Befriending Job: Theodicy Amid the Ashes

Ashes to ashes

The Natural History Museum in London is to return the remains of 8 aboriginal people to the Australian government. The remains include the skull of an aboriginal person thought to have been illegally exported to Britain in 93. The rest comprise the remains of 7 indigenous individuals from Tasmania and will be returned after a three-month period of study by scientists. Museum director Michael Di...

Theodicy and Animals

It is widely acknowledged among those philosophers and theologians who have given the matter much thought that the fact of animal suffering challenges Theism in a distinctive way. Standard attempts to reconcile human suffering with a perfectly powerful and benevolent deity don’t seem to apply easily to the case of animals. Animals can hardly be said to deserve their suffering or be morally impr...

Astrophysics. Ashes to ashes: the inner lives of neutron stars.

Ashes to ashes: the history of smoking and health

When I read Richard Doll's and Bradford Hill's paper in the British Medical Journal of 30 September 1950 on smoking and lung cancer, I thought that was the end of the matter; the evidence was overwhelming. When, a few years later, they reported their prospective findings on doctors addressed "to the survivors" there was nothing more to be said. Everyone would stop smoking, lung cancer incidence...

The Left: Ashes to Phoenix