What Has Christianity Ever Done for the West?

As Christmas and the holiday season draw near, it is time to take a pause and think deeply about the benefits that Christianity, particularly Catholicism, has conferred upon Western civilization. As a non-Westerner and non-Christian who has no ax to grind in this issue, I believe I can offer a fairly objective assessment of the impact that Christian ideas (some of which had pagan/Jewish precedents) have had on the evolution of Western civilization and their key role in the West’s spectacular... Read More

“The Avengers” and Friedrich Nietzsche

C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their colleagues in the Inklings wanted to write fiction that would effectively “evangelize the imagination,” accustoming the minds, especially of young people, to the hearing of the Christian Gospel. Accordingly, Tolkien’s Gandalf is a figure of Jesus the prophet and Lewis’s Aslan a representation of Christ as both sacrificial victim and victorious king. Happily, the film versions of both The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia have proven... Read More

10 Atheists Who Engage Religion Charitably

David Bentley Hart is one of our foremost theologian-philosophers, an American intellectual treasure who has ransacked the thesaurus while writing books such as The Beauty of the Infinite, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?, and the recent The Experience of God. One of the things I enjoy about his writing is how he rightfully gives credit to Nietzsche for recovering the scandalous nature of Christianity. In The Beauty of the Infinite he goes as far as saying: "Nietzsche... Read More

Why Atheists Should Read “Lumen Fidei”

On Friday, Pope Francis released his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, which means “The Light of Faith.” Even though the encyclical is addressed to “the bishops, priests, and deacons, consecrated persons, and the lay faithful,” I hope that non-Christians will read it as well. Why? Because Francis explains in stark terms the differences in how “faith” is understood by believers and non-believers. He begins by explaining that to Christians, faith is illuminating, and is described... Read More

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

From Atheism to Catholicism: A Tale of Three Supermen

Neither bird, nor plane...but Superman!   I was born and raised Catholic, but also Supermanian. Some of my earliest memories involve sitting in front of the television, mesmerized by that incredible, flying man of steel. He was invincible, doing good and daring deeds effortlessly and with a smile. Men respected him, women adored him, and he didn’t even want people to know who he really was. I too would come to don a Superman suit, cape and all, to such an extent that my mother’s... Read More