In the Western world it was probably the increasing influence of science that caused the rise in atheism. Atheists tend to be philosophical naturalists – people who attempt to understand the world without invoking anything supernatural. As the ability of science to explain the physical world increased, the need for the supernatural decreased commensurately. Indeed […]
My wife would certainly attest to the fact that I have a particular abhorrence of spiders. It is hard to know how it originated. Our progenitors no doubt had some fear of spiders and even more so of snakes. They, as hunter gatherers would routinely have encountered these potential threats. As a result over the […]
I once had a strange discussion with the author of a so-called “New Age” book. He had some disparaging things to say about science and mathematics. To illustrate a point he maintained that even the universal constant pi could not be accurately determined. He, of course was misled. Because pi was unable to be defined as a proper […]
The world is endlessly complex, intricate and surprising. Conceptually we find that hard to cope with and consequently we spend a lot of effort in trying to simplify it. Some of our models of the world and its component parts have proved very useful first approximations and have aided our general understanding. However sometimes our […]
Here we are in a New Year and traditionally that has offered us the opportunity to pause and take stock. Australia seems to be in transition again. There are a number of influences having an impact on our country and our way of life. As we approach Australia Day I thought I would elaborate on […]
My more long-suffering readers will remember there is a metaphor I am particularly fond of. We might call it the parable of the raindrop. When the sun shines on the vastness of the sea through the mechanism of evaporation water vapour is formed. Now the sea is the final repository of pretty well all raindrops […]
As you may probably know, I am quite interested in music and its origins. Some years ago I wrote a blog about the genesis of a popular Christmas song. I have decided this year to enlighten you about the circumstances that generated another one. One of the frustrations of most of us at Christmas is […]
If we were to blame anybody for the plethora of self-help books in recent decades, it should probably be Norman Vincent Peale. Peale was the author of the enormously successful, and still available, The Power of Positive Thinking. The book was first published in 1952. Peale was a modern day evangelist who promoted the dogma […]
It is not difficult to make the case that that advancement of Mankind has been greatly facilitated by the general agreement on a basic set of shared values by the various aggregations of its personnel in families, tribes, communities, states and nations. In days gone by those beliefs and values were perpetuated through the institutions […]
It is interesting to ask the question that what is it about sport that it has caught the attention and held the interest of Western societies so strongly. I don’t feel competent to comment on the phenomenon in Western societies generally and therefore I will restrict my comments to observations about what I am familiar […]