Atheism

Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (Rod Dreher)

A disease is going around. No, not the Wuhan Plague. This malady only affects the Right, and I name it Scrutonism. The symptoms of Scrutonism are a razor-sharp ability to identify one’s enemies and...

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (Lawrence Wright)

We all know religious devotion has declined precipitously in America. Most of what religion remains is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, which is the sherbet of religions, an unsatisfying imitation of the real thing. No doubt...

From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith (Sohrab Ahmari)

This is not a Muslim conversion memoir. Yes, Islam shows up quite a bit in the discussion, as it must in any book that discusses cultures in the Middle East. But Sohrab Ahmari’s conversion...

On the “Dark Enlightenment,” and of Curtis Yarvin / Mencius Moldbug

My project here is to analyze, in the detail required for all necessary understanding, the thought of Curtis Yarvin, who wrote under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug.  Yarvin is the most prominent figure of what...

The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (David Bentley Hart)

Although this is a book written by one of today’s most prominent Christian theologians, it is not a Christian book.  David Bentley Hart’s purpose is to demolish atheism, not to support Christian revelation.  Hart’s...

Republics Ancient & Modern, Vol. 2: New Modes & Orders in Early Modern Political Thought (Paul Rahe)

To my surprise, I found this to be an extremely topical book, even though it discusses only people long dead.  It bridges, or at least brings more clarity to the framework of, recent bestselling...

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (Jonathan Haidt)

In today’s world, discussion about morals is a lost art.  In part, this is because stupidity is on display everywhere, and encouraged to be so, even though most people’s thoughts and opinions are less...

Theology for a Troubled Believer (Diogenes Allen)

From its title, Theology for a Troubled Believer seems directed at people having a crisis of faith.  That’s not precisely true; this is not a work of apologetics.  The author, the late Diogenes Allen,...

The Great Heresies (Hilaire Belloc)

For no reason that is fully clear to me, I have always been fascinated by heresies.  It matters to me what the difference between a Monothelite and a Monophysite is.  Hence, I thought this...

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge (Matt Ridley)

“The Evolution Of Everything” is a hard book to review, because it has no substance. Reviewing it is like reviewing a Cliff’s Notes or “For Dummies” book. It is a wholly derivative book, startlingly...