Category: Good and Evil
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The Riddle of Evil and the Pyrrhonian ‘Don’t Care’
Substack latest on the aporetics of evil. Today I preach upon a text from Karl Jaspers wherein he comments on St. Augustine (Plato and Augustine, ed. Arendt, tr. Mannheim, Harcourt 1962, p. 110): In interminable discussions, men have tried to sharpen and clarify this contradiction: on the one hand, evil is a mere clouding of…
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Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and the Will to Believe
My friend, I continue to read and reread your Heaven and Hell essay, especially the "Concluding Existential-Practical Postscript". Psalm 23. "The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not…." Let us pray that there is a Good Shepherd who cares deeply about his flock and will do things to relieve their suffering. Can we come…
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Homo Faber, Homo Mendax
Man the maker is a damned liar. He is a fabricator in both senses of the term. A little god and a little devil. Neither the Father of all nor the Father of lies, he is a chip off the old blocks. This observation has a Manichean flavor. But if there are not two co-eternal…
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Suffering, Evil, and Galen Strawson’s ‘Proof’ of the Nonexistence of the Christian God
This just in from our old friend Malcolm Pollack: I'm writing because I went to your Substack to read your 2A post, and beneath it was a link to your post about Galen Strawson's audacious letter to the NYT — in which Professor Strawson, in a single paragraph, proves the nonexistence of the Christian God! …
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On Death: Subjective and Objective Views
Substack latest. Is death an evil?
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Reading Now: Demonic Foes
By Richard Gallagher, M. D. Available via Amazon. It arrived yesterday and I'm already 60 pages into its 247 pages. A page-turner for sure. I did, however, refrain from reading any of it in bed last night before drifting off — for obvious reasons. Experiences of my own incline me to take very seriously "Unseen…
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God, Evil, Matter, and Mind
How both theists and atheists stand pat in the face of objections. Top o' the Stack.
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The Psychology of the Pollyanna and the Political Ponerology of Leftism
We all know pollyannas. They are more often women than men and the charm of these lovable ladies is in no small measure due to their openness to the positive in people and things and their seeming incapacity to discern the negative and evil. A most extreme example has come to my attention, one .…
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The Axis of the Human Heart
Rod Dreher quotes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by…
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The State of Things When the ‘Leader’ of the ‘Free World’ is a Puppet
I asked Dr. Vito Caiati, historian, whether Donald Trump's being in office would have made any difference to the present geopolitical mess, and this is what he wrote: As for the present miserable state of the world, I think that had Trump remained in office neither the war in the Ukraine nor the war in…
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A Problem of Evil for Atheists
Latest Substack offering on evil. Yesterday's entry argued that the naturalist cannot explain the depth and depravity of moral evil. (We can 'thank' the Islamist Nazis of Hamas for rubbing our noses in it once again.) Today's entry argues that a naturalist who is intellectually honest and not self-deceived must be a pessimist and an…
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The Holocaust Argument for God’s Existence
Top o' the Stack. Is there an adequate naturalistic explanation for the unspeakable depth and depravity of moral evil? If not, what might we reasonably conclude? Can one plausibly argue from the depth and depravity of moral evil to the existence of God? ………………… Yesterday I ordered a book on Amazon and it arrived today.…
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Dreher on the Demonic
Here. Demonic forces are afoot as we slide into the abyss.
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Radix Omnium Malorum
Top o' the Stack
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A Response to My Is Sin a Fact?
Brian Bosse is not convinced by my Substack article, Is Sin a Fact? A Passage from Chesterton Examined. Brian writes, Your Argument Against Chesterton (1) If the existence of sin is a fact one can see in the street, then the existence of God is a fact one can see in the street. (2)…