Thinking Out Loud

Put up or shut up

In 1687, Isaac Newton published his book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (in English, “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”). In this ground-breaking book, he propose...

Theophysicists

We’ve all met them; there are probably millions of them in the wild. They believe in God, but they are not theologians. They believe in science, but they are not scientists. I call them theophys...

God’s IQ

The average human has an IQ of 100. The very smartest humans have IQs hovering around the 200 mark. Those blessed with such talent can do things that the rest of us can only marvel at. Kim Ung-yong wa...

Goodbye 2017, and goodbye Christianity

If you are a Christian, there is a lot that you have to take on faith; was Jesus born of a virgin? Did Jesus die and resurrect? Did Jesus ascend to heaven? Is Jesus alive today? You have no way of kno...

How myths challenge gods

It is uncontroversial that the Sumerians invented their pantheon of gods and their elegant myth explaining the creation of the world. They believed the goddess Nammu gave birth to her husband Anki. Th...

Jesus’ final miracle

If the Bible is to be believed, Jesus performed many miracles during his brief ministry, from walking on water to raising the dead. Things that are impossible for humans, Jesus could do without breaki...

Why God is too clever to exist

By all accounts God is a very smart and extraordinarily capable dude. He can make miraculous things happen just by thinking about them. He can design immensely complex things, such as life, in a heart...

The hardest truth of all

If you are an evangelizing Muslim, with complete certainty in your faith, there is a simple question you should ask yourself. If you were born to a devout Hindu family in Mumbai India, or to a pious C...

Is the moon made of cheese?

There are hundreds of ways to decide if claims you hear are true. For example, if you hear the claim that Omo detergent washes whiter than Daz. You may decide to believe the claim is true if: Most peo...

How much did our ancestors know?

The natural world is hard to understand. It took thousands of years for humans to discover how to investigate it. The process requires rigor, diligence and constant checking to avoid making mistakes. ...

Test how delusional you are

Delusion is not an oddity—it’s the norm. Almost all of us can slip into delusional thinking and it’s easy to see why. We all have a tendency to be confounded by cognitive biases. These are...

God and the brain of man

I am an atheist, so you may think I would oppose teaching religion to children, but you would be wrong. I think we should teach children about religions—as many as possible. The more children learn ab...