Benjamin D. Wiker
You may have caught wind of the latest attempt by Elon Musk to improve upon our human lot, this time by wiring our brains into computers through implanted chips connected to ultrathin threads lacing our brain (hence, the name “neuralace”). If you can’t decipher his white paper, then catch his popular presentation on YouTube. The … Read more
The self-destruction of the Democratic Party is being accomplished so quickly and thoroughly that even Democrats are noticing it. Certainly, the increasing internecine bitterness of Democratic debates is evidence that something is deeply wrong. The problem isn’t just that socialism is growing like mold on the planks of the party platform. There’s an even deeper, … Read more
Nearly everyone knows the basics of the Reformation, the first being that 500 years ago, it began with Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the Wittenberg castle door on October 31, 1517—except that scholars now think that what probably happened was that Luther mailed them, not nailed them, to his archbishop, Albrecht of Brandenburg. … Read more
This is not an article for those who are unabashedly in love with democracy, who look forward to election year with patriotic zeal directed first of all to the nation and second of all to one of the political parties. I write instead for the genuinely dispossessed: for those who feel deep in their bones … Read more
There are lessons of wisdom to be found in every folly, however painful the extraction. The ongoing, almost comic bungling efforts and non-efforts of the federal government dealing with the oil spill in the gulf is no exception. The most important political lesson is both conservative and Catholic. The conservative lesson? When dealing with a … Read more
Granting all the wonderful, important things modern scriptural scholarship has given us, it bears within it something dreadfully wrong. If you have had the misfortune of coming into earshot of all too many of our contemporary scriptural scholars, they will assure you that scholarship, properly speaking, must strip both the Old and New Testaments of … Read more
A man has dreams, and all too often, this one found himself drifting off on his pleasant and wishful clouds as he corrected yet another stack of undergraduate papers. Yes, being a professor had seemed so inviting — a life of tweed jackets, of dragging on the meerschaum, of good books and penetrating discussions, and … Read more
An Introduction, in which the reader’s attention is firmly but politely grasped It is out of fashion, to say the least, to speak of gentlemen. Perhaps that is why there are so few of them. As Aristotle, the gentleman’s philosopher, said somewhere or other, when they are not gentled, men are worse than beasts. It … Read more
What does a word mean, if it can mean anything? Is there a difference between a word meaning anything, and one that means nothing at all? This isn’t merely a semantic problem if that word is “marriage.” When I maintain that the definition of marriage has been all but lost, I intend both senses of … Read more
“As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.” G.K. Chesterton In the struggle to survive, the fit win, and so it is also … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Benjamin Wiker says we have an obligation not to be unnecessarily distracting to others at Mass. As I have not received nearly enough hate mail of late, I thought it best to write something else on modesty, this time modesty at Mass (see my first article, “Drawing a … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Benjamin Wiker almost gets lynched arguing for a return to sexual modesty in dress. I have a suggestion for those in academia who are concerned that women be treated as intellectual equals: Try sexual modesty. Before the lynching party arrives, I hope I will have time to explain. … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Benjamin Wiker revisits the strange history of belief in extraterrestrials and considers what impact their existence might have on Christianity. We tend to consider speculation about extraterrestrials to be a recent phenomenon, a task forced on us by the scientific knowledge we’ve gained during the last century. It’s … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Benjamin Wiker says that the single greatest moral crisis we’ve ever faced is upon us now. It is difficult to gain attention in an era that uses superlatives to describe dishwashing liquid and mayonnaise. Perhaps speaking simply and directly might prove such an oddity that words may again … Read more
If you are one of the very few people left who has not viewed the video of Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” on Britain‘s Got Talent, then you must do so immediately, or nothing I have to say will stick to your soul. If you are one of the tens of millions who … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Benjamin Wiker argues that not only does evil fail to disprove the existence of God, but without God, we would be unable to recognize evil. As an advocate of the Intelligent Design movement, I’m very often confronted with the following rather pointed criticism: “Well, if the world is designed, then … Read more
On February 12, 1809, both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born, a rather interesting coincidence. There are other odd concurrences in their two lives: Both of their mothers died quite early, within a year of each other — Charles’s mother, Susanna, in 1817 and Abraham’s mother, Nancy, in 1818. Both lost three children. … Read more
David Klinghoffer’s Shattered Tablets is painful to read. As a writer I slapped myself on the forehead frequently: Why didn’t I think of this? Shattered Tablets: Why We Ignore the Ten Commandments at Our Peril David Klinghoffer, Doubleday, 256 pages, $24.95 David Klinghoffer’s Shattered Tablets is painful to read. First of all, as … Read more
Christianity is under attack — in the media, in the academy, and in the culture. With his latest book, What’s So Great About Christianity, Dinesh D’Souza meets this latest wave head on with his characteristic wit and erudition. Benjamin Wiker spoke with D’Souza about his debut role as a Christian apologist. ♦ ♦ ♦ Benjamin … Read more
It has been one year since Pope Benedict XVI’s ill-starred Regensburg Address. We say “ill-starred” because the media fixated on a side comment the pope made about Islam, apparently to clinch a depiction of the pope as intolerant. In the process, they obscured the luminous center of the pope’s speech, the relationship of science and … Read more