Scientism
From a really wonderful little book; well written and enlightening: In order to understand early modern natural philosophy, it is necessary to break free of several common modern assumptions and prejudices. First, virtually everyone in Europe, certainly every scientific thinker mentioned in this book, was a believing and practising Christian. The notion that scientific study, modern or otherwise, requires an atheistic—or what is euphemistically called a "sceptical"—viewpoint is a 20th-century...
What Is Scholarship?
A scholar’s business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. — A. E. Housman, in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love As Christ commanded, we are supposed to love God with our minds, as well as with our hearts and our souls and our strength. It is an illusion to think that there is any necessary conflict between a Christian commitment and free, adventurous thinking. No-one ever does their thinking on a...
Two Insightful Insights
An old article I was going back over had two insightful, um, insights: If you ask Hollywood liberals themselves about the liberalism of their work, the answer generally depends on how you pose the question. If you frame it in terms of social responsibility, they will happily boast about using their platform to raise their audience’s consciousness about racial tolerance or the environment or distrusting government officials. Pose the same question as an accusation of ideological or partisan...
BUY THIS BOOK NOW!
This is an unbelievably valuable book—on sale for two bucks on Kindle. Get it now. Read it. It would help a good deal if you've had some Greek and/or Hebrew under your belt (he doesn't transliterate Greek words), but I believe you could profit from the book even without that training. If you can't afford two bucks, talk to me.
C.S. Lewis on the KJV
Some wise words from C.S. Lewis, who read Greek with a fluency I'll never hope to match. I think Lewis overstates the case slightly in the bolded line, because irreverent translations do exist. But as applied to all the major modern English translations, he's right on: In the first place the kind of objection which they feel to a new translation is very like the objection which was once felt to any English translation at all. Dozens of sincerely pious people in the sixteenth century shuddered...