Category: Mythology
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Seven Deadly Sins
The above Facebook post from “Sad Jesus” made me think about the Bible, a book that’s had a considerable influence in shaping Western culture. It’s often claimed in the Bible’s favour that, by and large, it has provided the moral foundation on which this culture rests. Unquestionably, chapters and verses can be quoted in which […]
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The Search for Meaning (ii)
As a follow-on from the previous post, let’s consider how our universe began with a bang to end all bangs, a cataclysmic origin that might suggest that any resulting universe should be extremely disorderly, if not completely chaotic. Surprise, surprise! Ours is developing in accordance with ‘laws’ which we can mathematically formulate and experimentally verify. […]
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The Search for Meaning (i)
Does human life have a meaning? Paradoxically, perhaps, Richard Dawkins seems to suggest the only possible meaning of life is, it’s meaningless! Here’s a typical quote – “Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor […]
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The Bible – Window or Mirror?
In the early verses of Genesis, the story goes that God said, “let’s create humans in our own image”. “Our” is taken to refer to God plus his divine council of supernatural underlings. It’s a bit like a prime minister and his cabinet (no, not the drinks one!) A great deal of ink can be […]
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Somewhere over the Rainbow …
In Genesis, after the all-encompassing waters of the Flood have at last abated, a memorable image makes its appearance in the clearing skies. “God said .. I will place my rainbow in the clouds .. whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears .. I will remember my promise that never again […]
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Honest to God?
It seems to me that if we’re to be ‘honest to God’, (understood as being, in some way, the originator and sustainer of all that is), we must face the challenge presented by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who cuts to the chase in an impressively concise way (unusual for a philosopher, some might say). “That […]
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A Down-to-Earth look at God (ii)
Following on from my previous post, I’m exploring what can, reasonably and credibly, be said about God. Many people may have the science versus religion debate, (occasionally acrimonious and mud-slinging), in the background, if not foreground, of their thinking. On the one hand, there are the ‘new atheists’ who don’t just claim that religion poisons […]
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A Down-to-Earth look at God (i)
Following on from my previous post, I’m continuing to give thought to what can be said about God, reasonably, meaningfully, and believably. Most of us might agree with the proposition that ‘believing in’ God has more to do with faith than knowledge. There’s a difficulty, however, in that different people have different ideas about what […]
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A Picture or 1000 Words
The old saying tells us that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament contains thousands of words about God, but it seems to me that it also contains two ‘pictures’ that put all these thousands of words in their proper place, and warn us against understanding them in any crudely literal […]
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Myth and the Gospels
In my previous post, I wrote about myths in the Hebrew Bible, and also about contemporaneous Greek myths. There are also what we can call myths, I believe, in the Gospels, and here I’m suggesting an example in John’s gospel. By ‘myths’, I mean imaginative stories which include supernatural beings and events. The fourth gospel, […]
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