Making our history one step at a time
As a religious person, "The Faith of a Heretic" was hard to read because many if its criticisms were so accurate. But I think such criticisms can only be good as they help us identify the faults that may be invisible to us.
In I-It relationships, you treat others something to be used, as means to your own ends. In I-Thou relationships, you encounter another being as unique and unlimited as yourself.
Rabbi Sacks' last book "Morality" is a deeply moving call to action to rediscover our shared responsibility to one another. If COVID-19 teaches us anything, it is that we need each other and our actions have direct consequences on those around us.
"There is nothing so absurd, that it can't be said by a philosopher." Wiker's thesis is that ideas have power, and a lot of them can be dangerous. OF the 14 books be reviews, some would be universally condemned such as Hitler's Mein Kampf-- but others were written by eminent scientists such as Darwin's "Descent of Man."
11th century Christian from England disguises himself as a Jew so he can train as a physician in a Persian hospital. Historical fiction at its best! It captures an era that I wish we engaged with more.
A beautiful example of the fact that if you sit down and talk with someone from a different background, a different faith tradition, a different culture, you will come to love them and find wisdom there.
Perhaps the statement "ideas have power" sounds super-obvious. But if that's the case, we had gosh darn take a moment to examine what ideas are driving us. A timely book considering the strong ideologies present in politics today.
Most accounts of secularization are pretty flat: the march of clear and virtuous reason against the suffocating faith of the Middle Ages. Charles Taylor gives much more detailed account than these over-simplifications-- and regardless of your background, Taylor's work is an engaging read.
Materialism (the idea that there are no supernatural causes) is such a fundamental assumption of modern science, rarely will anyone take the time to state it. But here, C. S. Lewis takes the existence of reason itself as a refutation of materialism. A great analysis by Reppert.
When I'm not an engineer, I want to be a theologian-philosopher-writer. I delved into my collection of ante-Nicene Church fathers this week.
