Apologetics to youth

[arjayen]

Walking down the hallway on my way to grad class last week, I passed by another classroom where a philosophy prof was teaching. The very words I heard when I walked by were “…and if I said these things at a Christian university, they would throw me out.” He then went on to ‘professionally’ rebuke prominent Midwest institutions like Anderson,

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[augustine]

The very words I heard when I walked by were “…and if I said these things at a Christian university, they would throw me out.” He then went on to ‘professionally’ rebuke prominent Midwest institutions like Anderson, Huntington, and Taylor (from which I graduated) and praise the state college’s philosophy department. THEY did not have a hidden agenda, or close themselves off from ‘finding’ truth in all its forms.

"In truth there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it"

-G.K. Chesterton, Fancies verses Fads, "Mercy of Mr. Arnold Bennett" (1923)
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"...We have a general view of existence, whether we like it or not; it alters or, to speak more accurately, it creates and involves everything we say or do, whether we like it or not. If we regard the Cosmos as a dream, we regard the Fiscal Question as a dream. If we regard the Cosmos as a joke, we regard St. Paul's Cathedral as a joke. If everything is bad, then we must believe (if it be possible) that beer is bad; if everything be good, we are forced to the rather fantastic conclusion that scientific philanthropy is good. Every man in the street must hold a metaphysical system, and hold it firmly. The possibility is that he may have held it so firmly and so long as to have forgotten all about its existence.

This latter situation is certainly possible; in fact, it is the situation of the whole modern world. The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas. It may be thought "dogmatic," for instance, in some circles accounted progressive, to assume the perfection or improvement of man in another world. But it is not thought "dogmatic" to assume the perfection or improvement of man in this world; though that idea of progress is quite as unproved as the idea of immortality, and from a rationalistic point of view quite as improbable. Progress happens to be one of our dogmas, and a dogma means a thing which is not thought dogmatic..."

-G.K. Chesterton, Heretics, "Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy" (1905)

BTW, do you mind if I add you to my friends list?