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Ernest Becker

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May 2020

May 17, 2020

The Denial of Death and the Disruption of Culture

"The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else;...

September 2016

September 05, 2016

Teaching About Death Anxiety in a Seminary Context: An Interview

Last Fall I taught a course called Death, Evil, and Alienation, at United Theological Seminary...

August 2016

August 05, 2016

Gravity CEO Dan Price, Symbolic Immortality, and Death Anxiety

Remember the big story last year about Dan Price, the millennial super-cool CEO of Gravity...

May 2016

May 26, 2016

Your Inner World and the Lost Magic of “Chumship”

Sometimes it feels like the carefree days of youth have slipped too far behind me....

April 2016

April 26, 2016

Where Do We Look to Find the Origin of Evil?

"Axis of evil." "That person is evil incarnate!" "There's so much evil in our world..."...

March 2016

March 16, 2016

How Thinking About Death Could Impact Your Vote

When you go to the voting booth in November, there's a surprising variable that could...

January 2016

January 18, 2016

Why Do They (Still) Follow Donald Trump? Fear and Authority

As Liberty University readies itself for Donald Trump's chapel appearance today--yes, today, on the day...

January 06, 2016

Have You Found Out Yet Who You Really Are? (Becker and Kierkegaard)

Ernest Becker, toward the end of his influential book, The Birth and Death of Meaning, offers up...

December 2015

December 30, 2015

Top Ten “Unsystematic Theology” Posts of 2015

2015 was a fun year for me vocationally and theologically. Some of that was because...

December 08, 2015

The Appeal of ISIS to Foreigners: Not Politics, but Meaning

All the bombs falling on ISIS are not deterring people from joining their cause. A...

December 04, 2015

Ernest Becker on the Logic of Killing Others

This semester I've been teaching a course called, Death, Evil, and Alienation here at United...

October 2015

October 19, 2015

To Explain the Trump Appeal, We May Have to Drill Deep into the Human Psyche

Lot's of folks have analyzed, dissected, and speculated on the appeal of Donald Trump. We...

September 2015

September 24, 2015

The Lies We Need in Order to Live

In Denial of Death, Ernest Becker argues (in chp. 4) that human character is a...

September 17, 2015

Every Society is a “Religion” and a Stage for Heroism (Becker)

Tomorrow I begin teaching my fall course, Evil, Death, and Alienation (Don't worry, students: I'll...

July 2015

July 24, 2015

How Important is Self-Esteem for our Well-Being?

In The Birth and Death of Meaning, Ernest Becker devotes a major portion of his analysis of...

July 17, 2015

On the “Demonic Nature of Social Evil in Our Time”

While working my way through Ernest Becker's splendid book, The Structure of Evil, I came upon...

March 2015

March 05, 2015

Christianity’s Failure as a Hero System (A Psychologist Diagnoses the Church)

As some of you know, I've been reading the fascinating psychologist Ernest Becker. He believed...

February 2015

February 23, 2015

The Existential Terror of “Birdman”

I'm glad Birdman won best picture last night. It's a strange film, to be sure....

February 02, 2015

On Rejecting the ‘Quest for Excellence’: Death Anxiety, Richard Beck, and the Super Bowl

This is the second post in a series of reflections on Beck's excellent book, The...

January 2015

January 29, 2015

Sin Doesn’t Cause Death; Death Causes Sin: Richard Beck’s The Slavery of Death

I confess that Richard Beck is one of my favorite contemporary thinkers. He's an experimental...

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