Years ago I stayed at a pub in Melbourne. I went down to the bar and had a drink while I was waiting for a colleague to join me for dinner. I ordered a beer at the bar and took a sip whilst looking around familiarising myself. All seemed to be pretty standard until I […]

Several weeks ago I wrote an essay about time. I made the point that the most popular scientific theory of creation, the “Big Bang Theory”, postulates that time commenced with the creation of matter with the Big Bang. I theorised that perhaps the Big Bang is an artifice that we need to understand creation because […]

Can you still remember the Arab Spring? Four years ago courageous citizens in a number of Middle Eastern countries took direct action to free themselves of the oppressive yoke of tyranny. The more optimistic and idealistic of Western observers of this phenomenon heralded this movement as the “Arab Spring”, confident that the overthrow of tyranny […]

This is not going to be a very erudite essay. I promise, for those of you more scientifically inclined, I will write something more substantial on the topic of “Time” at a later date. But before I do that I want to make some more subjective comments on this most arcane and difficult topic. I […]

It is a strange quirk of the human condition that we almost universally romanticise the past. T H White captured the sentiment in his lovely book The Once and Future King. The myth of King Arthur and Camelot reflect our desire for an idealised past. As in many such myths (including the Christian one) we […]

I want to extend my heartfelt apologies: To the Aboriginal people we recent invaders dispossessed, To the children that some of us have abused, To those people our intemperate language has offended, To the animals we have been cruel to, To the women we failed to promote to high office, To the “boat people” we […]

The Heidelberg philosopher Karl Jaspers was something of a polymath making significant contributions not only in philosophy but also in psychiatry and theology. According to Jaspers, a broad revolution in Mankind’s spiritual development occurred over a wide geographical spread including China, India, Persia, Judea and Greece over the period 800-200BC. He called this period the […]

There is no doubt that most of my readership might feel we are blessed to be Australians. I know I have had this debate before and some of us maintain we are “proud to be Australian” which is a sentiment I can’t relate to. Having become an Australian by a quirk of fate, an accident […]

Islam was fashioned by Muhammad from a platform provided by Judaism. Muslims recognise the Old Testament and acknowledge the legacy of its Prophets and the biblical struggles of Israel. The Arabs tell the story of Ishmael. The Old Testament hero, Abraham, had two wives, Hagar and Sarah. Each of his wives had borne Abraham a […]

Some twenty five hundred years ago, a Hebrew poet wrote a remarkable parable about suffering. You can find it in the Old Testament as the Book of Job. There is little in the narrative to suggest where to place Job in terms of our modern geography. (Mind you the Old Testament is notoriously unreliable about […]