When I was a young man early in my intellectual journey searching for truth, I came across Idols for Destruction; Christian Faith and It’s Confrontation with American Society. It was published in 1983, and I was just beginning to expand my understanding of faith to all of reality beyond my own religious experience. I remember being awed by the author’s learning and insight, and how he took a Christian worldview and critiqued everything, it seemed, about the modern world. It was, to me, a tour de force, especially because as a 23 or 24 year-old I was just beginning to exercise my intellectual chops. It was from a universe of learning I could only marvel at. The author, Herbert Schlossberg, was an historian who seemed to know everything. I decided after lo these man years to read it again, and it amazes me now just as much as I remember it amazing me then. It’s now a classic in Christian intellectual history. What is striking as I read it in 2021 is how prophetic it was. He died a couple years ago before the world went mad with COVID, and Trump drove the woke left into complete madness, but he predicted with uncanny accuracy the destruction of the idols of our age we are experiencing right now. (more…)
Most mornings when I pray I find myself thanking God for revealing himself in creation, Scripture, and Christ. I think how futile existence is without God’s revealing himself to us. Without that revelation, the human race is like a blind man in a dark box groping around without any way out. Every which way he runs looking for an exit he only finds a hard, cold wall, so he looks and runs harder. The history of philosophy is a perfect picture of the endless futility inside the box, speculation built upon conjecture based on assumptions based on nothing but human reason or human senses. Such thinking will only take humanity as far as human reason and senses can go, which is far, but not outside the box. The brilliance of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle is a testament to just how far human thinking can take us, but soon descended into philosophies not nearly as brilliant, like Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Cynicism. Many other great thinkers came after, but without revelation it was all just a big intellectual food fight. (more…)
If you’ve ever had any kind of conversation with a hard core Darwinist, especially of the most ignorant kind, you’ll have heard the phrase, “Evolution is a fact.” This statement is affirmed in the most cocksure way, as if nobody with half a brain would question it. Or if you work in the biological sciences, or work at a university, Darwinian orthodoxy is the faith that shall not be questioned. You know how weak a position or idea is if totalitarian tactics are required to silence heretics, and keep everyone else in line. Reminds me of a certain virus that too shall not be questioned. We find, however, when we question “the narrative,” whatever that is, that maybe there are other ways to look at things, other facts to be considered that challenge the orthodoxy. It so happens that Darwinian evolution (random mutation through natural selection, and magically everything that exists, exists!) is a very weak orthodoxy, and a truly open-minded inquisitor will likely find it so regardless of whatever religious presuppositions he brings to the table. Neil Thomas is one of those, and I think you will enjoy hearing about his journey to Darwinian skeptic even as an agnostic. It’s a fun interview, and you’ll remember it next time some snotty Darwinist insists that, “Evolution is a fact!” Uh, no is it not!
I’m reading a wonderful book by Nancy Pearcey called Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning. You can tell she was deeply influenced by the great Francis Schaeffer as she weaves the implications of thought through history and expertly ties them to the consequences that inevitably follow. If we are not “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” in the words of Johannes Kepler, they will lead to destruction, and there is plenty of evidence of that as she details in the book. I want to quote a section of a chapter called “Meaningless Materialism” because it is brilliant. Every Christian in our secular age needs to understand what she’s saying about materialism, and its inherent weakness, it’s pathetically inherent weakness. Since the so-called Enlightenment, Christians have been on the defensive about the ultimate spiritual nature of reality; materialism reigns in secular cultures. But it is materialists who must defend their materialism, but they can’t. So they mostly don’t try; we ought not to let them get away with that. We can have every confidence that the Christian view of reality is infinitely more plausible, and defensible, than the materialists view. I encourage you to take the time to read Nancy closely, and understand her argument; it is faultless.
Well, he didn’t really do that, but he almost gets there as he’s trying to describe the mystery of being in such a musical zone that it boarders on the transcendent. He doesn’t exactly say that either, but what he describes is certainly akin to an other worldly experience. I yelled out loud as he struggled to explain this, “Pat, it’s God!” If you don’t know who Metheny is, he’s a guitarist and musical genius. I was exposed to his music in the early to mid-1980s, and he was a companion for decades. I don’t listen to much music anymore given my preference for learning, but when I saw this long interview of Pat by Rick Beato, it was something I couldn’t miss. It’s pretty technical stuff at times, as Beato has created quite a following exploring musical theory in popular music, but it’s an especially fascinating conversation for those of us who know that melody, harmony, and rhythm can only exist because God exists. (more…)
When I was a young man early in my intellectual journey searching for truth, I came across Idols for Destruction; Christian Faith and It’s Confrontation with American Society. It was published in 1983, and I was just beginning to expand my understanding of faith to all of reality beyond my own religious experience. I remember being awed by the author’s learning and insight, and how he took a Christian worldview and critiqued everything, it seemed, about the modern world. It was, to me, a tour de force, especially because as a 23 or 24 year-old I was just beginning to exercise my intellectual chops. It was from a universe of learning I could only marvel at. The author, Herbert Schlossberg, was an historian who seemed to know everything. I decided after lo these man years to read it again, and it amazes me now just as much as I remember it amazing me then. It’s now a classic in Christian intellectual history. What is striking as I read it in 2021 is how prophetic it was. He died a couple years ago before the world went mad with COVID, and Trump drove the woke left into complete madness, but he predicted with uncanny accuracy the destruction of the idols of our age we are experiencing right now. (more…)
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