Dr Paul Allen

Richard Simmons III Previously, I have written a blog on the universe's fine-tuning. Since then, I have done more research on this subject and have concluded that in the realm of modern science, this is theism’s most potent argument for God fact; two of the most celebrated atheists to ever live, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins both acknowledged that the fine-tuning of the universe is the most troubling argument that atheists have to deal with. What is fine-tuning? Fine-tuning, as it applies to the universe, is the idea that the conditions allow life to exist only when certain universal constants lie within a narrow range of values. If any of the several constants were only slightly different, the universe would unlikely be conducive to establishing life. All modern scientists agree that the universe seems to be fine-tuned for life. There are so many aspects of the universe that, even if only minutely altered, life could not exist. The universe we live in appears to have be...

If appreciating some of the ideas in St. Augustine’s ‘Confessions’ was enough to make you a Christian,” a friend said to me some years ago, “then I’d be a Christian. But a personal God? The miracles? I can’t get there yet.” Whenever I write about the decline of organized religion in America, I get a lot of emails expressing some version of this sentiment. Sometimes it’s couched in the form of regretful unbelief: I’d happily go back to church, except for one small detail — we all know there is no God. Sometimes it’s a friendly challenge: OK, smart guy, what should I read to convince me that you’re right about the sky fairy? So this is an essay for those readers — a suggested blueprint for thinking your way into religious belief. But maybe not the blueprint you expect. Many highly educated people who hover on the doorway of a church or synagogue are like my Augustine-reading friend. They relate to religion on a communal or philosophical level. They want to pass on a clear ethical inherit...

Paul Kingsnorth is a novelist, essayist, and poet living in Ireland. Below is his journey from Zen Buddhism tro Wiccan to faith in Christ. We must have been fifteen or sixteen when we discovered the church visitor’s book. It was an old church, maybe medieval, and I would pass it with my school friends on our way to the town center. I’m not sure what possessed us to go in; it might have been my idea. I’ve always loved old churches. For a long time, I would tell myself that I liked the sense of history or the architecture, which was true as far as it went. Like the narrator in Philip Larkin’s poem “Church Going,” I would venture into any church I found, standing “in awkward reverence . . . wondering what to look for,” drawn by some sense that this was “a serious house on serious earth.” ­Obviously, there was no God, but still: The silence of a small church in England had a quality that couldn’t be found anywhere else. This visit was less serious. A fifteen-year-old boy with his schoolmat...

For as long as there has been sin, there have been atheists, those who deny God. Christians today sometimes think that atheism is a new phenomenon, something that began to exist in the twentieth century. Those who have studied some history might push the date a little farther back, perhaps to the Enlightenment. But atheism is much older than that. We encounter it even in the pages of the Old Testament. The psalmist, for example, speaks of the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1). Atheism is certainly much more culturally acceptable today than it might have been one thousand years ago. We do, in fact, see a change in the West with the spread of Enlightenment philosophy. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, men such as Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud represented atheism come into its own. In our own day, the new atheists (who are much less philosophically aware than the old atheists) have popularized the philosophy of th...

Richard Dawkins is the last person I’d expect to start realizing the value of Christianity. He’s probably the most famous atheist in the world and he’s downright devout in his views. Totalitarian, in fact. Back in 2015, he even told the Irish Times that children need to be “protected” from the religious beliefs of their parents. “There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children, and I think the balance has swung too far towards parents,” he mused. “Children do need to be protected so that they can have a proper education and not be indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in.” As for those who value the Scriptures above all? “You have to write off those people,” he advised. Horrifyingly Practical As an atheist, Dawkins is also willing to say morally horrifying things. He would disagree with that characterization because he doesn’t believe in objective morality. The Heavens are empty. There is nobody...

Imagine all the holy books of all the religions disappeared tomorrow so that all knowledge of religion was gone. Imagine, too, that all science vanished. People would rediscover math eventually. They rediscover science eventually. As for religion? Sure, they’d invent gods again, but new ones. The ones we have now would never come back again. The idea, naturally, is that science and math are built on timeless and unchanging reality. Religions depend on whatever people might invent, and they’re nothing more than inventions. As an argument against religion, this one’s a non-starter. It’s irrational — which is all too grievously typical of popular-level atheism lately. Typical Atheist Irrationality I’m speaking here primarily of popular-level atheism, such as you commonly find in blogs and on social media. The so-called (and fading) “New Atheists,” such as Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Lawrence Krauss, and Sam Harris also belong in this group. There are exceptions to this rule o...

Myth #1: There are no good arguments for atheism. We should admit up front that there are some decent reasons a person might have for being an atheist, and we should be careful not to casually dismiss these reasons. To be sure, not every atheist actually has these reasons in mind, but such reasons exist and we should take them seriously. In fact, failing to take them seriously can do considerable harm. Of course, taking them too seriously is also a problem. Also, keep in mind that there can be good arguments for false conclusions. When considering reasons for any position, think of the situation in terms of a balance scale, the old kind with two pans. Each side of the scale represents one side of the argument. And the weights in the pans are the reasons supporting that pan’s respective side of the argument. Both sides can contain relatively large weights, which would represent that side’s stronger arguments. But even so, one side can ultimately weigh more. To put it differently, a...

An atheist is defined primarily in two senses: Someone who says he believes there is no God , and someone who simply lacks belief in God . An atheist cannot rationally say he knows there is no God because he would have to know all things in order to know if there is or isn't a God. If he says he believes there is no God, ask him why he believes that way, and begin there. If he says he lacks belief in God, then ask what he does believe in, and start there. I always get around to the question of, "How did we get here?" Since creation and evolution are the only options, I have something further to work with. An agnostic says he doesn't know if there is or isn't a God. (Usually after saying this I challenge them to explain the prophecies of the Old Testament fulfilled in the New. I state how the Bible is unique that way, and that only God can make prophecies that are 100% accurate. Then I ask him to explain how that could be done if there is no God.) If ...

Hundreds of archaeological findings are confirming the biblical record. Peter S Williams looks at some of the most interesting discoveries Imagine the excitement of brushing away the soil from some ancient stone or pottery shard and finding an inscription mentioning someone previously only known from scripture, and whose existence was questioned by Bible critics. Imagine what it would be like to unearth a building mentioned in the Gospels that Jesus and the disciples actually visited. Can you imagine discovering something which has been hidden for 2,000 years? These things really happen! The evidence of archaeology really can help us interpret certain biblical texts, as well as providing an independent way to check the Bible’s historical reliability. Many critics of Christianity continue to argue against the trustworthiness of the New Testament record but, in fact, every new archaeological find has been on the side of scripture, not the sceptics. What the late ...