LordMonroe

Recent posts

• "İman ile akıl, insan ruhunun hakikati temaşa etmek için yükseldiği iki kanat gibidir."

  Hıristiyanlığa dair en kalıcı klişelerden biri, onun bilgiden korktuğudur. Hikâye tanıdık. Din imana dayanır. Bilim kanıta dayanır. Biri soru sorar, öbürü onları bastırır. Kahramanlar dini otoriteye meydan okuyanlardır, Kilise ise onları geride tutmaya çalışan kurum olarak durur. Tarihte bu hikâyenin bazı kısımlarını destekleyen anlar vardır. Kilise hatalar yaptı. Bazen yeni fikirlere direndi. Galileo meselesi...

• « La foi et la raison sont comme les deux ailes qui permettent à l'esprit humain de s'élever vers la contemplation de la vérité. »

  L'un des stéréotypes les plus tenaces sur le christianisme, c'est qu'il aurait peur du savoir. L'histoire est connue. La religion repose sur la foi. La science repose sur les preuves. L'une pose des questions, l'autre les étouffe. Les héros sont ceux qui ont défié l'autorité religieuse, tandis que l'Église représente l'institution qui a tenté de les freiner. Il y a des moments de l'histoire qui appuient certaines parties de ce récit. L'Église a commis des erreurs. L'affaire Galilée…

• Does literalism flatten the Bible into a mere manual?

  One of the strangest assumptions in modern literalist readings of Scripture is the idea that the Bible should be treated as if it were a single kind of document with a single interpretive key. As if it were a legal contract where every clause must be enforced uniformly, or a scientific paper where every sentence is meant as a precise empirical claim, or a recipe book where the point is simply to follow instructions exactly as written.

• Why does Silicon Valley talk about death like it's a software bug?

  One of the clearest signs that modern secular elite culture is uneasy about death is how Silicon Valley talks about it. The human body is treated like legacy hardware waiting for an upgrade. In place of acceptance, you get optimization: longevity startups, cryonics, extreme biohacking, and constant speculation about whether enough computation and biotech might eventually defeat death itself. Tech billionaires talk with pride about potentially transferring their consciousness to a computer, as…

• Foi o monoteísmo católico que tornou o universo seguro para ser estudado?

  É fácil contar a história da ciência como uma ruptura limpa com a religião. O Iluminismo substitui a superstição, a observação substitui a fé, a razão substitui a autoridade. Soa arrumadinho, e lisonjeia os pressupostos modernos. Mas deixa de fora algo mais interessante e, sinceramente, mais incômodo para essa narrativa: a ideia de que o universo é inteligível, antes de tudo, não é evidente por si só. É uma afirmação metafísica. E o monoteísmo católico é uma das principais razões históricas pela

• Kilise mi devleti yozlaştırır, yoksa devlet mi Kilise'yi?

  Konstantin'in kilisesi, bir kuşak içinde imparatorluk siyasetinin bir aracına dönüştü. Franco'nun piskoposları çocuk hırsızlığının suç ortakları oldu. Patrik Kirill savaşları kutsuyor. Soru, siyasi nüfuz elde edip etmeyeceğiniz değil. Soru, nüfuzu isteyenler işlerini bitirdiğinde, başladığınız şeyden geriye ne kalacağıdır.

• Pourquoi regardes-tu la paille qui est dans l'œil de ton frère et ne remarques-tu pas la poutre qui est dans le tien ?

  Il y a une certaine manière de parler, chez les chrétiens, qui m'a toujours mis mal à l'aise. Ce n'est pas le langage de la conviction morale en lui-même. Le christianisme n'a pas peur de nommer le péché. C'est le ton qui se glisse quand la conviction se mue discrètement en assurance de soi, comme si celui qui parle était sorti de la condition qu'il décrit.

• Does secular society still believe in original sin?

  One of the funniest things about modern secular culture is that it absolutely still believes in original sin. It just refuses to call it that because theological language makes educated people uncomfortable. Listen to how modern institutions describe human beings. We are governed by unconscious bias, shaped by childhood conditioning, manipulated by algorithms, trapped in dopamine loops, distorted by social incentives, blinded by ideology, and mostly incapable of seeing our own motivations…

• Is therapy just confession with the theology stripped out?

  One of the funniest things about secular modern culture is watching people reinvent Christianity piece by piece while acting intellectually superior the entire time. People abandoned confession and now pay someone $240 plus taxes an hour to listen to them describe their guilt in a softly lit room. They abandoned sin and replaced it with "unprocessed trauma." They abandoned repentance and replaced it with "doing the work." They abandoned examination of conscience and replaced it with journaling…

• Is simulation theory just theism with extra steps?

  One of the funniest intellectual developments of the last decade is watching aggressively secular people reinvent religion using computer terminology and then acting like this makes the idea more rational. Simulation theory is the clearest example. The basic concept is familiar by now, but I'll summarize: our universe might be an artificial simulation created by a vastly more advanced intelligence. Reality is likely programmed. Consciousness could exist inside a designed system. The laws of…

• Is Christ's message eternal, but never meant to be read literally?

  Christians rightly say that the truth revealed in Christ is not temporary, but rather eternal. That is true, but it does not mean literalism and it does not mean that we are to drop interpretation. The mistake comes when some believers quietly turn that into a different claim: because the truth is eternal, every biblical utterance should be treated as though it arrived outside history and therefore needs no interpretation any longer, but rather has to be taken literally in the same way...

• Does atheism make you more rational, or just leave a void you fill badly?

  One of the common atheist temptations is to confuse unbelief with clarity, to assume that religion is the irrational part, so removing religion must leave behind a cleaner and more rational human being. But human beings do not work that way, human beings operate through beliefs, emotions... We do not stop wanting ritual, purity, moral tribe, sense of sacredness or transcendent meaning just because we stop using religious language for those desires.

• Do conservatives actually own the Church?

  I am tired of conservatives acting like they own the Church. They do not. The Church is older than the political right, older than trad nostalgia, older than the American culture war, and older than the faction that keeps trying to turn its own instincts into orthodoxy. If you look at Christian history instead of clinging to one preferred snapshot of it, the record points the other way.

• Does the state corrupt the Church more than the Church ever corrupts the state?

  Constantine's church became an instrument of imperial politics within a generation. Franco's bishops became collaborators in child theft. Patriarch Kirill blesses wars. The question is not whether you will gain political influence. The question is what will be left of what you started with once the people who wanted the influence are done with it.