Hitchens vs. D'souza

Here is the link to the D'souza/Hitchens debate:
http://www.tkc.edu/debate/

I've unfortunately missed DD's TV appearances in support of the new book. I haven't had a chance to watch the debate. With my FE exam done, I have the time now.

-SK

What's So Great About Christianity?

I'm almost done with this. This book was a surprisingly good apologetical piece from Dinesh D'souza. Buy it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Whats-So-Great-About-Christianity/dp/1596985178

-SK

perhaps a distinction?

I've been batting this around in my head for a few days...

In Orthodoxy we've been distinguishing between Tradition with a capital T and tradition with a lowercase t.

I propose that analogously, we can say the same for "culture." There's culture and there is Culture. The former implies stagnation. My parents used to tell me to get more in touch with my culture because they had a very particular vision of what "our culture" was in mind. Needless to say, that culture had substantially changed, and the people in the place where my parents were from were no longer living the way they were when my parents left.

The second vision of Culture is the way we live because we have been cultured. Culture is dynamic, fluid; we live in respect of our forebears but not exactly as they have lived. We, as a people, can change according to our times, environment, technology, et cetera, albeit in continuity with our past.

I mention this distinction because I have the sneaking suspicion that our sense of goodness, evil, right, and wrong, has developed through ages of generations culturing the generations after them. I hope to not have pidgeon-holed myself into a particular philosophical category. However, I am not convinced that our notions of "right" and "wrong" are obvious ("self evident") from merely observing nature and the way things are. It seems that no matter how nihilistic one may be, the past can not be escaped.

Re-Christianize the Culture- Fr. Jacobse

"This co-opting of the Christian moral lexicon is one reason for the deep moral confusion in the culture. It creates a kind of moral schizophrenia in which people are unsure if right and wrong even exist. Repeat certain words over and over again, and people will tend to believe them. If these words have moral power, which is to say if they derive their authority from the moral tradition, people will tend to believe their new applications are the tradition.

That's what Huxley warned against. If man is a biological machine, and if that machine responds to pleasure, why not frame the pleasure-inducing activity in the terminology of a private good? Orwell warned of the same corruption. If man is machine, why not frame the attempts at social reorganization in terms of the common good? All it takes is wrestling common terms from their traditional moral contexts and employing them in ones that justify the dehumanization as progress. Good becomes evil, and evil becomes good. Society has reconstructed itself in a new moral order.
..."