David Gelernter is a man I have long admired.  A professor of computer science at Yale, he writes prolifically on a huge range of subjects, many in the humanities and religion. He is also a brave man.  He wrote something against the cruel philosophy of the Unabomber back in the 1980s, and as a result had his hand blown off by a bomb attached to a package in his mailbox.  So he is a victim of terrorism. This man of... Read more

If someone prior to 2012 had predicted that Oxford University Press would publish a book with the title Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, one might have wondered about his sanity, or at least about how familiar he was with current discourse in elite academia. But Oxford did in fact publish the book, and the intellectual aftershocks have yet to subside. http://www.intercollegiatereview.com/index.php/2015/02/11/darwin-day/ Read more

Kristof is correct: the result of ignoring Moynihan’s report has been epic disaster for children. Nowadays, 40 percent of all births in the United States are to unwed parents. That number is stunning. More stunning is the fact that 70 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. Consider also no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce was supposed to keep the government out of people’s business and increase personal freedom. In some ways, it has had the opposite effect, inviting courts... Read more

Peter Wehner reflects on tradition in the current issue of Commentary. He observes that even conservatives are wont today to leap over tradition and to grab for abstract principles.  The result is to follow modernity’s method and thereby to miss deeper truths which come only from working through tradition on our way to a partial grasp of truth. (more…) Read more

Such statements have yet to affect Dolce & Gabbana’s business, but as gay rights make gains there is likely to be less freedom to speak for those who oppose them—even if those speaking are gay men. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/03/dolce-gabbana-the-only-family-is-the-traditional-one Read more

Although the world has certainly warmed since the 19th century, the rate of warming has been slow and erratic. There has been no increase in the frequency or severity of storms or droughts, no acceleration of sea-level rise. Arctic sea ice has decreased, but Antarctic sea ice has increased. At the same time, scientists are agreed that the extra carbon dioxide in the air has contributed to an improvement in crop yields and a roughly 14% increase in the amount... Read more

The extent to which biblical criticism challenges believers has been vastly exaggerated; there is no reason to doubt the core of the Bible’s presentation of Israel’s history. http://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2015/03/biblical-criticism-hasnt-negated-the-exodus/ Read more

Obama’s expressed beliefs do not, of course, represent traditional Christian orthodoxy, but they do represent a kind of Mainline orthodoxy, which holds that religions are roughly equivalent (so long as they’re not “distorted” into fundamentalism) and that Christ’s death didn’t represent an atoning sacrifice so much as an example of his love and commitment to nonviolence. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415266/obama-really-christian-david-french   Read more

John Updike believed in a strange sort of Christianity that rejected the strictures of traditional faith, choosing divine comfort while rejecting divine commands. In other words, it was gospel without law, grace without repentance, the love of God without the holiness of God. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/03/14457/ Read more

Joshua Berman Scholars routinely accept texts containing supernatural occurrences as historically reliable. Except, that is, in the case of the Bible. http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2015/03/was-there-an-exodus/ Read more