Quote of the week: Wayne Grudem on the being of God

“It is not just that we exist and God has always existed, it is also that God necessarily exists in an infinitely better, stronger, more excellent way. The difference between God's being and ours is more than the difference between the sun and a candle, more than the difference between the ocean and a raindrop... God's being is qualitatively different.”

- Wayne Grudem, 

Quote of the Week: Jonah Goldberg on how wealth and technology shatter primitive culture

There was an NPR story this morning, about the indigenous peoples of Australia, which might make a good column. Apparently they want to preserve their culture, language, and religion because they're slowly disappearing, which is certainly understandable. But, for some reason, they also want more stuff — better education, housing, etc. — from the Australian government. Isn't it odd that it never occurs to such groups that maybe, just maybe, the reason their cultures are evaporating is that they get too much of that stuff already? Indeed, I'm at a loss as to how mastering algebra and biology will make aboriginal kids more likely to believe — oh, I dunno — that hallucinogenic excretions from a frog have spiritual value. And I'm at a loss as to how better clinics and hospitals will do anything but make the shamans and medicine men look more useless. And now that I think about it, that's the point I was trying to get at a few paragraphs ago, when I was talking about the symbiotic relationship between freedom and the hurly-burly of life. Cultures grow on the vine of tradition. These traditions are based on habits necessary for survival, and day-to-day problem solving. Wealth, technology, and medicine have the power to shatter tradition because they solve problems.

-Jonah Goldberg, National Review 

Quote of the Week: Charles Hodge on faith

Faith is not a blind, irrational conviction. In order to believe, we must know what we believe, and the grounds on which our faith rests.

- Charles Hodge

Friday Mentionables: Walmart,

Wal-Mart cancels plans to build three stores after D.C. leftists raise minimum wage by 50% 
Inhospitable Earth -- Compared to what?

Alvin Plantinga 'The Ontological Argument'  
Ontological Arguments 

Quote of the Week: B.B. Warfield on following evidence

We must not, then, as Christians, assume an attitude of antagonism toward the truths of reason, or the truths of philosophy, or the truths of science, or the truths of history, or the truths of criticism. As children of the light, we must be careful to keep ourselves open to every ray of light. Let us, then, cultivate an attitude of courage as over against the investigations of the day. None should be more zealous in them than we. None should be more quick to discern truth in every field, more hospitable to receive it, more loyal to follow it, whither soever it leads. 

- B.B. Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings (Phillipsburg: PRR Publishing, 1970), p. 463

Friday Mentionables: D'souza, Goldberg, Fracking, Pilate, and Schools

Dinesh D'Souza What's so great about America
Jonah Goldberg: We don't live in that world anymore - EXCELLENT article
CATO: Schools of choice promote civic values 

What the frack? Can we have some reasoned discussion please?

Pontius Pilate's Political Problems 

Quote of the Week: John Stuart Mill on Arguments and Certainty

Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being "pushed to an extreme"; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are not assuming infallibility, when they acknowledge that there should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be doubtful, but think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is so certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain. To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side.

-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859, pg 29