Author: David Ellis

8 August 2014 Last updated at 12:04 ET A Point of View: Why not caring about anything is only for the young by Will Self It is not the content of our beliefs that really matters, so much as the practice of believing itself, argues Will Self. In Dostoevsky’s great metaphysical whodunit, The Brothers Karamazov,…

Don: Last week we asked several questions about the truth about god. Does the truth about god require data to support it, as scientific truth does? Has the accumulation of data over time given modern Wo/Man a more complete truth about god than our ancestors had? Or is there something about the truth about god…

Don: We are still looking at the question of what is truth; in particular, the truth about god. 1 John 4:1-8 and 18-21 tell us: Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you…

Don: We have been studying the book of Matthew for 11 years so far, and have reached chapter 18, in which Jesus, in talking about the community he called the kingdom of heaven, outlines the key ingredients, or what we are calling the pillars, of community. The first pillar is the absence of authority: The…

Don: We’ve noted that both science and faith lay claim to “the truth” and decided that we need to understand what exactly is meant by it. We need to study the theology of truth. The issue of truth is raised more than 200 times in the bible. Jesus told Pontius Pilate that everyone who is…

Don: The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (1936) Science and faith appear to be opposed ideas. Each lays claim to honesty, integrity, and “the truth.”  Science bases…

Don: It seems from our discussion so far that science and religion can only be reconciled if we accept that god underwrites both; that he wrote both the bible and the so-called Book of Nature, as the first verse of Psalm 19 implies: The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse…

Don: For much of the history of man, things of the spirit and things of the flesh—things of nature and things of god—were combined and overlapped. Until the 19th century the term “science” did not even exist: The term used was “natural philosophy.” Its students were not scientists but “natural philosophers.” Their interest was to…

Don: We have been discussing the relationship between things of the body, which I will call science, and things of the spirit, which I will call faith or religion. In linking forgiveness (a thing of the spirit) with healing (a thing of the body), Jesus is simply recognizing the worldview of the time. Illness had…