Tag: www.chalcedon.edu

‘The Next Phase of History’

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In light of some of the totally daft public policies and cultural spasms we’ve been reading about this week, we might well ask, “What is the next phase of history?”

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/the-next-phase-of-history

Mark Rushdoony has a thoughtful essay–and in it, I think, he’s dug his way down to the heart of the matter.

Humanism, now embracing and promoting such total irrationalities as “transgender” and “open borders,” while at the same time proclaiming the imminent end of the world unless we all do exactly as they tell us–humanism has embraced its own destruction.

Because, as Mark says, reality is real and cannot be pushed aside by any amount of wishful thinking.

And it will devour those irrationalities.

What will replace humanism? We pray it will be a new growth in God’s Kingdom on the earth–which we can already see happening in such unlikely places as China and Iran.

I look forward to the day when “gender fluid” will be of interest only to cryptozoologists.

‘Scientific’ Rubbish–and Why We Believe It

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Would Mr. Spock ever lie to you?

How do we wind up believing in all-knowing, all-wise space aliens, human evolution into supermen, and intergalactic travel?

In Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs, author James Herrick explained exactly how. I reviewed his book in 2015.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/a-review-of-scientific-mythologies

We may not be able to provide everyone in America with a solid scientific education, but we can certainly load them up on science fiction, dumbed-down popular science, and sheer mythology. Herrick abundantly demonstrates that the “science” that has so many people in awe of it is hardly science at all–it’s mostly TV.

Forget about observing nature, collecting data, studying what’s been observed, subjecting it to verifiable experiments, and then coming up with a theory or an explanation that fits the facts–who has time for all that? And it’s boring! So much more enlightening to have some Hollywood celebrity lecture you on “climate change.” Or some actor who played a space alien in a Star Trek movie.

This is a thick, meaty book, jam-packed with information. You can learn a lot by reading it.

And you will be able to answer the question, “When is ‘science’ not science?”

‘Determining the New Direction of History’

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(This Chalcedon editorial appeared Sept. 7, 2019.)

One of R.J. Rushdoony’s more controversial assertions was that humanism is busy killing itself, and slated for extinction. He then went on to ask what that requires us, as subjects of the Kingdom of God, to do. That question’s still here, right in front of us.

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/determining-the-new-direction-of-history

Because they’re running wild, heaping up wealth and power, and generally trashing our whole civilization, it’s easy to wind up thinking Christ’s enemies are winning. But everything they, er, “achieve” hurts them even more than it hurts us. Homosexual parodies of marriage, transgenderism, and, only lately, a dalliance with the prospect of wholesale cannibalism–these are not winning game plans. They think they’re on the path to creating a global government. But all they’re creating is chaos–and in the end, they’ll choke on it.

Yes, they look like Goliath, and they scare us. But remember what happened to Goliath.

‘Schooling vs. Education’

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This insightful piece by Andrea Schwartz appeared in 2010 in the Chalcedon Blog.

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/schooling-vs-education

Think about it: you knock yourself out to give your child a good, solid homeschooled education… and then you send him off to “college”? Plug him into “the artificial environment of college,” with peer pressure and arrogant left-wing professors taking the place of family and church? “To funnel these bright, homeschooled graduates into the modern education system makes little sense,” Andrea writes.

Even in 2010, nine years ago, there were good alternatives to a public college “education.” Today there are even more.

Homeschooling is a key to re-Christianizing America and saving it from dumbed-down socialism. Don’t abandon it just because your kid turns 18.

Kill public education, and Far Left Crazy dies.

‘Why New Orleans? A Meditation on the Hurricane’ (2005)

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Hurricane Dorian… en route to Florida?

I wrote this for Chalcedon’s print magazine the year Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans. With Hurricane Dorian hammering the Caribbean, it seems a suitable time to revisit this.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/why-new-orleans-a-meditation-on-the-hurricane

From ancient times people have always tried to blame other people for natural disasters. They haven’t stopped doing that: hurricanes are always someone’s fault. Wouldn’t happen if we signed that climate treaty! Etc.

But insurance companies call these “acts of God,” and they’re not wrong.

Why does God permit such calamities? Why does a hurricane strike here, but not there? King Solomon in all his wisdom didn’t know. So what he said was this: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” (Ecclesiastes 12: 13)

Rushdoony on Fascism

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Benito Mussolini–“the patron saint of 20th century humanism,” according to Rushdoony

Fascism was defeated in World War II, but it’s alive and kicking today. In fact, said R.J. Rushdoony, “Fascism is socialism for the hypocrites”–people who want to do socialism, but call it freedom.

This essay, The Theology of Fascism, was published in 2006, five years after the author’s death.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/the-theology-of-fascism

Fascism, said Rushdoony, is “everywhere condemned, but everywhere imitated.” And, more trenchantly, “A Christian world without Christ is an impossibility.” So much for modern atheists’ claim that you can be “good without God.” Only by living off the capital of Christianity without acknowledging its source.

It’s an eye-opening essay, and ought to give you plenty to think over.

My Censorship Article

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As promised, here’s my article on censorship that I wrote for Chalcedon, published last week in The Chalcedon Report.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/a-way-of-censorship

There’s so much going on in the wonderful world of Internet censorship that I hadn’t a prayer of keeping up to date. The story changes by the hour. The only thing that doesn’t change is that Big Tech, in cahoots with the Democrat Party and other Far Left wackos, is trying everything they can think of to stifle conservative voices and manipulate next year’s national elections.

When I call these people neo-Stalinists, I’m not kidding.

‘Resistant Christianity’

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This month’s Chalcedon editorial warns us: “What begins with erasing God from society and institutions must make its way to the hearts and minds of believers.”

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/resistant-christianity

It’s not that the Church, or Christ’s Kingdom, is going to fail. But we as individuals can; and history is littered with the bones of failed countries and societies.

We don’t want America winding up there, do we?

The temptation is always “Go along to get along.” And so we compromise with a Godless world. We want people to think we’re nice guys. Next thing you know, we’re attending a baby shower for a woman who’s having a baby by her “boyfriend” while still married to her husband.

Cultural compromise is giving away half the Church’s ground whenever the world demands it.

Faithfulness has to win back the ground. Has to–or America is finished.

A Great Christian Thinker–from India

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Sometimes the assignments I get from Chalcedon are just so good!

I’ve been asked to read and review This Book Changed Everything, by Vishal Mangalwadi. I’ve only just started reading it, but I can’t wait till I finish to tell you how wonderful it is.

Mangalwadi’s personal knowledge and experience of Hinduism and Buddhism, and life in India, have led him to Christianity–and given him a unique perspective on it. He profoundly understands the dangers of the “post-truth” game being played today by Western intellectuals, and analyzes and explains these dangers clearly and with grace.

The core of his thinking is easy to explain in just a few simple words. You won’t need a degree in philosophy to follow him. Let me briefly sum it up for you:

God is! And He has revealed Himself–and our own selves also–in a book that changed the world: the Bible.

Don’t wait for me to read it and write a full review of it, to be published by Chalcedon. Get it for yourself and read it now. Educating, edifying, and enlightening–Mangalwadi’s work is a gift of God to all the world–by way of India.

Can the West be brought back to Christ by the work of missionaries from countries that the Western missionaries visited so long ago, and taught the Bible to the people of those countries?

It seems like just the sort of thing God loves to do.

Public Schooling: It Really Is That Bad

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This article is about some of the stuff that people refuse to believe is happening in their public schools. They are wrong. For if they did believe it, they would have to tax their imaginations to find some excuse for sending their children there.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/when-sex-education-turns-into-pornography

Since I wrote it in 2011, the main thing “educators” have added to the mix described herein is the frantic hard push for “transgender.” Y’know, it was only eight years ago. That’s not a lot of time, is it?

Kill the culture, and it will kill you back.