In Defense Of Truth

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Arming Americans to defend the truth from today's war on facts “In what could be the timeliest book of the year, Rauch aims to arm his readers to engage with reason in an age of illiberalism.” —Newsweek A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America's ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood. In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump and his troll armies continued to do the same. Social media companies struggled to keep up with a flood of falsehoods, and too often didn't even seem to try. Experts and some public officials began wondering if society was losing its grip on truth itself. Meanwhile, another new phenomenon appeared: “cancel culture.” At the push of a button, those armed with a cellphone could gang up by the thousands on anyone who ran afoul of their sanctimony. In this pathbreaking book, Jonathan Rauch reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the “Constitution of Knowledge”—our social system for turning disagreement into truth. By explicating the Constitution of Knowledge and probing the war on reality, Rauch arms defenders of truth with a clearer understanding of what they must protect, why they must do—and how they can do it. His book is a sweeping and readable description of how every American can help defend objective truth and free inquiry from threats as far away as Russia and as close as the cellphone.

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff is a woman caught up in extraordinary times. She has been hectored, vilified, persecuted and prosecuted for the grave offense of telling the truth about Mohammed and his "marriage" to a very young child as related in Islamic sacred literature. Her case has exposed the grave danger to freedom of speech (and thus, freedom of thought itself) in Europe. She fought bravely in the legal arena through the Austrian courts and on to the European Court of Human Rights to defend her freedom (and by extension the rights of all Europeans), to freely voice her opinion. She lost. In Europe, human rights are no longer thought to be intrinsic to the individual as a gift given by God, but are rather thought to be a gift of the state, which can be limited or revoked at will. This is a dangerous development and it could be coming to America. Her book serves as a warning call. It begins by relating her life's odyssey, living in a number of Muslim countries even as a young child. Her father served in the Austrian diplomatic corps. She was living in Iran when the Islamic Revolution broke out. Later, she too followed the path of diplomatic service and gained extensive experience working in the Muslim world. She was living in Kuwait when Saddam Hussein invaded. Elisabeth knows whereof she speaks. The second half of the book consists of expert analyses of her legal case by Robert Spencer, Clare M. Lopez, Stephen Coughlin, Grégor Puppinck, Christian Zeitz, Henrik R. Clausen, Christine Brim and Aaron Rhodes. These experts testify to the wrongness of the courts' repeated decisions and to the righteousness of her cause. Freedom of expression the basis for all freedom. There is no other freedom without it.

Publisher's description: How many Christians can defend their faith? I Peter 3:15 exhorts us to be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks about the hope within us. As we prepare our children for adulthood, part of bringing them to maturity should be teaching them biblically sound apologetics. Every Thought Captive was written with that very purpose in mind! Dr. Pratt created the lessons in this book for high school-age students to specifically train them in presuppositional apologetics, a genuine biblical defense of the faith. This book can be used for individual study or with a group. Parents, you may want to study alongside your student, equipping yourself as well as your child!

Noted scholars (William A. Dembski, Darrell L. Bock, etc.) address and respond to all major contemporary challenges (philosophical, historical, ethical, scientific, etc.) to the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible.

Christianity is a taught religion. Consequently, spreading the gospel means that one has to root out religious misconceptions and replace them with the teachings of the gospel of Christ. Kyle Pope has prepared a workbook that addresses many of the issues relating to rooting out denominational concepts about salvation, worship, security of the saint, woman's role in the church, the organization and work of the church, and divorce and remarriage, basing his teachings upon accepting the authority of Scripture as one's guide in religion.