ClearWords

In one of the online forums I visit occasionally, someone recently asked the question, "How can I believe in a God who needs to be praised?" The short answer is, of course, "You can't". What's unbelievable is not so much that the creator of the universe might be suffering deep personal insecurity and be in constant need of affirmation. That would be odd, but not a complete logical impossibility! What's unbelievable is the ridiculous notion that his insecurity might somehow be compensated by a bunch of humans constantly telling him how wonderful he is. If there is a God at all, he surely does not *need* our praise. But if what he wants from us is relationship, that would really explain where praise fits in. First of all, praise is a vital part of any healthy relationship. It's so easy to tear down and criticise each other. We also need to take time to affirm and build each other up. If God has taken toward us the relationship of father, and our relati...

Aside from the resurrection of Jesus, there can’t be many pieces of Christian dogma that have been attacked and defended with as much vigour, and sometimes vitriol, as the creation story. From the Oxford evolution debate of 1860 and taking in ten major court cases in the United States, as well as innumerable books and publications, the debate rolls on. At one extreme are the atheists, whose agenda is to write God out of the earth’s story altogether. At the other extreme, seven day creationists, promoting a completely literal interpretation of the creation story recorded in Genesis. Caught in the middle is the vast majority of scientists and people of faith, who adopt more flexible interpretations of ancient manuscripts, and accept the likelihood or at least the possibility of a creator, or are agnostic. Within evangelical Christianity, seven day creationism has been particularly forceful over the last thirty years or so, especially in North America; fostered by organisations like the C...

It seems to me that there's something a bit screwy about the government's credit crunch bank rescue plan. If it's true that they plan to fund it by issuing government bonds, then since the likes of you and me are the ones who are expected to buy the bonds, that means we will effectively be lending to the banks. Forgive me if I'm being naive, but isn't it supposed to be the other way round? What's more, whatever the banks repay will be recouped from us, their customers, in interest and bank charges. What they don't repay, the government will recoup in tax. Either way, we ourselves will be the ones paying back what was borrowed from us. Surely it's the borrower, not the lender, who is supposed to repay the loan?

In the beginning -- there was just God. And the Voice of God said, "Let there be light". Suddenly, the darkness was pierced by the brightest, whitest, most searing eruption of light that could ever be imagined; closely followed by the loudest, deepest and most violent explosion that could ever qualify to be described as sound. At that moment, in an unspeakably vast cavity of space whose existence had never before been seen or imagined -- where before, there was nothing -- an immense weight of something sprang into being. From the place of the Voice, an endless cloud of matter exploded, its perimeter racing outwards at the speed of light; filling the enormous emptiness, driven outward by the very Breath of God. Time passed. Whether seconds or aeons no-one can tell, for time itself was still young. There was no way to record its passing; no-one to measure it. The cloud grew and grew, the matter expanded and cooled. The light dimmed -- but was not extinguished. Clouds of gas for...

It turns out that a teenager who killed seven students and one adult at a school in Finland claimed his inspiration came from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Describing himself as "a cynical existentialist, anti-human humanist, anti-social social-Darwinist”, Pekka Eric Auvinen declared, "I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection." A pretty shocking interpretation, but it’s by no means the first time Darwin ’s theory has been taken to that kind of extreme. It was Darwin's cousin Francis Dalton who developed the idea of eugenics – the genetic improvement of the human race by selective breeding. This led directly to the Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy and all its offshoots; their attempts to breed a 'super-race' of people in human stud farms, the forced sterilization of at least two million people, and ultimately, the holocaust. The fact is that if y...