What Controls the World?

You can stop worrying about the danger of Artificial Intelligence taking over the world: it has already happened. The world is run by organizations - businesses, multi-national corporations - which operate according to their own systems and logic.

Climate Change: No Place To Hide

It's a reasonable assumption that one major barrier preventing faster and more effective response to climate change is this: the elite believe that they will be able to hide from the worst effects. They think they will be able to retreat to a gated

Leaping into Faith?

[Back to Reason, Science and Faith]

1. Introduction

The idea of a "leap of faith" is unfairly defined by Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_of_faith) as:

In philosophy, a leap of faith is the act of believing in or accepting something not

Why are discussions about faith between believers and unbelievers so often a complete dog’s dinner?

How can we be clearer when discussing ideas between believers who typically have invested meaning in the word 'faith' and non-believers who probably use the word differently.

Wonder, Mystery and Awe

When we talk about religion or belief - almost any religion or belief - it is easiest to talk about the aspects which can be expressed in words. Obviously. We can't talk in any meaningful way about the subjective experiences people have, but these

Faith

We tend to think about faith as a state of mind, but when considering faith we need to focus, not on the subject who is believing, but on the object of that belief. We can have faith in something or someone. When we have faith is something, we belie

Book Reviews

[Back to Resources and Reviews]

We need to give some thought about how best to structure this...

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, by Ha-Joon Chang (Penguin, 2011). This is utterly brilliant. It does what it says on the tin: it tells

Climate Change: Why Deny It?

Climate Change: Why do some people not believe in it?

In our Zoom meeting on 21^st September we discussed the dangers of climate change and possible solutions, and it was interesting and important but much like a million other such discussions. The m

Book Review: Humankind

[Back to Book Reviews]

Book Review: Humankind - A hopeful history

by Rutger Bregman, 481 pages; 2020

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Humankind-Hopeful-History-Rutger-Bregman-ebook/dp/B082SXZFC9

To be very clear, in my (not so) humble opinion, this is a v

REVIEW: Facism - A Warning: Madeleine Albright.

[Back to Book Reviews]

This was my holiday reading! A very important book.

BOOK REVIEW:

FASCISM – A WARNING: Madeleine Albright.

Madeleine Albright was well-placed to write an urgent warning about the resurgence of Fascism. She was born in Czechos

Don't Be Fooled by Abstraction

Many of our conflicts and difficulties are the result of our tendency to create abstractions and then argue about them. Is justice more important than freedom? Is positive discrimination fair? Given the choice, should you betray your friend or you

Improving Ourselves

We have a page about improving the world; this is the other side of the coin - if we want the world to improve, we need to get better ourselves.

Improving the World

All of this site can be seen as a search for ways to improve the world, make it a better place. This page is for the 'meta level' question - how do we promote and implement all the specific ways to make the world a better place? These are the ideas

Facts Are Not Enough

It often feels like the world is going backwards. Facts are clearly not enough, so what can we do to change hearts and minds?

How can we affect or stimulate positive change?

How do we affect change in an environment where there is so much mitigating against change. This short article is an invitation to suggest ideas!

Spirituality

As social creatures we need to share our spirituality, and shared spirituality is what we call 'religion'. You can have your own private spirituality, but as soon as you try to communicate it, you need words; and as soon as you find a way which help

The Life and Teaching of Jesus

Jesus was a Jew, brought up within the Jewish faith. We cannot understand what he did and taught if we ignore this context. But Jesus had a very nuanced understanding of the Jewish faith, and of His own role within it.

The Bible - a Short Background

[Back to Christianity]

When talking about a religion or belief system, please be particularly careful to ensure that any comments are fair and helpful.

This article is part of the 'Ground Up' project.

Introduction

The Bible as we have it today, is tw

Binary Thinking

This is a common theme running through many of the issues we face: it is very easy to see the world as a set of binary choices - either this is true, or that is. But, even if our choices are sometimes binary, the issues we face rarely are.

I Will Build My Church

Jesus promised His first disciples, "I will build my church", but it seems unlikely that the Church we see today was what He had in mind at the time. If we are genuinely seeking to follow Jesus, then we have to ask ourselves: when Jesus promised to

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