I argue in my essay  The Internet is God that new technology not only changes how we work but how we think as well. It happened with the wheel, with the printing press and now with The Internet.
As The Internet progresses and adapts, it provides us with new ways of interacting. It gives us a [...]

Richard Dawkins argues here that there is an absolute truth. He claims that those who believe in God are deluded. It is interesting that many religious people also adhere to an absolute truth. It just happens to be a different absolute truth to the wholly scientific absolute truth of Richard Dawkins.
Watching Richard Dawkins speaking with [...]

I argue in my essay on The Internet is God that God is less about mosques, temples, synagogues or churches than about society and justice.
The Reverend Dr. Raphael G. Warnock from Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia is preaching here about Health Care Reform. His message is that justice cannot be separated from faith, that [...]

It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what makes up a religious experience.
Certainly sincerity, wonder, tolerance, patience and a certain absence and presence of self seem to be involved. All these things are very basic to the human mindset of worship, our DNA of religion perhaps.
I love this clip from The Hajj 2009 and [...]

As with every religion, some Hindu practices and beliefs seem to contradict each other. Such contradictions, poetry and mythology are at the heart of every religion’s rich tapestry, something that fundamentalists in every religion tend to deny. If religions were completely bland and straightforward, they would have next to no followers.
This video provides some background [...]

Creationists may disagree with me but I find fossils both beautiful and God-affirming.
That the first traces of color have been found in fossil bird feathers (First Trace of Color Found in Fossil Bird Feathers, Carl Zimmer in the New York Times) only adds to my fascination with fossils and sense of wonder at them. I [...]

I welcome the controversy that Archbishop Nichols has started with his thoughts on social media. He says that MySpace and Facebook lead young people towards transient relationships which leave them unable to cope when their social networks collapse.
Whilst I accept the Archbishop’s position that community needs to be more than Facebook, I think it is [...]

In the sixth Elegy of Rilke’s Duino Elegies, there is praise for the fig tree that almost entirely omits to flower. Rilke is considering the big issues of life and death, as all artists should. He contrasts the flower-like shallowness of the acrobats with the value of the fulfilled fruit.
But this idea – that drawing [...]

One of the characteristics of The Internet is that good ideas, like Wikipedia, take root eventually without the need for advertising. Similarly, ideas that are promoted heavily but are less good tend to be forgotten eventually.
It’s over six months since The Internet is God went live and I’ve had very little interest in the idea [...]

I’ve just returned from a wonderful holiday in Transylvania without my laptop. We heard cuckoos all day, gazed at the wild flowers, found bear footprints in the woods and learned a little about Romania’s rich and troubled history and culture.

At the end of the week, I realised that I had not been exposed to a [...]