theological thoughts

The recent AI conversations I’ve heard and images I’ve seen have been so impressive that I wondered if anyone had created AI music using the same technologies. I was not surprised, therefore, to come across OpenAI’s musenet. They trained a GPT-2 language model on masses of midi files, so that it could generate novel music from a few initial notes and a text prompt. It’s not producing or…

The experience of consciousness

Is my cat just a biological robot?

When we have comprehensibly described life’s behaviour, will we have exhausted all that is significant about it? We are a long way from doing so, but just suppose that one day we manage to create a cat from scratch. Assuming that’s possible, which it may not be, I think we would still be left with the question of what life actually is, and the deep intuition that it’s source, it’s essence, is not…

The evolution of selfishness

In my extended God Puzzle piece on morality, I argued that morality, as many understand it in terms of being kind, cooperating, sharing, not lying or steeling etc, is not grounded in evolution. That is, evolution does not produce more and more moral populations. I said that bad behaviour would be just as much a product of evolution as “good.” Well, I just came across an experiment that shows…

My next Extended God Puzzle piece is on complex structure. I was never sure what to call it as I’m not sure the exact formal meanings of complexity or structure. What I mean by using the two together is an arrangement of matter and energy that does not have a simple easy to describe order to it, and yet is not really random or uniform in it’s distribution. It is neither boringly simple nor overly…

In researching my next Extended God Puzzle piece, I gleaned some fascinating wisdom and insights from Jewish Rabbis and leaders about the keys to their success. The Jewish Bible, that is the Christians’ Old Testament, has so shaped Jewish culture and values that, all things being equal, life can work really well for them. If the Bible really is authored by God, then I guess we might expect that.…

‘A foul-beaked canary’

In her book Swearing is Good for You, AI researcher and author Emma Byrne described swearing as: A foul-beaked canary in the coalmine—that tells us what our social taboos are.Emma Byrne It’s an interesting book title, but I think she’s right about the canary. Swearing comes from a very deep part of our brain, revealing our unconscious convictions. A taboo is: a social or religious custom…

Where does Love Lead?

My recent extended God Puzzle video on love draws upon some of the ideas in my new book Designed for Drama. So many movies are about love – romantic love, fatherly love, and self-sacrificial love – and, as I say in the book: The fictional stories we create and consume are not just idle, childish escapism. They give us a much needed vantage point from which to see reality more clearly. Crisis,…

It’s now around 15 years since Keith Hazel asked me, in that prophetic way of his: Have you ever thought about writing books? He went on: You will have one foot in the culture and the other in the Bible. You are like a blood hound, there are rabbit trails/warrens for you to go down, to follow. You’ve got a lot of word in you. It’s about long term thinking, like a gathering storm. Since then,…

You are a sign and a wonder!

It was great to speak from Acts 17 yesterday, where Paul seeks to introduce the people of Athens to their “unknown God”. He does so by joining the dots from what they know to what they don’t know, even using their own poets. I tried to do something similar in my preach, and it’s exactly what my God Puzzle project is all about: showing (hopefully), how the things around us and in us can point to…

Here is a short excerpt from the beginning of my new book Designed for Drama: Have you ever been reading the Bible when a word leaps right off the page and hits you straight between the eyes? Well, that happened to me when I read Acts 12, and the projectile was the adjective “earnestly.” Peter is in prison “but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.” Now, if I am honest, that word does…

At last! After almost seven years I can share my latest book with the world! In it, I look at how story tellers and movies makers create drama. While that is fascinating in and of itself, and I’ve certainly enjoyed watching dozens of movies for my “research,” the aim in writing it is to open our eyes to the real life drama taking place all around us, and so provoke us to more passionate…

The God Puzzle: Eclipses (extended)

A while back, as part of my God Puzzle project, I made a short animated video on eclipses and why I thought they might point to God. In this video I explore that idea a bit more. It might seem silly, and maybe I’m just missing something obvious, but see what you think. As I say at the end: if eclipses look like a fluke of nature, and everyone seems to agree that they do, then they also look like…

The Making of Beauty

I recently put together a short “making of” video for my God Puzzle animation on Beauty.

The God Puzzle: Extended

My next book, Designed for Drama is almost finished. It has taken about 6 years to get to this point but I’m really pleased with the result. I keep dipping in and reading bits and being encouraged to worship, and stirred to pray. Although I quite liked my previous cover design, a friend very kindly designed an even better one that is less mystical and more professional looking. And much less…

The God Puzzle book

The final proof copy of my God Puzzle book has arrived. All seems to look OK so I’ve made it available here.

Most of the content is available for free here (along with several short videos) so no need to buy unless you want a handy printed version. The book also has space for jotting down any thoughts you might have in response to each section and the questions posed.

Actually, I always…