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A reading of my essay with the same title that reviews Stephen C Meyer's book Return of God Hypothesis. I go over the arguments of the book that debunk the materialist narrative around the Big Bang, or the beginning of the universe: 1) what's called the Fine Tuning Problem, with the the mathematical and physical impossibilities it exposes, and 2) the metaphysical absurdities that arise from the inability of science to establish the "ground of being." 3) I touch on the counterargument known as the Anthropic Principle. The next episode will cover the materialist failure to account for the origin and diversity of life.

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Modernity with its humanism and secularism rose out of Christian culture but seems to be at odds with it. I explain this paradox in accordance with René Girard's anthropology: how the recession of the violent sacred wrought by Christianity over the centuries created the cultural space that distances itself from all sacred and thus becomes transferrable to the whole world, producing modernity and globalisation. 

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"You cannot be a human without a transcendental vision. The here and now is not enough; there must be something wholly above it, not just something higher and better, but something absolute and eternal. This something is transcendence. It anchors human life in meaning and purpose."

René Girard showed how Western literature over the centuries traces a descent of transcendence from heavenly and distant visions down closer to earth, where our idols become other people and we become miserable. No one can escape having a transcendental they worship, they can only choose to deny it. 

In this episode I trace this historical arch of the descent of idols, and how discuss how modern culture's earthly idols lead to misery and destruction.

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How and why I got into researching Amazonian spirituality. Modern interest in shamanism and the reality of shamanism among Amazonian tribes. Sorcery and witchcraft and recorded cases of scapegoating among the Amazonians. The imperative of conviviality and consequences of breaking it. Inner peace and its flip side: outer violence. 

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Here finally is a true and powerful traditionalist response to both feminist accusations and the cheap bragging of low-IQ wife-beaters. Why and how are men "born to rule"? The answer is clear once we recover the once-obvious link between authority, violence, and sacrifice. The gory origins of authority in blood sacrifice, archaic, ancient, and modern. The biological expandability of male versus female bodies. Male competition and female competition (if such a thing even exists), and how it plays out in modern business environment. Patriarchy as a balancing and restraining force. The liberal blindness to the dark side of desire and competition, and what it means for our spiritual and civilisational future.

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Parks Gore and I discuss Terence McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory. McKenna argued that human evolution was driven by hominid consumption of psychedelic mushrooms. We explain his theory and argue against it in light of René Girard's work. Girard believed that in-group violence was the unprecedented problem whose solution through violent sacrificial ritual and religion provided the leap from animal to human. We then talk about psychedelics and spirituality, both in ancient or indigenous culture and in the New Age / psychonaut one, and how it clashes against Christianity. We touch on the great problem of human origin.

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Autism is a rare but real disorder, but the recent rise in claims of being "on the spectrum" is a massive fad, a mimetic contagion. The spectrum is glamourised by popular entertainment and embraced by celebrities. With reference to René Girard's work, I analyse why people might want to signal autism (rather than "mask" it). It has to do with many notions that hit a raw nerve in our culture: narcissism, victimhood, innocence, ambition, mediocrity, genius. I also address the gender aspect of the autism fad. 

Find out why claims of autism are a sad cheat code for the liberal culture.

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What is the link between comedy and tragedy? Why do both laughing and crying involve tears? How is comedy related to tickling? Why do we laugh more in modern times? These and many other questions answered in a philosophical discussion based on René Girard's essay on the topic, "Perilous Balance: A Comic Hypothesis."

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We start where we left off in Part 1: Dostoevsky the romantic wakes up and realizes he lives in the underground, filled with resentment, frustrated ambition, and tormenting idols. The underground man struggles to break free in the character of Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment and the teacher in The Gambler.

We then encounter formidable idols that attract and foment underground passions all around them: Prince Myshkin in The Idiot and Nikolai Stavrogin in The Possessed. Dostoevsky shows how such demons cannot lead anywhere but destruction. The author depicts the depths of rebellion as a human universal and as a particular of his place and age.

Finally, in The Brothers Karamazov, the Devil has a mask-off moment and shows his face. But Christ also shows up. The demonic nature of the underground torment and fascination is fully revealed. Christ stands accused by the Grand Inquisitor, who wants to build a society without him. But only Christ can reveal the perdition of obsessing over idols, enemies, and sinful fathers, whom one inevitably ends up imitating, and the way out that obsession and into a whole, undivided humanity. 

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A review of the life and works of the great Fyodor Dostoevsky following René Girard's book Dostoevsky: Resurrection from the Underground. A masterpiece of literary criticism in its own right, this book brings edifying and brilliant insights into Dostoevsky's own masterpieces, but only by connecting them to the novelist's lesser works and personal life.

Girard traces a coherent arch in Dostoevsky's life and works, from a frustrated naive romantic trying to fit into the literary fads of the age while coping with his personal inadequacies to a man who experiences a spiritual breakthrough and perceives the unflattering, diabolical truths about the motives that drive him. These motives have everything to do with Girard's mimetic theories on desire and on modernity, theories that came to him while reading Dostoevsky, among other novelists, as a young academic. 

We begin to see how Dostoevsky's and Girard's works are coupled and how they provide such a powerful, prophetic interpretation of modernity.

Part 2 will be covered in the next episode, which traces the arch from Dostoevsky awakening in the underground, to struggling to escape it, and finally to the spectacular resurrection out of it.

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