This essay proposes that various forms of relativism and naturalism are self-refuting. The rational defense of any worldview requires the prior acceptance of the existence of other rational minds, mental causation and free will, an objective language, and objective logical and rational standards, A worldview is self-refuting if its defense necessarily presumes entities that are explicitly denied by the worldview. In contrast, theism provides the epistemic and metaphysical basis to fully account for our diverse knowledge. Liberal arts education is in a crisis due to the fragmentation of knowledge and loss of purpose caused by the combined action of pragmatic deconstruction and scientific reductionism Only by regaining a full appreciation of the depth and comprehension of the Christian worldview can we recapture the cohesive unity in diversity of a genuine liberal arts education.

The traditional function of the Liberal Arts, in contrast to courses in science, was to help students learn how to live meaningful lives. This meant that theology and the study of the Bible as Revelation were a crucial peart of the curriculum. Yet, since the Enlightenment, marked by the rejection of Revelation, the university has depended on reason alone for answering the question: How should I live? But this conceptual shift from Revelation and reason to positivistic reason had some serious consequences, especially a failure to address the innate semantic category of the transcendent-self or Thou. The existential questions still remain: (1) can man be reduced to a kind of animal; and (2) can the arts be reduced to science? Language, semantic primes, and the presence of dual organizational social structures all give supporting evidence that human existence has a superordinate-subordinate ordering, and that such reductionism is impossible. But philosophical Naturalism, in the name of science, has not only dethroned man from his place over nature, but also the liberal arts from their superordinate role over science. If the university is to become relevant in the lives of students again, then it is imperative that both the arts and man be restored to their rightful place. We can begin by restoring the "Bible as Revelation" to the curriculum.

This essay re-examines Robert W, Fogel's thesis in The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianim, which sees America's religious revivals as pivotal in the transformation of culture through the political process, ultimately producing greater equality. Fogel's work thus provides the context for examining the impact of evangelical Christianity on American culture. Curiously, Fogel's approach brackets the underlying spiritual reality beneath the conversion experience, and assumes the primacy of social, economic, arid political processes in U.S. history. Yet, the Puritan Awakening the nature of overlapping historical cycles leading to greater equality, and the increasing secularization of American society-all beg the question of interpreting U.S. history, and leave open the prospect of spiritual renewal which would characterize America's Fourth Great Awakening. Hence, the essay tries to regraft some of the spiritual roots onto Fogel's secular interpretation of historical events and the dynamics of American culture.

The Biblical and Deuterocanonical Wisdom books have a great deal to contribute to contemporary higher education, which has been affected adversely by the secularization of the past centuries, most recently by postmodernism. This essay traces the development of the Wisdom literature from Proverbs to the Gospel of John and its implications for higher education in five areas: the integrative; ethical; personal; enjoyable; and transformational aspects of learning Higher education rooted in the Wisdom literature is uniquely capable of addressing each of these issues in a way that education cut off from traditional values cannot. Practical suggestions address such concerns as general education courses, classroom cheating and ethical and professional responsibilities of faculty. For example, some general education courses should be required of senior students in order to integrate courses that they have already completed. The conclusion follows that a balanced practice of the five areas can serve as an antidote to the ills of higher education without degenerating into the repressive educational environment feared by postmodernists.

Increasing specialization and the fragmentation of knowledge have become the hallmarks of contemporary higher education. The general education or core curriculum at American colleges and universities has gradually also lost its useful original purpose to help each student become an educated person with a clear set of beliefs and values, a citizen capable of leading a moral, compassionate, and committed life. Christian hitter education has followed this general trend, despite the fact that most Christian colleges and universities have a core identity which they want to pass on to their students. The Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University offers a way for Protestant Christian colleges to revitalize their liberal arts education. Its curriculum uses the Great Books of the West to combine the study of theology and the Bible with the study of the humanities and social sciences. Its pedagogy uses elements of active learning as well as mentoring and technical innovations, to enhance the classroom experience.

This essay examines various sources of worth intrinsic to persons, and offers an overview of Peter Singer's ethical thought. Critics of Singer's ethical philosophy admit that there is a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to a definitive critique of his views. The "Singer Problem" is the notion that there are no facts intrinsic to persons capable of grounding their dignity and equality. Yet these are not so much critics as thinkers who do not like the conclusions that follow from unquestioned premises which they share with Singer: an overly rationalistic approach to reality, and the view that goodness is not an objective property of things. By exploring the uniqueness of persons, John Crosby shows a deep source of worth intrinsic to persons, which grounds dignity and equality. Based exclusively on traits common to all persons, Singer's notion of personhood excludes love from ethics; but love has a place in ethics.

Many assume that Charles Darwin rejected outright the notion of intelligent design. As a consequence, the term "Darwinism" has evolved to become conflated with a dysteleological interpretation of evolution. The primary historical literature reveals that Darwin's conceptualization of design was cast within the categories of William Paley's natural theology, featuring static and perfect adaptability. Once Darwin discovered the mechanism of natural selection and the dynamic process of biological evolution, he rejected the "old argument from design in Nature" proposed by Paley. However, he was never able to ignore the powerful experience of the creation's revelatory activity. Darwin's encounter with the beauty and complexity of the world affirms a Biblical understanding of intelligent design and argues for the reality of a non-verbal revelation through nature. In a postmodern culture with epistemological fourmulations adrift, natural revelation provides a mooring for human felicity.

The debate over teaching Darwin's theory in public schools has been a feature of American public life since at least the Scopes trial of 1925. Drawing on the liberal arts tradition centered in rhetoric and civic argument, this essay argues that science education should not merely prepare tomorrow's scientists, but also educate scientifically articulate citzens. It offers the Origin of Species as a model for educational strategies that would protect the integrity of science, while addressing the objections of students and their parents to Darwin's ideas. Darwin's work belongs in the great tradition of two-sided humanistic argument central to Western education since antiquity, and exemplified in John Milton and John Stuart Mitt. Debate between Darwin's theory and its alternatives, whether young earth creationism or Intelligent Design, is recommended as a means to teach Darwin's theory and train students in the central role of critique and argument in scientific reasoning.

For those who wish to affirm a culture that values human life, the relationship between science and religion continues to be of import. Some, like Edward O. Wilson, think that naturalistic science will eventually account for all phenomena, even religious experience itself. This essay considers Wilson's hypothesis by surveying three classic explanations of universal religious belief: Sigmund Freud's projection theory, Charles Darwin's evolutionarry paradigm, and John Calvin's sensus divinitatis. Both Freud's and Darwin's views suffer from self-referential and evidential problems. In contrast, Calvin's model handles well major objections of religious pluralism and atheism. Of these three, Calvin's view is superior. Religion may not be reducible to a naturalistic explanation, and those who wish to promote a culture of life ought to view the relations between science and religion in a non-Wilsonian fashion, eschewing reductionism.

The only true scarce resource is the human mind. Yet abortion is perhaps the most potent enemy of the human mind, since it destroys the one thing in life that cannot be replaced. Ecmomic analysis suggests that abortion policy will fail to serve the public iruerest due to public choice and knowledge problems, and it will adversely distort beneficial market phenomena like adoption services. Even if markets fail to produce zero unwanted pregnancies, it is not clear that abortion policy has avoided more tragic government failures. Theologians argue that killing innocent human beings is moral turpitude, since an irreplaceable soul is lost. But abortion is also a huge social loss in an economic sense. Society loses from legalized abortion by losing a mind and from the social costs that devolve from destroying that mind. Hence, classical liberals should embrace the recent pro-life momentum.

Apologists for physician-assisted suicide maintain that democracy's commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness entitles any rational adult to decide when to end one's life. Yet the procedure nullifies freedom and the right to life, and is thus anti-democratic. Both on the practical and theoretical levels, assisted suicide leads to involuntary euthanasia. On the theoretical level, the distinction between voluntary and involuntary euthanasia is clear, but on the practical level it becomes blurry. Both pre-Nazi Germany and contemporary Holland offer ample evidence for the slippery slope that leads from voluntary to involuntary euthanasia. While advocates of assisted suicide regard the transition to the involuntary as an "abuse," that transition is, however, necessarily implied, and hence justified by assisted suicide. For the putative "right" to kill oneself implies that one has rights of disposal over one's life. But what is in principle disposable may be disposed of by others. Any argument for voluntary euthanasia implies the justification of involuntary eutharuisia. Therefore, physician-assisted suicide nullifies the right to life and with it the democratic charter.

The postmodem age considers suffering as the greatest evil and an indictment of God. Yet a Biblical perspective on suffering reveals it as part of the human condition and a test of discipleship, Both the Old and the New Testaments view suffering through the lens of God's faithfulness, pace, transcendence, redemption, and salvation for all who believe in Him. This essay explores what we may discern from Scripture regarding suffering and its role in spiritual growth, self-discipline, character formation, and the Christian vocation of witness in the world. Crucially, we ourselves consciously decide our attitude towards suffering whether it is our own or the suffering of others. Yet suffering ony truly becomes that when we suffer unjustly for matters that we have not knowingly brought upon ourselves, in contrast to suffering due to our own mistakes or misbehavior. Ultimately, only God can answer difficult problems in the realm of justice. For the believer, God's promises are the foundation for life which fill the heart, mind, and soul.

This essay is about a life-affirming social revolution grounded in what theologians call Natural Law or the Orders of Creation, that innate universal Ground Plan within us which informs men everywhere how to live. It is about a social experiment in communicating a meta-culture of meaning and life to a dying monolingual, semi-nomadic Amazonian tribe living on the edge of extinction. As the Bolivian command culture slowly impinged on every aspect of the Chácobo lifestyle, this primitive, egalitarian, command-less, duty-based structured society, like so many other tribes before them, would eventualty disappear into the fabric of the dominant culture within a generation. The Chácobo would cease to exist as a tribal people. To prevent this, the society had to restructure itself from a defensive culture designed to reduce anxiety over existence in isolation to a pro-active culture designed to maximize human freedom within a universal moral order. Following the Plan of the Maker, Chácobo society, within a span of twenty-five years, moved from the edge of extinction to vigor and health, and from day-to-day existence to long-range planning while experiencing a five to six-fold irncrease in population growth.

This essay proposes an interdisciplinary framework for teaching markets and morals by exploring the linkages between political economy, civil society, and culture. Free markets in capitalist mixed economies shape, and are shaped by, political institutions of representative democracy, the vibrancy of civil society, and the values, norms, and beliefs embedded in culture. The major challenge for liberal society and free markets is to reconcile individual and group interests with the common good. The cultural contradictions of capitalism reflect the inadequacy of commercial virtues to sustain a liberal society. External constraints of law and institutional checks and balances in all spheres need to be conjoined with internalized moral constraints of a well-ordered individual conscience. This, in turn, requires a normative order which transcends radically the selfishness of individual and group interests, thus preserving liberty and democracy while enhancing economic efficiency and the social beneficence of free markets. The essay thus confirms Alexis de Tocqueville's notion of the interdependence of liberty, morality, and faith.

The idea that the pursuit of self-interest in economic life would lead to social harmony had a positive effect on production, but it led many to assume that virtue arui moral reflection were no longer essential in socializing human passions. As specialization and trade extended markets, workers followed the jobs, leaving their social and moral moorings behind. The fragmenting of social capital made it difficult to foster social trust and cooperation. Neoclassical market theory does not interface well with other disciplines given its scientific approach of rational choice analysis. Non-egoistic motivations like values and beliefs are usually excluded from economic thinking so moral reflection is relegated to economic applications only. These factors reduce the impact of moral reflection in economic life. Yet self-regard, market flexibility, and a scientific approach to markets all have positive qualities for integrating economic and moral life.

Adam Smith created a social model which subordinated faith to reason and reason to the instincts which, when released, drive the "system of natural liberty," facilitating peace, prosperity, and especially freedom. Smith's Faustian Bargain, which underlies the model, is to trade beneficence for self-preservation plus freedom. Without restraint, the social instincts would endanger private property and social stability. Smith recommends limited but effective government and a plethora of social devices, including a reconstituted, impotent collection of churches, to bolster morality and prevent instability. Transplanted to America, Smith's system and Biblical Christianity restrained immorality and allowed free enterprise to flourish yielding unprecedented freedom and prosperity. The decline of faith in the Biblical God and moral absolutes at the end of the nineteenth century upset the delicate balance between freedom and morality resulting in social problems not susceptible to voluntary solutions. Government intervention slowed economic growth and restricted individual freedom. Will a twenty-first century Biblical revival restore morality and permit once again the flourishing of individual liberty, or will government intervention continue to erode freedom?

Socialists and defenders of laissez-faire share the view that in the market agents pursue their self-interest, not the good of others. On this basis, socialists reject the market as an arena of immorality, while laissez-faire theorists attempt to defuse the charge by relying on the providential consequences of the "invisible hand," However, both stances presuppose a view of morality that too sharply separates self-interest and altruism. Some try to separate the economic arui morality into discrete spheres. In contrast, a compatibilist account shows the ways a concern for personal profit and a concern for others can come together. Such a motivationalist approach allows one to re-conceive the "invisible hand." It is no longer a serendipitous justification of the merely self-interested, but an invitation to think of the various mixtures of altruism and self-interest required to produce those results that may commend the market.

This essay armies that Kant's philosophy provides a justification for free markets. The myths about Kant are that he was a recluse, knew nothing about business, and that his epistemology divorced reason from reality, while his primary interest was metaphysics. Yet Kant's categorical imperative demands obedience even in the face of uncertainty about the external world. Adam Smith described this principle as the inward testimony of an impartial observer. Smith and Kant put individual decisions at the center of morality, but agreed that people have a tendency to make morally inferior choices. Those who propose to regulate the economy are as troubled by this tendency as those they regulate. The self-sacrifice prescription is economically, psychologically, and morally unstable. In recommending market competition. Smith was unconsciously applying a Kantian formula. Market decisions are individual decisions. Individuals prefer to do business with those they trust: this is an incentive to honesty. A morality that depends upon incentives is imperfect but superior to a morality imposed by force.