In the heavenly city, darkness and night are dispelled by the constant radiance of God. Our earthly cities have made a parody of this. “If universe big how God real?” So goes the tongue-in-cheek version of an atheist argument against God’s existence. More seriously: If the claims of Christianity and the other monotheistic religions are [...]
Jesus did not preach an escape from earth to an immaterial Heaven. Rather, he preached the coming of God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven,” a redemption of God’s good creation. We hope in the completion of God’s grand rescue project, which is taking shape as we speak and which will reach fulfillment [...]
The purpose of human conversation is not limited to pragmatic ends, as if we only spoke in order to learn new recipes and get salient tips on what stocks to invest in. A good conversation is always a discovery of the person who reveals himself in speech. So much fighting concerning AI is really no [...]
Must Artificial Intelligence open the door to "that hideous strength" described by C.S Lewis? Time will tell, though I suspect the answer to the juggernaut that is Artificial Intelligence may well be the Babel scenario. In recent online postings, writer Rod Dreher has been commenting on various predictions of an apocalypse caused by Artificial Intelligence. [...]
Yuval Harari, in his latest book, "Nexus," believes that AI endangers the utopian dream of unbridled license that has long been the goal of countless revolutionaries on the left and libertarian anarchists on the right. Modernity is replete with philosophers who interpret reality through prisms. By simplifying their perceptions, such figures seek to change history. [...]
Some observations: 1. The singular (classic) Greek contribution to liberty is freedom of the mind. That means, more or less, the freedom of Socrates. 2. Well, there’s also the freedom of the citizen. The freedom to participate in ruling and so be more than a merely material or economic or tribal or familial being. 3. [...]
For several years, I have made the New Year’s resolution to make my Sundays Internet-free. That means I cut off any connection with the Internet, be it email, websites or videos. It does not include phone calls or text messages. This Internet fast allows me to dedicate my Sunday to other things. It is not [...]
Architects and homeowners have long assumed that the only way to keep houses cool and comfortable is to equip them with central air conditioning. However, as electric rates increase, many homeowners are looking for alternatives, especially in very hot climate zones. Some have resorted to so-called passive homes that rely upon massive amounts of insulation, [...]
What sort of thing is the internet? It’s not exactly a physical thing, but it was made by human hands. It is a real thing, but not something I can touch. It is something man-made but difficult to nail down because it is unlike just about everything else. Asking ‘what sort of a thing’ something [...]
What in the twenty-fifth hour might happen to those of us who prefer to live outside the data flow, still analog, still un-captured? Take some time to read "The Twenty-Fifth Hour," a deep and dark book narrating history prior to World War II. It is for the reader to wonder if the novel resonates today. [...]
During the last few centuries, while exploring the material world more deeply, many people have lost the way towards their own self, that inner sanctum where they can meet the Creator of both Man and of World. Thus the symbolic universe seems to have been forgotten, even though it is always there to be discovered. [...]
“At the Council of Trent, nobody noticed that it was Gutenberg who made all the problems,” said Marshall McLuhan, “and at Vatican II, nobody mentioned the hidden ground of electric information which has created all the moral and theological problems of our time.” Marshall McLuhan identified our time of postmodernity as the “ecological age” in which [...]
Despite making fun of the nature of tech company perfidy and internet culture, “The Mitchells vs. The Machines,” like too many animated films, may simply add to the inability of its younger viewers to follow a story for more than a minute. I should have known. The ad that popped up for The Mitchells vs. [...]
According to Friedrich-Georg Jünger, modern man’s veneration of technology reveals his distant kinship to the Titans of myth. This ‘titanic’ impulse to dominate and consume expresses itself through our technology-driven industrial economy, which now determines every aspect of life from the air we breathe to the food we eat. Ongoing debates concerning the growing power [...]