EGGHEAD CHOICE – Crack open for a hard boiled think

After the daily, and lengthy, reading from Scripture in her home in Lewis my Grandmother was in the habit of glancing at a framed photo permanently positioned on the mantlepiece. It was of her brother who had been killed in The First World War. As often as not she would mutter ‘Wars and rumours of wars, for

Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species) fell like a nuclear weapon into Victorian consciousness. The implication for many thinking people was that the whole of the living world is engaged in a brutal, pitiless competition for survival. Worse than this realisation is that if Man is co-terminus with the natural world, then we

In comparative mythology, the related motifs of a dying god and of a dying-and-rising god (also known as a death-rebirth-deity) have appeared in diverse cultures. In the more commonly accepted motif of a dying god, the deity goes away and does not return. The motif of a dying-and-rising god refers to a deity which returns, is resurrected

It’s only in very recent times that people have found it uncomfortable to believe in the reality of The Devil. This is in line with the liberal squeamishness about believing in the reality of Hell. Millions across the globe, though, who do not live near University precincts or live in Georgian town houses, still believe

John Gray (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gray_(philosopher)) has been entertaining us now for years with his trenchant attacks on humanism, global capitalism, campaigning atheism, progress (historical and ethical), The Enlightenment, and any other (as he sees it) variety of flaccid optimism. He has presented these in False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (1998), Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans

One thought troubles me greatly. It is entirely possible to be deluded and live your whole life through happily. A clear example is that hundreds of millions of humans believed that the Sun was moving round the Earth daily. They organised their agriculture, society, calendar and religion around this idea. For them it seems to

Have you ever fancied, in an idle moment, that you’d like to live forever? Or just a little longer than the apportioned three score year and ten? According to Dr. Stephen Cave (http://www.stephencave.com/) (and with apologies to Eddie Cochran) there are actually 4 steps to heaven. These are not sequential – they are alternatives. Cave sets out

Adrian William Moore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._W._Moore_(philosopher) and http://users.ox.ac.uk/~shug0255/) studied under Michael Dummett and is President of The Aristotelian Society (2014-2015). He has published (1990) The Infinite (London: Routledge). A revised second edition, with a new preface, was published in 2001. (1997) Points of View (Oxford: Oxford University Press) (2003) Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty: Themes and