My new Solar Physics website is now up and running at www-solar.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~williams, detailing the results of a recent Summer project.

I recently received the following question: "What is the difference between religion and a cult? I understand that a cult is a focused group who share a single passion zealously (away from the mainstream view). But, if that's so, is a religion just a large cult?"

Here's my attempt at an answer:

If I could pick out for you a few of the most formative books in my own intellectual development, as a believing Christian, J.P. Moreland’s Love Your God with All Your Mind would be jostling at the top. I wish I could thrust a copy of it into the hands of every Christian student, pastor and teacher. I can at least commend it to you as essential reading – after C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, of course. But before you read either, I believe you should read Kingdom Triangle. And I think if you do read it carefully, cover to cover, you might just forgive me for putting J.P before Jack .

If you sent a message to JustWilliam's, or one of my subdomains, in the last few months, it's quite likely I didn't get it. Sorry.

Basically, I've been swamped with SPAM, and my site has suffered a number of serious attacks -- all during one of the busiest periods of my life (university, exams, moving house).

Well, another academic year has ended, and we're well into the Summer holidays. I have uploaded some pictures of the area I'm staying in at the moment.

Some of you may have noticed that JustWilliam's has got a bit smaller. Some nasty attacks on this site have, unfortunately, forced me to close some of my subdomains. This is rather sad; I shall have to find some other way of making some "book money" for university. However, I have just opened a new Amazon shop (using Amazon's own program, this time) which you can get at by going to http://www.justwilliams.com/shop.htm. Feel free to use my contact form to email me any ideas and suggestions.

If I could pick out for you a few of the most formative books in my own intellectual development, as a believing Christian, J.P. Moreland’s Love Your God with All Your Mind would be jostling at the top. I wish I could thrust a copy of it into the hands of every Christian student, pastor and teacher. I can at least commend it to you as essential reading – after C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, of course. But before you read either, I believe you should read Kingdom Triangle. And I think if you do read it carefully, cover to cover, you might just forgive me for putting J.P before Jack .

In remembrance of those happy moments spent in hysterics reading the descriptions of various cosmetics in an Avon catalogue.

"Now get thee to my Ladies Chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that." (Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1)

(August 1999)

Something I wrote several years ago after a brief visit to a certain university college. I took a wrong turn whilst looking for the loo and disturbed an ancient relic (a philosophy professor, I suspect) ensconced in his bookroom. He got up, looked at me (or through me?) then slowly, quietly, deliberately, pulled the door closed in my face. Helpful chap.

Whilst I don't entirely agree with all the sentiments expressed in this poem these days it does remind me to shave once in a while.

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house." (Matthew 5:14-15 )

(July 1999)

Dedicated to a colleague who actually asked me to write a poem about him. (Poor fool .)

This character is anti-feminist, and takes considerable delight in arguing the case of male superiority, purely for the joy of arousing female wrath. Ah, but beware! "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned".

(June 1999)

Whilst I understand modern art a little better now than I did when I wrote this poem, my sentiments remain largely unchanged.

For many Christians, C.S. Lewis’s seven volume “Chronicles of Narnia” has a special place in our hearts. They are, of course, excellent children’s stories, delightfully written, but each book is also a goldmine of biblical metaphors and godly wisdom. And The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is, perhaps, the most special of them all, with its shining allegory of Christ’s substitutionary death and triumphant resurrection.

My new Solar Physics website is now up and running at www-solar.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~williams, detailing the results of a recent Summer project.

If you sent a message to JustWilliam's, or one of my subdomains, in the last few months, it's quite likely I didn't get it. Sorry.

Basically, I've been swamped with SPAM, and my site has suffered a number of serious attacks -- all during one of the busiest periods of my life (university, exams, moving house).

Well, another academic year has ended, and we're well into the Summer holidays. I have uploaded some pictures of the area I'm staying in at the moment.

Some of you may have noticed that JustWilliam's has got a bit smaller. Some nasty attacks on this site have, unfortunately, forced me to close some of my subdomains. This is rather sad; I shall have to find some other way of making some "book money" for university. However, I have just opened a new Amazon shop (using Amazon's own program, this time) which you can get at by going to http://www.justwilliams.com/shop.htm. Feel free to use my contact form to email me any ideas and suggestions.

"Does Richard Dawkins exist? Many people would say yes. Terry Tommyrot thinks otherwise. In a revealing interview on "The Big Questions", Dr. Tommyrot explains how belief in Richard Dawkins is, in fact, a harmful delusion, and how it can be explained scientifically."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QERyh9YYEis

Someone posted me a link to an amusing parable by a chap called David Anderson entitled, "Does Richard Dawkins Exist?". Do read it, and then pass it on.

http://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/does-richard-dawkins-exist.html

(I have, quite frankly, completely lost faith in the Dawkins' hypothesis; he doesn't really exist.)

Joy and Sorrow

It is often supposed that there are two faces one can put on life: a big smile or a gloomy scowl. Take your pick. But I, for my own part, can choose neither. I do not admire either the grinning clown or the rational depressive – though perhaps I feel a stronger affinity towards the second. All is not well with the world, or with me – and certainly not with you. And we ought to feel it. The sad soul seems at least sensible of the way things should be in contradistinction to the way that they are. He shows proper feeling. What he lacks, I think, is hope. But our happy-clappy appears to live in another world: the troubles of our own do not reach him, or, on reaching him, are converted into careless laughter.

One of my fellow-students recently stuck up a large poster on his door asking 'the big question'. I decided I would write him an answer -- in three separate parts, as it turned out, and not an especially polished piece of work at that, but hopefully it will bear reading here.

I recently received the following question: "What is the difference between religion and a cult? I understand that a cult is a focused group who share a single passion zealously (away from the mainstream view). But, if that's so, is a religion just a large cult?"

Here's my attempt at an answer:

I can't help suspecting that, all too often, we (as Christians) have tended to conflate the distinction between "faith" and "doubt" with moral opposites like "good" and "evil" - as if doubt was something like stealing cookies (or worse, committing adultery), and you should jolly well stop it at once! The solutions tend to be fast and brutal - digging in the doctrinal heels, whipping up an emotional storm, papering over the problems with cheap answers to difficult questions...

I’d like to share with you a few things about myself this morning – not because I believe everybody should be interested in me, but because, by saying just a little about myself, I’m hoping to say rather more about somebody else.

I doubt very much that there were many people who anticipated the sort of devastation that Hurricane Katrina dealt out in America early this month, particularly in the city of New Orleans. Our sympathy and our prayers are with those whose homes and families have been wrecked by this destructive storm.

But whilst, for many of us, our hearts seem to switch smoothly into gear when confronted with the sort of scenes that the news media have been cycling through our television sets, our heads often remain stubbornly confused by the reality of human suffering, and disturbed by the unwelcome reminder of our own frail mortality.