Category Archives: Philosophy

How academic groupthink always impedes progress

Gary Habermas has just published the first 1100 page volume of his magnum opus on the Resurrection of Jesus, with four more volumes to come. That may seem overkill, but in the scheme of things it is not, because without the bodily Resurrection, Christianity is just another successful world religion – but with it, Christianity is the historical foundation on which the universe is built.

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An object lesson in testing the spirits

There’s a discussion on YouTube (no great benefit in linking to it) between a conservative Evangelical and a gay pastor also claiming the “Evangelical” label. As you might already have anticipated, the discussion is on the biblical basis for their opposite positions; on the one side that homosexual relationships are universally discountenanced by Scripture, and on the other that loving, monogamous homosexuality has the Bible’s blessing. Those familiar with me will know that I judge the first to be the case (and I start the pastoral aspect from there, which is a topic for another day, perhaps). I will add that what I’m about to describe has more general application … Continue reading

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Are we in a simulation? Materialist and theist approaches

The idea that the world is nothing but a “simulation,” akin to that in the Matrix films, has cropped up over the last few years in serious academic papers, in many YouTube videos, and even in comments by Elon Musk. And now it has reached the popular press in the form of this Daily Mail article.

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From an evolutionary perspective… you don’t see much of interest

Clare Craig’s book on the COVID experience, Expired, whilst perhaps not the best-written book on the subject (she herself acknowledges her literary limitations) is nevertheless important because she herself has had such an important role in challenging the official narratives from mid-2020 onwards. It is full of good information, and therefore I recommend it highly.

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Skin in the game

It doesn’t take much imagination to realise that the bloke who wins a Nobel Prize for, say, the No-threshold linear mutagenesis model of radiation is not the most susceptible to research debunking it. Nor is a renowned race activist immersed in intersectional theory the most amenable to evidence that racism has decreased. For they both have “skin in the game.”

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One of my occasional posts on occasionalism

How God works in the world is often regarded (and is indeed) a deep philosophical question. But it actually matters in real life, which is why the Bible says a lot about it. Because it doesn’t do so in a systematic analytical way, but through narrative, poetry, historiography and so on, its importance is often missed by those academics who like systematics.

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The religious apologetics of naturalistic materialism

James Tour, as many of you will know, is a noted chemist who wears his Christian faith on his sleeve, unashamedly engaging in apologetics alongside his groundbreaking research, particularly that involving nano-particles.

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Cambridge U.L. scuppers Jorge Luis Borges

Back in 2015 I wrote about Jorge Luis Borge’s fantastical “Infinite Library.” Read my post to see how Borges envisaged it, and why it proved useless to imaginary readers free to browse its galleries, but unable to gain any wisdom from it. I guess the nearest real-world equivalents are legal-deposit libraries like the Cambridge University Library, housing every book published in Britain since 1662.

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More on soul as the sole reality

I eventually worked through Joshua Farris’s The Creation of Self, as mentioned recently, and have to say I felt it improved towards the end.

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The sole soul

the Apologies for sparsity of posts just now, but it’s both the B&B season for visiting grandchildren, and the labour-intensive mowing period for our hillside wild-flower meadow. Nevertheless I’ve had reason, whilst raking a hill-full of grass, to ponder the matter of the human soul.

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