Simon Mathews

My impression of it is that Lewis is being facetious, as if without Christianity there is no possibility of a just society. I guess Uncle Screwtape is Devil’s Advocate.

BeckyL wrote:I am keenly aware that it is something I could lose my job over.

Coming from an essentially non-religious society that makes me very sad.

@Kuba, this is a nice piece. My personal view is that people, regardless of religious affiliation, are generally just trying to make their way in life and most are a long way from being considered evil under any definition. I think the most important thing, as you have pointed out, is to avoid dogmatic and entrenched thinking. All of us, theist…[Read more]

DrBob wrote:

On the very first day of catechism, the nun teaching our class told us that snakes used to have legs, walked upright, and talked.

*FACEPALM*

Sheesh.

And yet, @DrBob, albeit in fear of sounding like a broken record, apparently when someone informs us that Jesus died and then came back to life three days later it is not a case…[Read more]

I agree with @DrBob that climate shouldn’t be considered the same as weather in the sense that general trends over time are easier to model as statistical noise is lessened. So whilst we cannot say whether it will rain next Tuesday we can say with some confidence that polar ice caps will continue to melt (for example).

In terms of solutions, I’m…[Read more]

@thyplaguedoctor – it’s hard to receive a comment like that where the other person is clearly not just the usual internet psycho but actually makes a decent point. However your attitude that you are learning is a commendable one. Too many people simply wish to put forward their view and never accept any criticism, valid or not. You should continue…[Read more]

Hi Lars, welcome to the site. This sounds very worrying. It’s hard to know what criteria the prime minister was using but it doesn’t set a good example. I’m particularly surprised because I was under the impression that Denmark was quite non-religious in general. Is that incorrect?

@DrBob, if the bible is just one book out of thousands why not take the good bits of out it, put them in a new book and ditch the wretched thing. You’d think Christians would want to do this to stop silly atheists like us quoting all the nasty bits. And yet the bible is retained as some kind of special tome. You can’t argue surely that most…[Read more]

@DrBob takes want he wants from the Christian canon and leaves out what he wants. He is a cafeteria Christian. Thanks goodness for that because fundamentalists are scary. There’s no point in trying to use bible quotes to catch Bob out. He doesn’t think the Bible was written by God, only inspired by God. He says it was written by man. Therefore we…[Read more]

Hi Pam, I think changing attitudes to homosexuality and more atheists sticking their heads above the parapet are related. As the world becomes more connected and less parochial minority groups benefit. There is less opportunity for those desperate to maintain the status quo to silence those they consider weird or different.

@DrBob, Hi – you’ve decided (for now) to come with us. Excellent. At the moment there is no threading here. Threading has advantages and disadvantages – can’t decide yet whether I prefer it or not. People seem to be adopting a convention of putting @ with the person (or people) they are replying to as the start of a reply.

I don’t think we should…[Read more]