Feb 25, 2017 | Culture
In my previous post I wrote about the word of the year, “post-truth,” and how the triumph of the subjective makes assertions of Christianity as true, or anything as true for that matter (outside of scientific claims), problematic for many of our neighbors. The cultural obsession with the self, reflected in various ism’s (relativism, scientism, skepticism, postmodernism), has lead to people believing that the self is the ultimate authority on everything it surveys. In such a cultural milieu it won’t surprise us that our latest adult generation in the West, those called millennials, are considered the most narcissistic generation ever.
The ancient myth of Narcissus is about a youth who spurned suitors, and then became so taken with the beauty of his image reflected in water that he dies (or kills himself) because he realizes he can never obtain the object of his desire, himself. Though ancient Greek and Roman pagans had no revealed knowledge (i.e., the Bible) of the fallen nature of man, it was clear to many of them that the obsession with the self was endemic to human nature and ultimately self-destructive.
(more…)
Feb 23, 2017 | Truth
In a previous post on the The 4 Horsemen of the Philosophical Apocalypse, I mentioned that Truth in our secular age is a casualty of various ism’s, like , scientism, and relativism. After 50 plus years of Western secular culture watering down Truth with such ism’s, we’ve gotten to the point where they finally get the Word of the Year: Post-Truth. The Oxford Dictionaries decided that we are not much interested in Truth anymore, especially when it relates to shaping public opinion. Their definition of the word:
After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.
(more…)
Feb 21, 2017 | Culture
I saw this title at the Intellectual Takeout website, and was instantly curious. Two of the first three chapters of my book are on truth and epistemology, so I’m a big believer that philosophy is not exactly tangential to keeping our kids Christian. Most Americans, Christians included, think philosophy is only relevant to pointy headed intellectuals, with no bearing on everyday life. These people would be wrong.
Everyone has a philosophy, whether they know it or not, or think through it or not. Most Americans, Christians included, uncritically swallow the philosophical assumptions of our secular culture, and live out their implications in their daily lives. How and what we think about things could not be more profound or practical, which makes the average Christian’s ignorance of these four scary horsemen lamentable. They were originally given this designation by a philosopher of education named Robert Maynard Hutchins in 1951, and they’ve only become more entrenched in the culture since. The brief descriptions from the piece relate to their consequences for education: (more…)
Feb 17, 2017 | Apologetics
The more I read the Old Testament, the more amazed I am that a people could be proud of such a book. I’m currently reading through Jeremiah, a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah that was shortly to be destroyed by the Babylonians as God’s judgment for their sin. The northern kingdom of Israel endured God’s judgment, having been conquered by the Assyrians, a hundred years earlier
Jeremiah weeps for his people because, as he says, “they are all adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people.” Images of sexual infidelity are woven all throughout the prophets’ writings as they declare the Lord’s judgment upon his people. They prostitute themselves to false gods who are worthless idols in whom they think they will find their salvation and fulfillment.
What kind of people (the Hebrews/Jews) would write a book about their history that is so unrelentingly negative? I would argue people who are writing history that really happened! We can have confidence that this is so because of the criterion of embarrassment. Human nature is such that we are loathe to reveal embarrassing information about ourselves. We even lie in the face of facts that are less than flattering to us.
(more…)
Feb 14, 2017 | Culture
Darwinists are fond of saying that evolution is a “fact.” Maybe, but facts are not self-explanatory. Most people who believe in evolution as an undirected, material process of random mutation driven by natural selection, are sincere and think the “facts” compel us to believe this. Unfortunately for them, there is much disagreement about the “facts,” not that you’d know that from elite Western cultural institutions like education and the media. In a recent piece at Evolution New and Views about a new book by long time journalist Tom Bethell, Darwin’s House of Cards, the introductory paragraph gets it right:
The popular media’s attitude on evolution mixes several elements: loathing for the large part of the public that doubts the Darwinian narrative, preening at its own (presumed) superiority in grasping science, and a fawning reverence for evolutionary biologists. Added to this is an unwillingness to weigh the evidence for themselves, offering the excuse that the experts must know best, so why bother? Veteran journalist Tom Bethell’s new book offers a marvelous implicit rebuke on each of these points, but on the last in particular.
(more…)
Recent Comments