The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life: A review of the new book by Gilbert Meilaender. “Underlying the entire book is Meilaender’s assertion that Augustine ‘is one whose power lies chiefly in his sense that the way that leads to God (and hence to fulfillment) is a way that often hurts and wounds us.’” (Brad Mercer, Reformation 21)
Thu 26 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Why Democrats are losing the culture war: “By framing the debate as a choice between theology or science, Democrats essentially argued that anyone who has qualms about scientific progress is a troglodyte. That puts them on the losing side of the moral question, even as they win the specific policy debate.” (Amy Sullivan, USA Today)
Thu 26 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Let’s have a heated debate: Officialdom's calls for a 'gentle, nuanced' debate about race, veils and multiculturalism is just another way of policing public discussion. “When political figures and community activists call for ‘civilised’ debate or ‘the right kind of dialogue’, what they are effectively saying is that any opinion deemed too controversial is a risk to public safety. The merit of the actual argument comes secondary to the alleged danger it might cause.” (Munira Mirza, Spiked)
Thu 26 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
We’re all big babies: “Once one has embraced the 'isms' that characterise the Baby Boomer's creed of modernity—individualism, relativism, voluntarism—and lapsed into the hooting, crooning self-validating babyhood that inevitably follows, then one is beyond criticism.” Plus: How to be an Adult. (Michael Bywater, Telegraph.co.uk)
Wed 25 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Barr on Nagel on Dawkins: Physicist Stephen M. Barr comments on a review of Dawkins' new book: “Surfeited as I am with Dawkins’ highly polished put-downs and elegant sneering at his intellectual foes, I am happy to be able to experience his latest book (The God Delusion) at second hand through the philosopher Thomas Nagel’s incisive review in the New Republic. . . . Dawkins regards belief in God as a ‘delusion.’ In my judgment, physicalist reductionism such as his is not a delusion but an illusion caused by a trick of perspective.” (Stephen M. Barr in On the Square, the First Things blog)
Tue 24 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Brooks’ Law: Inspired by David Brooks in the New York Times, on Andrew Sullivan: “I have a rule, which has never failed me, that when a writer uses quotations from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and the Left Behind series to capture the religious and political currents in modern America, then I know I can put that piece of writing down because the author either doesn't know what he is talking about or is arguing in bad faith.” (Kathy Shaidle, Relapsedcatholic.com)
Mon 23 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Danger ahead - there are good reasons why God created atheists: “In the perennial battle between our lowest and highest instincts, which is the human condition whether we are atheist or believer, people usually robe their most brutal acts in the mantle of high ideals. In this respect the history of religion, like the history of substitutes for religion, is all too human.” (Jonathan Sacks, The Times)
Mon 23 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Atheist gifts pontifical school in will: Speaking of atheists. “In one of her final interviews, Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal: ‘I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true.'” (Here's the WSJ link to an obit with the link to the interview) (Frances D’Emilio, Associated Press)
Mon 23 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Battle of the New Atheism: “I do call it prayer. Here is the atheist prayer: that our reason will subjugate our superstition, that our intelligence will check our illusions, that we will be able to hold at bay the evil temptation of faith.” Fascinating. Ultimately unsatisfying on any number of levels, but fascinating. We'll have something more to say about this eventually. (Gary Wolfe, Wired)
Mon 23 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
A Divine Conspirator: A nice piece on Dallas Willard. “'I thought the fashionable views were a disaster,' says Willard. 'I wouldn't have stayed in philosophy if it weren't for realism.'” (Christine A. Scheller, Christianity Today, September 2006)
Thu 19 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Five Best Novels on Money: “My favorite novels about the pursuit of money.” Also notable is Mark Helprin's Memoir from Antproof Case. (Ward Just, OpinionJournal.com)
Thu 19 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Recommendation: Judas and the Gospel of Jesus by NT Wright: “This book shows Wright at his best in answering a specific contemporary challenge to the traditional creedal view of Jesus. Wright gives a superb overview of gnosticism, gnostic Christianity and the gnostic scriptures. He covers how gnostic writings like the Gospel of Judas both challenge and confirm the church’s ancient and orthodox faith in Jesus.” (Michael Spencer, internetmonk.com)
Thu 19 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Debunking the Debunkers: “There should be more to scepticism than angry rants about stupid religious people or New Age mysticism.” (Ben Pile, Spiked)
Thu 19 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
Only Fools Bark at Dogma: “Have you seen the bumper sticker that seeks to emphasize the importance of knowing Jesus by declaring that ‘Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship’? This is misleading, because Christianity is both religion and relationship. In fact, it’s a religion founded on a relationship. Without dogma, however, I would not be free to articulate such thoughts, because I wouldn’t have the requisite vocabulary.” A readable defense of logic and dogma. Not just for Catholics. Take a few minutes with this one. (Patrick O'Hannigan, Catholic Exchange)
Wed 18 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments
At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas of which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that, or the other, but it is "not done" to say it . . . Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the high-brow periodicals.
George Orwell, introduction to Animal Farm, 1945
Redefining Democracy, Ethics, and Evangelicalism
A European Challenge to Anti-Americanism
Religion, Politics, and Public Opinion
Lives of Adventure, Fulfillment, and Service
The X-Files and the Enlightenment Myth
Invitation to the Classics: A Guide to Books You've Always Wanted to Read by Os Guinness and Louise Cowan, editors.
A paperback edition of our acclaimed guide to literature.
The Real Digital Revolution: Social networking is changing the marketing landscape: “Brand advertising can’t stretch the truth anymore or try and gild the lily. Because if it does, we’re going to find out about it, find out that you’ve been lying to us all along about extras that don’t work and specials that aren’t special. And our reaction is not going to be pretty.” (Alan Wolk, AdWeek; h/t: Ryan Moede • 2008 08 27)
Après Lewis: ‘As it turns out, Tim Keller’s “The Reason for God” (2008), the book recommended by my friend, is the best of the “Mere Christianity” wannabes. Mr. Keller argues that the usual objections to Christianity—that it is a straitjacket, that there cannot be just one true religion—are themselves the product of a particular (secular Western) point of view. He then builds an affirmative case for Christianity, suggesting that the Big Bang and our appreciation of beauty are clues pointing to God and that Christ’s resurrection was so unlikely both to Greeks and Romans (who viewed the material world as weak and corrupt) and to Jews (who expected any resurrection to come at the end of time) that it cannot be dismissed as the clever marketing strategy of a new religion. If this sounds a little like N.T. Wright, it isn’t accidental: Mr. Keller draws liberally from him, as well as Lewis, Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga (a professor at Notre Dame) and others. “The Reason for God” is as sensible and winsome as one would expect from the pastor of a latticework of churches that draw more than 5,000 attendees in New York City every Sunday, most of them young, single, urban professionals. But it too is no “Mere Christianity.” It does not have the original arguments or the magical prose of Lewis’s classic.’ (David Skeel, Wall Street Journal • 2008 08 15)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: the line within: ‘Solzhenitsyn was far from endorsing the thesis of the “banality of evil” as Hannah Arendt had expounded it. Nor did he see totalitarianism as the ultimate source of the evil that it promotes. Rather totalitarian government is the great mistake, made for whatever noble or ignoble purpose, of putting the final goal before the present dilemma. It is this which gives evil intentions the same chance as good ones, which enables the criminal and the psychopath to compete on a level with the saint and the hero. Yet even in totalitarianism the evil belongs to the human beings, and not to the system. This is the remarkable message that Solzhenitsyn, crawling from the death-machine, carried pressed to his heart.’ (Senior Fellow Roger Scruton, in openDemocracy • 2008 08 11)
Atheism and Evil: Could it possibly improve things to believe that the long pain of human evolution was set in motion by chance alone? The atheist view of the world is actually rather bleaker than that of Jews and Christians: Suffering under the weight of evil is meaningless, and so is any struggle against evil. Everything in the atheist’s world begins and ends in randomness and chance. Few atheists seem to be as rigorously honest as Friedrich Nietzsche, who warned that if God is dead, it is wishful thinking to hold that reason alone can confer “meaning” on life. Reason has been outmoded by chance. (Michael Novak, First Things: On the Square • 2008 07 29)
• Christopher Nolan’s Achievement: The Dark Knight (2008 07 22)
• Unplanned Parenthood (2008 07 21)
• What makes a supervillain? (2008 07 19)
• Pope’s Speech at Barangaroo (2008 07 17)
• Hollywood’s Hero Deficit (2008 07 17)
The White Mare by Michael McLaverty, Foreword by Miguel Mesquita da Cunha.
