Due to some technical difficulties, this website is no longer active, and is for archive purposes only. For my active blog, please go to www.lightontheissues.com

Thanks and apologies

Ben

 

 

Welcome to Light on the Issues: Exploring the Difficult Questions, with Dr Benjamin Chang

Recent Articles

The Heroes and Villains of Covid

As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to uproot and transformed nearly every area of modern life, it is also beginning to uncover and highlight some quite interesting aspects of our society. One of these aspects is a noticeably salient narrative that has emerged in public discourse, of ‘heroes vs. villains’.
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Finding Security in the Pandemic

As the Coronavirus pandemic unfolds and nations take increasingly extreme measures to combat the virus, every person’s life and every sector of society has been affected. Lives have been turned upside down, industries have collapsed, plans have evaporated and the tragic loss of life continues to escalate. And through the outbreak and subsequent social and political consequences, most of the things we have traditionally looked to for life security have come crashing down.
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Mental Health in the Time of Coronavirus

At the beginning of this week (Monday 23^rd March), Prime Minister Boris Johnson announce a near-complete lock down of the whole United Kingdom, as Coronavirus mortalities continue to rise exponentially and the NHS braces for the approaching avalanche of unwell patients. On the same day as Johnson’s announcement I was chatting to a journalist friend who asked me “what is your biggest fear in this pandemic?”. After a long pause, I answered: “I am fearful for my mental health”.
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Most Read Articles

Depression and Christianity

In the UK, 1 in 4 people suffer from a mental illness¹, of which the most common mental disorder is mixed anxiety and depression¹. Between 8 and 12% of the population experience depression in any one year¹, and suicide remains the single most common cause of death in men under the age of 35².

Depression is something that affects virtually everyone either directly or through friendships and relationships. However, it is a topic hardly ever mentioned in the public sphere- whether secular media, church settings or social situations. Therefore, many people find depression confusing and difficult to talk about at best, and stigmatised and tabooed at worst.
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Is There Evidence for Easter? 

For most people in the UK, Easter means bank holidays, exam revision and buying overpriced chocolate for kids. For Christians, all those are probably true as well. But of course, Christians see Easter as a time to commemorate the most important event in the bible- the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in Israel, AD 33. So is there any truth to the biblical account of the first Easter story?
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Can We Trust the Gospels?

The gospels are the first four books of the New Testament in the Bible, and claim to be the accounts of Jesus’ life on Earth. Matthew and John are said to have been written by two of Jesus’ disciples, and Mark and Luke are said to have been written by disciples of Peter and Paul respectively. So are the gospels credible accounts of history?
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Creation vs. Evolution

If there’s one topic I’m asked about over all others, it’s along the lines of “Hasn’t evolution disproved creationism?” The creation/evolution debate is one of the most intense, dramatised and media-driven apologetics debates I have ever come across. It is very different to most other debates in that rather than being characterised by scholars pitting new research, quotations and intellectual-sounding arguments and rebuttals against each other, the creation/evolution debate is commonly characterised by uncompromising extreme views, personal insults towards protagonists’ intelligences, and confident lay-person involvement rarely seen in academic discussion. Read More…