The Reasonableness of Christianity Blog

[Update added 10-5-21] I’m reading Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous - or rather listening to it on Audible . I mentioned this book as part of The Return of Civilization , as one of a suite of recent works that seem like they “admit the uniqueness and advanced development of Western Civilization … but neglect the central role of Christian principles in its development”.  After listening to most of the book I think my assessment is sort of right, but also sort of unfair. The acronym WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, and also calls out his thesis that people from this type of culture (my culture) are exceptional, or at least different from the rest of the world, both in terms of location (West vs. non-West) and time (Modern-West vs non-Modern-West). The best thing about this book (other than the cool acronym in the title, of course) is the cornucopia of p...

Hello all! Asher here - I want to preface this post with a note that here, as well as in all of my posts, I will be including a TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) summary at the beginning of my ramblings. If you’re like me, some days you’re just not cut out for squinting your eyes at a bunch of philos ophical and theological blabbering, and sometimes the Sparknotes version is all you can handle. That being said, I hope that this series on the problem of evil will be interesting and thought provoking; it’s something that any person of faith has stake in, and should be aware of. TL;DR   - I've found it harder to believe in God since I've considered the problem of evil, and I'm starting a series on posts detailing my journey to work that out. The problem of evil states that an all knowing, all powerful, all loving God cannot exist in a world like ours where evil abounds, or at least it's highly unlikely that God would exist in such a world, let alone create it. Many philosopher...

In the United States and much of the Western world, we live in a Golden Age unequalled by any other society in any other time or place. It is not perfect, but we have enjoyed stable institutions, rule of law, human rights and egalitarian ideals, freedom of religion and conscience, economic freedom and opportunity, education, science, technological power and comforts, the arts, and overall prosperity including a thriving middle class - all of this at a level unimaginable in any society other than our post-Enlightenment West. As with all golden ages, ours is temporary. We can already see the cracks in the foundation, but lets enjoy this period that God gave us and not take it for granted. Remember that this time is unique and miraculous and that we are privileged to be a part of it. It did not have to be this way. In my view, our Golden Age is a result of the alignment of Christian values with Enlightenment rationality. Others, like John Mark Reynolds, have referred to "Athens and J...

I have no personal connection to Yale or Donald Kagan, but I enjoyed listening to some of his lectures on Ancient Greece that are free online, as I previously noted in my first blog post, and I approvingly cited his take on Niall Ferguson’s book Civilization: The West and the Rest , here .  He was a stout defender of the West in academia, and I’m sure he will be missed. He passed away  Aug 6, the age of 89.  Hat tip Tyler Cowen .

I am enjoying writing in this blog. It is satisfying, even if no one reads it yet. But it is slow, and I haven't even touched on some of the themes I hope will become central to my purpose in writing this blog. I haven't even written anything to explain the title of the blog. But since no one reads this blog anyway, I don't think anyone is complaining.😂 Instead I spent a lot of time on two topics that I think will be themes in my writings here - history, and the idea of Christianity under siege by cultural and institutional forces. I spent some time trying to understand for myself why the study and teaching of history is so different today from what what it was in the mid-1900s - more specifically, why certain pro-Christian and pro-Western approaches to history have been banished to obscurity in academia. (see here and here ) I called this the "History Coup." That term seems quaint now that I have some understanding of the broad and cataclysmic sweep of the soc...