thoughts in and out of season
A basic question that’s attracted surprisingly little discussion in spite of its obvious social importance is why so many people not only let religion slide practically but deny it as a theoretical matter. Their apparent claim is that one part of a universe that arose by chance and means nothing can interpret that universe correctly … More ...
Tufts materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote a book entitled “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.”
David Hart reviewed the book in the January issue of First Things, “Daniel Dennett Hunts the Snark.”
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=5428
The thesis of Dennett’s book is that the “phenomenon of religion” arose as the result of natural evolutionary biology, and … More ...
Anthony Esolen visits one of the few surviving men’s colleges and finds it a hotbed of benign timocracies. Fine upstanding young men, sense of honor, all that sort of thing. From his account it seems that education really can make a difference, and people can bounce back and start acting normal again if given … More ...
Arthur Schlesinger, a fine embodiment of modern liberal stasis, died last week. Schlesinger, along with JK Galbraith, represented that satisfied liberalism that died an unnoticed death sometime in the late 60’s or early 70’s. Figures like Schlesinger and Galbraith—and the brand of liberalism they represented—became instantly irrelevant during that time, although they personally never caught … More ...
Being unable to respond to the above topic digitably by Mr. Kalb is par for the digital course. So I am forced to create a “new topic,” not.
Mr. Kalb has laid out, as a professor does, his theories in clear detail. You just are not going to get this kind of down-to-earth intellectualism anywhere … More ...
Here’s some more moaning about These Young People Today, where “today” means recent decades going back God knows how long: The Closing of the American Mind Revisited. The piece is prompted by the 20th anniversary of Allan Bloom’s book.
Like most complaints about These Young People Today it’s really about the consequences of the … More ...
The 70s were called the “me” decade, but it appears that we’ve built on the foundation they laid. College students’ scores on a test called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory have been rising steadily since testing began in 1982, with the proportion of high scorers rising from half to two-thirds. The study worries that narcissists “are … More ...
Several items that touch on the current effort to turn the whole world into a unitary rationalized industrial scheme:
More news from the Sex Front that for some reason I’ve been covering a lot lately:
It’s become routine to say that current Anglican disputes are really about scriptural authority or unity of doctrine within the Anglican communion rather than sex. To my mind that doesn’t wash. At bottom the basic issue is always truth, in this case the truth about sex. If the right answer is that its human meaning … More ...