Essays

Faith is Fidelity: religious belief as a lived commitment

Many people think religion is a collection of beliefs about God, the soul and the afterlife. This view of religion drains all the life out…
Still Haunted by the Ghost of Descartes: why the hard problem won’t disappear

There’s a ghost story that was written 400 years ago and it still haunts the corridors of our conceptual architecture. In 1641 Rene Descartes neatly…
When Love Overflows: why the source of reality must be personal

We search for peace as if it were the highest goal. We try to remove suffering and agitation, hoping to find a state of satisfied…
The Resonant Universe: why reality is not indifferent

Many of us experience a quiet sense of dissonance between ourselves and the modern worldview. We know ourselves as conscious, intentional beings who seek meaning…
When Light Freezes – A Vedic answer to the hard problem of consciousness

James Clerk Maxwell’s work on electromagnetism was among the most important scientific achievements of the nineteenth century. Yet his contemporaries were slow to appreciate and…
You’re Already in Hell, and Why That’s Good News

Few doctrines have done more to diminish faith in a loving God than the idea some people will suffer eternally with no hope of redemption.…
The Hard Problem isn’t a Neuroscience Problem

Most people assume an explanation of consciousness will be in the language of neuroscience and dazzle us with details about how the brain works. But…
Is Consciousness Natural?

And why you should care about the answer. … One of my readers responded to my article Why Consciousness is Such a Big Deal. They…
The Authentic Spiritual Life

Curing the dis-ease of your soul. When we come to the point of extreme disappointment with this material world, our authentic spiritual life can begin.…
Does it Matter if God exists?

Naturalism’s magic bubble. One of my readers on Medium recently posted an article asking two questions: In all these discussions about God, we assume we’re…