Gleanings Quick Links

The Case for Working With Your Hands: “There probably aren’t many jobs that can be reduced to rule-following and still be done well. But in many jobs there is an attempt to do just this, and the perversity of it may go unnoticed by those who design the work process.” (Matthew Crawford, The New York Times )

Thu 04 Jun 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Wanda Sykes, Al Franken and the Politics of Incivility: “So civility has an unavoidably moral component. The proper treatment of others conveys regard and demonstrates self-control. Rudeness sets out to dominate and humiliate. . . . Why does politics seem to numb this rudimentary moral sense?” (Michael Gerson, The Washington Post )

Fri 15 May 2009 • Responses: 0 • from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Threat of Culture: Senior Fellow William Edgar: “Does the perversion of culture mean that the problem is culture itself? Although there are Christians who defend such a view, it is far off the mark…. It is never enough simply to decry the evils of the world, and then to offer salvation either as a way of warring against culture or as an escape from the world. In his Mars Hill speech, Paul reminds his listeners of the original purpose of history. God is the maker of the world and everything in it. He is to be worshiped as such.” (Gospel & Culture Project )

Wed 25 Mar 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The New Humanism: Senior Fellow Roger Scruton: “The new humanism spends little time exalting man as an ideal. It says nothing, or next to nothing, about faith, hope, and charity; is scathing about patriotism; and is dismissive of those rearguard actions in defense of the family, public spirit, and sexual restraint that animated my parents. Instead of idealizing man, the new humanism denigrates God and attacks the belief in God as a human weakness. My parents too thought belief in God to be a weakness. But they were reluctant to deprive other human beings of a moral prop that they seemed to need.” (The American Spectator )

Wed 25 Mar 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Knowing and finding: “The internet is a giant distributed information storage and retrieval system, and the most powerful tools are the meat-and-water units attached at the end by their fingertips. But ... there’s a difference between knowing a thing and knowing how it find it. Does the distinction matter? Well, yes. For obvious reasons, it helps to know how to make a fire, as opposed to knowing where you can get PDFs online of the Boy Scout Handbook. But knowing things lets you make connections in your head you can’t get with the web; the internet leads you from point A to point 85, and while it’s usually an interesting anabasis, all you remember at the end is how one damn thing leads to another, not connects to another. It’s as if we dump out a jigsaw puzzle on the table and compliment ourselves on seeing 500 pieces, instead of the picture they’re supposed to form.” (James Lileks )

Fri 20 Mar 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Obama’s Prayer Warriors: Senior Fellow Joseph Loconte: ‘When, in the throes of his presidential bid, Barack Obama cast off his controversial pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his campaign advisers began soliciting for more acceptable replacements. There was no shortage of willing applicants. In a provocative essay called “The Inner Ring,” C.S. Lewis suggested why that might be so: “I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods . . . one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring, and the terror of being left outside.” President Obama has recruited several Christian leaders to join one of the world’s most exclusive inner rings, the presidential prayer team.’ (The Weekly Standard )

Wed 18 Mar 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

How Science Fiction Found Religion: ‘More generally, why has mainstream sci-fi and fantasy as a whole become so religious? One reason may be the religious revival that the United States and much of the world have been undergoing since the 1970s. This “revenge of God,” in French scholar Gilles Kepel’s phrase, has seemingly begun to be felt even in secular Hollywood. But another reason surely lies in geopolitics.’ (Benjamin A. Plotinsky, City Journal )

Wed 11 Mar 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Science and the Obama Administration: “But the advances we have all enjoyed in health and power and material well-being do not mean that there is nothing more to life than health and power and material well-being. Politics must be concerned with those, but it must be concerned as well with other—sometimes higher—things: with moral as well as material progress, with equality and liberty as well as prosperity, with human flourishing in its fullness. Perhaps instead of asking about the proper place of science, we should ask about the proper place of politics in a society dominated by science.” (Adam Keiper, The New Atlantis )

Thu 05 Mar 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Triumph of Banality: Politics aside, there are some appropriate underlying concerns raised here: “Again, health care is expensive because Americans, with some good reason, have decided that the ancient tragic view—we all age and break down, and pay for the sins of our 20s and 30s in our 50s and 60s—can at last be replaced by the therapeutic promise of vigor and health into our 80s.” (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review )

Wed 04 Mar 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Faith is the defeat of probability by possibility: You don’t have to be religious to have a sense of awe at the sheer improbability of things: “The more science we learn, the more we understand how little we understand. The improbabilities keep multiplying, as does our cause for wonder.” (Jonathan Sacks, The Times (London) )

Mon 02 Mar 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Dangers of Overselling Evolution: Focusing on Darwin and his theory doesn’t further scientific progress: “I don’t think science has anything to fear from a free exchange of ideas between thoughtful proponents of different views. Moreover, there are a number of us in the scientific community who, while we appreciate Darwin’s contributions, think that the rhetorical approach of scientists such as Coyne unnecessarily polarizes public discussions and—even more seriously­—overstates both the evidence for Darwin’s theory of historical biology and the benefits of Darwin’s theory to the actual practice of experimental science.” (Philip S. Skell, in Forbes )

Wed 25 Feb 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Denis Alexander talks to Francis Collins: Senior Fellow Francis Collins, interviewed in 2008 on his journey to faith and other topics: “I was rather proud of the fact that as a scientist I wouldn’t draw a conclusion until I’d looked at the data and tried to draw the best conclusion I could, and I realised that outside of a few little babblings here and there I’d never really tried to understand what was the foundation upon which believers rest their faith.” (Faraday Institute. Also available in PDF format (46KB). )

Mon 23 Feb 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Defense of the West: How to Respond to the Islamist Challenge: “We must recognize that it is not envy but resentment that animates the terrorist. Envy is the desire to possess what the other has; resentment is the desire to destroy it. How do you deal with resentment? This is the great question that so few leaders of mankind have been able to answer. Christians, however, are fortunate in being heirs to the one great attempt to answer it, which was that of Jesus.” (Senior Fellow Roger Scruton, at CERC. )

Mon 23 Feb 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Blind Science vs. Blind Faith: Some Thoughts on Breaking the Deadlock: ‘In their conversation, the student happened to mention the resurrection of Christ. The professor’s response: The resurrection is inconsistent with the laws of physics. Now, in fact, the laws of physics lie at a considerable conceptual distance from phenomena such as human death and decay and their possible reversal. This particular professor in any case, would have little if any idea where to begin showing that resurrection conflicts with physics—or why it matters, if it does conflict. Indeed, who would? Very few, I would imagine. “Science” was vaguely invoked to end the discussion, just as in other contexts, “religion” is used for the same purpose.’ (Senior Fellow Dallas Willard, from a 1994 essay on dwillard.org )

Mon 23 Feb 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Pinning Your Own Tail on Someone Else’s Donkey: Guilty feelings got you down? Let Dr. Feelgood help you move on. “We may have, for example, to concede that forgiveness is an example of a virtue that may not be extensible beyond its religious warrant. It is one of Christianity’s most beautiful gifts to our civilization, but if it cannot sustain its nature when detached from its original religious framework, we need to understand that, and understand why. Forgiveness may not be secularizable precisely because it relies upon ideas and sources of justice that are not generally agreed upon in this age.” (Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay, in Character, Fall 2008 )

Fri 06 Feb 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments