Materialism is the belief that there is no supernatural of any kind; no God, no gods, no angels, demons, demiurges; no “fairies at the bottom of the garden,” in Richard Dawkins’ memorable phrase. Materialism Unexamined Many thinkers today write meaningfully about materialism as a set of doctrinal principles, but in the main, materialism is presented […]
Read more...Category: Christianity and Culture
Review: The Rage Against God, by Peter Hitchens
Peter Hitchens is the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens. Christopher was famous in the latter years of his life as, essentially, a professional atheist. Peter Hitchens’s book begins as an attempt to round out his arguments in the one debate on the subject he had with Christopher (available on youtube) because he, Peter, felt […]
Read more...Review, Atheist Delusions, The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, by David Bentley Hart
David Bentley Hart is a Christian author, and he’s made several valuable contributions besides this book, among them the excellent The Story of Christianity, an Illustrated History of 2000 Years of the Christian Faith, and his newest, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale University Press 2013). Atheist Delusions serves as a partial response […]
Read more...Reflections on visiting the Cloisters, New York City
A “museum” is a place for musing. Herewith mine. The Cloisters is a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that is located far off in the upper, upper, upper West Side of Manhattan. The building itself resembles a medieval monastery, if somewhat elaborate for a single sample of the type. The building is pieced together […]
Read more...Review: Bad Religion, How We Became a Nation of Heretics, by Ross Douthat
Ross Douthat’s thesis is that Christian orthodoxy is in decline in the United States. His is not the familiar story of irreligion replacing religion, however. Instead, he posits a culture in which many declare themselves to be Christian, but actually hold a set of beliefs not recognizable as such. To say that heresy has taken […]
Read more...Review: Inventing the Individual, by Larry Seidentop
We suffer in this age from a lack of historical perspective, but perhaps that’s been true of all people, in all ages. If we could but look back and understand, accurately, where we have been, then we might be able to project forward; to extrapolate into the future, to understand what man is, and where […]
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