The Philosophical Optimist

            Ours is a postdiluvian era.   The deluge that we have come through, and in whose aftermath we now live, is feminism, in all its various waves.   Gone are the days when the Jetsons would have an episode mocking Jane’s desire to learn how to drive, along with the very idea of “lady drivers” (what Precambrian stratum did that sort of thinking belong to, anyway?).   Now, we are more likely to see television shows where the women are equal partners with the men (in numbers and in power), if not the leaders of their respective groups.   Such is indeed an example of positive progress, and the sort of spiritual development that constitutes genuine progress, and not just an increase of our power over nature that so often is called by that name.             Still, the waves of feminism keep coming, and some feminists, it appears, will not be happy u...

“[He made] the stars also”—Genesis 1.16b             Growing up Christian in the Bible Belt of the American South is no doubt different from growing up some other places.   In such an environment it is not at all strange for someone to ask you for your favorite verse of scripture.   As a lifelong learner and a teacher, my personal favorite was always Christ’s words, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free”; for as another wise man once wrote, “truth is truth, / To th’ end of reck’ning” (Isabella, from William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure V.i.45-46).             Still, as we played these occasional games of scripture quotation, there was always some wisenheimer who would quote John 11.35.   You had to be a wisenheimer to quote John 11.35 because it is the shortest single verse in the English Bible.   There, in the story of the ...

            Science fiction is the literature of the world we live in, even when it was written decades ago.   It shows us the wonders of science, the potentials of technology, and the potential dangers of misusing both.   In “Runaround”(found in I, Robot ) and other robot stories, Isaac Asimov gives us “The Three Laws of Robotics” and—for the first time—a vision of robots as tools and companions, not monsters.   Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World shows us a frightening world where, thanks to controlled genetics and an infinite supply of entertainment, drugs, and other distractions, no one is free, but everyone is happy—because they are too immature to know any better; a story more relevant now than ever.   A Wrinkle in Time mixes elements of science and fantasy to take its readers on a journey that explores both the cosmos without and the universe within.   The novels of Andy Weir take us first to Mars...