Religion is dangerous, but not for the reasons post-Christian progressives think...
Religion is dangerous, but not for the reasons post-Christian progressives think...
If “God is love” (1 John 4:8), his instructions are for our good, serving as guardrails that keep us from veering off the road to our own destruction.
There are three ways we know everything we know (called “channels of epistemology” by philosophers): the rational, the practical, and the intuitive. You do math rationally, you start your car practically (unless you’re an automotive engineer, in which case you do so rationally), and you like someone intuitively. All three apply to our conversation today.
Jacob Wolf, a government professor at Regent University who formerly taught at Princeton, writes in Public Discourse that "Democracy, like many good things, is destroyed if it is elevated above all else. Democracy is valuable to the extent that it is placed in its proper position and context—bounded and balanced by other elements. As Edmund Burke wisely noted, one does not obtain liberty, equality, and self-government by merely letting go of the reins; these things require a complex system of incentives, punishments, and checks and balances that parallel the complexities of human nature. Our Founders understood this far better than do the democratists.
He concludes that “democracy is ineradicably religious; the question that remains is whether religion can bolster democracy without being swallowed up by it.”
I consider this question to be the foundational issue of our time.
The "Force" in Star Wars may be antithetical to Christianity, but a majority of Americans nevertheless say their own views of spirituality are similar to it, according to a new poll.
A new Pew Research study found that a majority of Americans are neutral toward several religious groups. When it comes to evangelicals, however, about 32 percent of non-Evangelical Americans view them negatively
TV host and author Bear Grylls, best known for starring in Discovery's Man vs. Wild, recently shared a picture of Jesus on Instagram, describing Him as "a wild one" and "totally non-religious."
As a cultural apologist, I would add that the parallels between watching American football and participating in American religion are noteworthy. On a typical Sunday, 100 million Americans (30 percent) watch an NFL game, roughly the same percentage as attend worship (28 percent). Most who participate in either activity engage in a transactional experience.