JP's Corner of The Blogosphere

I have been lent a copy of Richard Dawkins’ book, “The God Delusion?”, and in this last few days I have finally found a few moments to start reading it. It will be interesting to see how strong his arguments are; Dawkins actually states in his preface to the book that if it works as he intends, “then religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.”  He alludes to the fact that there will be some who warn against reading the book, but I reason that if my faith is true then I should have nothing to be scared of.  For the record, although my bookshelf now contains a copy of “The Dawkins Delusion?” by Alister McGrath I intend to refrain from reading it until after I have finished Dawkins’ book.  That way, I will minimise any accusation that my thoughts and response to Dawkins may have been indoctrinated or contaminated. Well, so far, I have opened the book and put it down several times, and I am still not an atheist.  On some of those occasi...

Following on from my earlier post, I have decided to write a more serious post about the funding of hospital chaplaincy.  I have already had a couple of comments on my views, and I’d like to justify my take on the matter. I’ll start by making it clear that my reasoning for NHS funded chaplains stems from more than the fact that I am a Christian, and a churchgoer myself.  Judging by some of the comments I have picked up on (see, for example, the BBC Have Your Say ), there are a lot of ignorant people out there and that, perhaps more than anything else, is what has annoyed me. One of the arguments for cutting NHS funded chaplaincies is that ordinary vicars (and presumably leaders of other faiths) could go in to hospitals and visit members of their own communities and congregations instead.  I can’t give a definite viewpoint about other faith groups, but let me assure you that vicars already do that.  The majority of churchgoers will already have their own Chris...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I very much enjoyed going to church in Shanghai .   Predictably, I didn’t allow enough time to cross the city and was a bit late.  When I got there I was initially turned away because the room was packed out.  I explained that I was unable to attend either of the afternoon services and managed to wangle my way in – where I had to squeeze up against the back wall because the room was so full.  Almost every bit of floor space and wall space was occupied.  The service I went to, at the hotel in Hong Qiao, has only been running for a few months and yet is already so popular that plans are afoot to start a second morning service to cater for demand.  This growth – despite some of the restrictions which seem to be in place – is certainly something to be thankful for.

I found an English speaking church in Shanghai, and I very much enjoyed it (more on that later).    However, I’m not sure that the local regulations, which dictate that the  “international English Service is open to foreign passport holders only” reflect the idea of religious freedom that the Chinese authorities might claim exists.

Before I went to Shanghai, I was quite intrigued to know what life would be like behind the Great fireWall of China.  Were there really restrictions on Freedom of Speech?  Would I be able to blog? Would I be able to get the BBC News Page?  The limited amount of research I did suggested that although things had at one time been quite restrictive things were now opening up.    At first glance, my experience tied in with this idea.  I can’t compare it with life before the Beijing Olympics, but it is said that things have improved since then.  One of the restrictions I read about was about not being able to comment on blogs, but as I surfed from Shanghai I encountered no such limitations.  I could blog and comment.  I could get my fix of the BBC News Page.  Steve Zodiac could get his fix of Facebook (before he got his comeuppance, of course).   Interestingly, however, www.biblegateway.com was apparently suffering problems and I...

Given that many people still seem to come to this Korner of the Blogosphere in search of cake, I thought that it was about time that I had a cake themed-post. In light of the ongoing debate about the existence of God (see the previous two posts), I want you to imagine that you've popped round to visit me for tea and that I've served a cake. Let us also suppose that I say that I have a friend called Flo, whom you've never met, and that she made said cake. The cake happens to be very nice and you ask me for the recipe, which I don't have. As would be perfectly reasonable, you might start to speculate about the cake's ingredients or how it was made. It would be a little bizarre, however, if you suddenly questioned whether or not I really did have a friend called Flo based on the discovery that apricot jam had been used to stick the icing on. Even the existence of self-raising flour doesn't invalidate the possibility of the cake being made by a friend called Flo...

Following the letters page in last Wednesday's Metro and the follow-up comment on this post I’m pleased to see that the beginnings of a debate are brewing, and I intend to use this post to pick up the baton again. Unsurprisingly, I’m going to start by responding to the aforementioned comment. I apologise if my tone was deemed to be a bit sharp, but I have no hesitation in defending the point I was trying to make. According to dictionary.com , faith can be defined as “belief that is not based on proof.” As there is no proof that God does not exist, belief that God does not exist (i.e. atheism) must be faith. Now, I take your point that “as human beings we are always revising and fine tuning what we hold to be true based on the evidence to hand, what we discover and our ability to determine what is probable or improbable.” To digress slightly, that is why switching on the Large Hadron Collider is going to be something of a milestone, as it could eit...

Or so said the sub-headline on the letters page in Wednesday's Metro .    I couldn't have put it better myself...