December 30, 2025 | 1,004 words - When having discussions with people about God, I have found that it is not uncommon for evolution to make its way into the discussion. I think it's fair to say that this is popularly imagined to be the main contender against the "religious" view; we have no need of God,...

December 13, 2025 | 1,143 words - I have recently been rereading 12 Rules for Life. It has been an interesting experience; the last time I read it, I was an atheist, with a very basic grounding in philosophy and ethics, and no idea who Joseph Campbell was. Revisiting the book now and reading it through a...

November 27, 2025 | 915 words - When I wrote about the "coercion problem" with the argument from suffering, I made reference to the concept of virtue ethics. To recap: in discussions about God’s justice, we often make the mistake of assuming that suffering per se is unjust; however, if we approach the discussion from a standpoint...

November 7, 2025 | 931 words - I have previously explored two limits which can be placed on the argument from suffering: the problems of counterfactuals and of coercion. In keeping with the ‘C’ theme, I would like to explore a third, which I term the ‘comprehension problem’. I have alluded to this problem in my writing...

November 1, 2025 | 1,099 words - In my last post I examined what I see as the ‘counterfactual problem’ with the argument from suffering: that in order to succeed as an argument against the existence of God, it requires access to knowledge we cannot possibly have, and that any hypothetical example of gratuitous suffering can be...

October 25, 2025 | 892 words - “If a good God exists, why do people suffer?” This is a fair question; it is perhaps the most common objection raised against the classical notion of God. For some people I have met, it is all they need; it seems to serve as the final word on the subject. God...