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Douglas Groothius on Bertrand Russell and Analytic Philosophy

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Ludwig Wittgenstein, [Bertrand] Russell developed the school of analytic philosophy in the early twentieth century. He called this “the philosophy of logical analysis.” Russell rejected the grand, sweeping, sprawling philosophizing of Hegel (who is so often incomprehensible) in favor of the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. This approach is modeled on the accuracy and clarity of good science writing, but it need not address matters of science. Analytic philosophers labor to define their terms carefully, to work on intellectual questions one at a time, have an acute concern for how language works, and to articulate explicitly the kind of argument forms they are offering.

Thomas Sowell on Fighting with Bleak Odds

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Indeed, we have a duty to fight against the signs of decay and corruption around us.

Even if victory seems nowhere on the horizon, think of the all the soldiers who gave their young lives, all across this planet, during World War II, when the ultimate outcome was by no means certain and the triumph of unspeakable evil seemed very possible. Think of all those who died lonely and ugly deaths in the gulags of Siberia or in the killing fields of Kampuchea, without even a speck of dignity for themselves or a sign of hope of common decency for others in their societies.

Our task is infinitely easier than that, our dangers nothing worse than unpopularity, and our society has already conquered many obstacles and is capable of overcoming many more.

Coleman Cruz Hughes on the Lessons of History

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It is often said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Sound advice though this may be, it does not get one very far in practice. The reason is that there is no agent called “history” which teaches unambiguous moral lessons. Study World War II and you may come away believing that nation-building works. Study Iraq and you may come away believing the opposite. In the end, the historical episodes we choose to study — and to ignore — say less about the wisdom offered by “history” and more about the lessons that we consider relevant today.

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George Gilder on the Invisible Microcosm and the Overthrow of Physics

Go It is understandable that humans resist the microcosm and even rebel against it. Quantum theory is an abstruse and difficult set of ideas. It baffles many of its leading exponents and it perplexed Albert Einstein to his grave. Defying the testimony of the human senses, the new physics is contrary to all human intuition and metaphor. In the quantum domain, all conventional analogies of physics — such as tops, springs, and billiard balls — are radically misleading. Therefore, we cannot "understand" quantum theory in the way we can comprehend classical physics. Quantum theory simply does not make sense.

CS Lewis on the Incompatibility of Reason, Science, and Materialism

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All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. If the feeling of certainty which we express by words like must be and therefore and since is a real perception of how things outside our own minds really ‘must’ be, well and good. But if this certainty is merely a feeling in our own minds and not a genuine insight into realities beyond them — if it merely represents the way our minds happen to work — then we can have no knowledge. Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true.

It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound — a proof that there are no such things as proofs — which is nonsense.

 

Nancy Pearcy on Worldviews as Explanations of the Pre-theoretical World

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A worldview is meant to give a systematic explanation of those inescapable, unavoidable facts of experience accessible to all people, in all cultures, across all periods of history. In biblical terms, those facts constitute general revelation. Philosophers sometimes refer to them collectively as the life-world, or lived experience, or pre-theoretical experience. The whole point of building theoretical systems is to explain what humans know by pre-theoretical experience. That is the starting point for any philosophy. That is the data it seeks to explain. If it fails to explain the data of experience, then it has failed the test. It has been falsified.

Charles Darwin on Facts and Theory

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About 30 years ago there was much talk that geologists ought to observe and not to theorize; and I well remember someone saying that at that rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

Mary Grabar on Howard Zinn’s Absolution of the Oppressed

Go nn’s telling, the Arawaks — or black slaves, or Cherokees, or New York Irish, or whoever — must always be persecuted innocents and the condemnation of their sufferings must be absolute. The officially oppressed cannot be blamed even for any crimes they themselves commit
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Transgender to Transformed

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Today’s culture is drowning in the lies of the “born that way” ideology that claims desires and feelings cannot change or be overridden. Transgender to Transformed chronicles the story of Laura Perry, a former transgender, who believed those same lies and was determined to never return to being female no matter what it cost her. And cost her, it did.

Like many who feel trapped in the wrong body, Laura “transitioned” to the opposite sex through irreversible surgeries, hormone injections, and a legal name change. Yet, despite her initial elation at living as a male, her new identity failed to bring her the peace and fulfillment she longed for. Realizing that she was living a lie, what was promised to be freedom had instead become a prison cell. 

Filled with raw, honest emotion, Laura’s story sheds light on the common deceptions about the transgender lifestyle, and exposes the frustration and hopelessness of living with a self-created identity that is in opposition to who God created. It bravely leads the way out of the darkness and into the light of freedom that transgenders may desperately be seeking. 

In Transgender to Transformed you will find: 

  • Practical insights into the mind of a transgender to help you understand how to better love them 
  • How to deal with loved ones who are transitioning 
  • Hope and help for those who are struggling with gender dysphoria

Tim Marchman on Nosism and Presumptuousness

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If you were looking for a place to assign blame for nosism — the use of the first-person plural to refer to oneself — you might start with God (“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” etc.) or with papal practice, or with Henry II, who is credited with having introduced the practice of English monarchs referring to themselves in the majestic plural in the 12th century; in the end, none of this is convincing. Without getting into the intricacies of theology and Hebrew grammar, for instance, it’s quite possible that God is a trinitarian, or using an intensifier to boast about His greatness in a way that seems more understandable coming from the creator of space and time than from a middle-tier magazine columnist, while popes and monarchs are not using the plural to refer to themselves alone but to themselves and God and/or the polities for which they speak, which may be arrogant, but displays a different sort of presumptuousness than that of a writer claiming to have divined the thoughts of everyone reading them. Even then, all of this is archaic: God hasn’t said anything in a long time, popes have generally passed over the “we” business since John Paul II, and even British monarchs aren’t all that likely to abuse the royal we.

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