Thoughts, Engagements, Updates from Fraser Watts
I have worked in science and religion for the last 25 years. However, in many ways, I feel dissatisfied with the field, and with my contribution to it. Humanity is facing a series of urgent threats, and they mostly involve some combination of science and religion. In each of them…
There continues to be quite a lot of public interest in exorcism (or ‘deliverance’, as the Church of England prefers to call it). For several years I had a role in deliverance on behalf of the church, and so know something about it from the inside. One of the fascinating…
I recently attended an excellent conference on forgiveness in Coventry. All the leading figures working on forgiveness were there. My own particular interest is in bringing the different perspectives on psychology and religion into dialogue. Though psychological work on forgiveness as therapy is far superior to religious traditions in terms…
Easter is still marked by bank holidays, but people have largely lost track of what it is supposed to be about. It is partly about what happened to a particular man, Yeshua (or Jesus), from Nazareth about 2000 years ago, after he had been crucified. However, Christians are convinced it…
Over the centuries Christians have used various ideas to try to explain their belief that the crucifixion of Jesus had consequences that were far-reaching and beneficial. I think it is helpful to think freshly about this, and to come up with new ideas that can go along side the traditional…
I have recently become aware of an intriguing convergence between the Social Brain theory of Professor Robin Dunbar at Oxford, and the Congregation Size theory that has been developed largely in the USA. Dunbar is best known for ‘Dunbar’s number’, 150, the number of people with whom we can maintain…
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….
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…
Most people (Christians and otherwise) think that Christians should do good in the world, and I agree with them. But I think it makes a lot of difference why they should do that. For some time I have noticed that some of the reasons Christians give for doing good inspire…
There is a principle often found in science writing, known as the butterfly effect, where small causes can have large effects, says Fraser Watts. The term was coined by Edward Lorenz, the ‘father’ of chaos theory and the butterfly effect, who showed how the details of a tornado could be…