Jan
30
2014
I don't know too much about the attitudes to marriage, sex and women in Israel at the time of Christ, but I have read Gerda Lerner on Patriarchy, and her account of the Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia outlines...
Jan
28
2014
An ancient Celtic poem: the monk and his pet cat I and my white Pangur Have each his special art: His mind is set on hunting mice, Mine is upon my special craft. I love to rest – better than...
Jan
27
2014
The Church is so right and yet so wrong about marriage. I believe what philosophers call the fallacy of composition is one of the most dangerous ideas in philosophy. It states that when we talk, for instance, of a school...
Jan
23
2014
Me: How did you get on in London Roy?Roy: It were nowt. You 'ave to pay to go in't lavs.
Jan
20
2014
Eleanor comes in to borrow some tea, brisk and businesslike as usual. She is as commanding in manner as she is inflexible in mind. From an early age, it is evident, she has never let a new idea into...
Jan
17
2014
This much loved poem was written by Edward Thomas in 1915 in the trenches, looking back to an unremarkable incident that had happened in June 1914. What had been a trivial event is turned by hindsight, which then had...
Jan
15
2014
Your table is a message from God How we know things is one of the oldest puzzles in philosophy. When you know a table there is clearly some sense in which the table is inside your head. But it can’t...
Jan
13
2014
Words in modern western languages generally have clear, precise and well-defined meanings. But this is not the case with ancient Semitic languages such as Aramaic or Hebrew. In these languages a word can hold twenty or even thirty interconnected...
Jan
12
2014
Why did Jesus have to be baptised? There is nothing that horrifies atheists so much as what they usually imagine are the Christian doctrines of original sin and baptism. An innocent baby is born with a black stain of sin...
Jan
10
2014
Well here we all are walking about the world. If we think about ourselves and our situation - if, in other words, we become philosophers - then we have to start with the most basic thing we know. What...