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A little cup of soda.
A tiny bag of peanuts.
A fluffy book.
You need some real meat
the next time you fly.

Don’t leave the ground without it.

How To Think about GOD on a Plane is the first of a new series by Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D. The goal of each book is to give those who travel on planes something relatively short, witty, and philosophically meaty to read during the entire of their flying experience--waiting in the airport, flying through the sky, and taxiing to the terminal.

Latest Posts

Green Hope: the Urban Garden Revolution

In the rich world of Christian symbolism, green is the color of the theological virtue of hope. (FYI, faith is white and charity, red). The reason is obvious because it is so obviously rooted in nature, in creation. Green is the color we inevitably associate with spring, with the rebirth of life after the long death of winter, with the native abundance of the earth.

As far as I know there are no official colors for the corresponding vices to these three theological virtues. But if I had to pick a color for despair—the vice opposed to the virtue of hope—it would be the color of concrete.

Ron Finley saw hope in a thin grass strip in front of his house in South Central LA. There he planted what he would call a "guerrilla garden."

Read the entire article at tothesource

Ariel Castro--Why There is Purgatory--and Hell

Ariel Castro was to have spent a millennium in prison. That was his punishment after being found guilty of 937 criminal counts, including kidnapping, rape and murder. To be more exact, he was to serve life plus 1,000 years.

But after just about a month, he tied a bed sheet around his neck and cut short his life and his punishment.
That’s it. No more Ariel Castro. No more temporal punishment. After causing a living hell for the three girls he kidnapped and kept as sexual slaves for over a decade — girls who were continually raped, chained to a wall, locked in a dark room, fed one meal a day, regularly beaten, threatened with death, day after day, month after month, year after year — Castro made the ultimate escape.

Castro had pleaded guilty to the 937 criminal accounts so that he could avoid the death penalty, and then he imposed that penalty on himself.

We need to think about this. Deeply.

First, we need to think deeply about what it was like for the three young women, Amanda Berry, Georgina DeJesus and Michelle Knight. In 2002, Michelle was 21 when Castro abducted her. A third of her life would be spent in darkness, rape, violence, horror, stench, despair. Amanda and Georgina were thrust into Castro’s hell in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Amanda was 16, and Georgina only 14 years old. The morbid math: Amanda would spend a little over 40% of her life in hell, and Georgina would spend about 44%.

Time feels differently when you are having fun, going out with your friends, watching a good movie and laughing over a meal with your family. It goes fast.

But time crawls when you’re sitting in a dark room smelling your own urine and feces, chained to a wall, waiting for the horror of footsteps coming toward the door, being raped, giving birth in a plastic wading pool. Minutes are hours; hours are days; days are years; years are eternities.

How long did the three young women spend in Castro’s hell? You tell me.
Read the rest at National Catholic Register.

The Religious-Liberty Quagmire to Come

A recent Slate column, "All Corporations Go to Heaven," about the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services’ mandate makes all too apparent the legal quagmire awaiting us.

Author Dahlia Lithwick sides with the HHS mandate in its attempt to compel all organizations — including Catholic hospitals, universities and businesses — to provide insurance coverage for contraception, abortion-causing drugs and sterilization.

What are the problems with Lithwick's arguments. Read my whole critique at the National Catholic Register.

Democracy and the Burqa

The Logo of today’s French Republic is emblazoned with the words made famous by the French Revolutionaries over two hundred years ago, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité—Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood.

The woman in the logo is named Marianne, France’s official Lady Liberty, the woman who represents all that the original French Revolution stood for.
But is Marianne free to wear a burqa or a headscarf?
Read the full post here.

Atheists' Monumental Ignorance

Heard of the new Atheist Monument set up in Florida? As the atheists themselves admit, their actual goal is not to set up atheist monuments all across America—a very expensive endeavor—but put up just enough monuments in key places to act as a threat so that Christians remove theirs wherever they exist.

The atheist strategy goes something like this. If Christians want the law to protect their First Amendment free exercise of religion and freedom of speech rights, then they must be prepared to allow all beliefs into the public square—each with its own monument.

Pretty soon—so the American Atheists hope—Christians will get tired of having atheist monuments set up right next to Ten Commandments monuments. They'll give up, and agree to the removal the Ten Commandments just so they can get rid of the atheists' monuments too.

Read the full post.

Christianity, Islam, and Atheism

Read my review of, and ruminations on, William Kilpatrick's Christianity, Islam, and Atheism.

William Kilpatrick is nothing if not blunt. The reason: we don't have time to mince words. If Christians don't act now, then the West as we know it will be destroyed in a kind of double movement, with secular atheism undermining Christianity (and all in Western law and culture that have been built upon it), and Islam filling the vacuum left by the fatal enfeeblement of the culture.

Catholicism and the American Founding

There are two ways to look at Catholicism and the founding of the United States of America. The first, and most obvious, would be to inquire about the actual participation of Catholics in the founding. The second, which is the focus of this article, is to view the gifts the Catholic Church gave to the American founding long before there was a U.S.A.
Go to my blog post.

Wiker's Recent Books

"Christianity is being deliberately pushed out of our culture—so that secular liberalism can be established in its place.
One religion is being actively disestablished, while another is being (in fact, largely has been) established in its place."

Just Released!

Politicizing the Bible took us three years to write, and it is meant to be a revolutionary book. In it, Scott Hahn and I trace out the real, deepest roots of modern historical biblical criticism, and show why it has ended in the secularization of the biblical text.

MORE GREAT BOOKS BY BENJAMIN WIKER

Ideas Have Consequences.
Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences.

This is one of my most popular books--perhaps a strange thing, since it focuses on the most destructive books, the books that have done so much damage to the modern world. But not really so very strange. Sometimes the best way to understand the truth, is to study the greatest errors. And here you have them.

The Good News!
Good Ideas Have Good Consequences. Here are the books that should form our hearts, minds, and souls.

We don't have to be the victims of bad ideas, or the mess they've created. In Ten Books Every Conservative Must Read, I take readers through the best books, the books we need today to re-form our minds and our culture. They are conservative in the original sense, conserving what is good in human nature, and preserving it from what is evil.

Benjamin Wiker is now a proud member of the Envoy Institute's Catholic Apologetics Academy

Click here to go to the Catholic Apologetics Academy website.

Now Available on Amazon! Just $4.99 in paperback, and only 99 cents Kindle!