John C. Wright's Blog, page 10
September 22, 2015
Leo Grin grins when he slays
Mr Grin first came to my attention with his excellent and unabashed essays on the poisonous effects of nihilism in fantasy.
He has now won my personal admiration.
http://leogrin.com/CimmerianBlog/your-cimmerian-bloggers/
On his blog, he posted this notice, which I here reprint in full. All editors and blogmasters take note and do likewise.
I hereby and against his will, in my official capacity as Grand Inquisitor of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors enroll him as a full member in good standing, and grant him an ovation. Let his enemies be driven before him!
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Prayer Request
From a reader:
I am writing you to request prayers for my sister in law’s nephew’s daughter, a little girl, who is suffering from neuroblastoma. She was diagnosed at the age of 2, given a few months, and is now 8. She spent 10 hours in the OR today to have masses removed from her spine. If you and the excellent Mrs. Wright would add her to your list, it would no doubt have great and lasting benefit. St. Peregrine, pray for us.
St. Peregrine is the patron saint aiding those afflicted with cancer.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
A Private Opinion of Pope Francis
An acquaintance of mine was polling those of us who converted under Pope Benedict XVI (or B-16, as we affectionately refer to him) our opinions of the current Holy Father, Francis, and what is our reaction to him: as if the sheep are supposed to have a ‘reaction’ to the shepherd placed over us. Hm.
I thought my readers might also be interested, as this Pope seems to have stirred up more controversy among the lazy and chattering crickets of the press corps than any Pope since World War Two.
My reaction is one of delight. I believe the Holy Spirit Himself must have prompted Pope Benedict to retire, something that has not been done in centuries, to make way for this next man.
Now, let me explain one thing: my opinion of Pope Francis is not based on the newspaper reports. I am a newspaperman and newspaper editor from way back, and I know how the press works, and I do not trust them.
The lazy and dishonest mainstream press has decided to portray the Holy Father as some sort of Leftist reformer or Marxist revolutionary, and, to my intense disgust, the lazier elements of the rightwing alternate press has followed suit.
The first dozen or so times the press quoted something that sounded extraordinary, and I took the time to trace the comment back to its original source, I found that, in context, the Holy Father’s comment was entirely orthodox, and entirely in keeping with the traditional teaching of the Mother Church since time immemorial.
It happened over and over again. Reading about the support of His Holiness for the Global Warming fraud, or his Marxist disdain for capitalism, I looked up the original document or original report, only to see some utterly orthodox Christian teaching on stewardship of God’s gift of the Earth to Man, or Christian warnings against wealth and worldliness as old as Moses.
And after a dozen times, my openmindedness creaked shut: I now simply dismiss, sight unseen, any such extraordinary quotes. Perhaps the Pope in his private opinions leans more to the Left than the average American. I care not. The Church has, in history, blossomed under the Emperors of Rome and Byzantium, who were elected by the army; under sacred kingship, under parliaments, under republics, and even under the tyranny of the Turks. The Church has also opposed all these things because She opposes the world. The Church will be here long after America sinks under the weight of our own corruption, long after the collapse of the North American Federation which comes next, or the Co-Dominium World-State, or the Long Night, or the Instrumentality of Man or the whatever comes after that.
I dare say that the Church will still be here, and her teaching will be remembered, unchanged, as a magician once said of the unicorn, “she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.”
Therefore I dismiss and despise the press-created image of the Pope as an illusion, as gossip, as nonsense. Why the Good Lord has decided to arrange to have the press, our natural enemy and the enemy of the faith, be charmed and pleased by this Pope, I have no idea. God’s ways are not our ways. What shall come of it, not even the wise can foresee.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
September 18, 2015
Musical Oasis
For those of you weary of the bustle and bad manners of the world, the deception of the press and the silly self-righteous posturing of our orcs and lunatics who have conquered and occupied our culture, weary of our jarring songs and lack of simplicity, I offer a drink at this musical oasis.
This is an English rhyming translation of an old Irish hymn.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Another Load of Leftism
Look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies
On the Wikipedia page concerning Sad Puppies, you will see Irene Gallo’s remark that we (and you) are sexist, racist, homophobes mentioned, but there is no mention whatsoever of yours truly, the author that the Puppy Kickers burned down the Hugo’s to stop.
Yet somehow, twice the allegedly neutral article manages to slip in the idea that the Sad Puppies objected to literary fiction — as if ‘One Bright Star to Guide Them’ were not literary, but ‘The Day the World Turned Upside Down’ was — and the source for the conclusion is two hostile hit-pieces of gutter journalism.
Good grief.
Had I world enough and time, I could answer all the lies and omissions and libels and slanders. As it is, I cannot even raise Tom Doherty on the phone.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Superversive Blog: What Stories Do!
A guest post by the refreshing young authoress April appears over on the Superversive blog:
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2015/09/16/superversive-blog-what-stories-do/
Not everyone loves reading, but who can resist a good story?
There is something about a good story. The way it pulls you in, the way it makes you want more, the way it makes you feel.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a very emotional person. I like to think rationally; I don’t like the idea of my emotions overriding my will very much. Yet I love to obsess over fictional characters and the way they make me cry, laugh, agonize, rejoice, and just feel.
There’s something about diving into a good story. Opening up our hearts and feelings to the direction of the author’s pen strokes. Even though it will take hours of our time, hours of our thoughts, and even wreck our emotions sometimes, we still gladly take the plunge.
Even when the stories are not fiction, people still like stories. Why do people like the news channels? Why do people like gossip? Why do people spend hours on Netflix?
Because they want stories
…
To be Superversive is to reach upward, to strive for those moments of joy, of revelation, and hope. Build your story so that you can deliverer those feelings to your readers. That even while everything may be in chaos and death, and fears are close, and you don’t know how everything will turn out, you give them hope. That awe and sense of something bigger and beyond. You stay holding onto the dreams, you give them a piece of calm in the storm, and you inspire.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
September 16, 2015
Science and Schism
A reader put forward the idea that the Protestant Reformation, allegedly by challenging the Christian desire for unity in dogma that hitherto differentiated Christians from pagans, allowed for freedom of inquiry in Protestant nations, and created or perhaps only encouraged the birth of science.
This is an old, old slander, and one that was popular among ahistorians long before the atheists took the same argument and turned it into the alleged war between Faith and Reason.
It is a theory the historical record does not support.
Here are a list of some of the inventions, mathematicians, and scientists who flourished before the Protestant Reformation.
It is this list that has to be explained away by the Christians-deter-science or Catholics-deter-science calumny. Ready? Go.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
An Unknown Friend needs your Prayers
A man I met once turned to me for help, and asked me to pray for him. It seems he and his wife have fallen into the ongoing hell of an unhappy marriage, and every conversation ends in a shouting match.
There is nothing I can do for him, no advice I can give, no way to help, except one. He asked for my prayers, and I would like to ask you, dear readers, for yours. I don’t want to repeat his name on the internet, but God and His saints will know who you mean if you volunteer to help.
(I note in passing that back when I was an atheist, neither did my fellow atheists and I ask for help from strangers when we suffered, nor did we volunteer to help, nor was their any help to give. Atheism is a cold universe, and there is only cold comfort there. Even if God should turn out to be a dream and a delusion, sharing even an imaginary warmth is an act of love and goodfellowship is better than the real coldheartedness godlessness produces.)
Here is a disciple of Christ who also had an unhappy marriage, and who is one of the Patron Saints of impossible causes:
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
September 15, 2015
Guest Post on Science and Christendom
Part of an ongoing conversation. A reader with the ghostly name of Apparition objected, at first reasonably, to my startling statement that a Christian civilization alone could create and sustain a scientific community.
I made this remark in the belief that pragmatic reasons are always insufficient to sustain an institution; either it rests on a philosophical ground, or it becomes the servant of the secular powers that be, and loses its original mission. In this case, a scientific community requires a metaphysical belief in the potency of reason and the objectivity of reality, and this metaphysical belief, in turn, rests on a theological belief in a transcendent yet rational Supreme Being.
Andrew Brew pens a clearer answer than my own to defend the proposition. The words below are his:
A Reply to Apparatition
I would like to provide some answer to Apparation. It was I who imposed the restriction, to which he apparently mildly objects, on what counts as science.
Specifically, I excluded engineering (and by extension technological achievements). I did so for two reasons. One was pre-emptive, since late moderns often confuse science and technology, and (for reasons I will get to below) when asked for examples of the success of he former, usually give examples of the latter. The other is simply that these things are not science, as intended by John’s original comment and by my support of it.
Science (what used to be called Natural Philosophy) is the disciplined intellectual process of gaining understanding of the physical universe and how it works. It does not include its own consequents (a science must exist as a science before it can be applied as an art – art aims at outcomes, science at understanding). So, no engineering, no matter how clever, or how dependent on pre-existing science, is itself science. Likewise, it excludes its antecendents – metaphysics, logic and mathematics. These are likewise not science in the sense used, although they can all be considered sciences in an older and broader sense.
In short, I do claim that “all science is Christian science”.
Historically, science emerged nowhere but in Christendom, for reasons that can be given. For science to occur it must be regarded both aspossible and as worthwhile Christian metaphysics and anthropology provides these prerequisites:
– A universe rationally ordered by God who is Himself both rational and truthful
– Human intellect that is to some degree reliable and capable (because it is made in the image of God) of grasping the physical, as well as the moral, laws of God’s creation
– A moral duty to perfect, as far as possible, our selves in conformity with God’s creation, including perfecting our understanding.
All of the other societies in which science might possibly have been born lacked one or more of these pre-requisites, with the possible exception of Jewry and the Dar-al-Islam. In the case of the Jews I suspect that the cause is that they were never a large enough people to generate the necessary intellectual critical mass for science to take off (they also had more pressing matters taking up their attention for most of their history). I note, though, that since it took off elsewhere they have joined in with enthusiasm, although the correlation between religions Jews and scientific Jews is not strong. The Islamic world, on the basis of its majority Christian subject population, made a start from the ninth to twelfth centuries, but then made a collective decision to stop, and from that time proto-science was actively suppressed. They had come to the conclusion that natural philosophy was not a means to the service of God, but at best a distraction from it. Even in that golden age, the subjects chiefly studied were abstract mathematics, astronomy (which at the time was regarded as a branch of applied mathematics) and medicine, all disciplines in which the Syriac Christians already had a distinguished centuries-old tradition of scholarship.
So, can pagans do science? No, or yes only to the extent that they abandon pagan thinking and adopt Christian thinking, as the ancient Latin and Greek worlds did. What about heretics? Certainly they can, to the extent that they retain Christian thinking. A heretic is by definition a Christian of a sort, although the particular bent of a particular heresy might preclude it.
What about a post-Christian society, such as ours, or a never-Christian society such as Japan? It remains to be seen, I think, but the signs are not good so far. A critical step from medieval to modern science was a change in its objective. Pre-modern science sought knowledge in the cause of perfecting our humanity. Not knowledge of how to change humanity, but knowledge as a perfection in itself. Modern science (see Francis Bacon for particularly clear statements) sought knowledge as a means to power. This undermines the third pre-requisite I listed above, but as long as most scientists remained, in fact, Christians (up to, say, 1800) it continued to rub along rather well. Even when they were mostly Christians, of some sort, in theory (for another century or so), it continued to seek truth and so serve genuinely scientific ends. Nearly all of the major discoveries of modern science, mind you, have been made by active Christians – heliocentrism, evolution, genetics, big-bang cosmology. The exception is relativity, made by a non-observant Jew. In the twentieth century we have taken, or are in the process of taking, a further major step. The culture of the scientific community is no longer explicitly, or even implicitly, Christian, and what we still call “science” is very often not directed toward truth for is own sake, or even for the sake of power of nature, but for the sake of power over people – political ends. We saw the first major outbreaks in the great left-wing totalitarianisms that troubled the middle of the last century – Lysenkoism in Russia and Rassenwissenschaft in Germany. Dwight D. Eisenhower may have had those partly in mind when he warned against the danger not only of the military-industrial complex of which we hear so much but of the scientific-industrial complex – an unholy alliance of industry and centralised government subordinating science to their ends (read Michael Crighton’s speech “Aliens Cause Global Warming”, if you have not already seen it). I call this “post-modern science”. What appears to outsiders as “science” (search for knowledge) is in fact at best a search for power of nature (which may be innocent), at second best a search for power over people (which cannot), or last and worst a sort of theatre in support of power over people.
I hope that makes clearer the context from which I, at least, am making my claims and posing my challenges to you.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
September 14, 2015
My Daughter’s Other Father
This is a very difficult post for me to write. It is a cry for help.
There is a man who runs an orphanage in China, and schools, who, during the terrible years before we adopted her, was the only father, helper, and protector my daughter ever knew.
His name is Xin Lijian, chairman and founder of the Xinfu Education Group. My daughter just calls him ‘The Chairman.’
She was abandoned by her parents, thanks to the hideous ‘one-child’ policy that the Leftists here in America so love and admire, for the crime of not being a boy. She is old enough to remember them leaving her, without explanation, out on the street to fend for herself. The first three times, she managed to find her way home. The final time her parents managed to leave her far enough away from everything she knew and loved that she could not find any way back.
Mr. Lijian was the one who took her in to the orphanage and showed her every kindness he could. Even after we adopted her, he maintained regular contact with us, and sought to do whatever was needed for her wellbeing.
To say that Xin Lijian is one of the finest and most heroic men, one of the greatest and most generous and brave spirits I know would be no exaggeration, just the simple truth.
He was arrested in the middle of the night by Chinese authorities and is being held without access to his lawyer.
Here are two articles on the matter:
Dear readers, Xin Linjian is my beloved daughter’s other father, the man in her life who stood by her, raised her, protected her, and who did not abandon her. He is a wise, generous and good man, and a family friend.
I would like you to pray for him, and to write to your Congressman to bring this case to federal attention, in hopes that something can be done.
But first pray.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
John C. Wright's Blog
- John C. Wright's profile
- 449 followers
