Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews

Top Highlights

“The Oxford English Dictionary defines an idea as ‘a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action.’ ⁸ What we conceive, what we believe, and our general impressions about the world are always based on something. If they are not based on an accurate understanding of truth, we’ll always be disoriented, unable to distinguish between genuine clues and background nose. This is why it is important, as the sixteenth-century scientist Johannes Kepler phrased it, to think God’s thoughts after him. God made the rules. To bear his image well, we should try to understand them, discern the patterns they create, and live differently as a result.” (source)

“Maybe the battles of our age are not first and foremost military battles, but battles of ideas.” (source)

“Secular Humanism: a religious and philosophical worldview that makes mankind the ultimate norm by which truth and values are to be determined; a worldview that reveres human reason, evolution, naturalism, and secular theories of ethics while rejecting every form of supernatural religion.” (source)

“Malcolm Gladwell refers to what he calls the ‘10,000-hour rule,’ the number of hours of intensive concentration and practice it takes to master a subject. If you worked at it eight hours a day, it would take you three and a half years to get that kind of experience. ³ There is no real shortcut to this rule, at least individually.” (source)

“The problem, of course, is that the more information we have, the harder it is to figure out what to do with it all. Even utterly wrong ideas can boast a cool website, making them appear credible. Information’s growth is exponential; wisdom’s demise is precipitous.” (source)