A Few Good Links (vol. 15)

I have a few tabs to clear.

1. An old point which bears repeating: there never was nor will be on this side of heaven a true "golden age," that is, an age in which men are all virtuous and wise and happy.
2. Michael Flynn writes a fanciful tale about the separation of Church and State, and about the supposed improvement of men's intellectual condition since the medieval times. "Ho Ho. We have learned our history at the hands of Monty Python. They are confusing the Spanish Inquisition with the secret police and SWAT teams of the modern scientific state."
3. Speaking of anti-intellectualism, I've mostly been following the whole Neil DeGrasse Tyson quote manufacturing thing with mild at most interest, but the longer it drags on the worse he and his followers are beginning to look. He is not nearly as vitriolic as, say, Richard Dawkins, though he seems to have embraced the same philosophical philistinism as Dawkins--or Lawrence Krauss, for that matter. My respect for him tanked considerably after he did the whole Cosmos reboot, which at times felt like it was more about bashing religion (by which is always meant Christianity and especially Catholicism). That said, the part where he manufactured a quote might have been forgivable, but the fact that he repeats and has been utterly unapologetic for repeating not one but many quotes and anecdotes which he fabricated is getting a bit ridiculous, as is his frankly philistine scientism.
4. Speaking of scientism, Matt Briggs has done a nice job of debunking a scientistic argument against the existence of a Creator God. This one starts with the philosophical equivalent of the Drake equation, then attempts to use statistics and probabilities to justify it.
5. "Sex positive" is a phrase which I have seen popping up here and there around the internet. It's usually meant as a way of denigrating Christians in particular. And, so long as we make only secular arguments for the Traditional Christian sexual morality, we will sound a bit "negative" in our approach. The thing is, the "sex positive" view of the world--secularism bolstering hedonism--is wrong, because it ignores evidence which if admitted is crucial.

As Prof. J. Budziszewski notes, "We don’t often stop believing in God, then start looking for new sins to commit. We become attached to sins we don’t want to give up, then start looking for reasons not to believe in God."