After hearing a complaint from a father that he did not want his son’s English teacher inserting politics into every English class in the form of “gender, class, and race,” an English teacher responded “But, that’s all there is.” Proponents of this mantra are supposed to be precisely those who fret about “stereotyping” and sexism, classism, and racism.
St. Augustine in the City of God systematically debunks astrology by highlighting its absurdities. One point he makes is that if astrology were true, then twins would share exactly the same fate, when they clearly do not. The astrologers counter, Augustine writes, that since twins are born a few minutes apart, this accounts for their differing destinies. Augustine responds that the idea that astrology, rather than simply focusing on birth month and star sign, is so precise that a three minute difference in birth time will have vastly different astrological implications and that astrologers will be able to make accurate predictions based on such a tiny time interval is ridiculous. The whole discussion is rather tedious if astrology has always seemed to the reader as an epistemic nonstarter. Continue reading
Discerning the nature of ultimate reality is a matter of intuition. A religious experience, for instance, needs to be interpreted and understood by the experiencer. Whether an experience is going to count as a genuine evidence or not is up to the person. And then, even if deemed genuine, it is necessary to decide what it means. For those lacking such experiences they are relying on someone else’s assessment and of course that assessment of his assessment might be wrong. Infallible arbiters we are not. Coming to know important truths is a creative process and those truths remain debatable. 
Berdyaev comments that the tragic condition of man results from our dual nature; the physical and divine. Being made in the image of God means participating in the mystery of Freedom, emerging from the causeless Ungrund. We are infinite beings living in a finite universe. It is precisely this fact that constitutes the Fall of man. And it is why we humans will never be thoroughly happy, with brief exceptions, so long as we may live. The release of death offers some prospect, at least, of future happiness. Perhaps a purely natural organism living out its life in a material universe could be expected to make some perfect adjustment to life circumstances, but this prospect is unattractive. Natural man following natural law, natural reason, and natural morals would be incapable of conceiving of anything higher, of anything to aim for, and as such he would no longer be man. The proof that the natural man does not exist is the fact that no man can serenely accommodate himself to such an existence. Even those who might pretend to have so reconciled themselves do so in an act of self-renouncing apparent heroism. It might seem heroic precisely because he has abandoned claim to divinity or aspiration – the ultimate in self-deifying self-sufficiency. But this means he has not abandoned his divine aspirations at all. Heroism itself requires the existence of transcendence. 
rivals, as we compete for the same things. Taboos and prohibitions can be sufficient to mitigate this problem much of the time, but when there is a crisis, such as a flood, famine, plague, or war, and the social structure based on rules and hierarchies collapses, we find ourselves in a state of horrible equality. The natural hierarchy between a parent and a younger child, or between humans and animals, high status and low status individuals, reduces conflict. In a crisis, each person becomes another’s rival, chaos ensues, and violence breaks out. It is a war of all against all. Without a public justice system, each of us wants to retaliate for the latest offense. If not against you, then against a family member. There is no logical end to the conflict. A common resolution is if we all agree that a single person or a group of people are to blame. This is the scapegoat. We are scandalized by the scapegoat. A “scandal” is etymologically a stumbling block. 
Knowledge, while hard to define, must have a connection with truth. Some truths are accessible only to a normally thinking, feeling, person. The truth of reciprocity is recognized, in practice, by everyone other than, presumably, some psychopaths. “In practice” because while some thinkers might imagine that reciprocity is merely a convention, or that we are “hard-wired” by evolution to merely think it is true, in practice everyone acts as though it were true – and actions are a better indication of actual beliefs than words.
opposite extreme would be a dogmatic brow-beating system of indoctrination employing ad hominem attacks against anyone not conforming to the party-line; all ill-feeling passion.
