Why Superman Is Not the Answer

    I didn't really care for the latest cinematic iteration of the Superman myth. Like way too many movies today, it was made for the generation that came of age with video games and MTV and their constant, irritatingly frenetic action. When the CGI whiz-bang stuff kicks in, I just check out, and Man of Steel is about three-quarters whiz-bang. However, there is a theme in this film that is worthy of some reflection, namely the tension between individual autonomy and a state-controlled... Read More

The Preachings of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The appearance of yet another film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby provides the occasion for reflecting on what many consider the great American novel. Those who are looking for a thorough review of the movie itself will have to look elsewhere, I’m afraid. I will say only this about the movie: I think that Baz Luhrmann’s version is better than the sleepy 1974 incarnation, and I would say that Leonardo DiCaprio makes a more convincing Gatsby than Robert Redford.... Read More

The Dove and the Soapbox

Early yesterday morning we received our 5,000th comment here at Strange Notions. We're just four weeks in and the response has been stunning. The site has received over 185,000 pageviews, 65,000 unique visitors, and thousands of comments. Contrary to those who claim this is "a one-sided Catholic conversation," roughly 75% of the comments have come from charitable, serious-minded atheists. As far as I can tell, there is no other place on earth where atheists and Catholics have come together... Read More

Fr. Robert Barron on “Les Misérables”

According to Fr. Robert Barron, Les Misérables is "replete with themes and can't be understood apart from the Christian worldview." Here he explores the story's decidedly Catholic symbolism.     What did think about the Les Misérables film?     (Image credit: Paste Magazine)  Read More →

How Music Led Me to God

A while back I mentioned to an atheist acquaintance that I'd cried at Mass that morning. I explained that it was one of those times when I felt overwhelmed with the presence of God; I was so perfectly at peace, so surrounded by love, that I couldn't help but be moved to tears. "Maybe it was the music," he responded. He went on to offer an erudite analysis of how music is known to produce certain positive sensations in the brain, noting that religious leaders from time immemorial have used... Read More

“A Universe from Nothing”

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss Free Press, 204 pages, 2012     A critic might reasonably question the arguments for a divine first cause of the cosmos. But to ask “What caused God?” misses the whole reason classical philosophers thought his existence necessary in the first place. So when physicist Lawrence Krauss begins his new book by suggesting that to ask “Who created the creator?” suffices to dispatch traditional... Read More

“The Good Book”

The Good Book: A Humanist Bible by A.J. Grayling Houghton Mifflin , 352 pages, 1998   In its marketing campaign, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible was presented as something akin to the emancipation of Daedalus and Icarus in their winged escape from Crete. Just as Daedalus refused to obey the tyrannical King Minos and secured freedom for himself and his son, so our hero, the prominent atheist A. C. Grayling, has refused to obey false authority and freed himself and his readers from... Read More

“The Greatest Show on Earth”

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins Free Press, 480 pages, $30   The first lesson to be learned from Richard Dawkins’ new book is a purely practical maxim: One should always do what one does best, while scrupulously avoiding those tasks for which neither nature nor tuition has equipped one. This is not, obviously, what one could call a moral counsel; it is merely a counsel of prudence. Another way of saying it would be, try not to make a fool... Read More

“Breaking the Spell”

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett Viking, 464 pages, 2006   In the second section—or “fit”—of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, the Bellman lectures the crew of his ship on the peculiar traits of the creature they have just crossed an ocean to find. There are, he tells his men, “five unmistakable marks” by which genuine Snarks may be known. First is the taste, “meagre and hollow, but crisp: / Like a coat that is rather too... Read More

“The Atheist’s Guide to Reality”

The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions by Alex Rosenberg W. W. Norton, 368 pages, $25.95   The Atheist’s Guide to Reality is refreshingly and ruthlessly consistent. It is also utterly incoherent—and precisely because it is so consistent. In drawing out its absurd consequences, Alex Rosenberg, an atheist professor of philosophy at Duke University, has written a compelling refutation of modern atheism. That is not what he planned to do. In fact, he didn’t... Read More

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