Varieties of Music: Varieties of Religion

Different kinds of music have different effects on people; understanding how that works is one of the tasks of the psychology of music. I would very much like to see that applied to different kinds of religious music. Different kinds of religion develop close links with particular kinds of music. You can tell a lot about different forms of Christianity by looking at what kinds of music they are associated with.

Read Varieties of Music: Varieties of Religion in full on my website.

Scientific and Religious Approaches to Mental Health

Much of my work has been on science and religion, particularly psychology and religion. There are many specific topics to consider from that point of view, but circumstances have led me to focus recently on mental health and wellbeing.

As far as psychosis is concerned I see no incompatibility between the medical approach and a spiritual approach.

Read Scientific and Religious Approaches to Mental Health in full on my website.

Computer Intelligence Becomes a Religion

Over my lifetime there have been massive developments in what computers can do. But it is something it is very difficult to take a balanced view about. A lot of those who are most expert seem to have a vested interest in exaggerating what they can do. Those who are more ignorant about computers tend to minimise the very significant advances they have made.

The trouble is that predictions about what computers will soon be able to do shades off into fantasy and science fiction, and it is not easy to tell sense from nonsense. There is a curious jumble of hopes and fears involved, some of which seem to be quite primitive psychologically.

Read 'Computer Intelligence Becomes a Religion' in full.

Laws of Nature, Laws of God

Up until the time of Newton, scientists regarded the understandings of the physical world, at which they were arriving, as glimpses of the working of the Creator’s mind. Thus, the generalisations being formulated about the behaviour of matter – the “Laws of Nature” – were seen as the Creator's injunctions, to created matter, as to how it was to act.

They were “laws” in the same sense as laws, Divine or human, about how people should behave: that is why the same word was used for both. And even now, scientific laws are occasionally spoken of as being “obeyed”.

Read the full article on my blog.

What Jesus Accomplished

In my last blog I took a modest line about claims for the divinity of Jesus. In this blog I turn to what Jesus accomplished, and here I take a stronger line. In both cases I believe I am following the New Testament, which is much stronger about the ‘work’ of Christ than about the ‘person’ of Christ.

Strong claims are made for the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament, but it is interesting that the claim is generally that ‘God raised him up’, rather than that Jesus rose of his own accord, because he was God. That way of phrasing it (‘God raise him up’) seems to indicate that it is not being claimed that Jesus is God.

Read the full article on my website.

Why Religion is Good for your Health?

Religious people tend to be healthier than non-religious people, and live longer. The evidence for that is beyond dispute, though it is only a trend, and there can be exceptions. In this blog I want to explore why religious people are healthier.

Read the full article on my website.

Hope, Politics and Religion

As I have said before, hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism is a matter of simply expecting things to go well, whereas hope can survive in adverse circumstances. Hope is primarily as much a matter of determination to make things better, leading to a belief in that being possible.

Recently, many successful elections are often those that inspire hope. In my latest article i discuss these campaigns and the impact they have had on those targeted - especially the youth.

The Psychology of Religious Knowing

In my latest article I take a look at my book 'The Psychology of Religious Knowing', which was co-authored with Mark Williams.

This work describes the psychological processes involved in arriving at religious knowledge. It is argued that the ways in which people come to know other things, particularly how people arrive at personal insights, is close at many points to how they arrive at religious insights. The psychological processes involved in religious knowing are described in the terminology of contemporary cognitive psychology.

Read more about 'The Psychology of Religious Knowing' on my blog.

A Psychologist’s Approach to God as Trinity

Next Sunday is ‘Trinity Sunday’. I want to continue my recent blogs that have taken a psychologist’s approach to occasions in the Christian year, and take a psychologist’s look at the Trinity. At first glance the Trinity may seem unpromising ground for a psychologist, but there are two aspects to the idea of God as Trinity.

One concerns the essence of God, and the relationality that is at the heart of God. Theologians have recently written a lot about that. The other aspect concerns how humans come to know God, and is nicely summed up in the title of a book by my former teacher, Professor Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God.

Read A Psychologist’s Approach to God as Trinity in full on my website.

Is the Ascension of Jesus Scientifically Credible?

One of the major festivals of the Christian year falls on Thursday this week, the Ascension of Jesus, 40 days after Easter. When I was a boy it was still a significant occasion, but it has lost ground badly in the last half century.

In my latest article, I look at the decreased interest in this event, in my latest article 'Is the Ascension of Jesus Scientifically Credible?'

Why We Should Stop Talking about ‘Religion’

Religion seems to have changed massively in the course of evolution. There is a widespread misconception, popularised by the so-called ‘cognitive science of religion’, that religion has always been primarily a matter of beliefs about gods.

I get increasingly impatient with the way people talk about ‘religion’, as though all religion was essentially the same. It is such a broad category, and different forms of religion are so different from one another, that it really makes no sense to talk about ‘religion’ at all.

Read my article 'Why We Should Stop Talking about ‘Religion’ to see why I think the way we discuss religion and faith should change.