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Rod Dreher

Here’s an interesting report from NPR about the possible connection between distrust of government and the presence in the brain of oxytocin. I wrote not long about about research scientist Dr. Paul Zak (full disclosure: a Templeton grantee) and his study of how the brain chemical oxytocin affects our sense of generosity and openness to…

If you found the Woody Allen nihilism thread of interest, I’ve got something else for you to chew on. In a bracing essay dismissing the New Atheists lock, stock and barrel, Orthodox Christian theologian David Bentley Hart says none of them hold a candle to Friedrich Nietzsche. Excerpt: The only really effective antidote to the…

Andrew Brown on the problem with “natural theology”: But neither is it satisfactory for Christianity to retreat entirely from the world of facts about the world and to suppose that God is merely a matter of opinion, not of truth. This is roughly – very roughly – the Steven Jay Gould position, of Non-overlapping Magisteria.…

Earlier this week, I watched a documentary film about the life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Evangelical pastor hanged by the Nazis for his role in a plot to assassinate Hitler. The case of Bonhoeffer, who risked his life speaking out against the Nazis (and against Christian pastors who collaborated with them), raises…

In an interview with Commonweal, Woody Allen shows the skull beneath the skin. Excerpt: RL: When Ingmar Bergman died, you said even if you made a film as great as one of his, what would it matter? It doesn’t gain you salvation. So you had to ask yourself why do you continue to make films.…

Charlotte Allen has a problem with the fashionable cult of simplicity. Excerpt: Welcome to the simplicity movement, the ethos whose mantras are “cutting back,” “focusing on the essentials,” “reconnecting to the land” – and talking, talking, talking about how fulfilled it all makes you feel. Genuine simple-living people – such as, say, the Amish –…

Reflecting on how the Icelandic volcano brought much of life in Europe — especially economic life — to a near-standstill in Europe, badly inconvenienced travelers waxed philosophical: “I think Europe weirdly needs this kind of occasion to be reminded that life is tougher,” Mr. Dreznin said. That lesson appeared to have been widely absorbed, and…

He sat at attention in the darkness of the Prytania only a few rows from the screen, his body filling the seat and protruding into the two adjoining ones. On the seat to his right he had stationed his overcoat, three Milky Ways, and two auxiliary bags of popcorn, the bags neatly rolled at the…

Happy Earth Day. Sharon Astyk thinks its all b.s.; here’s part of the reason why: I see Earth Day as the new Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day, a Hallmark holiday for us to give lip service to the environment. There are contrary forces, good in the mix – but then there are good things in…

So says Simon Winchester, who wrote a book on Krakatoa. Excerpts: But others of the 47 known VEI-8 volcanoes are more alarmingly recent. Taupo in New Zealand erupted with mega-colossal force some 22,500 years ago. The newer of the great eruptions that helped form the mountains of today’s Yellowstone national park in Wyoming took place…
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