Nick Spencer’s The Evolution of the West: How Christianity Has Shaped Our Values warmly reviewed in The Economist. This theme was one that Walker Percy repeatedly returned to. Lurking everywhere in the secularised West is what he calls a “disenchantment with disenchantment”. People still want more than just freedom and choice. They want to belong, they want community rooted in…
Another pointed article from Nassim Nicholas Taleb. My view as follows. It is correct to say that any attempt to define religion is a problematic enterprise. For a start, Judaism strictly speaking, is not a religion in the same sense that Christianity is. Christianity historically, turns on belief as the criterion of identity, an emphasis on a theology.…
John Cottingham’s discussion of Descartes has resonance to the way Locke has been treated in the academy. I was astounded going back some 30 years that Locke could be so blithely discussed on a political philosophy course (UCL) with no mention of the vital role God has in his system of ideas — The Reasonableness of…
Malick, the greatest living American filmmaker, has never made the consistently good fully philosophical film that we know he’s quite capable of. I fear that unless he dumps the star actors, he never will. I suppose that beginning with the Thin Red Line (after a 20 year hiatus) he understandably exploited high-priced luvvies eager to embellish their resume with…
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A superbly literate occassional co-author and chum of mine here with a chapter from a book that he edited and I too had a piece in. Christianitycivilizationcorey abelcultureMichael Oakeshott
I’m not at all sure that Uncle Will suffered from a tragic flaw, indeed I’m firmly of the view that he didn’t. Still, on the whole an OK (ish) article (that over-plays the Catholic card). Best be advised that for an infinitely more finessed understanding of the topic one should read Uncle Will’s (Percy) most incredibly beautiful…
Bishop Butler’s quote “Probability is the Very Guide of Life” (Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (Charlottesville: Ibis, n.d.), is one that I invoke from time to time in the most unlikeliest of contexts. (The other Butler quote I invoke from time to time in “identity…
An argument presented by Alvin Plantinga yesterday at UBC. I’ll argue (1) that contemporary evolutionary theory is not incompatible with theistic belief, (2) that the main antitheistic arguments involving evolution together with other premises also fail, and (3) that naturalism, the thought that there is no such thing as the God of theistic religion or…
I This well-worn question needs to be re-analyzed into the following three subsidiary questions. First, for what reasons did the government (i.e. the organs of state, broadly speaking, the emperor, the senate, officials, and provincial governors) persecute? Secondly, for what reasons did ordinary pagans (i.e. the general populace) demand persecution? Thirdly, we need to examine…
manwithoutqualities 