The Gnostic Delusion

I have not read a single article or book that does a better job connecting the dots on everything from our seduction with AI and digital transhumanism, to marriage redefinition, to  . . . (you name it), than Robert George managed to do in his 2016 Touchstone conference talk on “The Gnostic Revival.”

I encourage all our readers to listen to Dr. George’s presentation (available on our website), in which he emphasized the dualistic nature of Gnosticism, the heresy that holds that the body is a mere instrument of no particular worth and separate from the mind or soul. Following that talk, Touchstone senior editors Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, Dr. Anthony Esolen, and Dr. David Dockery joined Dr. George onstage to discuss the implications of what they just heard. The following is a slightly edited transcript of that discussion.

—J. Douglas Johnson, Executive Editor


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Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University (web.princeton.edu/sites/jmadison). His books include In Defense of Natural Law (Oxford University Press) and Conscience and Its Enemies (ISI Books). He has served as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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