The Christian Vanguard

I recently found out that there is a Rothko Chapel . Apparently, Rothko intended on arousing a religious experience when you looked at his paintings, and it inspired some to build a chapel in his honor, where there would hang some of his work (different panels of the same project). Looks cold, sterile, and somewhat dystopian.  Two years ago, I wrote about how realism is necessary for art, which you can find  here . It was a reaction against Pollock and Rothko, and I still agree with what I said there. I did qualify myself as saying realism may not have been alone a sufficient reason, but it was definitely a necessary one. I want to add that abstraction is also necessary, which wasn't a view I held at the time. My reaction against the radical abstractionism of Rothko and Pollock inclined me against the view that abstraction was a necessary condition. I mean, look at the "chapel" and you could see why I believed it. It was nothing but abstraction.  But in a con...

This is a draft of my final essay for my Modern Philosophy class. In it, I look at Cartesian dualism and Cartesian skepticism from a Thomist view. Feedback welcome.

In just about every talk I hear on transgenderism, talks that try to normalize the disorder, there is a preemptive argument that genitals don't determine who or what you are. I heard it recently here , and the way he phrased it, as "genitalifying", makes me want to say something about this very common argument.  The most important point to be made is that this is a straw-man. We do not say that because you have a penis, you are a man, or because you have a vagina, you are a female. And I would press any critic to actually cite a philosopher who argues this. You probably won't find it in those terms. This is what you probably will find, and is what has been said for a very long time and is not criticized by those who want to normalize madness, which is, a male is that which has the power to reproduce actively, and a female is that which has the power to reproduce passively.  This is a better definition because it helps classify what things are, not just in hum...