May 5, 2017 | Culture, Notable Quotations
We must attack the enemy’s line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round. Our Faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implication were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defence of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materalistic assumptions in all the other books.
C.S. Lewis, God in The Dock, p. 91.
Apr 13, 2017 | Culture
We live in the age of The Sovereign Self. Phrases heard throughout the culture like, “Just be true to yourself,” or “As long as it makes you happy” are common. Such ideas reflect the triumph of the subjective, which basically asserts that each individual can determine their own reality. This almost ubiquitous mentality could not have been put any better than by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in a decision from 1992:
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Actually, this is more like a recipe for anarchy. What if I define my concept by taking away someone else’s liberty? On what basis could Justice Kennedy say that is not valid? After all he said It’s my “right” to define reality (“the universe”) as I wish. No, the Justice’s sentiments are sentimental nonsense. Realty will never bend itself to my wishes, no matter how hard I wish. And if we let our kids drink this dangerous cultural Kool-Aid, they will suffer for it because as I often say, reality doesn’t take any jokes.
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Mar 20, 2017 | Culture
The FX show The Americans is set in the Reagan era Cold War 80s. Two Soviet intelligence agents, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, pose as a married couple to spy on the American government. They didn’t know each other prior to meeting in America, and are tasked with living a completely normal suburban American life, helped along with their two kids who have no idea mom and dad are agents of America’s sworn enemy.
For those too young to remember life in a Cold War world, The Americans an excellent pop culture introduction to the time. For those old enough to remember, it’s a great nostalgia trip. And for those who like solid drama with a lot of moral ambiguity, there’s plenty of that too.
The reason I wanted to write something about the show isn’t to necessarily promote it, although for adults not squeamish about television portrayals of sex and violence it’s well worth the time. Rather, I came across a piece at an online (generally liberal) publication called Vox that affirms one of the central tenants of my book about keeping your kids Christian: “The Americans has always been a show about faith.” Having watched the show over four seasons, it is about anything but “faith,” as most Americans would understand the term; i.e. it’s not about religion. A liberal version of Christianity is part of the show, but the show itself if focused on two communists who are atheists. When I read the piece I was pleasantly surprised by the case the author was making: Everyone lives by faith.
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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.
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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 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.
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