my burg

Here are a few more quotes in line with my post earlier today... "Technology is good, as a means for the human spirit and for human ends.  But technocracy, that is to say, technology so understood and so worshipped as to exclude any superior wisdom and any other understanding than that of calculable phenomena, leaves in human life nothing but relationships of force, or at best those of pleasure, and necessarily ends up in a philosophy of domination.  A technocratic society is but a totalitarian one ."  ( Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads , 1943 , quoted in The Year of Our Lord 1943) "The severance of ethics from fixed values and standards, ardently promoted by John Dewey and the naturalists, has brought moral chaos.  Theological sanctions discarded, the modern man covets only social, and sometimes only individual, approval of his behavior .  The sense of ethical imperative is evaporating from one range of life after another.  The obligation...

"We traditional Christians in America can learn from both Eastern European examples [of Czechoslovakia and Poland under Communist rule] .  We face nothing so terrible as the Czechs did under Soviet domination, of course, but the more insidious forces of secular liberalism are steadily achieving the same aim: robbing us and future generations of our religious beliefs, moral values, and cultural memory, and making us pawns of forces beyond our control.  This is why we have to focus tightly and without hesitation on education."    ~ Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option , p. 145. 

In June of 1932, J. Gresham Machen gave three lectures at a meeting of the Bible League in Caxton Hall, Westminster, London. The titles were "The Importance of Christian Scholarship for Evangelism", " The Importance of Christian Scholarship  for Defense of the Faith", and " The Importance of Christian Scholarship   for Building Up the Church."  The PDF of this series, as well as MP3 readings of the messages are located on the Reformed Audio site .  It would be worth your while to listen to them! Here are just a few excerpts... Let us, therefore, pray that God will raise up for us today true defenders of the Christian faith. We are living in the midst of a mighty conflict against the Christian religion. The conflict is carried on with intellectual weapons. Whether we like it or not, there are millions upon millions of our fellowmen who reject Christianity for the simple reason that they do not believe Christianity to be true. What is to be done in suc...

Here's a quote sent to me from my friend Harry...   "One of the most disastrous illusions of the internet age is that  an amateur plus Google is equivalent to a scholar. A search  engine offers information, more or less relevant according to the  skill of the searcher. But it does not sift that information; it  does not sort fact from fancy, wheat from chaff. It does not  explain which facts are relevant and which are beside the point.  It does not weigh the merits of competing arguments and tell the  user where the balance of evidence lies. A bright amateur armed  with the internet may at best be better informed than he would  otherwise have been, and he may occasionally catch a real scholar  in a factual error. But it will not turn him into a scholar  himself. There is no such thing as effortless erudition." (- Dr. Timothy McGrew,  Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan U )    

Gerry McDermott's post in his Northampton blog led me to an interesting NY Times article. Apparently, in an annual gathering of social scientists -- who routinely identify prejudice and bias -- it was discovered that there is a stunning lack of perception of their own bias and non-diversity:    Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.” It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt est...

“Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”  So said G. K. Chesterton, who is one of the most quotable writers in history, though I think C. S. Lewis still holds first place in that category. I finished reading an excellent quote on education by Chesterton here . This struck me as so relevant that it could have been written this week on our own campus.   Many liberal arts professors today would tell me that my own view of truth is absolute, dogmatic, and ultimately leads to domination.  Instead, any "truth" should be seen as subjective and relative. Absolute truth claims only serve to subjugate others -- all truth claims, then, are power plays. Except their own, they think. I hear often from Christian students how their views are frequently belittled and berated by teachers who would otherwise say truth is relative.  So even the postmodern professor ends up being exclusive, domineering, and power-playing....