Two pieces about an evangelist who is defending her ‘culture.’ Reading them now. What is she defending exactly? Anything about her actual religion?
First, from the evangelist herself.
Washington Post, Bonnie Kristian, 4 Sept 2026: I’m an evangelical. My faith isn’t ‘a cancer.’, subtitled “The stereotypes don’t line up with reality.”
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Subtitled: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress.
(First published 1981. This edition, with a new preface and afterword: Princeton University Press, 2011, xviii + 208pp, including 35pp of notes on sources, afterword, and index.)
I had thought this book was about a particular famous idea attributed to Singer: that the ‘expanding circle’ of moral concern or empathy might extend even beyond fellow human beings to animals, at least to some degree. And maybe someday to AI. But the book is much more: in its extension of E.O. Wilson’s ideas in his 1975 book SOCIOBIOLOGY, and it’s a good sketch of how we understand human nature in light of evolution and the heredity environment.
And coincidentally, it’s a corrective to the simplistic theological thinking of C.S. Lewis. It’s a good primer into some of what we understand about the origins of human nature. And also coincidentally, it dovetails with some of the ideas in the Todd May book I read just before this.
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I don’t have a lot to say about Wendell Berry, the poet and essayist who died this past week. I was aware of him, and I even have one of his books: LIFE IS A MIRACLE, subtitled “An Essay Against Modern Superstition,” published in 2000, a screed against E.O. Wilson’s 1998 CONSILIENCE (reviewed here), which, I gather from the dust jacket, casts science as a bully and industry shill. (There’s no index, and I haven’t sat down to read the whole thing.) As far as I can tell, this book made no impression on Wilson and his later thinking, nor on anyone else. There is no Wikipedia entry for it.
We can get some idea of Berry’s other thinking from the various tributes this week.
LA Times, 3 Sept 2026: Wendell Berry, celebrated author and fierce defender of agrarian life, dies at 92
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(First published 1952. This edition: HarperOne, trade paperback, 2001, xx + 227pp)
This is famous as one of the most popular ‘apologetics’ for Christianity. (Coincidentally, I did recently see a poll of the most popular books about Christianity of the 20th century, and this was #1.) I’ve heard about it for years, mainly for its claim that Jesus was either really God, or a liar, or he was crazy. Therefore, obviously!
Unlike most books I read, I didn’t come to this one expecting to ‘agree’ with it, or even to learn anything factual from it, but rather to learn what kind of arguments Christians find persuasive. In this book these arguments boil down to two types: Continue reading
Wonder is freely available, in the reality of the world we live in, for people who bother to look up from their holy books and political screeds and capitalist efficiency mandates.
The Atlantic, Ian Bogost, today: The Missing Ingredient of Modern Life, subtitled “Why we need wonder”
The writer discusses the current idea of “maxxing” and the culture of optimization ever since industrialism emphasized efficiency and productivity, summarizing:
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It’s not getting any better.
LA Times, Jon Duffy, 31 Aug 2026: Trump is spending billions to reverse American progress
Subtitled: “Human Meaning in a Silent Universe”
(University of Chicago Press, 2015, xi + 197pp, including 13pp of acknowledgments, notes, suggestions for further reading, and index)
This is the first of three slender books I’ve collected over the years by Todd May, who’s just a bit older than I am and who gained some prominence by being a philosophical advisor to the TV show The Good Place. Is that where I first heard of him? Probably, though I’m not sure after ten years. Continue reading
We wouldn’t be the species we are — one with the particular spectrum of evolved human nature that we have — without having learned to overcome our primal instincts (most of us anyway) to learn to cooperate among large groups.
OnlySky, Angie Dixon, 31 Aug 2026: The future of independence is interdependence, subtitled “Every one of us depends on others; the only difference is how visible that dependence is.”
I have a bunch of Trump/MAGA kibble today, but I’ll start with two quotes from the enlightened fringe of humanity.
Carl Sagan, from his book with Ann Druyan, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS. (Which I reviewed here.)
“We humans are like a newborn baby left on a doorstep, with no note explaining who it is, where it came from, what hereditary cargo of attributes and disabilities it might be carrying, or who its antecedents might be. We long to see the orphan’s file. Repeatedly, in many cultures, we invented reassuring fantasies about our parents—about how much they loved us, about how heroic and larger than life they were. As orphans do, we sometimes blamed ourselves for having been abandoned. It must have been our fault. We were too sinful, perhaps, or morally incorrigible. Insecure, we clung to these stories, imposing the strictest penalties on any who dared to doubt them. It was better than nothing, better than admitting our ignorance of our own origins, better than acknowledging that we had been left naked and helpless, a foundling on a doorstep.
As the infant is said to feel it is the center of its Universe, so we were once sure, not just of our central position, but that the Universe was made for us. This old, comfortable conceit, this safe view of the world has been crumbling for five centuries. The more we understood of how the world is put together, the less we needed to invoke a God or gods, and the more remote in time and causality any divine intervention had to be. The cost of coming of age is giving up the security blanket. Adolescence is a roller coaster ride.”
First, posted on Facebook about our Napa Valley Wine Train trip yesterday.
Then, more about the role of science fiction in modern society.
The Atlantic, Gal Beckerman, 31 Aug 2026: We Are Living in the Fantasy World of 13-Year-Old Boys, subtitled: “Many of the tech billionaires who built our world have taken the wrong lessons from their favorite science fiction.”
This is more about the new Jill Lepore book.
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