Category: Philosophy

  • Do we have free will?

    The problem of free will is this: do we have a choice to make the decisions we do with no force from anywhere else, or are our decisions determined by factors that are beyond our control? In one version is a body of belief, held by hard core Atheists, that the universe is deterministic. In…

  • Why do Bad things Happen? (2)

    In this series of articles I’m looking at the Atheists’ question ‘Why do bad things happen to good people’ or ‘If God is all good then how is it that He lets bad things happen’ or so on. The question takes many forms but in the end they boil down to one question: How can…

  • Why do Bad things Happen? (1)

    The Atheists’ question ‘Why do bad things happen to good people’ or ‘If God is all good then how is it that He lets bad things happen’ has been answered many times and in this series of articles I will go through the many answers to this question. The common answer that religious people give…

  • God is in the Moment

    We live on a tiny planet, revolving around a small star on the edge of a average-size galaxy. There are billions of stars in the galaxy and there are probably trillions of galaxies in the universe — many of them much larger than our own. This universe has existed for billions of years and will go on…

  • We Should Remove the Word Blame from our Vocabulary

    We should stop using the word blame. Not just as a linguistic sleight of hand, but as way of changing our thinking. I’m driving on a busy road and I need to drop into a shop very quickly. I park my car outside of the shop with the keys in it and dash in. I…

  • How we Model

    When we discuss such concepts as dimensions and time it is obvious that our diagrams are simply representations. In the way that a picture paints a thousand words, they are models which help us to understand some ideas better than simply using word would do, Its very easy to get beguiled by a model. As…

  • Mathematics and the Real World

    What is the relationship between the ‘real’ world and the mathematical world? If you studied physics at school you may have performed experiments with lights boxes and weights and other such things to understand how the world works. If you went on to study physics at university you would probably find that most of the…

  • The Quantum World

    The world at the quantum level, that is at very small scales and very short time intervals, is very different from the kind of world we are used to. The quantum effects only affect very small particles and time instances. In our physical world what we call the laws of nature are an averaging of…

  • The god of the Atheist

    To say that Atheists have a god sounds like an oxymoron. After all, Atheists claim that they don’t believe in any gods. In fact, it’s used as an argument to support the idea that science and religion are incompatible. If someone was to say that things fall down because of the will of god, this…

  • Proof of Evolution

    Evolution is a fact. We are told this so much that if you even ask a question about how evolution works you are likely to be accused of being a creationist or of doubting science. There is undoubtably evolution of one kind or another taking place all the time in the world but when people…