John 20:29

Another article in The Times, this time by Monsignor Roderick Strange on the interesting subject of faith and doubt. He quotes Jesus's comment to Doubting Thomas; Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. - John 20:29And the article points out how faith and doubt *are* linked. He ends the article:Doubt...

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Polkinghorne's Motivated Belief

John Polkinghorne has written a piece for the regular Credo column in the Times, called Motivated Belief and the Stringent Search for Truth. Polkinghorne is notable for being a physicist *and* an Anglican priest. From what I’ve read of his apologetics, his arguments for a god stem from such things as the intelligibility of the universe and fine tuning. I find these arguments very *unpersuasive*, but it’s apparent that Polkinghorne...

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Confounding Expectations

I’ve been reading Daniel Dennett’s excellent Consciousness Explained in which he makes the thought provoking observation that the brain is a future predicting device. This is sort of obvious when one considers that once life has evolved the ability to propel itself, it will be advantageous to predict its own course, so a whole load of *expectations* of events will be established by the brain to assist; there’s a tree ahead,...

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