Renaissance

Conservatives: Get Over the Dark Ages [Open College series]

Audio links: iTunes Stitcher YouTube Topics: The “Dark” Ages or The “Brilliant” Ages? // Chronology // Was there a Dark Age? // Why did the activity pick up after the year 1000? // Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas // Why is the debate significant today? // The verdict on Christianity // The verdict on modernity and the Enlightenment //  Why

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Religion and the Verdict of History [Theist vs. Atheist series]

[This column is a part of the Theist vs. Atheist series debate between Stephen Hicks and John C. Wright. This is Hicks’s response to Wright’s column. Here are the links to other columns in the series.] To evaluate religion’s track record we need to specify our evaluative benchmarks and identify whether we are evaluating religion generically

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No Reformation for Islam, Please [Good Life series]

[Originally published at EveryJoe.com.] Many smart people — including Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, Naser Khader in Newsweek, John Lloyd in The Jerusalem Post, Ayaan Hirsi Ali in The Wall Street Journal — are hoping that the Reformation will come to Islam. Some are calling for an Islamic Martin Luther. Sorry, but no.

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