One of the missions of contemporary culture, perfectly consistent with the grand narrative of liberalism, is to destigmatize various identities and behaviors traditionally considered sinful in Christendom. Identity and behavior can't finally be separated, of course,...
Mark Ward
Delightful Video by Entertaining and Effective Lexicographer
I no longer need to be persuaded that descriptivism, not prescriptivism, is the way to go in linguistics—although I hasten to say that I will and do most certainly prescribe language choices for the only people for whom it is appropriate for me to do so: my kids. But...
CFR
Walsh and Middleton make a good point about the Creation-Fall-Redemption story of Scripture: Christians may tend to think of the Bible as all about sin (fall) and salvation (redemption). But without creation, neither of these concepts makes sense. What is sin but the...
Ross Douthat on Past Conservative Predictions
Read the whole thing, but if you want a little help getting to the good parts, feel free to use my highlights. The basic thesis is this: If you look at the post-1960s trend data—whether it’s on family structure and social capital, fertility and marriage rates,...
Question Authority?
In our contemporary society, it is almost automatically assumed, primarily under Immanuel Kant's influence, that the mature adult must attain moral autonomy and question critically every directive that authority makes. When I was much younger, I think I would have...
Epistemological Naïveté and Hubris
Tanya M. Luhrmann is a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times with a Ph.D. from Cambridge and a professorship in anthropology at Stanford. She's no intellectual slouch. And she's focused some of her writing on the particular sub-species of homo sapiens in...
Fiddlesticks and Lexicography
What do you do if you’re not sure what a word means? Wait for it... You look it up in The Dictionary. So far we’re together, right? This is chicken-crossed-the-road-to-get-to-the-other-side level stuff. But what if The Dictionary disagrees with The Dictionary? I...
BibleWorks 10
It's out. What's new. More later.
Discrimination
I saw this sidebar at The Atlantic not too long ago. Notice the first item: The article itself doesn't use the word "discriminate," and I have no idea who wrote the headline. But I do think it's interesting that the article itself discriminates against many groups...
The Most Important Thing You’ll Read Today Beyond Holy Writ
I may be at risk of becoming the boy who cried "Read This," but this point from Mark Bauerlein about debating homosexuality in the public square is so, so important: Religious conservatives demand religious liberty, while liberals, progressives, and libertarians...