Dr Paul Allen

“All scientists —including agnostics and atheists—believe in God. They have to in order to do their work.” The dependable regularities and constants we observe in nature are the basis for all scientific inquiry and progress. Whatever their philosophical theory of these regularities might be, all scientists in practice depend on these laws to be a reliable guide to the external world . These natural laws or regularities are simply the providential speech of God upholding the world. Our beliefs about natural law are eerily similar to classical divine attributes . We assign to natural laws such properties as omnipresence (operating in all places), eternity (at all times), immutability (constant effects), immateriality (seen only in its effects), omnipotence (incapable of being broken), transcendence (applies generally), immanence (applies particularly), incomprehensibility (mystery as to why such laws work), goodness (natural laws are reliable), rectitude (consequences for breakin...

Image via Wikipedia If there is no Hell , there is no justice. When most people speak of what a terrible notion Hell is, they talk as if it involves the suffering of innocent people. That would indeed be terribly unjust—but nowhere does the Bible suggest the innocent will spend a single moment in Hell. When I think of Hell, I recall a man I met on a train out of Kiev, whose mother was the only one of twelve children in her family to survive Stalin ’s enforced starvation in Ukraine. I think about Vek and Samoeun Taing, as they walked us through the Killing Fields, telling us of the atrocities committed against their families. Without Hell, justice would never overtake the unrepentant tyrants responsible for murdering millions. Perpetrators of evil throughout the ages would get away with murder—and rape, and torture, and every evil. Even if we may acknowledge Hell as a necessary and just punishment for evildoers, however, we rarely see  ourselves  as worthy of Hell. After all, ...