About three years ago, I became a dog owner for the first time. We have a small, fluffy creature who scampers around the house and garden, eats whatever she’s allowed to, and sometimes gets away with snoozing on sofas and sleeping on our bed. Although I had misgivings about taking Read more
A news story currently being covered here in the UK concerns serious serial abuses by a healthcare worker. One of the questions being addressed in ongoing investigations concerns why managers of the healthcare facility where the tragic events took place didn’t intervene sooner to remove the now-convicted murderer. I have Read more
Economics is the subject I most wish I had studied earlier than I did. Although my school offered an A-level in the subject, a motivation to understand money and its growth and disappearance only arose very gradually over the following years, as I grappled increasingly with my own finances at Read more
It was at the start of this year that Ruth Perry, the headteacher of a primary school in Reading, took her own life after being informed that the school she led (and attended as a child) would be downgraded by Ofsted from “outstanding” to “inadequate”. This story, tragic on many Read more
Image: AI-generated by DALL-E* I had a chat with a robot the other evening. The OpenAI project has released an interface called ChatGPT, so I decided to do some research on artificial intelligence by consulting the authority at my fingertips: an AI dialogue partner. I asked it what progress there Read more
Sad news emerged last week about Tom McLeish, professor of natural philosophy at the University of York and longstanding associate of Thinking Faith Network. Tom passed away on 27 February aged 60, leaving an amazing legacy of scholarship in understanding the physics of soft matter and of proteins in living Read more
Understanding is a wonderful thing! I hope you’ve had many light-bulb moments in your past education, and that you continue to have moments of stunning insight in your current work. I don’t have such moments as much as I’d like, and my scientific research has never yielded a significant breakthrough. Read more
At the start of this new year, I’d like to offer you my selection of online initiatives that you could connect with for inspiration and fellowship on your journey of faithful thinking and research. The following resources give me hope and inspiration for Christian academic work, and share in the Read more
This is the title of a conference I have just returned from in Liverpool – and also, I would say, the result. The Hope Ecumenical Network was launched last week with a two-day international meeting that brought together representatives from at least fifteen universities and colleges with Christian identities, and Read more
Many people know of C.S. Lewis through his Narnia stories. Many Christians also know him as an apologist, whose own journey from atheism to Christianity informed his defence of the faith on radio and in person as well as in numerous writings. Not so many know him as a contributor Read more