Last night my wife ask me a question: “Why do you suppose there is such hatred in the scientific community for those in the ID (Intelligent Design) camp?” I’m sure she was looking for a simple answer, to which there are plenty of decent ones—she, however, did not get one. The question is well founded, there is a vitriolic hatred spewed in the direction of scientists who support an ID model. It is a palpable hatred, akin to that seen in the ever-partisan and antagonist world of politics. This, however, should come as no surprise, because the hatred is, at its most fundamental level, a political hatred. More specifically, it is a hatred for any worldview that is anti-Marxist. There was a point in history, not that long ago, in the second half of the 20th century, where nearly 40% of the world’s population lived under some form of Marxism. Due to its philosophical naivety and devastating legacy of bloodshed and...
"Taking Every Thought Captive" 2 Corinthians 10:5
Justin_Chiarot
A Polarized Nation: How The Black Lives Matter Movement is Proving the Necessity of Free Market Education
Now, more than any time in the recent past, it seems as if America is a polarized nation. In regards to countless issues, there seems to be an ever growing, bifurcated chasm between opposing sides: Republicans vs. Democrats, pro-lifers vs. pro-murderers (I mean pro-choicers), pro-Brexiters vs. anti Brexiters, and this list could go on and on ad nauseam. At the moment, this divide is most viscerally felt in the area of race relations. We have on one side a group of people in the Black Lives Matter camp who obviously feel disenfranchised and think that America at large, and the police force in particular, do not treat Black Americans fairly based on the color of their skin. On the other side of the aisle...
We Are In The Last Days
Clichés become clichés in large part because they tend to be true. And perched atop the precipice of the great mountain of clichés is this old philosophical ditty: True wisdom is knowing that you do not know. This little morsel of Western cultural inheritance takes many different forms, with a minor variance here or there, but the sentiment remains the same regardless of the chosen syntax. One should be slow to pronounce absolute knowledge in any area and quick to admit ignorance.
Yet, it is with full foreknowledge of the truism stated above, that without reservation, I make the following claim: We are now in the last days! This topic, when will the last days come? When will Christ return? these questions are of great intrigue for Christians, and in some ways rightfully so. It is understandable that it would be. How could the coming of Christ to usher in the eschaton, to end the normal space time continuum not be intriguing? It is inherently interesting, and we can’t get enough of it. The History Channel seems to trip over itself, rushing to produce their next tedious special feature on it. Even non-believers like to watch movies about it. It’s a topic that sells books, ups TV ratings and is great internet click-bait. There is a deep longing to know when Christ will return. However....
Black Lives Matter?
If we believe that man is nothing but matter, which is the logical consequent of the materialism of the day, I see no problem with affirming that black lives DON’T matter. It is actually tautological. If we do not hold that man is a supreme being, made imago Dei, then man only becomes a human being based on the arbitrary standards that other human beings have decided upon. Once again, this is an a priori fact.
Given the pro-abortion stance of this country, the “rights of humanity” are not conferred to a first trimester fetus, or for that matter a second or third trimester fetus (in all cases). In some cases, the rights of humanity are not even conferred to a fetus/child/baby/infant/half-person/ bundle of matter, whatever we wish to call “it,” when it has partially emerged from its mother. Even further, some, like Princeton’s celebrity ethicist Peter Singer, have argued that we should, in certain cases, delay declaring these balls of atoms “humans” until they have lived for a full month outside of their mothers.
Punching Gender in the Jaw
It is often said that sports are a microcosm of life. The statement contains a scintillation of truth, but the correlation is often overblown into a heaping pile of nonsensical fandom and analogical fallaciousness. With that being said, we can learn from sports. This past week, sports has — like an inebriated Eagles fan screaming at a preseason game that “this is our year!” — taught us once again just how dumb we are.
A few days ago, the starting quarterback for the New York Jets, Geno Smith, had his jaw broken when, now, ex-teammate IK Enemkpali landed a post-practice haymaker. Great sadness instantly reverberated throughout the defensive-back meetings of all of the Jets’ AFC opponents. All kidding aside, this is an important story because of the fact that it has not been a big story. Sure, during a slow period in the sports calendar, it has fueled many vacuous segments of sports talk radio and television, but it has not been a national news story...
On Abortion
This piece is not about abortion. The recent Planned Parenthood scandal may have been the impetus for this discussion, but this is not about abortion. The insidious defenders of Planned Parenthood may think they are having a conversation about abortion, but they are not talking about abortion. On the surface, the Christians and atheists, the agnostics and materialists, the liberals and the conservatives, may seem to be in a dialogue, or more often than not, an ad hominem-laced bout of verbal pugilism, over abortion, but alas, they are not. What we are talking about is ethics, and modern “ethics” appears to be little more than manipulation dolled up and presented as moral discourse...
Right, Not Rights
C.S. Lewis famously wrote of “men without chests.” A passing glance at the daily events, seen as filtered by our bestial media, would lead the sober observer to note that we have...
A Power Grab
When Nietzsche’s Mad Man read the obituary of God to the startled onlookers in The Gay Science, he realized that the death of God had left in its wake a large void. A void that once was filled by the metaphysical, but now was open to be filled by the physical. Power was up for grabs. People, having abandoned their faith in a deity, were not simply...
In The Cool Of The Dawn
¨ There were solitudes beyond where none shall follow. There were secrets in the inmost and invisible part of that drama that have no symbol in speech; or in any severance of a man from men. Nor is it easy for any words less stark and single-minded than those of the naked narrative even to hint at the horror of exaltation that lifted itself above the hill. Endless expositions have not come to the end of it, or even to the beginning. And if there be any sound that can produce...