Faith according to our Lord’s teaching in [Matthew 6:30], is primarily thinking; and the whole trouble with a man of little faith is that he does not think. He allows circumstances to bludgeon him… . We must spend more time in studying our Lord’s lessons in observation and deduction. The Bible is full of logic, and we must never think of faith as something purely mystical. We do not just sit down in an armchair and expect marvelous things to... Read more
From Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard (edited by Charles Moore): The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole... Read more
Think about what life in a space colony would be like: a hermetically sealed, climate-controlled little nothing of a place. Refrigerated air, synthetic materials, and no exit. It would be like living in an airport. An airport in Antarctica. Forever. When I hear someone talking about space colonies, I think, that’s a person who has never studied the humanities. That’s a person who has never stopped to think about what it feels like to go through an average day—what life... Read more
In his Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Pierce defined a novel as “a short story padded.” This is an all too apt description. The inability to prune a story to its essential story is an unfortunate quality shared by many modern writers and the primary reason that bookshelves are filled with bloated novels. William Faulkner once wondered if writers didn’t become novelists after having failed at the short story, “the most demanding form after poetry.” Perhaps this is the reason there are even... Read more
If I told you that I had a neurological disease which meant that for eight or more hours a day I lost control of my faculties, bade farewell to the outside world, and was subject to complex hallucinations and delusions – such as being chased by a grizzly bear at Stockport Railway Station – you would think I was in a pretty bad way. If I also claimed that the condition was infectious, you would wish me luck in coping... Read more
“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all,” said writer Anaïs Nin, expressing an absurd but frequently touted idea, “there is only the meaning we each give to our life.” Philosopher Bill Vallicella explains why such claims are nonsense: Note that if I must first give my life meaning, if it is to have some, then it has no meaning prior to and independent of my giving it meaning. And yet I must exist prior (both logically and temporally)... Read more
Black American sign language and American sign language are different languages: Some differences result from a familiar history of privation in black education. Schools for black deaf children — the first of them opened some 50 years after the Hartford school was founded, and most resisted integration until well after the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954— tended to have fewer resources. Students were encouraged to focus on vocational careers — repairing shoes or working in laundries — rather than... Read more
Naval analyst Chris Weuve explains how naval warfare is portrayed in the literature and television of outer-space: Foreign Policy: Let’s reverse the question. Has sci-fi affected the way that our navies conduct warfare? Chris Weuve: This is a question that I occasionally think about. Many people point to the development of the shipboard Combat Information Center in World War II as being inspired by E.E. Doc Smith’s Lensman novels from the 1940s. Smith realized that with hundreds of ships over... Read more
Depressing statistic of the week: More Americans now commit suicide than die in car crashes, making suicide the leading cause of injury deaths, according to a new study. What’s even more distressing is that, as bioethicist Wesley Smith notes, “some states some suicides aren’t even included in the suicide statistics–such mendacity thanks to the assisted suicide movement.” Read more
Joe Carter
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