophy. So the challenge is a simple one. Name [...]

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History and science – the human errors of Jesus and the Bible?

February 24, 2010

The title of this post is, I point out, a question. It arose because I was struck by the openness and honesty of the comment David Couchman left on this post. He said:

On the one hand, I’m very uncomfortable with the kind of conservative position which says ‘if science seems to contradict the Bible, so [...]

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Scientific evidence for God: cosmology versus biology?

February 19, 2010

Eddie Arthur has drawn my attention to a new site – God: new evidence –which (so far) is exploring the ways in which modern cosmology can be seen to offer support for theism. It has a number of videos, which feature some respectable scientists like John Polkinghorne. Here’s one which circles around the strong anthropic [...]

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Richard Dawkins: “Oh, the cleverness of me”

January 29, 2010

“Oh, the cleverness of me” is, of course, a quotation from that exemplar of immature arrogance, Peter Pan, who really can’t quite cope with emotions, and endlessly defers the complexity of growing up. It struck me looking at this extraordinary piece in the (London) Times, that it’s remarkably appropriate as a summary of so much [...]

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Enjoying Eagleton’s delicious dismemberment of Ditchkins

January 25, 2010

I’m currently reading Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith and Revolution and finding its acid acuity and delightfully phrased polemics a sheer joy. Here are just a couple of quotations from what I’ve read so far. In the first (pp37-38) you can hear the scornful hauteur of the unrepentant Marxist for the bourgeosie.

The trouble with the Dawkinses [...]

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Nutritious religion? Creation and C4’s Bible: a History

January 24, 2010

I’ve just finished watching the first of the new Channel 4 series The Bible: a History. Tonight’s episode was presented by the novelist Howard Jacobsen – a non-religious Jew – on Creation. It will be interesting to see how different each episode is; if tonight’s is any guide, they will be quite individual, for rather [...]

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Hey philosopher, repeat after me, “shit happens”

January 19, 2010

The BBC – sometimes fairly, and sometimes unfairly accused of anti-Christian bias – gives some more ammunition to those who think it is biased against Christians. It commissions a non-religious philosopher to write a piece on “Why does God allow natural disasters?” Unsurprisingly he wraps his rhetoric by asking:
But, as for those who believe in [...]

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Being nice about the Christian Right

October 27, 2009

I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe.

You’ll never guess who said that, or will you?

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A question or two for Duane Smith and other atheists

July 9, 2009

Duane raises what I regard as some slightly abnormal concerns about President Obama’s appointent of Francis Collins to head what the Huffington Post describes as “the nation’s premiere medical research agency”. For Duane there is something of a problem in that Francis Collins is a Christian.
The first question (you’ll excuse me if I ask this [...]

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