Many believe that religion will inevitably decline with social and intellectual progress. How can Christians honestly believe their faith is true when we see their numbers diminishing?
When Matt Damon won an Oscar at 27 years of age he experienced a moment of insight that changed his life, saving him from wasting years pursuing something relatively meaningless. We all need to get perspective like this. The question is, how?
Somehow we have come to attach the idea of ‘freedom’, and particularly freedom of thought, to atheism. Religious people are shackled to ideas that exert power of them, almost as though they are helpless victims. But the atheist is free… Well, sort of. But no.
Most of our moral passion for justice and outrage at equality stems from a belief that all people are created equal. But that belief makes no sense without God, as Yuval Harari makes clear.
In a society that has rejected many of the roots that gave meaning to past generations, more and more people are seeking to cultivate the inner life, and to experience a sense of purpose that is deeper than the superficialities of our age.
The primary way we understand someone to be trustworthy is not by what they say, but how they live. We’ve all met people who might claim to be whiter than white, but when you dig beneath the surface and see into the nooks and crannies of their life, they’re just as imperfect as the rest of us. So simply claiming to be trustworthy isn’t enough — we need to see it in someone’s behaviour.
When physicists heard the sound of two black holes merging over a billion years ago, humanity cheered. Our response to that cosmic tug is evident everywhere, and emotional investment in scientific discovery is just one flavour. Whether deliberately or subconsciously, the human spirit reveals itself in pursuit of intangible rewards.