When Love became incarnate he did not immediately transform the world: instead the world nailed him to the cross. He promised to return, and until that time he left the Spirit to empower his disciples to baptize the world. This they did, against all earthly odds, and for an age the civilization that grew up out of the fusion of pagan philosophy and Judeo-Christian revelation, Christendom, ruled the world and gave birth to the ideals of individualism and freedom.

But Christendom has collapsed.

Sometimes when answering the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" the atheist will say:

“Science now suggests that there is in fact a multiverse containing an infinitude of universes, and the laws can be different in each universe. Thus, there it is no mystery why there is this universe: all universes exist, because anything that can happen does happen.”

Some theists have misunderstood the multiverse answer as just an atheist's way of evading the question. In fact, there are unrelated, principled scientific reasons to suppose that the multiverse is true, though its truth has not been demonstrated definitively.

Still, it does not answer the question adequately. Here's why. 

We talk a great deal about about rights, and far too little about the responsibilities and duties concomitant with our rights, and hardly at all about the fundamental basis of both right and responsibility: relationship. Because of this latter deficiency, we have become very confused about rights and duties and think that they require our consent to be binding.

Go play around with this clever interactive didacticism. It uses shapes and "shapism" as a parable for how slight racial preferences can lead to segregation and to a racist society. It's a nice little tale, and it fits in perfectly with the watchword of the day — diversity — but it has some assumptions that I am not entirely sure should be accepted without further consideration.

My thoughts on a recent episode of The Incomparable podcast, which I generally enjoy, in which the panelists discussed Galaxy Quest. Hold on to your butts, it's a long one.

Before GamerGate was ever a thing, I was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the persistent and seemingly increasing coverage of identity politics, not in video game journalism (not much of a gamer myself), but in another suburb of Nerddom: that esoteric delicacy, the podcast wherein geeks in the Apple orbit get together to talk about the non-Apple geekery that they love.

No group does that particular genre better than The Incomparable....