Whatever we think about airlines it is pretty incredible that having travelled for 22 hours starting in Paris and going via London and Vancouver we picked up our bags with a 12 minute wait at Vancouver airport to clear Canadian customs, and 7 minutes in Victoria.

Nice to be home.

News about China and the United States, the rise of non-North American economists, some market musings of note, and the public god question in a country where state and religion are separated by the constitution.

The Prime Minister’s plan to use the Toronto-based G8 summit to champion the health of the world's poorest women and children is uplifting. However, it raises the question why he does not use his famous focus to deal with Canada's worst in class infant mortality rate. An essay on god in the context of the Haitian catastrophe makes the reasoned case that, sorry, we are alone in an infinite, expanding, unjust universe. Justice is human made. Wednesday's Holocaust Memorial Day surely reminds us of that.

Do We Need God To Do Good?

Prominent observers complain that public discourse in America is shallow and unedifying. This debased condition is often attributed to, among other things, the resurgence of religion in public life. Steven Smith argues that this diagnosis has the matter backwards: it is not primarily religion but rather the strictures of secular rationalism that have drained our modern discourse of force and authenticity.

This short blog on how religious thinking has helped human beings make sense of their world.

When I began blogging on religion and unbelief for the New Statesman, I introduced the strand on our website with an article in which I lamented that debate in this area had ceased to be a conversation and had become dominated instead by aggressive assertion. After watching Howard Jacobson's excellent programme on Creation in Channel 4's new series The Bible: a History, I feel that I have found an ally.