If you’re not a Christian, or haven’t encountered Creationism before, the idea that the universe was in fact created by God in six days around 6000 years ago probably strikes you just as mad as believing that the Earth is flat. Richard Dawkins finds Creationism incomprehensible. In his review of Blueprints Solving the Mystery of […]
I listen to a lot of talks, lectures, sermons, podcasts and stuff on my mp3 player, so I was very annoyed when it stopped working a couple of months ago. Yesterday, I finally got it back in working order having sent it to be repaired, so I went online and downloaded around 50 mp3s to […]
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”. What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes – but whom has it saved? There […]
The latest edition of Discworld Monthly popped into my email inbox recently. One of the letters included various quotes from Terry Pratchett on stories and narrative, which are very interesting: “Narrativium is powerful stuff. We have always had a drive to paint stories on to the universe. When humans first looked at the stars, which […]
I found an article on Goodness, Beauty and Truth by Andrew Fellows of L’Abri that gives in written form the same argument as a L’Abri lecture of the same title that has had a big influence on the way I think. Well worth a read! An extract from the introduction: Goodness, Beauty and Truth, I […]
From After Virtue by Alisdair MacIntyre: Abstract changes in moral concepts are always embodied in real, particular events. There is a history yet to be written in which the Medici princes, Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, Frederick the Great and Napoleon, Walpole and Wilberforce, Jefferson and Robespierre are understood as expressing in their actions, often […]
Yesterday evening, I caught the end of this edition of Horizon – sadly it was laughably dumbed-down. I’m sure there’s an interesting and intelligent programme to be made on the subject of the similarities and differences between humans and apes, and how we should treat them, but this wasn’t it. A comedian spending some time […]