Against these criteria we see in homosexuality and homosexual marriage two areas where same-sex relationships clearly fall short of the image of God in us.

Am I a biblical thinker or am I, even if I profess christianity, functionally a ‘progressive’ atheist in my thinking?

How easy it is to be blind to the rise to power of evil, could it happen to us today?

‘He who pays the piper calls the tune,’ it’s an old proverb meaning that the person who pays for the service – that is the playing of the piper – has the right to determine what tune is played. More crudely put, the person with the money has the right to determine how it is spent. In the case of society today we are living in a world where Government pays for many things and therefore Government ordains what happens.

Far-sighted they call me, and so I am. Long nights, innumerable hours, standing at the top of my tower, staring into the darkened sky, counting, plotting, calculating the courses of the stars, have trained my eyes to see further and deeper than those of others. I love the stars, so steady and regular in their paths, untouched by the woes of this earth.

The death of Muhammed did not see an end to expansion by warfare but rather an acceleration of it. Despite civil wars and the splitting of the Muslim community into two camps (Sunni and Shia) over the legitimate succession to Muhammed, within little more than a century the Islamic empire extended from the borders of India, across the middle east and north Africa and the whole of the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain).