Taylor Weber > Recent Status Updates

“… the Christian worldview offers a grounding for altruism and a reason to dare to believe that ultimate justice is more than a delusionary longing in the illusionary mind of the collection of atoms you mistakenly call “me.”

“To say that Christianity and Islam or Islam and Hinduism are just two sides of the same truth coin reduces pluralism to a patronizing posture by which we don’t respect others enough to take their beliefs seriously.”

"If you put control-oriented, analytical people in an individualistic, urban environment, give them a sense that the world will one day be better than it is now, and suffuse them with a conviction that there is an intelligence behind all things whose secrets are just waiting to be unveiled, then you would expect such a society to value novelty and discovery - even if most of them remain religiously devout farmers."

“Industrialization is a Promethean triumph as well as a Frankensteinian monster. Which of the two metaphors predominates - whether running water compensates for Hiroshima, or antibiotics for the Somme, or the growth in wealth for the overweening pride that accompanies it - probably depends on where you are sitting.”

Gradually, churches would replace the Church, which would lead inexplicably to calls for religious tolerance and then religious pluralism, and ultimately the privatization of religion. It would also contribute to the rising prestige of experimental science… [which gave] the same results whether you were Protestant or Catholic, [and] made it a prime candidate to replace the church as the empire of modern thought.

Reading this book several months after finishing Trueman’s “Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” is unintentionally timely. Lotsssss of tie-in between the two (Wilson has even referenced Trueman’s book several times).

“In the late 18th century, concepts like rights, consent, choice, and equality were used to discuss questions of government... By the late 20th century, they were being used to settle questions of morality in general; my right to x your freedom to choose y, equality for z, and so forth. In many debates, they serve as conversation stoppers, axioms with unimpeachable moral authority.”

“The rate of change in the last two centuries makes the past feel much further away than it actually is, which inclines us to fawn over the future, and either patronize that past or ignore it altogether.”

“… resurrection is where you get to theologically if you believe in God as the good Creator and in God‘s purpose to put all things right at the end. All this means that following Jesus wasn’t so much a new religion as the unveiling of a new reality.”

“Whenever we have something that we are good at – something we care about – that experience and passion fundamentally change the nature of our first impressions. This does not mean that when we are outside our areas of passion and experience, our reactions are invariably wrong. It just means that they are shallow. They are hard to explain and easily disrupted. They aren’t grounded in real understanding.”

“Taking rapid cognition seriously - acknowledging the incredible power, for good and ill, that first impressions play in our lives - requires that we take active steps to manage and control those impressions.”

“… this bruising makes us set a high price upon Christ. Then the gospel becomes the gospel indeed; then the fig-leaves of morality will do us no good.”

This book makes me wanna go back to undergrad bio lab… never thought I’d say it.