Dr Paul Allen

As the BBC   reported   in April, “JK Rowling has challenged   Scotland’s new hate crime law   in a series of social media posts — inviting police to arrest her if they believe she has committed an offence.” According to the  law , “A person commits an offence if they communicate material, or behave in a manner, ‘that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive,’ with the intention of stirring up hatred based on the protected characteristics,” which include “transgender identity.” In response, Rowling posted a series of comments on April 1, all with pictures of men who identified as women, before  explaining , Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them. In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the ri...

St James the Greater Roman Catholic Church, Coatbridge, Scotland. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) By spring of 1558 the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland was fighting a losing battle. Protestantism had begun making inroads into the country in the 1520s, and had been progressively picking up steam since then, powered principally by the importation of English bibles (which were accessible at least to Scots speakers of the Lowlands) and reforming literature from the continent. Efforts to counter the spread of Protestantism by killing its chief advocates, beginning in 1528 (with the execution of Patrick Hamilton) and peaking in 1539 (with the execution of at least eight various Protestant agitators), had backfired, creating martyrs whose message merely intrigued, rather than repulsed, the people. Internal efforts to address, in a series of provincial church councils, the most obvious shortcomings of the Scottish Kirk 's clergy—namely, sexual immorality and theological ignorance—and...

1. What perception does the average Scotsman have of Christianity ?  The average Scotsman does not have a positive perception of Christianity, but rather sees it as outdated or bigoted. Scotland is really post-Christian. And so, while there may be some lip service in places, perhaps under the guise of tolerance, really there is either apathy or hostility. 2. What are the most common objections/challenges raised against the gospel? In truth, many people don’t raise objections, so long as it does not interfere with their own lives. And yet others will treat it with scorn as a thing of the past – that was for their grandparents’ generation, not our “enlightened” one. The sad thing now is that most people don’t know what the gospel is – darkness is over the land. “Religious assembles” in schools have become “assemblies” and often the so-called chaplains don’t know the first thing about true religion. In my experience I have noticed school children who don’t want to hear anything...

Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Not many pastors rise at 3 A.M. to be sure they have sufficient time for God and their people. Samuel Rutherford was one who did. Thus it came as a great blow to him when he was compelled to leave the folk he loved. Rutherford had published an  Apology of Divine Grace  against the heresy of righteousness based on human works. This work offended the government.  On this day, February 20, 1636 , Archbishop Laud , who controlled the established churches of Britain, exiled Rutherford to Aberdeen. He forbade him to preach anywhere in Britain. It might seem Rutherford could not be blamed if he slipped into depression. The years had not been kind to him. In 1630, after barely five years of marriage, his wife died following a painful illness of thirteen months. Their two children also died, and Samuel himself suffered a debilitating fever for three months. Now he was in exile, excluded from the work he cherished most. But rather than ...

Image via Wikipedia The news outlets are abuzz with reports of some provocative claims made in Stephen Hawking ’s latest book,  The Grand Design , which is due for release on Tuesday. For obvious reasons I haven’t yet read the book, so I don’t know the broader context of his claims or how he supports them. However, since the claims in question have been widely quoted, and several folk have already asked me about them, I’ll offer a few tentative comments (with all the necessary caveats assumed). Here are Hawking’s statements as reported by the  Telegraph  (and by numerous other outlets): Because there is a law such as gravity , the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going. In the first place, I have to assume that Hawking is speaking loosely when he says that “...