Religion

Is Truth Dead?
“As a valued customer, a dedicated member of our expert team will be with you very shortly.” All of us encounter variations on this ubiquitous line – at minimum insincere, exaggerated and misleading, if not deliberately false. Many of us barely even notice, while nearly all have given up fighting it. But what does it actually take to inure a culture to misdirection, deception and falsehood – to lying? What is the motive source that would seek such comprehensive degradation? And where might it lead? David Solway explores how lying has become institutionalized into a structural component of cultural and political life, seeing its origins in deep recesses of human nature, its contours outlined by theologians of ancient times – and its dreadful potential exploited and put to unprecedented uses today.
Understanding Wokism
A bright young woman – let’s call her Kylie – heads off to university. She had a great childhood and loves her family, but now learns from her prof that they are oppressors. She meets some other cool students, all members of groups victimized by the evil system of which she and her parents have been active if unwitting parts. Suddenly, Kylie gets it. She’s woke! Her soul lights up. The world must be remade and, now that Kylie is with the enlightened, she will help save the future. It all seems very new and exciting. In fact, it’s deeply reminiscent of something that was done before – nearly two millennia ago – and which the perspective of time has rendered absurd if not exactly comical. Drawing on a solid body of scholarship, Tom Flanagan goes back to ancient Gnosticism to illuminate the derivative nature of today’s wokeness and its connection to Progressive identity politics.
Movies
Who’d have thought the rotary-dial phone and kung fu could help save late 22nd-century humanity? These were just a couple of the charming wrinkles in a sci-fi thriller that captivated audiences with its innovative special effects and ambiguous religiosity and mysticism. The oddness of the combination perhaps helps explain The Matrix’s staying power. Aaron Nava first saw the film at age nine, triggering a lifelong devotion that, two decades and many viewings later, continues to nourish his moral reflections.
Religion
Disasters – natural or otherwise – have a way of bringing out extremes in human behaviour and emotions. And so it was with the Easter Week fire at Cathédrale Notre-Dame in Paris: from the Catholic priest who risked his life to save irreplaceable relics and artwork, to French businessmen pledging grandiose sums for rebuilding, to the almost psychotic architecture some proposed for the restoration. For Patrick Keeney, the near-catastrophe triggered deep reflection on our era’s tense relationship between science and spirituality.
History in Review
Official regret – often delivered with a perfectly moistened eye and quavering voice – has been expressed by our prime minister for a seemingly endless parade of old injustices. Native schoolchildren, gays and lesbians, Sikh immigrants, Jewish refugees, six British Columbia chiefs hanged following the Chilcotin War and Inuit populations suffering from tuberculosis have all received a mea culpa from Ottawa. But does such federal self-abasement correspond to what actually happened? Peter Shawn Taylor casts a gimlet eye at Mexico’s efforts to blame 16th century Spain for present-day complaints and finds that the truth sometimes comes down on the side of colonialism.
The Mob Mentality
In the early hours of November 10, 1938, Nazis attacked Jewish people and their property throughout Germany. “Kristallnacht” was a direct prelude to the Holocaust. Barbara Kay reminds us that how a nation treats its Jewish minority is a signal of the wellbeing of the broader polity, and warns against what she calls the “third wave of anti-Semitism.”
Philosophy
Like many young people, Johnathan Strathdee got his progressive ideals from the public education system. In high school he learned that capitalism is unfair, oppression is endemic, and environmental catastrophe is imminent. Then he read Plato and learned that the world is not so simple.
Stories
China just cracked down on religion. But they’re not alone: see Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea……
Stories
Peter Stockland and Michael Walker debate religion and capitalism. This week, Michael Walker offers his thoughts…

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