Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Christians have always needed to know how to defend the Christian faith ever since Peter admonished us to “always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” That is even more true with so many people skeptical about God, Jesus, and the Bible. Douglas Groothuis and Andrew Shepardson are the co-authors of an introduction into classical apologetics with the title, The Knowledge of God in…

Kerby Anderson John Whitehead has been warning us about the growing surveillance state in America for decades. The increase in surveillance has taken place under both Republican and Democratic presidents. But he is seeing another element that concerns him even more. To illustrate it, he reminds us of the Steven Spielberg movie, Minority Report. This dystopian film is set in the future “where police agencies harvest intelligence from widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, [and] precognitive technology.” The goal…

Kerby Anderson In his video, John Stossel asked people on the street, “If you could spend $30 billion trying to solve the world’s problems, how would you spend it?” As you might imagine, the most common answer was to “fight climate change.” Bjorn Lomborg (Copenhagen Consensus Center) has much better answers. In the past, we have talked about his several books on the environment and climate change. He says he was not surprised at the answers since we live in…

Kerby Anderson When you make an investment, it is important to know if there is any counterparty risk. Any business involves a cooperation of many entities and individuals. How likely is it that one of them may default on their financial obligations? Here’s a scary question: what if the counterparty is your bank or the government? That may be less likely here in the US, but is becoming a reality ever since the 2013 banking crisis in Cyprus created the…

Kerby Anderson The American Psychological Association released a health advisory on social media. In fact, the report offered ten recommendations that involve various forms of monitoring, training, and technical adaptations to blunt certain adverse effects of social media. James Spencer from the D.L. Moody Center was on my program recently to talk about the advisory and also to broaden the discussion about the place of technological advancements in our society. We talked about everything from social media to artificial intelligence….

Penna Dexter Psychoanalyst Erica Komisar is a therapist to families, and especially children, in private practice in New York City. Her periodic columns for The Wall Street Journal on childrearing are treasures. I first noticed the one on why moms should prioritize being home with their babies for their first three years. This practical wisdom almost goes without saying. Some of her points might shock or seem retro, if they weren’t timeless and backed up with stats and tons of…

Kerby Anderson New York Times columnist Bret Stephens laments, “Our Vanishing Culture of Argument.” He talks about being a student at the University of Chicago, which he says, “has a culture of argument.” He added that “nearly every undergraduate could not avoid reading the classics of Western thought.” He talks about Socrates, Locke, Hobbes, and the Federalists. And that might have been true of higher education, but it doesn’t seem like it today. As someone who often was able to…

Kerby Anderson Is it possible to close the Overton Window? One columnist, William Marshall, argues that President Trump is closing the Overton Window on many social policies. But first, let me explain what this means. Three years ago, I did a commentary on the Overton Window because I had someone in my Sunday School class ask what the term meant. Today, we hear people using the phrase all the time, but I suspect some don’t know its meaning and origin….

Kerby Anderson Columnist Brittany Bernstein described a first-of-its-kind study by Dutch researchers that found no evidence of a global acceleration in sea level rise because of climate change. The peer-reviewed paper has the title: “A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes.” The researchers analyzed more than 100 tide-gauge stations worldwide and found that the average rate of sea level rise in 2020 is only around 1.5 millimeters per year. This is significantly lower that the number reported by climate…

Kerby Anderson Columnist Barton Swaim wrote about “The Left’s Vast Lack of Knowledge.” He focused on it because of the bungled attempts by liberal journalists to describe Charlie Kirk and his impact. He pointed to articles that pieced together random quotations attributed to Charlie Kirk without any context. One of the quotes attributed to him made him “sound like a Jew-hater of the 1930s.” He was, in fact, quoting a social media post that he critiqued. But the liberal journalists…

Kerby Anderson We knew social media was censoring free speech. Now the social media organizations are admitting it and telling us why they did so. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal wrote about “When the Left Censored Speech.” They documented these issues just as YouTube announced it would reinstate accounts that they banned under pressure from the Biden administration. A lawyer for the Google parent company, Alphabet, sent a letter to the House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan. It…