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By 2030, epidemics will be eradicated; life, rejuvenated by injections, giving lifespans of 150 years; and cars almost obsolete with aeroplane ownership common. These were the 1930 predictions of FE Smith, a British politician and friend of Winston Churchill.

Money is essential in our Western world. It allows us to purchase the necessities of life—food and shelter, for instance. It pays the bills for heating and cooling. There may even be enough for some luxuries.

There are a number of beliefs and practices around sleep that have been created and followed by many people, but which science has shown to be false and even dangerous for those who follow them.

Sartre may have been right when he said Hell is other people. Yet, for some, their first step toward Heaven is meeting the God who shelters in someone else's soul.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are specialists who are not surprised by this crisis, and believe that in the future we could be facing other pandemics if we fail to fix the mistakes that led to an increase of animal to human pathogen transmission.

I spoke very little in my early years and my mother says that my silence scared her. She never knew what was going through my mind. She was afraid I was hiding something.

When I was at high school, I played basketball a lot—most days at school, then team training sessions and often two or three games each week. At university, I played on the best team I have been part of. We trained and competed regularly over two years, and twice won our league championship.

“If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them” (James 4:17). Yet Jesus asks, “Do you want to get well?” This question highlights that good cannot be done just any way or against a person’s will. Jesus shows that human will must be respected before God’s power can address sickness.

No one has ever seen a thought, not even a neurosurgeon. However, today we know more about the way we think than what we were able to visualise, yet still less than we would like to know.

Our greatest, most desperate need today is not the type of change which loses its power over time, but that which leads to our transformation into a permanent Good.

"Most of us now living have a chance for personal, physical immortality." This is the sentence French biologist and philosopher Jean Rostand (son of the writer Edmond de Rostand) used to begin the preface of a book on cryonics, The Prospect of Immortality, by the physics professor and science fiction writer Robert C. W. Ettinger.

Medical science has made extraordinary progress over the last few decades, with achievements that have led to an increase in general life expectancy and quality of life. Today, afflictions such as cancer, severe heart failure, polio, or tuberculosis have modern and effective treatments.

Breast cancer claims the lives of more women than most other forms of cancer. In the United States, the incidence of this disease in women is about one in eight, which is nearly 13 per cent, while in Australia and New Zealand it’s slightly lower at one in nine (11 per cent).

Raising children with the ability to empathise is key in creating a kinder, more compassionate and loving world. 

The Bible is not the product of an event or a circumstance, but of time, study and especially of the journey that humanity took on its way to its development. But could it be that all the time that has passed has also eroded its relevance? How much confidence can we still have in the Bible, in the 21st century?