Some reflections from a brisk walk in an eastern wood.

Now the case for the Resurrection is just this: the physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead is the only proposed explanation that accounts for all the basic facts.

There is a persistent superstition, fed by politics, the news, and social media, that our knowing “what is going on” (always somewhere else) will alter the course of things…But this is a burden you cannot, and should not bear.

Dismissing every counterexample to a reigning narrative as “anecdotal” is just one of the tactics of pseudo-argumentation that sustains the regime of lies and bs under whose aegis we labor.

In the ideal case, the virtue of purity enables a man to be in the presence of women, to experience their unavoidable beauty, while behaving (and, especially, thinking) justly toward them – you know, like real people.

That, after all, is the glory of science: looking to see what’s actually there…Any theory, theistic or atheistic, that attempts to assert a priori how nature must be, and which then purports to explain it or spin it out merely in accordance with the principles of a theory, and without actually looking — well, that’s an unscientific theory.

Why should these forms appear over time on an isolated continent, unless they developed there? But on the other hand, it is simply impossible for any reasonable person to look at this pattern of morphology … without seeing clear evidence of a plan. 

In my opinion, there are very good reasons for accepting the proposition that most organisms on earth have arisen through a process of descent with modification. However… Darwinism gives many intelligent people pause.

I do not grill because it’s the most efficient way to get food on the table Sunday night. I don’t know if it’s healthy, and I don’t care. For me grilling is an almost meditative activity. It’s a way of remembering that I am a man, and of being more human. 

Perhaps the intellect and will seem to be immaterial because they actually are immaterial. Perhaps water seems to be a form because it is a form… [P]erhaps we need to dispense with physicalism altogether, and go back to first the first principles to see where we’ve gone wrong.

Before continuing, I note that it is possible to believe in just one god, without believing in the One God. A person who worships the sun, or the earth, or the universe as a singular entity is really no different than a polytheist, in a metaphysical sense.

Being, at the time, a fellow devotee of anarcho-capitalism, I was taken aback, and asked him to elaborate on these “problems.” That he could make only vague statements irritated me, and confirmed my impression that he was just being soft-headed.

She didn’t mean to destroy the world, but she did. True, when she spoke her Deplorable Word, the sky did not come crashing down. The room did not disintegrate. The large crocodiles standing behind her didn’t even react. But if what she said were true — and it literally cannot be true — all things would have come unwoven, strand by insubstantial strand.

Most of us realize we’re too afraid, and that we’re making our children live in the same, persnickety terror. Some of us try to fight back, a little. We ignore the sign at the playground, and let our kids climb up the slide…

The wholesome post-postmodern man will approach the world like a small child who, whenever he comes across a good thing, picks it up, and tastes it, and smells it, and admires it, and stores it away “for later.”

In my opinion, it’s always better to take the good you find, when you find it. The real problem for us is that taking the good is insufficient. After you find a dollop of virtue, you need to put it somewhere.