“’Truth is not only stranger, but much more blood-curdling than fiction.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News December 31, 1921 quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. VIII #7 (June 2005)
In a speech to the Augustine College Summer Seminar in June (sorry, I’m a bit behind in my video editing) I argue that the calamities of the 20th century derived, fundamentally, from a rejection of the notion of truth.
In my latest Mercatornet piece I argue that Stephen Hawking’s arguments in his last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, are as unconvincing as they are dreary.
“Four park benches sit on the lawn at Wesley United Church at Main and Graham, offering weary passersby a place to rest. They aren’t chained or locked. One of the slats in the benches bears the inscription: ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ But it’s probably the added inscription on the next slat that is most effective. ‘God is watching.’”
Dave Brown Best of Brown
“Refiners may weave as fine a web of reason as they please, but the experience of all times shows Religion to be the guardian of morals.”
Richard Henry Lee in a letter to James Madison, quoted in Forrest McDonald Novus Ordo Seclorum
"With God dead, there remains only history and power."
“Helen’s Exile” in Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus & Other Essays
"Every right is a divine right."
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News December 20, 1924 quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. VIII #7 (June 2005)
"if there is any permanent element in him [man generally], his conscience in all probability cannot be destroyed, although it can be covered up and disregarded. To tamper with it, therefore, to try to destroy it, is of all conceivable courses of conduct the most dangerous, and may prepare the way to a wakening, a self-assurance, of conscience fearful to think of. But suppose that the fungus theory is the true one. Suppose that man is a mere passing shadow, and nothing else. What is he to say of his conscience? Surely a rational man holding such a theory of his own nature will be bound in consistency to try and to determine the question whether he ought not to prune his conscience just as he cuts his hair and nails. A man who regarded a cold heart and a good digestion as the best possible provision for life would have a great deal to say for his view.”
James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty Equality Fraternity