Tag: Design
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“In the Beginning was the Word” …
These are the opening words of John’s Gospel, most probably written around 100 CE. Whoever John was, he tried to convey a late 1st century understanding of the person and significance of Jesus. In doing so, he borrowed the term logos from Greek philosophy. This can indeed mean ‘word’, but also includes a variety of…
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A ‘Renegade’ Bishop and God
The recently deceased Bishop John Shelby Spong stayed in the Episcopal Church, though no longer able to accept many traditional teachings at face value. To be true to themselves, people must either leave, or seek change from within. Choosing pursuit of change, Bishop Spong wrote the book “Unbelievable” in which, like the reformer Martin Luther,…
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Let’s get ‘Real’ (ii) ‘The Lord of the Dance’
My previous post was about Materialism, which the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the theory or belief that nothing exists except matter”. My point was that Materialism, arguably, ‘doesn’t have very much in it’, since matter is made up of atoms that are 99.99% ‘empty space’! The truth of the matter (!) is that…
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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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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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My Religious Paradigm (6) Summing Up
In this series of posts, I’ve been trying to gather together my current thoughts about ‘God’. I say ‘current’, because I believe in keeping an open mind. My views, of course, are no more likely to be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ than anyone else’s. As the apostle Paul pointed out, (though when in full dogmatic flow…
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My Religious Paradigm (5) The problem of suffering
In re-thinking my current religious paradigm, I’ve suggested that there’s some evidence of intelligence and design in the existence and form of the universe, and that this means that the notion of a god is not an entirely unreasonable proposition. Whereas Darwin’s Theory of Evolution facilitates the setting aside of such a notion, it doesn’t…
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My Religious Paradigm (4) Two key questions
Continuing this series, in which I’m asking myself, having once been a preacher, what my current religious ‘paradigm’ is, I’m now at the point of thinking about what I can positively say about ‘God’ and belief in him/her/it. While noting that the word ‘God’ can mean many different things, let’s leave its definition open for…
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