“Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream”—John Lennon Perhaps it is one of those curious fearful symmetries that the words of John Lennon quoted above are found in the Beatles’ album titled ‘Revolver’…and that he was finally gunned down, shot multiple times in the back by a “fan”. I grew up reading Kerouac… Read More John Lennon and The Seductions of Beautiful Nothing
…and Epistemology. [P]hilosophy and religion deal with the same basic questions. Christians, and especially evangelical Christians, have tended to forget this. Philosophy and religion do not deal with different questions, though they give different answers and in different terms. The basic questions of both philosophy and religion (and I mean religion here in the wide… Read More Francis Schaeffer on the Philosophy of being
Updated. Succinctly put, Judith Butler is a mess. You may not know her, but your daughter very likely will —or did. We can forget all about Butler’s sophist philosophical rationalizations. They are a mishmash of true and false. None lead necessarily to her systematic conclusions. Judith Butler has, by her own intentional will, become a… Read More Judith Butler, Feminist. A Brush of Her (or Its) Thought.
Are the hegemonic fields of politics and sex destroying us? “English Literature no longer makes the top ten of A-level subject choices. English departments at universities are regularly closing. Studies show dramatic drops in literacy and reading, particularly amongst teenagers. A book and a discussion. Stefan Collini’s new book explores why such a prestigious academic discipline… Read More English literature’s last stand
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise. Galatians 3:28-29 Not a few on the political far Right, alas, seem… Read More Not Ethnicity or Race, Not Blood and Soil…
Before there was Gloria Steinem or Michel Foucault, there was Dada. And it was deadly serious. Kickoff, Demolition time. “Dada thrives on contradictions. It is creative and destructive. Dada denounces the world and wishes to save it.” So says one narrator of journalist-filmmaker Mick Gold’s Europe After the Rain, a 1978 Arts Council of Great Britain documentary… Read More 1914. Europe After the Rain.
Learning the First Notes All Over Again. In Fellini’s film “Orchestra Rehearsal” the Conductor found himself in the midst of a revolt. The musicians had long murmured against he Conductor on account of his rigorous methods, demands and practice sessions. The exchanges between them and he were bitter. Time did not heal this rift but… Read More Fellini’s Orchestra Rehearsal.
2/24/24. “For years the annual Religious Education Congress in Los Angeles has been a regular source of liturgical distress as various innovations test the bounds of reverence, not to say sacrilege. This year as the congress unfolded on the West Coast, the genuine sacrilege took place on the East Coast, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in… Read More Dead Synodality. Fr. Raymond J. de Souza.
When in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Avant-garde were given powerful platforms to announce that traditional art forms were passé, and art galleries exchanged space for the mystic likes of Picasso, Surrealism, and in some degree Andy Warhol, etc., they arguably prepared the way for the denial of natural gender distinctions and the binary… Read More Rehabilitating Rockwell from the Culture of Kitsch
“Running from August 28th through September 5th in Nevada’s remote Black Rock Desert, few large-scale events are as compelling and overwhelming as this spectacle. Even with thick coatings of swirling alkaline dust and soaring temperatures, it has now evolved into a magnificent scenery of the craziest costumes, quirky art cars, and experimental living in some… Read More “Burning Man” Annual American Celebration of Reported Ancient Human Sacrifice
“The physicist Albert Einstein did not directly participate in the invention of the atomic bomb. But as we shall see, he was instrumental in facilitating its development.“ “In 1905, as part of his Special Theory of Relativity, he made the intriguing point that a large amount of energy could be released from a small amount… Read More Albert Einstein and the Bomb
To the Outskirts of Existence “At the end of 2013, I wrote to Pope Francis suggesting we have a conversation about the fundamental questions facing Christians in the modern world. It was a naïve proposal, but it never reached him. John WatersJul 12, 2021, Ireland The main element and purpose of this article is actually… Read More John Waters on Pope Francis
David Berlinski holds a PhD from Princeton University and has taught philosophy and mathematics at universities in France and the United States. A Senior Fellow of Discovery Insitute, he is the author of such books as The Deniable Darwin, A Tour of the Calculus, The Advent of the Algorithm, Newton’s Gift, and The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions. He… Read More Dr. David Berlinski on ‘The Deniable Darwin’
Catholic Critique 