The Doctor Is In

David Foster Wallace, a writer, professor and committed atheist, died on Sept 12, 2008. He was perhaps best known for his book about John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign. Wallace was a thoroughgoing postmodernist — and thereby solidly possessed of the notion that there is no capital-T Truth.
Recently, The Wall Street Journal published an essay, adapted […]

A recent post on the worldview of contemporary postmodern liberalism was kindly linked by Gerard Vanderleun over at American Digest. In his link post, a commenter left the following missive:
The essay would have value if there were absolutes. Never have been, never shall be. Our standards of behavior are devised by us, and used or […]

The talk of the past week or so in political circles has been Barack Obama’s tour of Europe — in particular his non-political political speech in Berlin. Two of the better commentaries you will find on the event are the devastating critique by John Bolton, and the more humorous, but equally effective demolition by
James Lileks. […]

The context of Mark Steyn’s trial by the British Columbia Human Rights Commission prompts The Belmont Club to ponder the standards by which we judge good and evil. In Nor iron bars a cage, he asks,
Is there a fundamental definition of evil? Are there things which objectively possess this property independent of the perception of […]

On a recent post about grace and Karma, a commenter posed a challenging question:
I’d like to ask you a question because you strike me as an intelligent man of faith. I was taught that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment, a nice euphemism for a torture chamber. Do you believe that those of […]

Sorry to go dark for so long — more on that later. Hope to have some time for new stuff soon. In the meantime, here’s another repost from the past.
 
It takes only a brief review of conservative web sites, print media, and pundit blogs to be left with the impression of a deep frustration with […]

40 years — a biblical number.
For 40 years, Moses was in exile, before returning to Egypt to free his people. For 40 years, the Israelites wandered in the desert before entering the promised land.
Our own advent has lasted 40 years as well.
Our preparation for this moment began 40 years ago, in 1968. Vietnam, the Democratic […]

If you are not a regular reader of First Things — well, you owe it to yourself to make it a regular watering hole on you daily reading journey. Excellent writing, in-depth posts on the intersection of faith and the public square, the culture wars, and topical posts on Christianity in contemporary Western culture, from […]