Featured Essay
Elementary school is a rather treacherous place to learn to navigate as a child. The first time I ever read Calvin and Hobbes, I discovered a kindred spirit. Calvin's view of elementary school was akin to an intergalactic prison where the alien life forms torture you for what seems like their own pleasure—at times I resonated with that analysis.
Elementary school is one...
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Featured Essay
Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room;
And Hermits are contented with their Cells;
And Students with their pensive Citadels:
Maids at the Wheel, the Weaver at his Loom,
Sit blithe and happy; Bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness Fells,
Will murmur by the hour in Foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no priso...
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Martin Buber (1878-1965) was a Jewish philosopher who did a great deal to put classic documents of Hasidic tradition into wider circulation. He is most famous for his 1923 book I and Thou.
I and Thou is a remarkable book, a masterpiece of simplicity and direct communication. I don't know if it will ever seem as important again as it did for a while in the 1960s, when $5 Sc...
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Featured Essay
Just the other night I was doing something that all middle-aged university professors do on a regular basis – maintaining my Facebook! Yes, I have a presence on Facebook and, yes, on occasion I visit the site to see what all of my “friends” are doing. I originally created my Facebook presence simply because my colleague and fellow blogger Matt Jenson said that I should. I...
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Featured Essay
The recalcitrant nature of human persons for scientific naturalism has been widely noticed. Thus, Berkeley philosopher John Searle recently observed, “There is exactly one overriding question in contemporary philosophy….How do we fit in?....How can we square this self-conception of ourselves as mindful, meaning-creating, free, rational, etc., agents with a universe that co...
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Science does a wonderful job making my body healthy.
That is good, but religion does something better. Christianity cures my soul so that I can live well.
After all, bad men are not blessed when they have good health. Sound bodies just give them greater chance to harm others and deeply harm their own souls. As many great saints demonstrate, cure the soul and a man or woma...
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It is good to know the origin of ideas so we can critically examine our own assumptions.
The pre-Socratics philosophers who lived in the ancient Greek world helped invent philosophy. Any civilized person owes them a debt of gratitude.
They also were fumbling to discover new ways to think about the world. They did not, however, simply sit under a tree and speculate abou...
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Featured Essay
It is a cherished belief of most people that human beings simply as such have equal value and rights and that they have significantly greater value than animals. However, this claim is difficult if not impossible to justify given a naturalist worldview. For many naturalists, the best, perhaps only, way to justify the belief that all humans have equal and unique value simply a...
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Featured Essay
Throughout its history, the Judeo-Christian tradition has been interpreted as giving an affirmative answer to questions about the reality of the three great topics of Western philosophy, viz., God, the soul, and life everlasting. For two thousand years, the vast majority of Christian thinkers have believed in the souls of men and beasts as it used to be put. Animals and human...
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Featured Essay
Consciousness is among the most mystifying features of the cosmos. Geoffrey Madell opines that "the emergence of consciousness, then is a mystery, and one to which materialism signally fails to provide an answer."[i] Naturalist Colin McGinn claims that its arrival borders on sheer magic because there seems to be no naturalistic explanation for it: "How can mere matter origi...
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Featured Essay
Once upon a time there was a man who thought he was dead. His wife tried everything she could to convince him he was very much alive. But try as she may, he would not change his mind. After several weeks of this, she finally took him to the doctor who assured the man he was alive. Sadly, it was to no avail. Suddenly, the doctor got an idea. He convinced the man that dead ...
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Joe Carter is a great writer, a good man, and a fine American. He could beat me up without noticing the effort.
He is Red Bull in the blogosphere to my Skim Milk.
He is, in all probability, more influential than Senator Tom Coburn.
He is an omnivorous reader with the sense to enjoy both pop and "high" culture. On a good day, Joe Carter shows why blogging should be take...
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