Free Republic

Like the Nazis, Islamist terrorism weaponized horror to demoralize the West. Christianity has a soft underbelly: It struggles to reconcile belief in a God who so loved the world that He sacrificed Himself for its salvation with the suffering of innocents. That was the nub of Voltaire’s attack on theodicy after the Lisbon earthquake killed 12,000 in 1755, as well as Ivan Karamazov’s protest that “if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.” The post-Christian world, which...

In this blog article, we will explore the profound quote by Voltaire, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." At its core, this quote serves as a sober reminder of the power of manipulation and the dire consequences it can have on individuals and society as a whole. Voltaire's words encapsulate the notion that when people are persuaded to accept and adopt absurd beliefs or ideas, they become vulnerable to committing acts of great cruelty or injustice. This statement holds immense importance in our modern world, where manipulation is rampant, giving rise to extremism and...

You need wisdom to navigate the challenges and complexities of life. But how do you get it? Owen Anderson, professor of philosophy at Arizona State University, suggests the perfect place to start.

The following article is essentially a review of ideas put forward in a book published nearly a century and a half ago but which deserve to be more widely known. What follows should be read as a supplement to discussion of the subject elsewhere, notably in the detailed appendix to Gary Bates’ book Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the evolution connection.1 A lightly-edited version of the latter is available here: Who were the ‘sons of God’ in Genesis 6? We strongly urge anyone who wishes to comment on the present article to read that latter link first.CMI recognises that evangelical Christians...

Why his repulsiveness may have been exaggerated. Posted April 25, 2023 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk -His students Plato and Xenophon described Socrates as ugly and made much out of this. -His supposed repulsiveness did not prevent Socrates from leading a rich and remarkable love life. -Plato and Xenophon may have had good reasons for inventing or exaggerating their teacher's ugliness. Socrates was remarkably full-blooded for an ascetic philosopher. In Xenophon’s Symposium, he says, “For myself I cannot name the time at which I have not been in love with someone.” By all accounts, Socrates’s greatest love was with the...

The ‘music of the spheres’ was born from the effort to use numbers to explain the universeAn image of a white half circle at the bottom-center on a starry background. There are 8 arches spreading away from the circle. The Pythagoreans believed that the motions of the heavenly bodies, with just the right ratios of their distances from a central fire, made pleasant music — a concept that evolved into the “music of the spheres.” If you’ve ever heard the phrase “the music of the spheres,” your first thought probably wasn’t about mathematics. But in its historical origin, the music...

What happens to a culture when absolute truth is determined by a group of elites instead of spiritual morality

The new slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives lacks something besides its slim majority and the battle over leadership positions. It lacks intellectual depth. The Reagan administration may have been the last one to challenge Americans to think for themselves, and for that matter, just to think. Perhaps this lack of thinking and intellectual depth in our politics is caused by instruments and websites that do the thinking for us. We now tune in to whatever newspaper, cable network or website reinforces our beliefs and care little about how ideas were developed, whether they work and who benefits...

...There are many like Yoo in South Korea who have chosen either not to have children or not to marry. Other advanced countries have similar trends, but South Korea’s demographic crisis is much worse. South Korea’s statistics agency announced in September that the total fertility rate — the average number of babies born to each woman in their reproductive years — was 0.81 last year. That’s the world’s lowest for the third consecutive year.... ...Lee Sung-jai, a 75-year-old Seoul resident, said...“These days, I see some (unmarried) young women walking with dogs in strollers and saying they are their moms. Did...

Can God totally know himself? If God is infinite it would take an eternity for him to know himself. You can only know something completely if it is finite or bounded. How does space curve? I thought you go through space rather than with space. Is there a negative zero?

The Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, who lived 2,500 years ago, applied his genius to music as well throughout his brilliant career, creating the Pythagorean comma as part of music theory, and his brilliance is still recognized to this day. The Pythagorean Theorem remains one of the fundamental concepts in the realm of mathematics and is still taught in schools across the world. The influence of the Ancient Greek thinker, who was born on the island of Samos in the year 570 BC, remains strong today in many realms—but, unfortunately, so do the mysteries surrounding the great Greek philosopher. Pythagoras’...

When a new book came out, the great C. S. Lewis would first seek out an old one on the same subject. That’s good advice for embattled Americans. In fact, two old books address what is happening today with rare perception. Regent College Publishing has reissued The Green Stick and The Infernal Grove, the two volumes of Chronicles of Wasted Time by Malcolm Muggeridge. Paul Johnson called it one of the great autobiographies of our time, which might be an understatement. Wisdom and wit leap off the pages, and there’s even a news hook: Russia has invaded Ukraine and that...

What is a Minarchist? A Minarchist is someone who believes that the state should only exist for the purpose of maintaining law and order. Minarchism is a Libertarian political philosophy where the state’s only function is protecting individuals from theft, breach of contract, fraud, and aggression. The government would still maintain the military, police, courts, fire departments, prisons, and legislatures, but the state would have no ability to interfere with the capitalist interactions and transactions of the people. These states are referred to as “Night-watchman states.” One of the biggest supporters of this philosophy was Robert Nozick and he talked...

In case it wasn’t obvious, the Western mind is damaged goods. Many observers would say that this is a recent state of affairs, but in truth it’s something that has been slowly building for centuries. It started with the broad acceptance of Cartesian dualism, the conceptual separation of the mind from the body that developed as an over-mechanised response to the scientific discoveries of men like Copernicus and Kepler. This “analytical mindset,” in the original sense of analysis as “the resolution of something complex into simple elements,” destroyed the manifold intricacy of organic traditional society as it was conceptually applied...

A former UCLA lecturer who threatened to carry out a mass shooting at the school was arrested in Colorado on Tuesday morning where he had also made threats against a different campus in an 'alarmingly' violent 800-page manifesto. Matthew Harris, 31, was taken into custody near the University of Colorado Boulder campus on Tuesday by SWAT teams. On Sunday, he posted 300 unhinged and threatening videos on YouTube, and then he sent emails to UCLA staff threatening a mass shooting. He included details of the manifesto, which also had references to Boulder in it. UCLA banned in-person classes and told...

Though expected to distance and quarantine at the whim of local dictators, a few things gave us a clue that our pandemic response was not about health. Vices were deemed essential, as liquor stores and non-medical marijuana dispensaries remained open, while playgrounds were barricaded, beaches, and gyms, and houses of worship suddenly inaccessible. There was no guidance on health-seeking behavior to bolster the first line of defense against the onset of ailments, just a band-aid for a bullet wound grade of national mitigation strategy that left many dying alone, surrounded by strangers. We willfully sacrificed our most fundamental duty of...

On this episode of The Resistance Library Podcast, Sam Jacobs interviews Jash Dholani. Jash Dholani is an independent scholar and philosopher interested in human excellence and freedom. He has gained a following on Twitter, where he is the Old Books Guy, due to his extensive reading and trenchant insights into long forgotten works of philosophy. We had Jash on to discuss philosophical pessimism: what it has to say about our world, why we should study it, and what responses it offers to the crises of modernity.

oday C.S. Lewis, the man whose literary works such as The Chonicles of Narnia book series is known as a titan of the Christian faith. When he was alive, Lewis’s deep insights, wisdom, words of comfort, and reason were all sought after, particularly during World War II, when he addressed the people of Great Britain on the BBC, and thereafter. After he passed away in 1963, C.S. Lewis’s writings would continue to bring valuable insight, wisdom, words of comfort, and reason to generations looking for serious answers about God, life experience, the fractured world around us, pain, suffering, and how...

I broke a tooth recently, which caused me to look at ways to improve the strength of my teeth. One of the things I decided to do (besides being careful about ingesting processed sugar) was to drink milk again–for the calcium, phosphorous, Vitamin A and D. And for additional protein too as I’ve been lifting heavy weights. And yet, deep down, I knew that there are other ways to get the nutrients I need without having to drink milk. Yet, I kept at it. This morning, like too many mornings I’d care to admit to, I woke up with a...

00:00 Part 1. Introduction: Philosophy and History/1. Fascinated by history 03:36 2. What is philosophy of history? 04:46 Part 2. Explaining Nazism Philosophically/3. How could Nazism happen? 06:17 4. Five weak explanations for National Socialism 14:31 5. Explaining Nazism philosophically 21:40 Part 3. National Socialist Philosophy/6. The Nazi Party Program 22:44 7. Collectivism, not individualism 24:01 8. Economic socialism, not capitalism 27:40 9. Nationalism, not internationalism or cosmopolitanism 32:25 10. Authoritarianism, not liberal democracy 35:21 11. Idealism, not politics as usual 38:42 12. Nazi democratic success 41:05 Part 4. The Nazis in Power/13. Political controls 43:27 14. Education 51:28 15....