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The Long View 2004-11-21: Shaken Faith

This is finally an interesting political post, a reminder that increased turnout in 2002 and 2004 helped elect Republican candidates, which runs counter to what both parties and most pollsters think then and now. Of course, we've also had twelve more years of demographic change, but much like

The Long View: Millennium: A History of the Last Thousand Years

Prior to 1500, the idea that Northwestern Europe and its disapora would come to dominate the world would have seemed pretty strange. One can make a case that this is a temporary state of affairs. All of the ancient seats of civilization were in other places, and had been for

The Long View: Name the Present, Name the Future

The identification of the present with nominalism ascendant is plausible, especially if you combine that with its handmaiden antinomianism. Name the Present, Name the Future The term "postmodern" is an unsatisfactory way to refer to the last few decades of the 20th century. (The era itself was not

The Long View: Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection

Ross Douthat pointed out today that atheism, as such, isn't particularly rational. For most of recorded history, gnosticism has been the preferred alternative for intellectuals to classical monotheism or paganism. The argument that God is evil is a far stronger one than that God doesn't exist.

The Long View: The Coming Age of Cathedrals

In 2014 I speculated that John Reilly probably knew Richard Landes, because of their common interests. I managed to miss this essay of John's where he talked about meeting with Landes in New York City. I'm not sure how, since I referenced the ideas here in

The Long View: What If the Second Temple Had Survived AD 70?

A fun bit of alternative history exploring the likely impact of the survival of the Second Temple upon the religion and politics of the Middle East. What If the Second Temple Had Survived AD 70? This note takes issue with Donald Harman Akenson's recent book, "Surpassing Wonder:

The Long View: Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds

Textual analysis and criticism of religious texts was a real innovation in the mid-nineteenth century. However, historical criticism of the Bible and the Talmud exhibits the amusing spectacle, as work has slowly progressed, of converging on something very much like the traditional account. Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible