Liberal education has as its end the free mind, and the free mind must be its own teacher. Stringfellow Barr & Scott Buchanan I have some questions I want to ask you, questions for St. John’s graduates and questions for American citizens. As I understand the questions, one leads to another, and [...]
Many atheists are assured of the truth of their position, arguing that religious beliefs are merely blind faith at best and stupidity at worst. As Richard Dawkins writes, “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because [...]
Jonathan Chait burned up the Internet with his critique of so-called political correctness.[1] Among many responses, Amanda Taub’s stands out for its denial of Mr. Chait’s basic premise.[2] According to Ms. Taub: …there’s no such thing as “political correctness.” The term’s in wide use, certainly, but has no actual fixed or specific meaning. What [...]
For a little more than 100 years we have had standardized IQ tests, and over those 100 years there has been a consistent, linear increase in IQ scores, on the order of three points per decade. According to IQ tests, we are getting smarter. Also over the last 100 years, rates of belief in [...]
Those of our readers, with the good sense to follow Al-Arabiya News, will not have missed their story from the United Arab Emirates, in which a court granted divorce to a man whose wife was possessed by a djinn (a genie).* His wife refused to have sex with him, and he discussed it patiently. [...]
Webster’s defines “intelligent” as “endowed with intelligence or intellect; possessed of, or exhibiting, a high or fitting degree of intelligence or understanding.” This modern understanding of “intelligence” as an innate disposition or propensity differs from earlier understandings of the word as meaning “versed” or “skilled.” Milton, for instance, in Paradise Lost, calls the eagle [...]
The great English playwright and social philosopher George Bernard Shaw once remarked that all professions are conspiracies against the common folk. He meant that those who belong to elite trades—physicians, lawyers, teachers, and scientists—protect their special status by creating vocabularies that are incomprehensible to the general public. This process prevents outsiders from understanding what [...]
In the Western world there is a rich tradition of the life of the mind. Much of the emphasis on the life of the mind in the West flows from our Christian inheritance, as seen in the biblical documents, and in key thinkers of the West (e.g., Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Calvin, among others). As [...]
The recent flap over the WikiLeak disclosures reminded me of lessons I drew from my experiences as a communications officer in the Marines with top secret crypto clearance. When I was with the 6th fleet in the Mediterranean during the period of Hungarian revolt and the Suez crisis I would often have the responsibility [...]