Dr Paul Allen

There is no doubt that recent times have seen a number of disasters. Just over a week ago, the world witnessed a semi-rare three hurricanes simultaneously in the Atlantic basin . Houston has experienced  three “500 year flood events”  in the past few years. Having dropped about 52 inches of rain locally and  nine trillion tons of water , Harvey is considered a  “1000 year or more” event . Irma is still deluging the States after  devastating entire islands . While Americans were thus occupied,  monsoon-related flooding in Asia   exceeded the deaths, damaged, and displaced of the States . Water wasn’t the only carnaging culprit. Wildfires in Washington, Oregon, California , Montana , Idaho, California, and Utah  brought unexpected havoc to the west . We could go on about wars, rumors of wars, and other mayhem. Your co-worker philosopher is right: things  are  happening. But the question is, what? Many have postulated....

A number of people lately have been intrigued to meet a French theologian, and have asked me to tell them the story of how I, a French atheist, became a Christian scholar. Even the theologians and apologists I met recently at the  ETS  Conference in Baltimore (where by God ’s grace I was delivering my first scholarly paper) seemed to care (understandably) more about my conversion from atheism than my immediate theology paper! Therefore, it seemed fitting to type it up properly, to have a clean telling of that story of God breaking into my life, ready to be shared with people who ask. So here it is (and please let me know if you spot spelling mistakes or awkward sentences, I’m still French after all!)   FROM   RELIGIOUS   ATHEISM   TO   SECULAR   ATHEISM I grew up in a wonderfully loving family in France, near Paris . I was the second of 3 children. We were nominally Roman Catholic , and would regularly attend mass, but this religious expr...