Musings of a Christian Humanist

     The book which more than any other has misled millions of American teachers and distorted American education is Dewey's How We Think , for it is concerned only with learning by discovery and the sort of thinking that there goes on....In so far, therefore, as I restrict myself to the basic education of youth  –  youth incompetent to discover anything by itself – I can say that there is no significant operation of thinking apart from such operations as reading and listening, writing and speaking, and there is no art of thinking other than the three liberal arts as arts of language or communication. (Mortimer J Adler, Reforming Education, 154)

​     ​ There is a popular series of books entitled, "Eat This, Not That." The premise of the series is that of all the foods out there, some are healthier for you than others or some are not as unhealthy as others. We can classify this essay as a "Read This, Not That." With the growing number of published works by fundamentalist atheists, let me suggest when trying to think through the complex issues of religious reality and human cultures, one should read Christopher Dawson and not the venomously ill-informed works of those who seem driven primarily by profit and not generous, well informed scholarship. ​     ​ Historically speaking, as a humane discipline, History and all of its variant emphases experienced decline when the mind of the modern inquirer into the past was clouded by the myopia of enlightenment consciousness of the 18th century.  Those blinded by the narrow Enlightenment lens could feel little interest and no spiritual sympathy for transce...