John Dewey on an Open Universe Without Bounds or Final Causes
To many timid, albeit sincere, souls of an earlier century, the decay of the doctrine that all true and worthful science is knowledge of final causes seemed fraught with danger to science and to morals. The rival conception of a wide open universe, a universe without bounds in time or space, without final limits of origin or destiny, a universe with the lid off, was a menace. We now face in moral science a similar crisis and like opportunity, as well as share in a like dreadful suspense.
Marriage, Scripture, and the Church
This book takes a distinctive approach to the same-sex-union debate by framing the issue as a matter of marriage. Darrin Snyder Belousek demonstrates that the interpretation of Scripture affects whether the church should revise its doctrine of marriage for the sake of sanctioning same-sex union. Engaging charitably yet critically with opposing viewpoints, he delves deeply into what marriage is, what it is for, and what it means as presented in the biblical narrative and the theological tradition, articulating a biblical-traditional theology of marriage for the contemporary church. Afterword by Wesley Hill.
Bonnie Kristian on the False Prophecies of Q
Brett McCracken on Algorithms and Aimless Folly
When we grab our phones aimlessly, scroll our feeds without a goal in mind, or suggest to our spouse that “we should watch something on Netflix,” we are susceptible to whatever voices or images are the most seductive or alluring. To use Tozer’s language, we are uncommitted, not sure what direction to go.
This makes us utterly vulnerable to the power of suggestion, cogs in the machinery of algorithms ever more sophisticated at keeping us distracted on their platforms. We are digital wanderers, and this is a dangerous thing to be. Without a purposeful direction in digital spaces, we’re open to whatever direction an algorithm thinks we’ll like—a “suggested for you” movie, article, or YouTube video that will eat up a few minutes or hours of our time.
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The antidote to dangerous distractibility in the digital age is purpose, focus, and intention. Proverbs 4:25 says, “Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.” This is wisdom in contrast to the unwise woman of folly, who “does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it” (Prov. 5:6).
CS Lewis on Aligning with Reality, with Natural Law
There is something which unites magic and applied science (technology) while separating them from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.
Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb” (video and text)
Virtue as the Mean Between Two Extreme States
Alexis de Tocqueville on Social Ostracization
Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.
Stephen Jay Gould on Consensus Science
Judgments based on scientific evidence, whether made in a laboratory or a courtroom, are undermined by a categorical refusal even to consider research or views that contradict someone’s notion of the prevailing ‘consensus’ of scientific opinion. … Automatically rejecting dissenting views that challenge the conventional wisdom is a dangerous fallacy, for almost every generally accepted view was once deemed eccentric or heretical. Perpetuating the reign of a supposed scientific orthodoxy in this way, whether in a research laboratory or in a courtroom, is profoundly inimical to the search for truth. … The quality of a scientific approach or opinion depends on the strength of its factual premises and on the depth and consistency of its reasoning, not on its appearance in a particular journal or on its popularity among other scientists.”