The man behind the myth
What do you expect to get out of meditation? A lot of people sit down to try 'meditation' but soon give up because they either fell asleep or 'nothing happened'. Nobody seems to know what 'meditation' is for! 'Guided Meditation' seems to be the only game ...
"Nothing's happening! I must be doing it wrong?" It's your first day in a meditation class. You carefully open one eye to see if anyone has started levitating without you. Everyone is firmly rooted to the gym floor but there's something 'otherworldly' ab ...
This is a re-post from an old website of a blog we produced back in 2015 about the sayings of the Jesus of History. We hope you enjoy. Before I go any further, I just want to make this clear; I am not saying anyone is wrong. Everyone says that their id ...
Christians constantly tell us that they are ‘saved’. They tell us that Yoga is demonic and music is ‘of the devil’. They want to kill gays. They use verses they don’t understand like weapons. They seem to have their own language, which marks them out to e ...
Can you explain why you believe the things you do? Many of our beliefs come with our culture or our age group as a job lot. It takes a lot of courage to analyse your own beliefs. It can be frightening. It is much easier to buy our beliefs off the shelf. ...
One of the strangest things about studying the Jesus of History is the fact that every week, Christians go out of their way to tell me that the Gospels were originally written in Aramaic. As if that 'fact' alone itself validated Christianity. At first, ...
Can you prove to me that your grandfather actually existed? We have been using photography for over a hundred and fifty years but despite this technological advantage many of us would struggle to prove that our grandparents really existed. What proof c ...
If you hear the word ‘Jesus’ and find you have uncomfortable feelings and urges, you may have been traumatised in your past and you may be suffering from mental health issues of which you are not aware. Many people from a religious background have suffere ...
Two weeks ago it was Easter and greeting cards and emails were flying around the world, rejoicing in the death and the story of a resurrection of the Galilean Jew. These stories are based on the ideas of human sacrifice, universal sin, and vicarious atone ...
There are over 33,000 denominations of Christian in the world and each one believes and asserts that they alone have the truth. One would assume that 32,999 must be wrong! Muslims are instructed to convert or kill the world and it is a sentiment many non- ...
After the Second World War, the peculiar culture of the East End of London began to spread along the north bank of the Thames like gangrene on a septic wound. It infected that ancient countryside and turned it into an urban wasteland of narcissistic stupi ...
When people called Jesus ‘The Nazarene’ what did that mean? If you are reading something from long ago or words that have been translated, it is always dangerous to assume you understand what the writer meant without asking and checking. No Woman, No Cry ...
It’s not often that transcendental truth can be found in the eye of a Twitter storm but Joan Bakewell the famous face of the British progressive left, recently and unwittingly spoke for Jesus when she had the courage (or stupidity) to suggest that anorexi ...
Both the advocates for religion, people like the late Ravi Zacharias, and those against it, people like Richard Dawkins, tend to focus exclusively on the scriptures. This has always struck me as somewhat strange, as though the written words themselves act ...