Because of intense fear, we refuse to acknowledge that nothing in this world is permanent, that everything perishes, that soon we will be no more. Lodged within every human heart is the blind hope that death comes to others, not to us... Prometheus was the one Olympian god to rebel against Zeus’ plan to wipe [...]
While science and religion have differences that need reconciliation, you can regard the so-called ‘war’ between them as ‘fake.’ The history of science is entwined with our human search to discern a deeper understanding of our purpose within the universe.... Alan Honour begins his book Cave of Riches: The Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls with how [...]
Maybe because I am particularly dense, I learned nothing of value for human living from all the brilliant mathematicians, esteemed physicists, and distinguished academics I have known. Instead, my mentor was a "curandero," a traditional healer from Northern New Mexico. Even his death taught me a profound lesson about life. When I moved to Santa [...]
Although the prospect of death makes us miserable, it forces us to confront our mortality and search for a remedy, if we do not immediately numb ourselves with the drug of distraction. "Soles occidere et redire possunt [Suns are able to die and rise again]" —Gaius Valerius Catullus, Carmen 5.[1] One morning, as I walked out [...]
The problem with the notion that one should do good because doing good leads to happiness is that, well, what if it doesn’t? Throughout human history, the greatest thinkers and theologians have each proposed a state of being which in their view was the highest state of personal fulfillment one could achieve. For Plato, the [...]
The attack against Western civilization is, in some way, an attack against the Body of Christ. And Christians need to understand that... What is civilization and why is it important? Civilization is many things, but at its heart, it is both the inheritance of societal ideas, customs, and traditions which inform the body, and it is [...]
When C.S. Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, he admitted that he did so in large part because Christianity answered the pagan longings he had experienced in his love of mythology and of all things northern. Northern Irishman C.S. Lewis holds such an important place in the hearts, minds, and souls of American Protestants that [...]
The world has been and will continue to be overwhelmingly traditionally religious, whatever intellectuals like Nietzsche might have expected to the contrary, thus confirming those philosophers who contend that all civilizations must be supported by such moral frameworks… San Diego State University recently announced what it called perhaps the largest ever study of American youth [...]
What is the worst thing about living in the rubble of a civilization? It is not that you shed a tear for the noble churches and courts and town halls you once knew, as you recall years filled with religious services, parades and block parties. It is that you do not even suspect that such [...]
René Girard gave the intellectual universe a way of seeing old truths in a new way and new truths through an old lens. As a result, his work has already been hugely influential in a range of disciplines, both academic and cultural… Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard by Cynthia L. Haven (346 [...]
It is through Ivan’s representation of Soloviev in The Brothers Karamazov that Dostoevsky unearths the grave implications and outcomes of totalitarian politics… Fyodor Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, has rightly earned its place among the greatest books of all time. It warrants this stature in no small part because it addresses questions and problems [...]
Humanity is mystified by Love. All humans experience it. None can explain it. The mysterious genesis of this strange gift, the wondrous beginnings of this bizarre quality within the human heart prompts the greatest quest of all: the quest for Love… My friend Carol is a writer of medical romantic fiction. This does not mean [...]
Jonah Goldberg terms a “miracle” the great wealth that has been produced by the West since the middle of the eighteenth century. But will the miracle that is the West give way to the suicide of the West? Ah, that is the question he attempts to answer in his new book… Suicide of the West: How [...]
The narratives of science and Christianity are obviously not novels, nor works of fiction, for both claim to tell the true story of humankind—where we came from, what we are, and where we are going. To determine if either of these narratives is true, we must assess the plot… In 1882, Nietzsche’s madman ran to [...]