There is one more 19th century philosopher I want to draw our attention to: the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). When Kierkegaard died in 1855, Darwin had not yet published Origin of Species, Nietzsche was merely 11 years old, and Marx, still smarting from the failure of a full-fledged proletariat revolution in 1848, had been…
Deism, Enlightenment thought, the influence of the industrial revolution, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx…with a little bit of Darwin thrown in—with all this going on in the 19th century, onto the world stage stepped Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was to 19th century European thought what the atomic bomb was to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the thing one…
In the last few posts, I have been going into detail about Charles Darwin, and his books, The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. And whereas I have tried to emphasize that the theory of evolution is a valid scientific theory that is not a threat to the Bible or Christianity, I have…
If my previous two posts about Charles Darwin has come across as a validation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, it should, at least partly. The point I wanted to make was that one must make a clear distinction between the biological/scientific theory of evolution and the philosophical/naturalistic worldview of Social Darwinism. The two are not…
If you follow the current creation/evolution debate, chances are that you might not really understand what the theory of evolution actually states. And if you are a Christian (particularly one who has been influenced by YECists like Ken Ham), you probably have assumed that Charles Darwin was an atheist who came up with his theory…
When I was hired back in 2003 at a Christian high school in Arkansas, I was hired to teach mostly English, but also one class in “Worldview.” Specifically, I was to teach Senior Worldview—a class that looked at the major thinkers of the modern world. There was a unit on Karl Marx and a unit…
Possibly the most influential and infamous thinker of the 19th century was Karl Marx (1818-1883). Now it must be said off the bat that you can’t really understand Marx unless you realize the socio-economic conditions in 19th century Europe. That could be a book in and of itself, and I am certainly not going to…
In this post, I am going to give a brief overview of the essential views of three highly influential philosophers: Immanuel Kant, Georg W.F. Hegel, and Ludwig Feuerbach. Yes, I touched upon Kant in an early post, but he deserves another look, especially as we delve into the 19th century. Immanuel Kant: What is “Real”?…
After the earth-shattering political events of the American and French Revolutions to close out the 18th century, along with the philosophical shift that took place during the so-called Enlightenment, 19th century Europe and America found that there was a whole new world to navigate. Despite the cataclysmic failure of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment philosophers…
This will be my final post discussing Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge’s book, Inside the Nye/Ham Debate. I hope these posts, no matter how comical and/or frustrating they have been, have been able to help crystalize precisely the methods, tactics, and rhetoric that YECists like Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis routinely use. And, if…