Author Archives: Alastair Roberts

Willow Creek and a number of other megachurches are cancelling their Christmas Day services (Tim Bayly also reports on this). This is just another instance of the idolatry of the natural family in action. Christ came in order to form … Continue reading →

Human beings are religious animals. It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion. You can see this in the positivist scientists of the 19th century. They insisted that they were … Continue reading →

I finished reading Eco’s Serendipities: Language and Lunacy today (a big thank you to Cliff, who bought it for me from my wishlist). It follows on from Eco’s earlier work, The Search for the Perfect Language. Central themes from Baudolino … Continue reading →

Some very interesting thoughts here.

In his book, The Disappearance of Childhood, Neil Postman argues that shame is a crucial element of the civilizing process. He maintains that the printing press encouraged the development of a heightened sense of shame. The reading of books demands … Continue reading →

Woohoo! Now I can understand Berek.

After writing my previous post, I finished reading C.S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism. This concluding paragraph was particularly striking, especially given some of the positions expressed in my earlier comments:— Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, … Continue reading →