Category: Philosophy of Religion
Wittgenstein, The Tractatus and Logical Positivism
Wittgenstein was unique amongst 20th century philosophers in that he precipitated two revolutions of thought despite only have one publication during his lifetime. The first was his enormous influen... Read More
Van Til and Plantinga, Comparison and Contrast
Overview My PhD thesis (coming soon!) examined the work of these men as it specifically intersected our thesis but their enormous contribution to Christian philosophy, and indeed philosophy generally,... Read More
Richard Rorty’s Iconoclastic Deconstruction of Philosophy
One of my contentions in my PhD thesis (coming soon!) of modern philosophy as incoherent and arbitrary, lacking a reasonable defence, is not original. Indeed the essence of the postmodern critique w... Read More
Applying the Epistemological Self Consciousness Transcendental Critique to Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism
We note that one of the unique features of reasoning regarding ultimate authorities is that an external authority cannot be appealed to when settling a dispute at that level because the authority woul... Read More
Macneil’s Guide for the Spiritually Perplexed
How I unapologetically explained the Christian God to thoughtful, foreign, Muslim and Hindu student housemates when I was 21. A PDF version of this book is found here.... Read More
COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus: God’s Blessing or Satan’s Curse?
Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils — William Blake c.1826 Estimated 6 minute read One of the biggest questions we can ever ask as Christians is who is behind a catastrophic world event like COVID-19,... Read More
Is COVID-19 a sign of Jesus’s imminent return and the Rapture of the Church?
This is a reprint (with a small prologue and addendum) of an article I wrote for a previous publication which I feel is particularly appropriate as a response to some of the speculation in the Christi... Read More
Should I Obey my Government – Civil Disobedience in the COVID-Era
The question I pose is a question that needs to be asked particularly when “obedience” or “submission” to the will of the government is being presented as a moral and civic duty – both perso... Read More
Abraham Kuyper, Culture and Art
Abraham Kuyper [1] (b.1837, d.1920) was described in a recent publication ‘as one of those rare intellectuals who actually led a popular movement. He thought it not enough just to articulate a wor... Read More
Scripture and the Post-Darwinian Controversy
Has the importance of the concepts of biblical inerrancy and infallibility changed for evangelical Christians today when compared to the end of the 19th Century? If so, why? At the end of the 19th cen... Read More
Augstine and Plantinga on the Problem of Evil
Augustine, otherwise known as St Augustine, is said to have returned “again and again, over a period of nearly half a century” to the “problem of evil” and is credited with clearly definin... Read More
The Problem of Evil
The Logical Problem of Evil if God is Good, Omnipotent and Omniscient – How Can He Allow Evil? John Polkinghorne in developing the scientifically responsible apologetic that he has spent his pos... Read MoreWittgenstein and Religious Language
Discuss the relationship between Wittgenstein’s rejection of the anti-metaphysical stance of logical positivism and his account of religious language in his later philosophy Wittgenstein’s tho... Read More
Descartes showed there was no need for God in philosophy
With reference to Descartes’ key philosophical ideas and with particular reference to Descartes’ Discourse on the Method and related metaphysical works, discuss and critically assess this ... Read More
Orality and the Welsh Revival 1904-1906
“Orality” is defined as “interaction with the world by means of the spoken word” and contrasts with “conceptuality” which is defined as “interacting with the world by means of ideas and ... Read More
Fundamentalism as a modernism
Fundamentalism is often conceived of as a reaction against modern, secular society. This essay argued the opposite – it is a form of modernism but a modernism distinct from secular modernism.... Read More
If we cannot prove the claims of religious belief, is it nevertheless reasonable to believe these claims?
This is an introduction to the Reformed Epistemology (RE) movement that was particularly associated with the philospher Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga was interested in establishing the grounds on which a... Read More
Christianity and Postmodernism
Postmodernism is an amorphous term that started to appear in the middle of the 20th century and was first applied to a particular school of Art that rejected the normal and conventional conceptions of... Read More
Kant’s Moral Argument for the Existence of God
Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) is considered by many philosophers to be one of the most important of Western philosophers, if not the most important. His Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 2nd edi... Read More
Hume and the Argument from Design
David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scots philosopher who developed empiricism in opposition to the continental Rationalism. More than any other thinker of his time, perhaps with the exception of Immanuel ... Read More