CultureCast

In this episode, I provide some thoughts from Kant's logic about the nature of philosophy. Philosophy is not sophism, which merely seeks to appear clever and win debates. Philosophy is not the picture-thinking we encounter in the mytho-poetic ancient cultures. Philosophy integrates all the other sciences in a purposeful unity. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I give a brief rundown of the surrealist movement in the art and literature. The surreal is a merger of dream and reality, such that dreams can provide a source of truth and there is no longer a distinction between dreams and reality. The surrealists used Freud to justify their exploration of the unconscious and they challenged the facile order of the conscious mind characteristic of Enlightenment Reason. Automatic writing let ideas flow with moral or aesthetic concern.

Kant tried to balance the strict lawfulness of nature with an absolute idea of human freedom. To accomplish this, Kant established the natural world as ideal, i.e. based on mental mediation in part. In ourselves, independent of any mental mediation, we can exercise an absolute freedom. But a will that is distinct from any causal structure seems free to invent itself without any constraint by the natural law. A will that is independent of any causal structure can make itself good without the grace of God. The independence of the Kantian agent seems to be the basis of the rebellion against nature characteristic of the New World Order. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss the philosophical roots of the cultural battle, after the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade. There are three key issues that have profound implications for how we view the controversial social issues of our time, which include, but are surely not limited to, abortion. These issues involve belief in God, our definition of truth, and our notion of liberty. Please check out this article by Pedro Trevijano to read up on the issue! https://www.religionenlibertad.com/opinion/484706846/batalla-cultural.html --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss an article by the Spanish writer Pedro Trevijano in which he distinguishes between two extreme attitudes in one's moral philosophy. One is pharisiacal and rigid, judging others and claiming possession of absolute truth. The other has no sense of absolute truth and puts everything up for debate. I think this provides a helpful framework for considering ethical issues. https://www.religionenlibertad.com/opinion/574738836/relativismo-moral-catolico-extremismos.html?eti=5293##STAT_CONTROL_CODE_3_574738836##

In this episode I go over an argument for the immortality of the soul from St. Thomas Aquinas. The idea is that the soul can grasp unchanging principles, while the senses are rooted in a specific time and place. I tie this idea into Plato's Theory of the Forms, which holds that there are supra-sensible ideas that are abstract patterns for all concrete realities. The mind's ability to grasp the general formulations of mathematics makes a compelling case for its distinctness from the body. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss two conceptions of liberty. One is the ability to do what one desires. The other is the a self-mastery in which true autonomy is the following of the moral law. Kant gave us an idea of freedom that is libertarian. We are truly free when we are able to think in universal terms, and not just yield to private self-interest. I consider these ideas in light of a line from an epistle of St. Peter in which he warns us of using liberty as a cloak for malice.

In this episode, I discuss an episode in the Gospel of Matthew in which the people of Nazareth dismiss Christ for his wisdom and miracles. I was wondering how people could be so foolish and perverse? They have a “crabs in the bucket” mentality. I turn to Aquinas to illuminate how we do not directly choose evil, but instead mistakenly choose a certain pleasure that comes with an evil. We do not have a “diabolical will”—one of Kant's ideas-because we don't seek to rebel against the law for its own sake. We have mistaken priorities in which we value a small pleasure over the real goodness of God. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss a recent interview with Remi Brague, a prominent European thinker. He documents the phenomenon of “cancel culture.” It is common to hear about this, but we must not take it lightly. We need to recognize that political correctness protects certain dogmas from any criticism. Feminism, radical ecologism, and gender ideology, among others, do not permit dissent. These ideas are meant to drive a wedge between ourselves and the past, and we are in danger of losing touch with our moral compass.

In this episode, I discuss a fascinating and vigorous philosophical treatise by a great American, Benjamin Franklin. It is called “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.” Franklin denies human free will. How can we choose something to which the omnipotent God does not consent? Franklin claims that there is no evil, because pain is necessary for the existence of pleasure. There is no need for an afterlife to realize justice, because pleasure always arises in exact proportion to pain. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss how Adorno views the Enlightenment as sliding inevitably towards totalitarianism. The Enlightenment seeks to reduce reality to numerical rationality. It suffers no exemption to this reductive trend. Eventually it emerges in a totalitarian political system that brings every aspect of human life under its control. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Aporia is a state of speechlessness in which we are unable to articulate a mysterious phenomenon. In this podcast, I explore the precarious existence of time, and how it is an aporia insofar as it is defined by being and non-being. Death is also an aporia, because it is an experience no one can assume for us, but we talk as if it were an impersonal experience that always happens to other people. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I illuminate the modern notion of identity politics through a description of Hegel's parable of the master and the slave. This parable is about how consciousness views itself as a transparent measure of all things, only to be relativized in the encounter with the “other,” that is, another consciousness. I tie in this encounter with the other with identity politics, which is perpetually seeking outliers to the dominant cultural narrative. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss again the death of God theology. I root this movement in the rational religion of Kant, which sought to remove the doctrines of historical religions and make them subordinate to an ahistorical and universal moral law. I then describe Nietzsche's character, Zarathustra, and how he sees the “meaning of the earth” in the transcendence of the human in the Ubermensch. I finally discuss Heidegger's notion of anxiety and how it reveals the contingency of all meaning and the inner emptiness of the world. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I discuss how postmodernism represents a radicalization of the Enlightenment. Not only is faith abandoned, but human reason's ability to develop objective knowledge is challenged. Postmodernism entered theology in the death of God theology. This theology seeks to rethink the idea of God to conform to a more secular and worldly culture. Check out the 1966 Time magazine article, “Is God Dead?”, at Time-Is-God-dead.pdf(valleybeitmidrash.org). --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I go over Kant's great work, The Critique of the Power of Judgment. I discuss the difference between the beautiful and the sublime. I discuss what Kant means by free play, in the interaction between the imagination and the understanding. I also discuss how reflecting judgement attempts to find a universal in what is particular. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss how Hume deals with the problem of subjectivism in artistic appreciation. If beauty is just a feeling, and not a property of objects, how can anyone be wrong about their judgment of art? Hume provides five characteristics of the true judge of art: delicacy, practice, comparison, freedom from prejudice, and good sense. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss how the theory of beauty, or aesthetics, developed during the Enlightenment. Aesthetic judgement has to do with how we react to works of art and beauty in nature. I discuss how aesthetics in the Enlightenment tied aesthetic judgement to the rational structure in things. What is beautiful in art is what captures the unity in multiplicity, i.e. the universal rational structure that connects things that appear on the surface to be diverse. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss the attitude of Enlightenment thinkers towards religion. I discuss how they sought to purge religion of any unreasonable elements involving miracles and supernaturalism. They wanted a religion based solely on the moral law. I mention deism, which presents God as a Supreme Architect who never intervened in the world, which proceeds like clockwork. I also mention how liberty of conscience was radicalized in the Enlightenment, such that it was divorced from Revelation. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss how ethics changed in the Enlightenment. The classical basis in ethics, in the Platonic intelligible domain, and the Aristotelian teleology, was lost in the secular naturalism of the Enlightenment. So too was the faith-based focus on the afterlife. I discuss the threat of subjectivism in ethics, in which it is based on individual desires without any objective standard! Check out the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the Enlightenment online! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss he transition from a faith-based, mystical view of political authority to a rational and secular order. In the Enlightenment, politics is based on the consent of the governed and rational self-interest. I differentiate between the French and American revolutions, rooting them respectively in Spinoza and Locke. I then raise a question: if the Enlightenment eliminates the transcendent from our understanding of man, where we do get values to inform our political system? Without a religious cosmology, where does value come from?

I continue in this podcast to describe how Immanuel Kant reconciles the religious and the mechanistic understanding of humanity. Kant uses transcendental idealism to show that our experience of lawfulness is a mere appearance. As things in themselves, we can have free will, an immortal soul, and God can exist! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I show the dual conceptions of humanity produced in the Enlightenment. On the one hand, the Enlightenment shows a new pride in which humanity claims to know the world through unaided reason. On the other, humanity is swallowed up in the deterministic and mechanistic universe established in Newtonian science. Immanuel Kant enters, trying to reconcile the Newtonian science with the religious image of humanity. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I continue to trace the intellectual roots of the Metaverse and the current “toxic” moment in human history in which intellectual trends of the past have reached a culmination. I discuss the rationalist system of Descartes and Christian Wolff, who tries to form a scientia with reason alone. The age of Reason replaces the age of Faith by using reason alone, without revelation and faith, to gain full deductive cognition of reality. In Part III, I explore how Hume debunks the idea of causality which is central to the Newtonian system. Causality is not something metaphysically robust in the world and we can't seduce it rationally. Instead, causality is a psychological habit by which we associate events with no necessary logical connection. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

The Metaverse is a virtual internet in which we would interact through digital avatars. The Metaverse involves humanity creating its own world and so it is not a mere creature beholden to its Creator. I argue that the Metaverse has ethical issues and it is the culmination of a metaphysical revolution beginning with the Enlightenment. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Peter Navarro, who is the trade advisor to President Trump and an economic nationalist, has developed a very sharp report on the massive election fraud that took place in 2020. If this fraud is not corrected immediately, we risk a horrible social collapse. Here is the link to the report: https://bannonswarroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Immaculate-Deception-12.15.20-1.pdf.

Clearly, Biden stole the 2020 election and the current numbers are completely fraudulent. But, though this is a painful situation, it is a huge opportunity to excise a cancer in our society. Biden and his criminal associates, which include big media and big tech, are now in a vulnerable position. Once fraud is proven, there will be a public mandate for arrests.

In this episode, I provide just a brief glimpse into the utter fraud of the 2020 presidential election. Democrats used both mail-ballots and electronic manipulation to create an illusory Biden victory, in which he somehow exceeded the vote total of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and overcame Trump, who expanded his base significantly from 2016. A court with any shred of integrity must invalidate these results in order to protect the voting rights of all Americans. https://www.theepochtimes.com/wisconsin-voters-file-lawsuit-to-exclude-over-792000-votes-in-3-counties_3578417.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-11-14-1&fbclid=IwAR0u6UjjQkoO9jnh41Y6CwwWTJJfNS9lyh_nECQ1du4jfVrWhWRinNzK86s https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/report-john-durham-dropping-investigations-spygate-worried-blowback-joe-biden/ https://phibetaiota.net/2020/11/robert-steele-ed-jewett-trump-will-not-concede-sof-has-captured-all-servers-in-germany-with-fraud-evidence-we-are-a-go-for-righteous-triumph/?fbclid=IwAR3fWYYLsX4W0zUiyPfgy50l8ILbzlMIG4_R9E5lYvWvfB1qfHqAfy78m1g --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I give you insight into what is currently happening in the world. This is a fascinating but difficult time of transition. We are learning a lot about our world and I suggest you allow yourself to ask questions and reach new conclusions. Asking new questions will allow you to break free from the propagandists who use their media platforms to control the way you think and keep you in subservience. The outcome of this process will be great, but the passage through will be a test of character. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I continue to explore the meaning of Wallace Stevens' poem, "The Snow Man," and its connection to Eastern traditions depiction of meditative consciousness. "The nothing" at the end of the poem is an ultimate intellect that is undifferentiated into distinct things, and involves a full merger of the self into a larger eternal self. The meditative consciousness enters sacred space and time, in which it is no longer a discrete self occupying a unique point in space and time. I develop a view that distinguishes the idea of pure consciousness of simplicity from a Christian tradition that retains the individual self and personal God with a distinct identity. Meditative consciousness of nothing even goes beyond God, because that is a concept with a bounded identity. Read the book, "Mind of Winter," by William Bevis! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Some atheists will try to make their worldview appealing to a Christian by claiming that they just believe in one less god than the Christian. The atheist is right that the Christian is an atheist with respect to many other religions that don't respect Jesus Christ as the true God. However, there is a wide gulf between the denial of any supernatural being at all and Christianity. However, the atheist offers a challenge to the Christian by forcing the Christian to justify the position of denying so many so-called pagan cults, and clinging to belief in Jesus Christ. Is belief in Jesus Christ a mere arbitrary shot in the dark about a metaphysical matter about which our cognitive limits do not permit us to make an definite claims? Is our Christianity a mere social fad with no deeper roots than the pagan cults the Christian rejects? The atheist's challenge forces the Christian to prove that her faith is more reasonable than all the many faiths she rejects. Cross Examined is an interesting blog, found here: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2020/10/i-just-believe-in-one-less-god-than-you-do-an-atheist-fallacy-2/. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I discuss Wallace Stevens's haunting and beautiful poem, "The Snow Man," in which someone enters a wintry landscape, savors the extreme bareness and simplicity of it, and enters a state in which his consciousness becomes nothing and reality itself loses its determinacy and becomes nothing. I discuss this experience in the Snow Man as a meditative experience recognizable in the Eastern traditions of spirituality. I raise questions about the desirability of this experience, as it suggests a cruel abstraction from reality and a desire to escape from the pressures of selfhood. I draw from the fascinating interpretation of William Bevis, in "Mind of Winter: Wallace Stevens, Meditation, and Literature." --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss how former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, son of current governor, Andrew, laid the groundwork for the Democrat Catholic politician to both embrace the abortion wing of the Democrat party and also to present themselves as practicing Catholics. Cuomo defended the view that he was personally opposed to abortion, but that he, out of a sense of respect for the plurality of American society, decided to refrain from making his views into law. This seems in a way humane and consistent with an American emphasis on individual liberty. However, it can also be taken as a ruse to curry favor with both the abortion lobby and moderate Catholics. I point out contradictions in this view. If abortion is wrong because it commits the very serious violation of taking the life of an individual, how can one permit others the chance to commit this violation? Also, rather than being a narrow sectarian position based on the sacred texts of a particular creed, one can argue against abortion solely on the basis of reason, natural law, and science. See the link to a relevant article here: https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/10/10/mario-cuomos-gift-to-joe-biden/?fbclid=IwAR1R8wdISLWgY3g2uCweEL8eNlIdwm9mGkCUiqUuU2ui7ceJ6F6hjcWSdVE. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I discuss differing attitudes towards prayer to Mary in Catholic and Protestant theology. Protestants view the Catholic Church as falsely usurping spiritual authority, and adulterating Christian faith with human traditions. Protestants demand that prayer only go to God, and see prayer to Mary as blasphemous. However, the idea that Mary, in Heaven, is able to be aware of many prayers at once, in the thoughts of believers, is consistent with the idea that Heaven involves a completely different experience of space-time than what we have on earth. It is also not the case that we only believe what is explicitly claimed in Scripture. We have to use our reason, and rely on the apostolic authority Jesus established (He did not establish a Bible, but appointed apostles to tell the world the good news) to glean truths from Scripture that we can apply to issues they do not explicitly address. The Bible is a necessary source of truth, insofar as we cannot contradict it, but not sufficient, and so we can believe ideas that it is does not positively affirm. The fact that saints are depicted as praying before the Lamb in the beatific vision of Revelations 5:8 creates a major problem from Protestant interpretations. Here is the link to a great article: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2020/09/can-mary-hear-simultaneous-prayers-of-millions.html?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Catholic+For+All+Seasons&utm_content=45 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I outline some concerns about Pope Francis's new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti. This document reiterates many themes that the Pope has emphasized throughout his pontificate. We know he is concerned with climate change, seeks a more united world at the expense of national boundaries, and is against current "populist" leaders who build walls that prevent "interchange." Pope Franicis's document has some good moments, for instance, when he discusses an anthropological reductionism that reduces man to a mere thing and see him as readily discardable in the name of economic interests. But, the document is too horizontal, insofar as it exclusively a political commentary without mention of the spiritual dimension. It also has a repeated emphasis on the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which are the ideals of the anti-Catholic French Revolution, and it continually suggests that Catholicism is just one way of viewing the world, that is of equal benefit of other ideologies, religions, and worldviews. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Elliot is a great American poet of genius. In this podcast, I discuss his literary theory, specifically his attitude to the relationship between the individual poet and tradition. Elliot puts forth an attitude neither of blind conformity nor personal self-aggrandizement and detachment from tradition. Instead, Elliot calls for a depersonalization, in which the poet loses his own ego in becoming a medium for the current of the historical consciousness. Tradition is not automatically inherited as some rote procedure, but has to be laboriously acquired. Here is a link to the pdf of the brief essay Elliot wrote when still a young man: https://people.unica.it/fiorenzoiuliano/files/2017/05/tradition-and-the-individual-talent.pdf. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I go through the profound, searching imagery in Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem, "The Man Against the Sky." This poems follows a man embarking alone on to a hill where he stands against a terrible conflagration. It is a symbol of an individual on a spiritual quest, facing the fundamental reality of change in the universe and the possibility that immortality is only an empty wish. This poem is an existentialist poem insofar as it explores the separation of the individual from the community and the related withering of significance of the ideologies that bind that community together. The poem can be found here: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-man-against-the-sky/. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I start a conversation based on the wonderful blog of Manuel Alfonseca, a Spanish thinker, known as Divulgacion de Ciencia. The piece is on whether man (including both sexes) has a special status in relation to the non-human environment. Certain contemporary biologists are advocating a value-free conception of life, indicating a complete egalitarianism that puts all species on the same level, which is a great rupture fro the tradition of the Judeo-Christian religious view (man is created in the image of God) as well as the Aristotelian view that nature is ordered towards the ends of man. Certain environmental movements have arisen in recent decades that blame humanity for upsetting the balance of nature with "unsustainable" practices, and recommend a restraint of population growth and industrialization in the name of the ongoing sustenance of the non-human domain. This new paradigm sees anthropocentrism as a philosophy that has given license to human beings to wantonly exploit their environment, and recommends re-centering value on the non-human domain in a biocentric manner. I do not agree that anthropocentrism entails that we have no regard for our environment--in fact, I argue that it can lead to a heightened regard! Here is a link to Alfonseca's blog, which is in Spanish: https://divulciencia.blogspot.com/2015/06/es-el-hombre-un-animal-mas.html --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Catholics and Protestants use different Bibles. Protestants omit what they call the Apocryphal books. Catholics call these books the Deuterocanoncial books: Sirach, Baruch, Wisdom, Tobit, Sussana, and Judith. John Calvin, one of the great Protestant thinkers, thought that the Church usurped the authority to determine canonicity--which books belong in the Bible--which properly belonged to the individual believer relating directly to God. The canonicity of books of the Bible is self-evident, according to Calvin, acting like a divine seal of veracity, and one does not need an institution to validate the veracity of a book. For Catholics, though, determining the veracity of a spiritual text cannot come through private revelation, since even highly trained Christians can disagree over what they think authentically comes from God. A pronouncement of the Church, built up through long stretches of struggle and debate, is needed to resolve disagreement over canonicity. The Protestant method of individual interpretation is dangerous, as it cannot provide a bulwark against cultural shifts and individual prejudices. You can find a nice article on this topic here: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2020/09/church-authority-the-canon-vs-calvin-59.html?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Catholic+For+All+Seasons&utm_content=45 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Even though Aristotle was a student of Plato, he diverged from his teacher greatly in terms of his attitude towards art (although I challenge the idea that they diverge at the end of this podcast!). Plato thought that art separated us from reality, being at an even lower level than the merely derivative physical reality we see, which is on a lower level of reality than the abstract general Forms that pertain universally to individual things. Aristotle, on the other hand, thought that art is a kind of mimesis, or imitation, that trains to cognize the identity of things, and can purify our emotions of pity and fear through a process of catharisis. Please check out the wonderful article at Classical Wisdom: https://classicalwisdom.com/philosophy/aristotle/aristotles-poetics/. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I discuss the nature of consciousness as presented by Karl Friston in his article in Aeon magazine, entitled "The Mathmatics of Mind-Time." Friston is interested in the transition from blind mechanistic causation--i.e. B simply happens to occur as a result of A--to teleological causation in which B follows A as the consciously sought goal of an agent. Friston likens consciousness, in a reductionist manner, to any complex system like evolution, the weather, or even a virus. Complex systems share in common a tendency to maximize evidence about their surroundings in a way that minimizes surprise. We can develop an account of purpose in terms of evidence-seeking to minimize surprise that is opposed to entropic tendencies to dissipate energy in random sequences. The link to the article is here: https://aeon.co/essays/consciousness-is-not-a-thing-but-a-process-of-inference?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a5ff1f090d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_08_25_12_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-a5ff1f090d-70783053. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I discuss the spirituality of the great American poet, Emily Dickinson. Dickinson was not a doctrinaire Christian, and had a deep suspicion of organized religion in general. Nevertheless, she refused to succumb to materialism, in spite of her fears that death might be the end of consciousness. She was aware of the limitations of space and time, and how the spatiotemporal framework need not capture reality in its entirety. I provide certain poems that give examples of this individualistic spirituality that embraces both feelings of transcendence while at the same time recognizing a profound sense of spiritual isolation. I bases my comments on a scholarly article "Love, Terror, and Transcendence in Emily Dickinson's Poetry," by Glenn Hughes, in Vol. 66, Issue 4 in the journal Renascence. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I finish my discussion of Dr. Maike Hickson's article on the third secret of Fatima: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/what-we-know-of-our-lady-of-fatimas-3rd-secret-appears-to-be-unfolding-in-church-today-priest?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com&utm_campaign=dea289f0da-Catholic_8_18_2020&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12387f0e3e-dea289f0da-404536973. I discuss how the book of Revelation shows a final struggle between a red dragon along with two other beasts: a leopard and a lamb with horns that speaks like a dragon. Father Unterhalt, whom Dr. Hickson references, interprets the dragon as representing communism. The leopard in its stealth represents Freemasonry. They present themselves as charitable do-gooders who in fact follow a secretive and esoteric religion. The lamb that speaks like a dragon is the false prophet referred to in the Catechism, who will offer a solution to a terrible problem that will nevertheless involve an apostasy from the Catholic faith. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

This is the first part of a two-part series on whether the third secret of Our Lady of Fatima is occurring now. With Pope Francis aligning with secular globalists who want a secular socialist world government and who embraces idol worship within the holiest sites of the Vatican, many are worried that we are now witnessing the apostasy at the top of the Church that the third secret warns us about. In this episode I discuss the centuries of planning by Freemasons and communists to pass themselves off as Catholic to work their up into the hierarchy of the Church only to mislead and corrupt the faithful through religious indifferentism. The article I am referring to is written by Dr. Maike Hickson at Lifesite News: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/what-we-know-of-our-lady-of-fatimas-3rd-secret-appears-to-be-unfolding-in-church-today-priest?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com&utm_campaign=dea289f0da-Catholic_8_18_2020&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12387f0e3e-dea289f0da-404536973 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss Walt Whitman's for a post-Christian religion. Whitman was influenced by deism, which sought a rational religion that did not include elements of revelation. Whitman rejected the divinity of Christ as unscientific, and sought a religion based solely on rational views having to do with God as creator and a morality of respect for other people. The Deistic God establishes perfect laws for nature, and does not perform miracles, because this would suggest an imperfection. Whitman tranposed evolutionary theory into his view of reality, which he saw as continually progressing. The individual transcends continually old forms, and the individual is the final arbiter of religious truth. I wonder if this attitude, expressed in poems like "Song of Myself," does not resemble the sin of pride that caused God to banish Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss some of the grand ambitions of the World Economic Forum in the post-Covid world. I discuss how they are working to double down on social distancing, reinvent sexuality and marriage, and to reset the global economy with an eye to regulations to protect the climate. While they present themselves as benign, I caution that members of the WEF are asking for a tremendous amount of power that would erode national sovereignty and subject the free exchange of goods to their constant surveillance. Social distancing using robots for baristas and doctors would create a dystopia in which we would not be able to realize the generosity that we need to be fully human. The article on which this podcast is based can be found here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/globalist-elites-post-covid-vision-for-humanity-is-satanic-anti-human --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss a controversy in the sixth century Church over the nature of the will (or wills) of Christ. The Monothelite heresy claimed that Jesus, even though he had both a human and a divine person, had just one will. But St. Maximos the Confessor defends the dual-will theory of Christ, and was tortured for it! Maximos argues that the human will has both a natural and a gnomic aspect. The natural aspect is implanted by God and naturally seeks what God intended us to seek. But, our fallenness means that we have a gnomic will, which means that we do not know what is good for us and have to constantly deliberate in uncertain situations. Check this corresponding article by Henry Karlson, "St. Maximos, The Will, and Universal Salvation," to be found here: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/henrykarlson/2020/08/st-maximos-the-will-and-universal-salvation/. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I address the issue of the compatibility of socialism and Christianity. I argue that socialism does not cultivate compassion through forcible seizure of property, and it actually stems from a horrible greed for money and power, not compassion. I refer to an article by Father Michael Orsi on Life Site News entitled “US Priest: Socialism Is Antithetical to the Gospel”. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I analyze the philosophical beliefs of key players in the RussiaGate story. I focus specifically on the ideology of Strobe Talbott who runs the Brookings Institution. Talbott is a firm believer in the future obsolescence of the nation state and the ultimate objective of a global government. Talbott is also a Rhodes scholar, and I discuss Rhodes’s racist and imperialistic ideology. The link to the article is https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/10/the-brookings-hand-behind-russiagate-points-back-to-rhodes-trust-coup-on-america, by Matt Ehret at Strategic Culture. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I consider a bleak article by blogger Benjamin Cain, that can be found at http://the rabbitisin.com/the-nightmare-of-god-152c2cc8694b. In this article, Cain advances the thesis that God is the only substance that ultimately exists, and that He therefore lives in a state of solipsistic hell. His omniscience means He never learns anything new, and we are just avatars in a video game He has created to distract Himself. I think this thesis is interesting, but I counter it by noting Aristotle’s notion of God as well as the Trinitarian conception of God in Christianity, in which God has internal relationships between His three persons. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss the phenomenon of the sublime, a peak experience involving a pleasure because of terror at being overwhelmed. It can occur when overpowered by an experience of the awesomeness of nature, or of a work of art. I draw from an article by Robert Clewis, found in Aeon magazine, “Is the Sublime A Hopelessly Old-Fashioned Euro-Romantic Ideal?” Links to the artwork of Thomas Cole can be found at arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.com/2014/10/thomas-coles-voyage-of-life-at-chrysler.html. Also a video of the work of Caspar David Friedrich can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPLp5wPMIxU. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app