Category: Religion
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Jews and Christians Together
A reader of this blog recently opined, "And there isn't any "Judeo-Christian" anything: there is just Christian and Jew, and ne'er the twain shall meet." This provocative comment ignited some animated push-back from other commenters. And so it was serendipitous that I should stumble this morning upon Jews and Christians Together by Ian Speir. If…
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Michael Walzer on Religion
At least one lefty gets it, somewhat. Top o' the Stack.
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Faith: Life-Enhancing Only if True?
In July of 2022 I published a post entitled Faith's Immanent Value. Here are the opening paragraphs slightly redacted: Suppose you sincerely believe in God and the soul but that your faith is in vain. You die and become nothing. Your faith was that the curtain would lift, but it falls, irrevocably. My question is…
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Richard Dawkins on Christianity and Islam
Here (HT: Catacomb Joe): Famed atheist and self-styled intellectual Richard Dawkins shared in a recent interview that he was “horrified” to find that Oxford Street in London had lit up its public signs and displays to celebrate the Muslim fasting period called Ramadan, just days before Easter Sunday. “I have to choose my words carefully: If I…
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Is Belief in God Rationally Required? Response to a Critic
S. L. writes, I will just tell you three quick things about myself in an effort to get your kind response to my question. 1. I am a 70-year-old "evangelical", conservative (in every way), protestant, Christian believer. I put evangelical in quotes because I don't subscribe to all ideas that fit under the rubric of…
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Theistic Belief and What Inclines Me to It
Substack post du jour.
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Nagel on Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion
Substack latest.
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John Henry Newman and the Problem of Private Judgment
Onsi A. Kamel (First Things, October 2019): The issue of ecclesiastical authority was trickier for me. I recognized the absurdity of a twenty-year-old presuming to adjudicate claims about the Scriptures and two thousand years of history. Newman’s arguments against private judgment therefore had a prima facie plausibility for me. In his Apologia, Newman argues that…
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It Used to be Hard to be a Good Catholic
Substack latest. Another taste of John Fante with a bit of commentary. Tony Flood comments, "A priest is now authorized to bless the fornicating couple who recently befouled a Senate hearing room."
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Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion
Substack latest. One source of the appeal of ordinary language philosophy (OLP) is that it reinstates much of what was ruled out as cognitively meaningless by logical positivism (LP) but without rehabilitating the commitments of old-time metaphysics. In particular, OLP allows the reinstating of religious language. This post explains, with blogic brevity, how this works…
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Next Stop: The Catacombs
Catacomb Joe sends us to this Rod Dreher piece in the European Conservative. Believe it or not, the Trial of the Century just happened in a courtroom in Helsinki. The Finnish parliamentarian and physician Päivi Räsänen this week returned to the dock to face hate crimes charges for having quoted the Bible in defense of…
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The Most Powerful Argument Against Religious Faith Ever?
Today at Substack.