Category Archives: Fyodor Dostoevsky

A Conversation About God

Jordan Peterson with Dr. John Lennox

Video here. (1 h 28 min.)

Dr. Jordan B Peterson sits down with mathematician, author, and theologian Dr. John Lennox. They discuss the axioms and dangerous aims of transhumanism, the interplay between ethical faith, reason, and the empirical world that makes up the scientific endeavor, and the line between luciferian intellectual presumption and wise courageous exploration.

Dr. John Carson Lennox is a ​​Northern Irish mathematician, bioethicist, and Christian apologist. He has written several books, and was a professor at Oxford and Green Templeton College (Now retired) where he specialized in group theory. Lennox appeared in numerous debates with questions ranging from “Is God Good” to “Is There a God,” and faced off with academic titans such as Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, and Christopher Hitchens, among others. Lennox speaks four languages – English, German, French, and Russian, has written 70 peer-reviewed articles on mathematics, co-authored two Oxford Mathematical Monographs, and was noted for his role in translating Russian mathematics while working as a professor.

When you remove the sovereignty of God

you transfer this sovereignty to a totalitarian state

James Delingpole interviews Reverend Jamie Franklin about “Lessons On Freedom From [Fyodor] Dostoyevsky “.

At the 1:50 minute mark, Franklin summarises the insight of the Russian thinker and author with regard to the episode “The Grand Inquisitor” from “The Brothers Karamazov” thus:

Dostoyevsky realised that when you remove the sovereignty of God from a nation, a civilisation, you inevitably transfer this sovereignty to a totalitarian state . . . It’s what’s happening now in our country [the United Kingdom].

How to combat this? Near the end of the 9 minute video, Franklin explains:

Dostoyevsky says that you will often encounter objectionable thoughts [of others]. You will be tempted to take them by force. Jesus teaches us to take them by humble love.

Today is the 200th Birthday of Fyodor Dostoevsky

His "Crime and Punishment" taught me a lesson

Many years ago, when I was in my early 20s, I shared a flat with someone who had a copy of “Crime and Punishment” by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. I borrowed it. When I started reading it, I found it easy to identify with the feelings of isolation and alienation of the (anti-)hero, the impoverished student Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.

Raskolnikov thinks himself intelligent enough to be above the law, and do justice his own way. However, he then goes and murders someone. The victim is innocent, but the reader is not invited to find her likable. This was a brilliant move by Dostoevsky, because it forces the reader to examine himself. Do we not all sometimes harbour feelings of superiority? The rest of the book is all about Raskolnikov’s attempts to deal with the fact that he has killed someone.

The lesson the book taught me was to “consider the possibility that I might be wrong”. It taught me some humility. For that, I am deeply grateful to Dostoevsky.

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