The Narthex
The Determinist's Dilemmas
Absent free will, one is not free even to evaluate an argument
By James Hanink | October 27th 2023 8:10 PMNeurobiologist Robert Sapolsky recently captured a headline in the Los Angeles Times. “Humans lack free will, says Stanford scientist” (10-22-2023, B1). The subtitle drives home the point: “Decades of study lead to claim that virtually all behavior is beyond our conscious control.” So contends Sapolsky, the winner of a MacArthur…
READ FULL BLOG POSTGod, Caesar, and Dividing the Renderings Today
What if the people running institutions that presuppose a Supreme Being don’t presuppose Him?
By John M. Grondelski | October 24th 2023 1:53 PMThe November issue of Commentary, a monthly magazine of conservative Jewish thought, features a great essay, “Psalms They Have, But They Know Not.” Rabbi Meir Soloveichik ponders American Biblical ignorance, especially among its “educated,” and its implications. The immediate impetus for his article was an incident last summer on the…
READ FULL BLOG POSTJohn Paul II's 'Lively Battle'
We continue to learn much from the pope God gave us 45 years ago
By John M. Grondelski | October 16th 2023 12:45 PMOctober 16, 2023, marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the election of St. John Paul II as Pope. There are so many things about his 26-year pontificate for which we should be grateful, but I will focus on one I find particularly important: his Christian humanism. I am aware mention of…
READ FULL BLOG POSTMarxism, Alive and Well
Communism's anthropology, as described by Engels, currently threatens traditional values
By David Daintree | August 15th 2023 11:18 AMConservative defenders of traditional Christian values often claim that many of the things they perceive as current threats to society -- radical sex education in primary schools, for example, or the notion of gender fluidity -- share a common origin. That they are in fact inspired by Marxism, which is…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThoughts of a Pastor in the Midst of War
Reconstructing the religious foundations of society would have been work enough
By John M. Grondelski | July 31st 2023 11:42 AMUkraine’s ongoing attack from Russia is now entering its seventeenth month. Russia continues its aggression, in part because it knows Western attention spans can be short and eager to “move on.” There’s nothing Moscow would like better. As a Polish American, let me tell you: the Central European perspective is…
READ FULL BLOG POSTPluriform Blasphemy
Blasphemy in heart and in deed
By James Hanink | July 26th 2023 11:31 AMWe’re used to “in your face” demonstrations, and so are Swedes. But now Sweden is dealing with something more, the public burning of the Quran. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is furious: “The insult to the Holy Quran in Sweden is a bitter, conspiratorial, dangerous event. It is the opinion of…
READ FULL BLOG POST'Science': the Great Idol
Modern man has answered life's big questions with things
By Jason Morgan | June 5th 2023 2:02 PMWe moderns hear a lot about miracles. Modern medicine is a miracle, we’re told. Landing rovers on Mars, or on distant asteroids, requires a miraculous degree of technological sophistication. Marvels—miracles’ kid brothers—are a dime a dozen in 2023. Video phones, space telescopes, ChatGPT. Wow. Aren’t we human beings special. Miraculous,…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Heavens & the Firmament
Deep space, deep sea, deep atomic structure, and the reason for the season
By James Thunder | December 29th 2022 1:09 PMPerhaps you have read of the James Webb Space Telescope, launched on Christmas Day 2021, and the kinds of images it has given us, like those of the “Stephan’s Quintet” (google "James Webb Space Telescope Stephan’s Quintet" to see it). And perhaps you have read of the findings of the…
READ FULL BLOG POSTShell Shock
Our 'post-Christian' society barely conceals the great brokenness beneath it
By Jason Morgan | September 15th 2022 10:38 AMAs part of research for a separate project, I recently came across this ten-minute video about shell-shocked soldiers from World War I; it’s gut-wrenching but ought to be seen by everyone (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvTRJZGWqF8). It shows men twisted and deformed, body and mind, by the horror of war. I had…
READ FULL BLOG POSTNewman & Moses on Belief
Our forefathers teach that God has revealed Himself to humankind
By James Thunder | July 13th 2022 3:24 PMI had recently finished reading Father Ian Ker’s biography of Cardinal John Henry Newman (who was beatified in 2010 and canonized in 2019) when a review in the Wall Street Journal of a book on the existence and nature of God by a professor of law at Yale caught my…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Open Society and Its Frenemies
The New Atheists' vision suffocates under their dogma of godlessness
By Jason Morgan | March 24th 2022 6:43 PMMy friend and fellow NOR subscriber Kevin Doak shared with me a book by Dr. Alberto Martinez Piedra called No God, No Civilization: The New Atheism and the Fantasy of Perpetual Progress. The title is right up the alley of a hidebound reactionary like me. When many months later I…
READ FULL BLOG POSTAggravated Apologetics
Apologetics is entirely compatible with reasoned argument
By James Hanink | February 22nd 2022 7:20 PMTruth-telling dialogue has its hazards. Patience wears thin. Distractions can demonize. So it is, gentle reader, that I return, a bit aggravated, to the dialogue with my one-time mentor and longtime radical Karl Meyer. What we share, in varying ways, is the legacy of the Catholic Worker. I’m aggravated because…
READ FULL BLOG POSTAuditing God’s Design
Do we know enough about creation to judge it?
By James Hanink | February 8th 2022 3:22 PMMy ongoing dialogue with Karl Meyer, once a mentor and always an independent radical, has hit a rough patch. In a recent note he tells me that all is not well. “I wonder how it is possible,” he asks, “to have an intelligent dialogue with a philosopher who posits a…
READ FULL BLOG POSTMore Frank Dialogue
Believer and unbeliever spar over terms, stewardship, and dignity
By James Hanink | January 26th 2022 3:40 PMIn recent posts I contested the “dignity deniers” Ruth Macklin and Steven Pinker. I noted also, with grave doubts, Alasdair MacIntyre’s annual Notre Dame lecture in which he suggests that everything dignity can do justice can do better. Those posts, gentle readers, offer a background to my ongoing dialogue with…
READ FULL BLOG POSTMy Muddled Mentor
A past convert to Catholicism lost his faith many decades ago
By James Hanink | December 1st 2021 3:33 PM“Karl Meyer On the Road Again” read a recent ad in The Catholic Worker. At 84 he was planning a cross country peace mission. I first met Karl in 1966 when he ran St. Stephen House of Hospitality in Chicago. I was an undergraduate, for a semester, at Loyola University…
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