The centre of me is always and eternally in terrible pain... A searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfiguring and infinite.
- Bertrand Russell
Recent Thoughts
December 30, 2025 | 1,004 words - When having discussions with people about God, I have found that it is not uncommon for evolution to make its way into the discussion. I think it's fair to say that this is popularly imagined to be the main contender against the "religious" view; we have no need of God,...
December 13, 2025 | 1,143 words - I have recently been rereading 12 Rules for Life. It has been an interesting experience; the last time I read it, I was an atheist, with a very basic grounding in philosophy and ethics, and no idea who Joseph Campbell was. Revisiting the book now and reading it through a...
November 27, 2025 | 915 words - When I wrote about the "coercion problem" with the argument from suffering, I made reference to the concept of virtue ethics. To recap: in discussions about God’s justice, we often make the mistake of assuming that suffering per se is unjust; however, if we approach the discussion from a standpoint...
Recent Articles
Theological reflections on God of War (2018)
Not too long ago, I found myself watching the end credits of 2018's God of War, thinking "this game was better than it had any right to be." This was not a game which required all that much in the way of reflective storytelling; its developers did not need to go too far beyond "a big, angry Greek goes to the frozen north with an axe", and it would have been more than entertaining enough. When first I sat down to play it, my expectations were not set overly high: I anticipated a few hours' worth of hacking and slashing...
Theological reflections on God of War (2018)
Not too long ago, I found myself watching the end credits of 2018's God of War, thinking "this game was better than it had any right to be." This was not a game which required all that much in the way of reflective storytelling; its developers did not need to go too far beyond "a big, angry Greek goes to the frozen north with an axe", and it would have been more than entertaining enough. When first I sat down to play it, my expectations were not set overly high: I anticipated a few hours' worth of hacking and slashing...
Some reasons for trusting the Gospel accounts
In the last two articles on the "lunatic of Galilee", I've offered a treatment of the Lewis trilemma, and explained why I don't find it credible that Jesus was a liar or a lunatic. Naturally, this trilemma rests on Jesus's words really being Jesus's words, and not somebody else's. In this article, I defend that proposition: I think we have very good reasons to believe that the words of Jesus (and other things) relayed to us by the New Testament are genuine, and can be taken as evidentially sound. This isn't a comprehensive apologia on the topic, by any means; the...
Some reasons for trusting the Gospel accounts
In the last two articles on the "lunatic of Galilee", I've offered a treatment of the Lewis trilemma, and explained why I don't find it credible that Jesus was a liar or a lunatic. Naturally, this trilemma rests on Jesus's words really being Jesus's words, and not somebody else's. In this article, I defend that proposition: I think we have very good reasons to believe that the words of Jesus (and other things) relayed to us by the New Testament are genuine, and can be taken as evidentially sound. This isn't a comprehensive apologia on the topic, by any means; the...
Further preposterous claims from Jesus of Nazareth
In the last article I wrote on this subject, I looked at two compelling lines of evidence from the gospels of Mark and Matthew which pose problems for the idea that Jesus was just a good moral teacher. There are more to come; this article will do the same for the gospels of Luke and John, and will cover some interesting ground. The intent here is to force us back into the realm of the Lewis trilemma, popularly expressed with the formula "liar, lunatic, or Lord"; at the end of the article I will give a summary of my thoughts...
Further preposterous claims from Jesus of Nazareth
In the last article I wrote on this subject, I looked at two compelling lines of evidence from the gospels of Mark and Matthew which pose problems for the idea that Jesus was just a good moral teacher. There are more to come; this article will do the same for the gospels of Luke and John, and will cover some interesting ground. The intent here is to force us back into the realm of the Lewis trilemma, popularly expressed with the formula "liar, lunatic, or Lord"; at the end of the article I will give a summary of my thoughts...