# This Book Changed Everything  ## Metadata - Author: [[Vishal Mangalwadi, Ashish Alexander, Jenny Taylor]] - Full Title: This Book Changed Everything - Category: #books ## Highlights - It was Alexander’s sword, not Aristotle’s logic, that conquered the world. ([Location 355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=355)) - They needed a new spirit. The spirit of slavery had to be exorcised out of their hearts, so that they might receive a spirit of bravery. A spirit of sonship that takes ownership of one’s inheritance. ([Location 408](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=408)) - They renounced the world in order to seek God. ([Location 414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=414)) - They believed the Bible that the Creator gave us the authority to establish our dominion over this world (Genesis 1:26–28). This belief became a basis for Europe’s leadership in modern science and technology. ([Location 441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=441)) - God’s children can count on their Father’s promises. ([Location 447](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=447)) - Shared literature becomes the soul of a society, a nation, a civilization. It gives meaning to individuals and motivation to society. It becomes a society’s light: the authority that settles disputes. 27 ([Location 472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=472)) - Skeptics attempt to put Nothingness/Nihilism/Chance into the heart of a society’s literature. Soon they discover that the absence of truth invites the rulers of the day to exercise unbridled and exclusive authority to govern according to their own folly. The abolition of truth creates a vacuum that is filled with force. ([Location 475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=475)) - Hermits can live in their own time. They can get up when the sun is warm and go to bed when they want. Communal living, on the other hand, requires a common time. Each monk has to organise his work in ways to get to communal prayers and meals at the same time as others. ([Location 499](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=499)) - Monks, not shepherds or fishermen, needed clocks. Therefore, they invented them. ([Location 501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=501)) - Time is to be feared and appeased, not managed. This outlook made India a culture of astrology, in which our times rule over us. ([Location 516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=516)) - Human beings can and ought to manage or steward time, just like they steward the rest of the created order. ([Location 529](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=529)) - It was a vote against tradition and for freedom-with-responsibility. ([Location 560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=560)) - Human authorities, political, intellectual, and ecclesiastical, needed a light purer than their own; an authority higher than humans, yet open to critical investigation. ([Location 565](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=565)) - the Bible’s worldview is unique in that its spirituality requires an engagement with the material world. ([Location 571](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=571)) - By forgetting Vadian’s book, has the West amputated its soul? ([Location 596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=596)) - Intellectual hubris is robbing the West of its heritage. A little humility could re-connect us with the West’s true wealth. ([Location 607](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=607)) - without seeing sin and salvation through the Bible’s perspective, Europe could not have invented legal, educational, economic, bureaucratic, political, and cultural institutions and traditions that made it an example to the rest of the world. ([Location 645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=645)) - Morally debased cultures tend to be controlled by a few wealthy people. Their riches come from power, extortion, and war, not honest and diligent work. “The ease of doing business” is always at a low ebb in a culture of corruption. ([Location 738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=738)) - In his epistle, Paul repeatedly asks Titus to confront myth-makers and myth-teachers. Because myth-based religions create and sustain a culture of distrust. ([Location 740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=740)) - The church was to be a community’s source of knowledge. ([Location 784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=784)) - Myth-based religions are invented to exploit. They make religion a means of “shameful gain.” ([Location 785](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=785)) - Truth liberates because it can be questioned, debated, examined, and refined. Truth’s authority comes from understanding. The knowledge of truth may come from outside, but it compels from within as a truth-seeker absorbs it into his heart. That is why “freedom of conscience” is recognized as a “fundamental” human right. ([Location 798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=798)) - The Bible changed the world because it was believed to be God’s communication. ([Location 866](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=866)) - What changed the West was the doctrine of human equality 46. It was a “mystery” that was revealed, first to Peter and then to Paul.[xli] Paul’s vision obligated him to break with his friends’ prejudices and to love and serve the contemptible, hated Gentiles. ([Location 882](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=882)) - Like karma, the theory of evolution explains self-evident inequality. Therefore, it cannot be the philosophical foundation for faith in human equality. ([Location 889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=889)) - Revelation requires more than interpretation. It calls for obedience. Such obedience changes history. ([Location 955](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=955)) - a scientific interest in nature has to begin with the assumption that the world is real. ([Location 1190](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=1190)) - Note: Two things are implicit here. The world is knowable, and there is something worth knowing about it. The knowability is logos for Jordan Peterson. - Few people understand that from the Scottish philosopher David Hume to French Jacques Derrida 61, Westernized Buddhism has demolished the West’s “Age of Reason.”[lxxiii] Demolition succeeded because a key foundation was replaced. Faith in “accident” (chance) replaced faith in Logos (a purposeful, rational Word) as the Creator. ([Location 1198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=1198)) - Hinduism said, “Yes. Your individuality is an illusion: you are God and can become God.” Buddhism agreed that your soul does not exist, and it taught techniques to help you become non-existent. The Bible differed. It said, you are real and important. So important, that the Savior died to give you eternal life. ([Location 1366](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=1366)) - A fundamental assumption behind these catechisms was that God wants faith to be grounded in knowledge, not ignorance. ([Location 2009](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=2009)) - The modern myth is based on the misunderstood fact that during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Roman Catholic Church integrated the Justinian legal Code, called Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law), as one of the major sources of its legal system. The code was a synthesis of Roman civil law, Church’s canon law, and Christian ethics. At that time it was received as a gift of the Eastern Empire. The code was compiled between ad 529 and 534, not at Rome, but at Constantinople (now Istanbul). ([Location 2104](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=2104)) - Atheism has a philosophical need to deify the state through its political rulers—Caesar, Stalin or Mao Zedong. It makes rulers the ultimate source of law. ([Location 2226](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07MJ9RV1C&location=2226))