The Avengers and Classical Theism

October 2, 2012 By Joe Carter

Philosopher Ed Feser considers some of theological exchanges in the recent superhero movie, The Avengers: We cannot assume Captain America to have had time between battles to study classical philosophy and theology, but his words could be read as containing implicitly the answer to pop atheism’s “one god further” objection (which I have discussed here, here, and here). The God of classical theism is not “a god” among others, precisely because He isn’t an instance of any kind in the first place, not... Read more

Mumford and Sons are a Kind of Musical Pinterest

October 2, 2012 By Joe Carter

This week Mumford & Sons released their new album Babel, which I listened to in its entirety (on the life-changing app Spotify). As with their previous work, I really wanted to like the music—felt almost obligated to like the music as a reaction against Ke$ha and Lady Gaga. And yet . . . there is something not quite right about Mumford’s music. I didn’t know what it was that bothered me until I read my friend Matthew Schmitz’s post, Against... Read more

The First Popular Psychoactive Drug for People Who Were Basically Fine

October 2, 2012 By Joe Carter

Robin Marantz Henig explains the significance of Valium: It as one of the first psychoactive drugs to be used on a large scale on people who were basically fine. Taking a pill to feel normal, even a pill sanctioned by the medical profession, led to a strange situation: it made people wonder what “normal” really was. What does it mean when people feel more like themselves with the drug than without it? Does the notion of “feeling like themselves” lose... Read more

Naming the Turtle: The Basic Beliefs of My Worldview

October 2, 2012 By Joe Carter

In his book A Brief History of Time, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking relates a story about a well-known scientist who gave a public lecture on astronomy: He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish.... Read more

A Commonplace Blog

October 2, 2012 By Joe Carter

In the sixteenth century commonplace books—essentially scrapbooks filled with its creator’s particular interests—became widely used, as Alan Jacobs explains, “because literate people were discombobulated by the flood of information that the printing press had unleashed on them.” It’s not surprising then that in an era that is even more deluged with information, we’d adopt similar methods of collecting material that has captured our interests. As Jacobs wrote in a 2008 issue of First Things, blogs often fill the same function... Read more