Essays

God is Love

When some people hear that God is love, it arouses the image of a benign old gentleman. An inoffensive chap who is insipidly polite and…
The Problem of Evil and Suffering – Is there a solution?

The problem of evil is often called the rock of atheism. This describes its enduring power to cast doubt on the existence of a loving…
The Law of Karma – cosmic justice or natural law?

The doctrine of karma is sometimes interpreted as a system of cosmic justice. God as judge, enforcing his laws through reward and punishment. Suffering is…
How to Construct a Worldview – A blueprint for building tolerance and humility.

Human beings need a worldview to function. A worldview isn’t a single belief or even a collection of beliefs. It’s the widest possible view we…
Reflections on the Nature of Faith – Transcending the limits of the intellect.

Faith is sometimes described as belief without evidence. Non-believers promote this idea, but many believers also say this is the substance of faith. If we…
The Fingerprints of God – A finely tuned universe

Modern physics has produced some amazing insights into the nature of the universe. One of the most astonishing is the discovery that the fundamental forces…
The End of Knowledge – Introduction to Vedanta

Vedanta has been called the science of spirituality. It’s one of the six schools of Indian philosophy and takes its inspiration from the literature of…
What Caused God? – misunderstandings of the cosmological argument

The cosmological argument is a formidable argument for the existence of God. It’s not a single argument but a family of arguments with a similar…
The Impossibly Hard Problem of Consciousness

In 1994 the philosopher David Chalmers raised questions about consciousness that ignited a zombie apocalypse. These weren’t questions no one had asked before. These were…
The Mystery of Existence — From the Cosmos to God

The question of why there is something rather than nothing is the most fundamental of all questions. This is not the question of why some…