Gleanings Quick Links

President Obama’s Proposals for a Second Fiscal Stimulus: Senior Fellow Prabhu Guptara: “Is there anything short of divine miracles which will be good for job creation, good for the small business sector, good for the economy as a whole, and good for President Obama?” (Renaissance: Insights for Action in Today’s World )

Tue 09 Feb 2010 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

How the Victoria and Albert Museum dealt with the dying of Christianity: “This situation is unprecedented in western civilisation: even 50 years ago, when these galleries of one of the richest collections in the world were last displayed in the V&A, they could assume that everyone was familiar with the rudiments of Christianity. Now, in a twinkling of an eye, 2,000 years of culture in the profoundest meaning of the word have been largely forgotten.” (Anna Somers Cocks, The Art Newspaper, December 2009 )

Tue 05 Jan 2010 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The God that Fails: David Brooks: “Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.” (New York Times, December 31, 2009 )

Tue 05 Jan 2010 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

From Winchester to Westminster: Jonathan Aitken discusses Sir John Templeton recently in the American Spectator; here’s a quote from the late philanthropist on gratitude: “Thanksgiving opens the door to spiritual growth. If there is any day in our life which is not thanksgiving day, then we are not fully alive. Counting our blessing attracts blessings. Counting our blessings each morning starts a day full of blessings. Thanksgiving brings God’s bounty. From gratitude comes riches—from complaints, poverty. Thankfulness opens the door to happiness. Thanksgiving causes giving. Thanksgiving puts our mind in tune with the Infinite. Continual gratitude dissolves our worries.” (The American Spectator )

Fri 11 Sep 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Welcome, National Affairs: We’re pleased to welcome the launch of National Affairs, the new quarterly journal published by our neighbors, which is the successor to The Public Interest. Among the contributors are many friends of the Trinity Forum, notably Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay. ()

Tue 08 Sep 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Looking for an Honest Man: Leon Kass, in an important lecture on the humanities: “I have pursued the humanities for an old-fashioned purpose in an old-fashioned way: I have sought wisdom about the meaning of our humanity, largely through teaching and studying the great works of wiser and nobler human beings, who have bequeathed to us their profound accounts of the human condition.” (National Affairs )

Tue 08 Sep 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Why AI is a dangerous dream: Robotics expert Noel Sharkey: ‘It is often forgotten that the idea of mind or brain as computational is merely an assumption, not a truth. When I point this out to “believers” in the computational theory of mind, some of their arguments are almost religious. They say, “What else could there be? Do you think mind is supernatural?” But accepting mind as a physical entity does not tell us what kind of physical entity it is. It could be a physical system that cannot be recreated by a computer.’ (New Scientist )

Tue 08 Sep 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Restoring the Fresco of Progress: Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay: “We have become skeptical about one of the constitutive elements of the modern, post-enlightenment West. And the skepticism runs deep. Not only do we question the inevitability of progress, but the very idea that we would know for sure what progress is, if it indeed does occur.” (Dappled Things )

Fri 28 Aug 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

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 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