The Big American Zero

Good Night Sweet Prince

2009-07-21T08:41:00.003-04:00

Well... The Big American Zero is dead. With no further ado, the curtain closes and the lights come up. I am going to leave the site up for a little while, I still have a number of students who end up here looking to get a synopsis of Hume's Guillotine or on the nature of virtue.

Unfortunately, I am juggling work (and I'm going to be teaching in the fall) and school and family responsibilities and blogging about philosophy, while very interesting and a lot of fun, falls at the bottom of my priority list. The Big Zero may be back at some time in the future, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Peace in the Middle-East everyone!

Mad World

2009-05-12T21:09:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the dead space! I've been caught up at work and all that jazz.

I just happened to attend a high school concert at which a choral group performed this song. It's a beautiful piece of music even if it is a bit depressing.

I almost posted the video from Donnie Darko, but Frank really creeps me out and I am working late a night in my office alone...

Theodicy - The Existance of Evil

2009-04-10T15:06:00.002-04:00

I have stumbled upon an interesting philosophy blog which discusses some of the metaphysical issues which I have typically focused on here. As seems to always be the case, the author and I disagree about the ultimate conclusion of his argument, but it is certainly an interesting and well informed series of articles.

I might post a response to some of these ideas here. We will see how I feel about it once I have really had a chance to digest his postings and the various comments.

Check them out! You will have to read from the bottom up as this blog, like most, arranges things in chronological order (ie. the first post is at the bottom of the page).

Who is Watching the Watchmen?

2009-03-31T16:18:00.001-04:00

Ozymandias

2009-03-30T16:00:00.001-04:00

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~ Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Retrieved on 3/30/09 from: http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/672/

Free-Will - Some Ancient Proofs

2009-03-23T16:32:00.006-04:00

I was interested to note that Walter Farrell, the gent who wrote the “Companion to the Summa” books that have been hovering in apparent stasis on the left side of the page since Christmas, broached the question of the freedom of the will. Apparently the proofs that St. Thomas Aquinas used are largely the same ones that we have been using. I admit that I am a bit of a nerd, so I find this more exciting than I expect anyone else will.

His proofs are as follows:

The argument from morality: If man is not free, there can be no question of his actions being right or wrong; they are simply necessary. It is absurd to reward good behavior or punish bad behavior if both are nothing more than physically necessary. A great quote about morality is, “if a moral law means anything, it means a law which does not force but obliges,” (p 313). Farrell does a good job of demonstrating the absurdity of moving contrary to this position by pointing out that we wouldn’t ever think about actual physical characteristics (height or the size of one’s hands) as being morally right or wrong. If we have no free will than none of our actions are any different than these physical characteristics.

(As a side note, which I encourage new readers to this blog to skip: I have been doing a lot of thinking about an article on determinism and justice that was posted here awhile back, and I have concluded that the author has done a good job of not answering any questions at all. The apparent conclusion that the judge will make a judgment based on his own conditioning does not provide a basis for morality outside of free-will, but instead is simply a statement that justice and morality are not actually real at all. This solution tries to diffuse the problem by pretending that the problem does not exist. In fact, this is just a reduction to a statement that morality is whatever individuals “feel” is right or wrong. This incorrect answer to the morality question has already been discussed earlier.)

The argument from experience: Man has the immediate and consistent experience of being aware of his own freedom. We are aware of our ability to exercise our will and choose between alternatives and we are aware that we use this ability to actually make decisions all day long. This, of course, is the proof offered by the Good Reverend. This is consistent with the Ancient philosophical school of the Greeks (at least the Aristotelian) which insisted that some concepts must be known by intuition (in that specialized Aristotelian sense).

The argument from the order of the universe: (This being the proof which we did not use and I think one can quickly see why) Every object in the universe is assigned it’s particular nature which it never acts contrary to; rocks do not laugh, nor do parrots swim. Farrell moves the argument forward as such, “why should his (man’s) appetite, capable of the universal, the supreme, be forced to desire that which is so plainly imperfect?” (p 314). By those things which are “plainly imperfect” Farrell means those material things which humans do in fact spend their time working towards (ie. anything other than God Himself).

I think this final argument has merit, but it is coming from a very different place than the other arguments and it requires the reader to go a great deal further. In other words it would take more time to explain and make clear than I am willing to put in.

Another argument, which occurred to me recently, is this: If we did not possess free-will, where did this concept come from? Humanity has never come up with a single original concept; they are all necessarily derived from the universe in some way. If nothing possesses true freedom, where did the idea come from? As we do have a concept for "free-will" it must be, in some sense, a real thing.

All quotations are taken from "A Companion to the Summa" Vol. I by Walter Farrell. Copyright 1941 by Sheed & Ward.

(Editor's note: Some stylistic modifications made on 3/24/09 because I didn't actually spend enough time editing before I posted yesterday.)

Free Will and Ethics

2009-03-11T10:44:00.002-04:00

In our discussions on morality we were able to provide solid evidence in support of the idea that without some absolute moral law (what Immanuel Kant called the Categorical Imperative) morality does not exist at all. Then in our discussion of free-will, a long and rambling discussion I freely admit, we were able to strongly suggest that the creature called Man (or Human if you prefer) has the ability to make decisions and so has some control over his (or her) own behavior. I think that in both of these discussions we were able to see that the denial of either of these positions will ultimately result in the denial of our own humanity and reason.

I assume that no one has any difficulty in seeing what naturally follows from these two positions. We are all subject to moral law (or else it is not absolute) and we all are able, by the use of our free-will, to either follow or not follow this moral law (while of course maintaining that it is easier for some than for others).

Before I am able to go further it is necessary to stop and talk a little about what the moral law actually requires, what it is, and where it comes from. I need to discuss a popular misconception about the moral law before we can take our next step.

This is the idea that there have been many different moralities over the course of human history. While I don’t argue that there are no differences in the moral codes between different peoples in different times, I maintain that the moral codes have been far more similar than they have ever been different. The similarities between the codes of moral conduct between the early Americans, the English in the middle-ages, and the ancient Egyptians and Greeks are really quite amazing.

If you doubt me, take a moment to really think about it. Imagine for a moment a code morality which is truly different from our own, different in a way which is qualitative not quantitative; a morality which actually applauds stealing, lying, and cheating the people who have done the most for you. It is difficult to even imagine a code which tells you to hate and betray your closest friends and family. I have found that the codes which have come the closest to this did so, not because they felt that one particular value was unimportant, but rather because they felt another was even more important.

If you actually look back at all the moral codes ever developed (by Plato, Jesus, Confucius, Buddha…) certain rules of behavior run throughout all of them. To see an illustration of this, check out the appendix of The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis. This means that most people have had at least a general idea of the moral law. As I mentioned once before, I do not necessarily think that any one moral code totally embodies the essence of the moral law, but that nearly all reflect it in some way (imperfectly).

As such, I am not putting myself in the position of telling anyone else what code to follow and will not (at this time) push any of the ethical requirements of any one particular code. Instead, I will content myself with saying that the majority of traditional morality is in agreement and if we take morality on the whole, we will do rather well (but not perfectly).

So we have a situation in which we are aware of what is moral (for the most part) and, because of our free-will, we can either choose to do the right thing or not. It seems to be a simple matter of personal history that none of us has done the right thing all the time. We have all done things which we knew were objectively “bad” but did them anyways. What the result of these two things, free-will and an objective moral law which none of us has perfectly followed, is that we are all guilty.

If there were not absolute moral law, we could shrug this off as “other peoples’” opinion, but we already know that this isn’t true. If we had no free-will, we could say that we are not responsible for our own decisions, but we already know that this isn’t true either!

I think this is a critical point because our culture has moved so far away from thinking clearly about ethics and morality that this simple fact about human beings has been totally lost on our popular consciousness. We are not going to be able to think clearly or reasonably about morality and ethics until we accept the fact of our own guiltiness.

It may be said in objection, “So what? I have done something wrong, so has everyone else! What’s the big deal? I am certainly better than Mr. So and So down the street.” This is on the one hand a very reasonable objection, after all we are all guilty of breaking our own moral codes, so who am I to bring it up and wave it in peoples faces?

On the other hand this objection is very much mistaking the whole point of my argument. On this blog I am only talking about matters of fact, and matters of fact are totally indifferent to who is better than whom and I am certainly not making anything a big or little deal. I am merely concerned with using logic and philosophy to determine what really is.

Our use of reason and logic has led us to this point and I am certainly not going to stop here. There is much more to learn and talk about!

Apparently, I am Famous

2009-03-04T07:23:00.001-05:00

Heh, check it out!

This link leads to a site in one of the many languages which I do not speak, so these people may be totally ripping up my ideas!

Aldous Huxley - A Quotation

2009-02-20T10:33:00.004-05:00

“I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. . . . For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.”

-Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, pp. 270 ff

I have borrowed the above quotation from the website http://lumelonline.com/tolerance-new-morality-does-god-changes-his-standers/ on 2/20/09.

I have not read Ends and Means myself but I find this quotation to be very interesting.

My Generation

2009-02-17T12:40:00.000-05:00

I was checking out some of my older blog entries which never made it to the "publish" phase. This one is dated 5/5/08 and I am not really sure why I never finished working on it. Probably because, as demonstrated by the book I alluded to writing, I have a tendency to not complete my writing projects. Other than tapering off at the end and being about a number of things which I don't usually write about it still seems appropriate to me.

Anyways, the (mostly unchanged) post from last summer follows:

I have been pretty busy these past weeks. I'm settling into a new job which may turn into a full time position shortly, and have been providing editorial services business major's theses at my Alma Mater, just for fun.

I have been re-reading Hearts in Atlantis, by Stephen King, and the book has derailed my previous train of thought. I had been working pretty hard on the problems, referenced here, which have arisen concerning the existence of The Source. I have made a great deal of progress in this area, and do think that I am going to be able to push the conversation forward in a little while. All of this will be very important to the book that I am writing and will probably never finish.

At any rate, Hearts in Atlantis is really a book about the 60's and that generation of young folks which have been the focus of ever so much media attention and popular culture ever since the 60's. What interests me most is the vast difference between the people who I went through college with and the people described in every book, poem, song, and movie written in or about this time period. It has been characterized as a time when it was believed that anything was possible. I don't really want to talk about the 60's. As far as I am concerned the 60's have been talked to death, and should now be shelved away in an archive somewhere to be brought out only for historical discussions. Most importantly I think that people need to just let it go. It's done man, it's OVER.

What I do want to talk about is my generation. I want to talk about the people who I went to college with. I want to look at what their hopes and dreams were, and why they now are what they are. I had given this some thought while I was actually in college, in part because I never felt any real association with the generation I found myself in and in part because I just can't seem to stop thinking about things. I have come to realize that this lack of association is part of what characterizes us as a generation.

Perhaps it is too soon to be talking about this stuff. Probably this shouldn't come up for discussion for another couple of decades. We should wait until we are all going on middle aged and are complaining about how our kids need to do something to straighten out the mess the world has become. They need to take some responsibility, darn it!

Fortunately, I don't care much for all of that. I also don't care much for any mentality suggesting that responsibility is limited to one age group or demographic. Let's face it. We are all part of the problem.

I wonder how often we really stop to look at ourselves, to consider who and what we are. Consciousness is self-consciousness, and we are pretty well asleep.

Who are the hero's of our time? Are they politicians fighting to do some good in the world? Are they saints? Are they philosophers thinking deep thoughts and broadening our understanding of the universe? Or are they movie stars, who care less about the movies they are in than the amount of money they are making? Are they musicians who care more about being famous than about music its self?

We are a generation with no goals and no purpose. It makes me wonder if any generation was ever any different. It is depressing to look at my peer group and to discover that no one has any idea as to what they are doing or why they are doing it. Talk about lost in space!

Lost in the Morass

2009-02-11T15:08:00.004-05:00

I have been trying to keep up with my writing here, but have been incredibly busy with work. I actually have half completed a posting on free-will in which I was trying to prove that human beings actually do posses the ability to choose. This posting, however, ended up coming out in the comments section of Mr. Mandal’s blog post on the same subject. Rather than re-hash old thoughts I scrapped the post entirely. (Mr. Mandal, you mention that you mentioned that the actual existence of our ability to choose seems to be self-evident. I wanted to provide you an example of someone disagreeing. Even in this disagreement choice has clearly not been totally discarded as it still exists in some form, just not in a form which is applicable to the movements of a human body.)

I have been asked to participate (as a sort of co-teacher) in a course on comparative religion. This is, clearly, an area which I have a great deal of interest, but I am hesitant to immediately agree to do this as the course is mostly focused on middle-eastern religions and I am far from an expert on Islam or modern Judaism. As such, I have tasked myself with the immediate job of reading the Quran and several self-styled introductory books on the subject. In reading Introduction to the study of The Holy Qur’an I have been repeatedly struck by a number of misunderstandings in the statements which have been chosen to represent Christianity. As such I probably will not post anything on the subject here, as I fear that my own comments on the subject would be similarly flawed.

I suppose that I will just have to see how all of this plays out! New posts on philosophy to come soon!

Philosophical Dino

2009-01-05T11:56:00.005-05:00

I just happened across a webcomic which has a certain bearing on a number of discussions which were ongoing before the holidays. The comic seems to be pretty silly and I'm not really recommending anyone read more than this particular comic!

Image taken from Dinosaur Comics, http://qwantz.com/archive/000014.html, 1/5/09

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T17:00:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone! I am away until after the new year. I won't be able to comment or reply, but will catch up on whatever I am missing after my little vacation.

An Ongoing Discussion on Ethics

2008-12-19T10:05:00.005-05:00

I have been having a running debate with a gentleman by the name of Tao, over on Eric's site. I felt that I was being very reasonable and he does raise some interesting points. However, it is very difficult to get someone who refuses to actually express their thoughts in anything but Taoist aphorism and poetry to engage actively on any point.

This, however, highlights a very dangerous new intellectual phase for humanity. A generation of people who are no longer actually interested in Truth. Of course, this may just be a small subset of people, and I might be overexposing myself to this group by spending too much time on Eric's website!

Eric expresses his condemnation of Christianity in three posts. It is interesting to note that while Eric claims to be exposing the "Religious Conspiracy" he focuses almost exclusively on Christianity. I have only bothered to comment on the first one as no actual discussion was forthcoming.

*shrugs* You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him actually drink. You can lead a man to the heart of his philosophical error but you cannot make him actually think about it.

Update: Ben has had a bit of a run in (philosophically) with Tao and I just had to get involved regarding Eric's third post. 12/24/08 ~ Torq

Edmund Fitzgerald

2008-12-18T16:17:00.001-05:00

I've always liked the melancholy sound of this song. Call me weird!

Lumel

2008-12-10T09:06:00.000-05:00

I came across this website which I found to be rather interesting. The authors discuss a large number of topics relating to Christianity. I might suggest that their focus tends to travel a little too far in the negative direction, but they certainly do raise a lot of good points. They seem to be engaged in some sort of media war, which might explain their negative focus.

I may add them to my sidebar at some point.

Ravi Zacharias

2008-12-09T08:56:00.004-05:00

You can sort of think of this video as being posted "by request." The video is of the noted theologian Ravi Zacharias as he answers the question, "How do you know there is a God?"

I post this here because in relates to our Source thread. Zacharias does something here which I intended to do, but never quite managed to figure precisely how to go about it. He talks of God as having a mind, as being rational. I have several times attempted to post on how the Source is (or has) a mind, but think it is a particularly difficult question to answer and so have put it off.

Asbestos Head

2008-11-20T09:24:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to provide a quick link to another book written by Eric Dubay. He has published his second book, titled Asbestos Head, and it is available to buy or be read for free online.

If you are interested in buying the book, you can do so here.

If you are interested in reading the book online for free, you can do so here.

This was a book which Eric started writing in college and finished a couple of years back. The book discusses a number of interesting philosophical, social, political, and religious questions. This is Eric's intro:

"Join Asbestos and the other 12 Heads in their spiritual and philosophical journey through life and death. Meet Pin Head the hyper-active, hyper-critical, hypocrite, Figure Head the mystic mathematician, Pot Head the shamanistic high school teacher, Dead Head the politically-active radical environmentalist, and a host of other unique personalities in this humorous and thought-provoking philosophical fiction novella."

Quote taken from Eric's webpage (www.atlanteanconspiracy.com on 11/20/08).

On Miracles

2008-11-18T11:14:00.001-05:00

I want to take a moment to talk about miracles. I am not here talking about the everyday sort of miracles which we all have some experience with (a child being born, or a sick friend getting better). I am talking about the true, dyed in the wool miracles; things which genuinely defy our understanding of how the material world works. For the sake of this discussion I want to define a miracle as something which happens in the material world, which cannot be explained by a material cause. Examples of this can be found throughout all religions, but some examples which most of my readers will be familiar with would be Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus walking on water, the Apostles healing the sick with a word.

Most people either believe or disbelieve in miracles because they have been told by people who they trust that miracles happen or do not happen. Most of us never experience a miracle in the sense we are using here. It is important to keep firmly in mind that most of the things which we believe or disbelieve are made on the basis of this type of information gathering. We take it on authority. We believe in the Big Bang, the atom, the French Revolution, and Australia because people we trust have told us that they really exist or really happened. We cannot prove their existence by abstract reasoning the way we were able to do with The Source. They are not true a priori. Acknowledging this is not demeaning, but rather places these things at their appropriate level of reality.

Before we go any further I want to make one thing quite clear; it is quite reasonable to believe some things which an authority says and not others. It is quite reasonable to believe that when a biologist talks about physical life he knows what he is talking about. This is his area of study and he is an authority in it. However, when the same biologist talks about philosophy or miracles he may be just as much in the dark as anyone else. This is why I am so insistent on keeping fields of study clearly defined.

In the case of miracles there are authorities on both sides which claim to be able to tell us definitively whether or not they can exist. Our own experience will not do us much good in determining which is right and which is wrong (we have never seen a miracle, but then we have never seen the Big Bang either) so we will have to evaluate each argument on its own merits. In the case of the argument that miracles cannot exist, it is typically made by materialist philosophers or scientists who hold that matter is all that there is. If they were right than miracles would obviously be false because there would be no such thing as a “non-material cause.” However, we have already proven that this is not so in our discussion of the Source. In that one case, we have already proven that things can be caused by non-material things (i.e. the universe itself).

The argument against miracles is thus weakened substantially. We must move from the argument that “miracles cannot occur,” to the much weaker statement that “while miracles have occurred and we have solid proof of an unquestionable sort of at least one, we are quite certain that that sort of stuff isn’t going on anymore.” Essentially the idea is that even though the universe may have had a miraculous beginning, it has gone on its way ever since then by following quite immutable laws. Now, to a certain extent this worldview is natural for scientists but there is not philosophical basis for saying it. I think that they really take this approach to make it seem like the world makes a little more sense. If they allow that at any moment something entirely inexplicable may occur, it makes their job a great deal more difficult. If gravity stops pulling one person towards the center of the Earth in one place for no material reason at all, it raises questions about the whole theory of gravitation.

However, and this is really important, this would be the exception to a rule which goes on applying perfectly well for every other object in the known universe. We can acknowledge that there was a time (if you will allow me to use such an inappropriate term for illustration) before gravity (before matter I mean), so we already know that gravity is not an unbreakable rule. We just think of it that way for the sake of convenience. Why should our theories of material science be required explain something which does not have a material cause? This exception doesn’t invalidate the rule, but rather draws our attention back to the fact that the rule has not always existed, and may not exist forever or in all circumstances.

The problem with any “non-material cause” is that we cannot adequately explain what is going on and that makes us very nervous. To ease our fear of the unknown we have tried to pretend that everything is simple and makes perfect sense and follows immutable laws, but everything is not simple and the rules need not always apply.

Now we are left with a situation in which non-material causes exist and do not invalidate our other areas of knowledge. Miracles then are possible, but that does not mean that they actually happen. Are the particular instances which I have used as examples above miracles? If the stories we have received relating these events are true than they would be. We need to evaluate the story on the basis of whether or not we allow that the story teller is telling the truth.

I will not presume to tell you which is which here. I am willing to leave you with a big maybe.

Knowledge in Science - Evolution

2008-11-11T09:13:00.002-05:00

I have written a little about the appropriate role of Science in the hierarchy of knowledge, and I certainly do not intend to demean or belittle to value of this branch of study. I just feel that it is necessary to remind ourselves of what this area of study actually does and what its limitations are. This is of course particularly necessary for those who have set scientific knowledge up on the pedestal of godhood or who ascribe Truth (capital T) to a field which is only capable of presenting its disciples with truth (lowercase t).

As an interesting side note: Were you aware that the word “science” once had a much broader meaning than we typically ascribe to it today? The word science, from the Latin scientia, actually means knowledge. Science is the broad category of efforts “to know.” What we now think of as science (chemistry, physics, biology) is just one branch of the tree of science which also supports philosophy and theology. They are also sciences, in the old meaning of the word. But this is getting off topic.

What I want to consider is the debate over evolution. The debate is really whether or not the “theory of evolution” is appropriate to be taught in science classrooms. Usually this discussion is had between the creationist, believing that the Biblical representation of creation in seven days is literal, and the evolutionist, believing that life evolved from single celled organisms over the course of millennia. To be fair to both sides, there are holes in both arguments. For example, that the Earth is older than the Biblical time line is corroborated by astrophysics (I do not need anyone to inform me that “God could have made it to look that way”). And, the theory of evolution has a difficulty in providing explanations for specific evolved organs such as the commonly cited eyeball and the initial “beginning” of life (I do not need anyone to lecture me on “missing links” or “evolutionary jumps”). I have elsewhere suggested that these two systems of thought are not necessarily at odds, but again that would be getting off topic.

What I find to be interesting about the theory of evolution is that when it was first proposed (by Mr. Darwin) and began to be accepted it was not actually a scientific theory at all. A scientific theory, in the strict sense of the term, is an explanation for observed phenomena, which incorporates all known interrelated facts and is in some way testable. As a concept “evolution” has been around for thousands of years, having been suggested by Greek philosophers before the birth of Christ. The problem with the theory of evolution is that it was not testable for most of the life of the theory.

Let me be a little clearer, the theory as a whole, providing a complete explanation for observed phenomenon, was untestable at its conception. You see the theory of evolution, stating that all life originated from a common ancestor and has evolved under the mechanisms of natural selection and genetic mutation, was not actually testable until genetics became a viable field of study. The theory was capable of explaining observed phenomenon, several different species of horse have a similar ancestor, but to take a horse and make a new species was impossible. Even now we are incapable of making something genuinely “new.” Most of the initial efforts to study this theory were total failures. Why then was evolution accepted as a genuine scientific theory by the scientific community? And why did it happen at this stage in history. As I mentioned above the idea of evolution has been around for millennia!

It is important to note that I am not being Pro or Anti Evolution. I was just having a conversation with the Princess and this happened to come up.

Aristotle – Knowing by Intuition

2008-10-15T10:25:00.005-04:00

This is going to be another of those obscure posts which will most likely not be of any interest to anyone. That said, onward and upward!

I have been troubled by something which Aristotle said regarding the nature of knowledge and reason. Aristotle placed a great deal of stock in man’s ability to reason, to progress logically from determined premises into new areas of knowledge. However, he made it clear that he did not consider this to be highest form of knowing, stating instead that there is a way in which we may know things that is even more sure and certain than logic. This form of knowing, Aristotle claims, is something called intuition.

This statement has troubled me profoundly. In what way can we say that intuition must be of a higher order of knowledge than logic? I have intuitions all of the time, hunches and feelings pushing me in one direction or the other. It is to my reason that I turn to keep me steady in the constant ebb and flow of my feelings of intuition. I have come to realize that Aristotle meant something very different when he used this word. When I use the word, I am thinking of a vague feeling which tells me that A is right a B is wrong.

To illustrate, imagine two cards from a deck are laying, face down, on a table and we are told that one of them is red and one is black. When asked which is which, I have a hunch (what I was calling intuition) that it is the card on the right. This is mere guesswork; I have a fifty percent chance of being correct. Aristotle meant something very different.

Aristotle tells us that our intuition is able to grasp truth and that it is absolutely certain. He is not entirely clear how this actually takes place, only that the truth is grasped by intuition upon seeing a situation or object a number of times. This is admittedly a little confusing. However, it is demonstrable that this (or something similar) must be true.

Logic is only able to function by building a structure upon premises which are obviously true, or which have been proven to be true by a prior exercise of logic (which must be built upon premises which are obviously true, or which have themselves been proven to be true by logic). Logic itself is unable to operate without certain premises on which to build. Where then do these premises originate? From intuition.

Very well, there must be some faculty (called intuition by Aristotle) which allows us to grasp fundamental premises. However, the question remains: On what grounds are we able to suggest that intuition is of a higher order than logical reasoning? This also is demonstrably correct, for we may only progress from that which is certainly true to that which is as certainly true or less certainly true. It is not possible to start with a premise which might be true and to end up with a conclusion which is certainly true. Thus the premises grasped by intuition are necessarily of a higher order of knowledge than the things which are possible to be derived from those premises.

It is through the combination of intuition and logical reasoning that mankind posses what was once called Reason, or rationality, or a rational soul. It is interesting to note that theologians have incorporated Aristotle’s conception of intuition into their understanding of angelic knowledge. It is said that angels know by pure intuition.

I merely mention this as an interesting fact, not as an argument for the existence of angels.

BRB

2008-09-22T16:51:00.003-04:00

Please excuse the lack of postage. I am in the middle of a "life transition" which has rendered me sans internet connection for the most part. The bonus is that I will probably have a great deal to say once I return.

~ The Management

Other Thoughts on the Nature of the Universe

2008-09-10T20:20:00.003-04:00

I was forwarded a link after my posting about the Flat Earth and its possible validity in metaphysical thought rather than geographical or astronomical thought. It was a link to a pretty interesting site, an online book really, which has a number of things to say on the subject.

I'm not pretending to agree with everything which is said in this chapter, but the author and I are most likely more in agreement than disagreement. For one thing I place a great deal of emphasis on the physical sciences, though I will always defend the primacy of Philosophy and Theology.

If you are inclined to spend a couple of minutes reading a chapter from the book, be aware that the author is a feminist and so uses feminine language rather than masculine. It was jarring until I realized what the author was doing.

Pay special attention to the quotes from my dear friend Nietzsche!

The link can be found here.

Truth in Myth

2008-08-29T16:10:00.003-04:00

I was recently listening to a cd of poetry on my drive into work. She was discussing the idea of truth in myth. As someone who loves myth and has always thought that they were incredibly rich in symbolic and metaphorical truths, this came as no real surprise to me.

However, as I spent some time thinking about it it occurred to me that something which I have long discarded as erroneous geography may very well be a representation of a metaphysical truth. I am talking about the idea of the flat earth. Part of what interests me about this notion is how commonly the flat earth idea is used to ridicule those who came before us. "Sure Aristotle may have been a pretty smart guy, but what are you going to suggest next? That the earth is flat?"

The truth seems to be simple. That we are all going to die. Think about it. In all of the flat earth mythology, what lay beyond the "rim" of the earth was the land of the dead. If you travel far enough you will eventually pass from this world into the next. If one were to take the metaphor just a little farther, you could envision the realm of the dead gradually drawing closer and closer as time went past.

It is interesting for me to have this sort of realization. What would be obviously silly geography, can still be remarkably insightful metaphor.

A Living Soul

2008-08-07T10:43:00.001-04:00

As I have not heard significant disagreement regarding what it means to be alive, I am going to push on. It is important to note that defining what it means to be alive is not actually all that important to our conversation on the Soul. We can certainly all agree that there are living things, ourselves amongst them, and that is all that we really need. That something is alive, the body, and that there is something which makes it actually be alive, the soul, is really all that we need to say.

That said, any philosophical point which is brought up deserves at least some scrutiny and consideration. Thus which this little divergence into properties of life and defining what it means to be alive, is certainly worthwhile. If you think that this conversation needs to be continued, or that the question should be pushed further, we can certainly delve deeper into the subject. For me, I possess certain knowledge of life, from the simple fact that I am alive. Aristotle has presented us with a fair working definition, although there are a couple of aspects which I think need to be re-evaluated or redefined as the current understanding of concepts is quite different than they were 2000 years ago. However, for the most part, I think he was spot on.

Also there was one point which Aristotle made clear which may help our discussion of living creatures. He insisted that things which are alive need to be able to live independently from other organisms. By this he is making the distinction between a finger, which is only alive while part of the whole, and a human, who is capable of sustaining life independently of most other factors.

That which is alive is in possession of a soul. The soul is that which makes a body live and is to be thought of as the essence of the living creature. The soul is immaterial, as demonstrated by the lack of physical differences between the living and the dead, and is in some way attached to a living body in such a way that it can be separated from the body upon death.

It is important to note that there are different types of soul, or essence, which Aristotle suggests come from a difference in quality and not from radically different things. This would make sense because there are not radically different types of living things; instead there are several general categories into which each form of life falls. Without covering each of these categories in depth, we can still state that human beings are in possession of a radically different type of soul than that of any other biological creature. We possess the ability to reason, and thus possess a rational soul. We can, and should, discuss the higher order mammals if there is any dissention on the uniqueness of human life.

It is a question of deep theological and philosophical import as to why any of this should be. However, there is no real discussion or dissention that this in fact is. Every attempt to explain this away that I have encountered involves a critical logical fallacy at its heart.

What does it mean to be Alive?

2008-08-01T12:10:00.002-04:00

In a previous post we discussed one of the traditional conceptions of what the soul is, namely that which makes a living thing alive. However, we quickly ran aground in our discussion because there is a bit of difficulty in determining what is and is not alive.

To answer the question I turned to my old buddy Aristotle. This is a particularly important distinction for him, seeing as he is no longer alive! His answer to the question can be found in De Anima. He claims that something is alive if it contains any one of the following characteristics: Nourishment, Growth (increase and decrease in size), Generation and Decay, Movement, Perception, or Intellect.

It is important to note that each of the characteristics is rooted in the object which is being defined as living or non-living. For example a building which appears to “grow” because builders constructed another floor, is not considered to be alive as it received the change rather than having the change originate from within its self. A ball rolling down a hill would not be considered alive as the motion is caused by an outside force (gravity) and not by its own power.

This is a useful definition, but I do have several difficulties with it. My biggest issue arises from the category of decay. Most likely it is just that we now have greater scientific knowledge, unavailable to Aristotle, which indicates that decay is caused not by the self but rather by micro-organisms. Secondly, I am not sure if I can agree with his statement about growth defining a living creature. A computer program can be programmed to replicate itself and grow (thus achieving not only growth but also generation). Is it then alive? A crystal will also increase in size gradually if conditions are correct. Is a crystal alive? I would say probably not in both cases. In the others I am inclined to believe that Aristotle is pretty accurate. Also I am not totally sure about that computer program example, it bears further consideration.

I’m not sure if I am misunderstanding Aristotle’s definition here. At any rate his definition provides a starting place and a framework which we can work with.

The Truth Will Always Out!

2008-07-29T22:03:00.003-04:00

The recent conversations which I have been involved in have been largely negative towards people who I actually know and do actually respect. As such I think this video is appropriate for both their efforts and my own!

A Conversation with Chris

2008-07-25T21:50:00.005-04:00

I started out replying to a comment. I haven't written for a little while so I seem to have decided to write more than I expected. Here is my reply and hopefully we can have a conversation about this!

Hey Chris, good to hear from you. I have been on holiday for a little while in the technology free zone, so I haven't been ignoring your comment. I just didn't know it was here.

I believe Megan was referencing an earlier post of mine in which I made David Ike's "Secrets of the Matrix" available. That was quite awhile back, so the links are probably broken at this point. As Eric himself is certainly aware, Ike's theory gets a little out of hand there at the end and has caused "Technowarriors" such as himself no little difficulty.

I do not accuse you of being a blind follower any more than I accuse Eric of being a blind follower. As we are all followers of truth, we must simply do our best to stay on the path and to keep our eyes wide open.

So, onward and upward! From what I understand, your suggestion is that I have not taken Eric seriously enough. On this I feel that I must profoundly disagree. I happen to hold Eric in the highest regard, and there was a time when I most certainly considered him to be my intellectual superior. That said, I can no more allow him to present an incomplete or circumstantial argument than he would allow me.

As I happen to know that Eric is very smart and was a solid philosopher, I intend to hold his arguments and theories under the same lens as my own. Thus, if he introduces his central argument amidst a plethora of arguments which are lacking in evidence (of a logical nature mind) and amidst a long string of logical fallacies, than he is not really asking me to agree with him.

Thus when I read you above referenced quotation, "American's don't read," I quite naturally am bound to disagree. To take your second reference, "that 1 in 5 (Americans) are illiterate." My first question is by what standard is illiteracy being determined? Is it to be defined as the inability to read and write even simple messages in any language (the definition used in the encyclopedia), or some other definition? In my own experience this statement strikes me as absurd. How would you even gather such data? From a survey (which the illiterate could not read)? A standardized test (which the illiterate could not take)? All this is not to say that the statement is actually untrue. I was certainly suspicious about quantum theory the first time I heard it.

You suggest I do some research, which is certainly a reasonable suggestion when faced with a claim which seems to be absurd. Thus I do a little quick research online and find that the actual illiteracy rates are more like %1 (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-illitera.html). On the other hand I do also notice from a quick study of census data and other sites that there ARE a large number of people who do not speak read or write English (about %18), which may be where the one in five number is coming from. So this, as a number of other points which were made which I also know a little about is just not quite right.

Something which is important to do as a writer is to establish a level of trust between the reader and yourself. If you are going to try and convince someone of anything it doesn't do you any good to throw up a bunch of incorrect data. If someone is wrong about this and that and that, than why should I assume that they are right about this other point? I have to trust what Eric is saying, and from the parts of his book which I did read, he has not earned that level of trust.

Again, to restate my original thought on the book; I do think he has a strong point, but he is not going to convince rational people using his current methods.

I do agree that you do not gain wisdom from a text. What you gain from a book is knowledge. Wisdom is a whole long step beyond the accumulation of knowledge. Saying that everything that earlier writers have said is just dirt does not strengthen your argument that I should re-read the book. Why should Eric's book be anything other than the dirt he has left behind him?

You made a point of insisting that you are not a blind follower, I would suggest you do not make the assumption that I am one simply because we disagree.

Viva la Vida

2008-06-27T20:52:00.005-04:00

I'm not crazy about the music video but I really like the song! All the other videos either had embedding disabled or were covers. Not good enough! If you don't know what Kingdom Hearts is, it's a video game. I hear it's good, but have never played it.

Edit: Because my video link went bust, I'm putting in a new one. Yes, I am still kicking around, and yes I have been working on our little philosophical quandary. I think I have an answer and will post it soon!

What Is the "Soul?"

2008-06-24T11:40:00.001-04:00

It does not seem that the discussion of whether or not there is such a thing as “the soul” is really very serious. I hold that it is self-evident that all living creatures are in possession of a soul. However, I expect that a large portion of those who would disagree with this statement are actually making a statement about the properties of the soul, not about the existence of the soul.

That the soul exists is demonstrated simply. There is something which differentiates between that which is living and that which is non-living and this thing is called a soul. This is not a controversial statement and is one which, I presume, everyone can agree with. Thus if it is determined that it is the human brain which differentiates between the living and the non-living, than we can justly say that the human brain is actually the soul. This is really the classical definition of the soul and is in keeping with most philosophical and religious thought.

The difficulty, and the controversy, comes from the discussion of the properties of the soul. Is the soul made of matter or is it immaterial? Is the soul immortal or does it cease to exist upon death? Is there any difference between the soul of a man and that of a tree? These are the questions which are really interesting, and which fuel our discussion and thoughts on the soul.

Using the above example in which it was supposed the human brain were the principle which differentiates from the living and the non-living and thus was the soul, a couple of points become clear. The principle which determines which things are living and which are not will have to be in every living thing. From this example, the human brain would have to be found in every living thing. Obviously this cannot really be the “soul” as grass, which is living, does not possess a brain at all! There is a way around this difficulty, which is to suggest that there are different categories of souls. A tree has a “tree soul” or a “plant soul” with particular characteristics and other types of living things have different souls with different characteristics. In fact, this is what Aristotle suggested so long ago, saying that plants have a “nutritive soul” while animals have a different type of soul.

Another point which the above example illustrates is that the soul must be found in living things but not found in things that are not living. Thus if the brain truly were the principle of life, than it would have to in some way leave the living creature upon it’s demise. This brings up an important problem for those who contend that the soul is a material thing as there really seems to be no material physical difference between a living object and one which is no longer living. The material changes occur after an object passes from living to non-living. In fact, once you start to think about it, we really don’t have a very clear definition for what it means for something to be alive at all!

To momentarily skip over this, admittedly important question, there must be something which unifies all things which we call alive. Thus, even if there are different categories of souls, they cannot really be totally different things. As there is no material difference between the living and the non-living and as there is no unifying material property of living things, we can deduce that the soul is ultimately non-material.

This is why it has been held for centuries that the soul consists on a non-material level. Further, from this one conclusion, several other conclusions naturally follow. First, if the soul is non-material, there is some part of all living things which exists outside of time (for this proof, spend a little time reading my discussions on The Source), but in what way must still be determined. Secondly, this would mean that the soul exists on some level which is inaccessible to scientific (at least scientific materialism’s) scrutiny.

On the Soul

2008-06-16T11:07:00.000-04:00

As anyone who bothers to actually follow the items that I am currently reading and studying will know, I have been trying to make some progress through St. Thomas Aquinas’ book the Summa Theologica. This has been proving so difficult that I have been forced to go back and look into the writings of Aristotle which are featured so prominently in the Summa.

One thing which I find to be particularly interesting is the various ways in which the Greek Philosophers conceived of the soul. This has been a topic of philosophical study and discussion for thousands of years but it seems that most of our ideas today stem in some form from the Platonic and Aristotelian notions of what the soul truly is. In fact, the more I learn about the Ancient Greeks the more I begin to realize how slight our scientific achievements over the last few hundred years have truly been. For instance, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, is really just the modern day equivalent of a theory formulated thousands of years ago by the Greek Philosopher Anaximander.

At any rate what I find to be particularly interesting is Aristotle’s idea that the soul is the essence of a human being. The soul is that essential characteristic which distinguishes a human being from a lump of clay or a tree. It is also interesting to note that the type of soul possessed by a human being, what Aristotle calls a Rational Soul, is only one of many different types of soul. He feels that plants and animals have souls and that, just as with humans, it is the soul of the object which defines it. This is a rather different view, for it would seem that the soul is the actual definition of the object and is not a spirit or anything of that sort. A hemlock tree is a hemlock tree because it has the soul of a hemlock tree. From this perspective, understanding a form or category of object is to understand something about the soul of that particular form or category.

Aristotle also felt that the soul of an object ceased to exist after death, an interesting concept and one in keeping with his concept of what a soul truly is. If the soul is the definition of an object and the object ceases to be the same type of object, then the definition of object, and thus the soul of the object, has been changed. In the case of death, a creature goes from animate matter to inanimate matter, and, as only things which are actually living possess a soul, the soul must be destroyed upon death.

It is interesting to see how the Christian notion of the soul reflects this understanding, yet also differs in a number of important ways. An obvious example would be the question of whether a soul continues to exist after death. I am also not sure if I agree with Aristotle’s basic definition. It defines the essence, soul, of an individual based on the generic characteristics of a whole group. In what way then would an individual soul differ from another? I suppose that it is possible to resolve this by stating that the soul is what actually animates the body, while the body (brain) is what determines personality and knowledge.

Interesting!

2008-05-28T21:02:00.002-04:00

I think everyone has something to say.

It's just that most people can't seem to stop talking long enough to figure out what that is.

Old Man

2008-05-15T22:00:00.001-04:00

Refutation of The Atlantean Conspiracy

2008-05-12T08:20:00.002-04:00

Eric Dubay, author of The Atlantean Conspiracy, was getting a lot of "knee-jerk" responses to his book on various debate websites. I finally got around to reading the book (or some of it anyways) and wanted to at least offer him a serious opinion on the book and his arguments. This is my posting. I have spent some more time thinking about this since and would add a couple more paragraphs if I were just re-writing this. Oh well, let it stand.

Alright Eric, if this is what you really want.

I have read part of your book and have skimmed/speed-read the rest. I was willing at least consider your argument even though I was certainly suspicious of your premise. Your “book” is not really a book in the traditional sense. You have not gathered information, analyzed it, and formed it into a coherent whole which would allow your reader to easily go through your writing and consider your argument. In fact this is not even a book designed to persuade those who disagree with you, but rather a book designed to encourage those who share your conclusion. This is probably one of the reasons you are finding such a resistant group in this forum. The other, as you mentioned, is that you are using concepts which are seriously lacking in credibility; too many people who attribute anything to these “conspiracies” end up with conclusions so nutty that it makes everything else they have said seem absurd.

You have gathered a large number of quotes and pictures from various sources, organized and presented them in such a fashion as to give the impression of fact. From these quotes you have attempted to derive conclusions. This is not a tactic which you would allow anyone who disagreed with you to use, and so you should not be surprised that people are not willing to let you use it either. Consider: If I were attempting to prove the existence of God by referencing quotes from people in authority who believe in God. There is no way you would let that stand.There is most definitely something to your argument.

If you strip away all the quotes and mythology you have used and boil your argument down to the basics, you certainly have a number of very good points. We live in a society controlled by a powerful elite class. People in power are willing to do “bad things” and then lie about it to the people they are supposed to protect. We are continually being bombarded by propaganda, our college and universities even have degrees dedicated to propaganda called “Marketing” and “Public Relations.” The list goes on. You see we are not in total disagreement about your central argument. I disagree with your methods and with your conclusions.

A couple of quick points to illustrate: Your first chapter is dedicated to the genetic ties between those in power today in many countries and those who held power in times long past. First off, this is really no big surprise to anyone. Power (money, political clout and the like) tends to centralize inside of groups, such as families, and to be passed along inside the group. This is really quite natural and you can see it occurring all the time. Additionally many of these connections you are making are 16th or more cousins! I assume that you are aware of how distantly related that is. You and I may very well be more closely related than 16th cousins! From this tenuous genetic connection you attempt to forge a unity of purpose (global domination). Is your assumption here, that everyone who is related by blood agrees on everything and shares a common plan? This moves your argument from the tenuous to the absurd.

Also, in this chapter you trace this “genetic cohort” back millennia. You are suggesting that a single uniform purpose has guided this genetic group for thousands of years, as if under the guidance of a single uniform intelligence. I don’t even agree with my brothers, much less my grandfather, on many issues, and you suggest that George Bush is following a program designed in Egypt before the birth of Christ.

In your discussion of the N W O (spells own backwards!) you reference novelists (who are in on the plot) writing about this global plan glibly, under the belief that “American’s don’t read.” Well, we could do a role call if you like, but I am pretty sure that most everyone is getting your “big brother” pictures and understand the reference to 1984. You reference Huxley, but what about Bradbury, and Herbert (even CS Lewis wrote about this)? Were they all in on the conspiracy too?

It is possible to rule the world, but if this is what this nigh all powerful organization is trying to do than they are really muffing up the job. It can be done much quicker and much more completely by adopting different tactics. In your last book you suggested that Occam’s razor could be used to “slit the wrists of God.” I think it might be used much more accurately here.

But hey, I get it man. The world is a big place and our generation is wandering the Earth looking for some sort of purpose which we can hang onto and finding nothing. It can be comforting to separate the world into groups which are unequivocally “good” and “evil” with you safely sitting on the good side of that fence fighting the evil with all you have. I empathize, but do not believe that human nature is as simple as this.

You may say that I am on the side of evil. You can say that I am blinded by propaganda. You may argue that I have bought into “the system” that has been prepared for me. You can even argue that (just as in the Matrix) those who are unawakened to reality will fight to defend the system that makes slaves of them. But, I hope, in the end you know better.

Widgets

2008-05-10T11:45:00.001-04:00

I've been trying to get a Recent Comments Widget setup for a couple of weeks and it keeps flopping on me. Here's to another go!

Is Education Propaganda?

2008-05-10T09:39:00.007-04:00

It seems that I have been scarce for awhile. Oh, I have a list of excuses longer than my arm and I HAVE begun to write a couple of different posts. One which I was quite excited about while writing focused on the aimlessness I see in my generation, inspired by a book I read of course. Unfortunately, these all fell through the cracks and I was left with nothing to post.

Never fear - where, there is a will there is a way! I have been putting some effort into awakening those I work with to certain important philosophical questions. This is something which I consider to be an intellectual duty, but it's probably very annoying to the people who have to put up with it. I figure the questions I make them think about, I should probably be making you think about as well!

So here is a question for you: What is the difference between Propaganda and Education? Are they ultimately the same thing? It's a question which I find to be particularly troubling because I work in education and have always had a fear, hidden way in the back of my mind, that I might actually make a first rate propagandist.

Really, what is the difference between the two? Both are systems designed to change individual people into something quite different than they are, something more useful to the State. Both use the same methods. To make this question even harder, education and propaganda rarely exist unmixed. History texts in Japan refuse to discuss the reality of Japanese atrocities propagated on the Chinese during the second world war. To further distort the question, individual beliefs certainly color the type of classes taught and the primary message given. I have sat through classes in which an Astronomy Professor gleefully explained that our knowledge of the universe has now answered the question of the existence of God with a resounding NO! Is this anti-religious propaganda or a serious lesson on the physical universe?

I suppose that it is the end goal which determines the difference between the two. The goal of true education is an individual who knows how to think and how to gather the information necessary to draw conclusions. The goal of propaganda is an individual who does not ask questions, instead accepting the answer which has been given to him. Of course this suggests that the two are very closely related and may often occur in the same school side by side and may even be taught by the same teacher in different contexts and with different individuals. Is getting the right answer the point of education? Or is it the ability to ask questions and to think about them, even if you sometimes get the wrong answer, which characterizes true education?

It all makes me highly suspicious of a current trend in education in this country towards producing students who are merely able to test well. This may seem almost inevitable, it is far harder to test a person's ability to think than it is to test what a person knows. However, if propaganda is bad (a question which I have not discussed yet but am inclined to believe), than we must be very wary of such easy answers.

Hallelujah

2008-04-13T21:44:00.002-04:00

Kabbalah

2008-04-05T18:51:00.002-04:00

A certain someone has been sending me a lot of links having to do with Kabbalah. Kabbalah is a philosophical system with it's roots in Jewish mysticism. I have done some research on the subject (not all that much honestly) and it seems pretty legit.

Here is a link to a short introductory video on the subject.

The Source: The Objection of Evil - Epicurus

2008-04-03T19:53:00.000-04:00

Once the existence of the Source has been ascertained we must spend some time considering its nature. One point which must be considered against the standard conception of a benevolent omnipotent Source is the Epicurean objection.

"The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so, cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are both able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can, but will not, than they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, then they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, how does it exist?"
~ Epicurus

Does this totally undermine modern theology?

The Atlantean Conspiracy

2008-03-28T13:33:00.007-04:00

Eric Dubay, an old friend of mine, has just finished his second book. He is of the opinion that it is unpublishable due to it's controversial content and so is trying to give it to as many people as possible. He suggested that I just e-mail it to everyone I know (just meme it up) but I'm not going to do that.

Instead I will provide the link for download here:

The Atlantean Conspiracy - By Eric Dubay

It's a 31.8 mb doc file.

The Philosphy of Liberty

2008-03-27T14:15:00.003-04:00

The YouTube posting of this video made reference to this as representing some part of Ron Paul's essential philosophy. However, as I have previously mentioned my interest in politics is largely superficial, so I have not attempted to determine if this really has anything to do with Ron Paul.

The essential philosophy represented here seems to be sound, providing (of course) you are willing to grant several unstated premises: that there is free will, that the ethical system suggested here can be agreed upon (ie. murder, theft, and slavery are wrong), and that we have some responsibility to act in a particular manner. Few people really contend otherwise.

I have personally come to a similar position represented here from a different direction. It is my contention that humanity has absolute free will. This means that every action which is done by any individual is done by an active movement of the will of that individual. There may be conditions which make one choice or the other easier or harder but the act of will is not suspended by such extraneous factors. Of course, I am not making reference to one's ability to follow or not follow the laws of physics.

This means, among other things, that any authority (save one) which exists over you is only in a position of authority by your own choice. Someone else may choose a leader for you but that person is only YOUR leader if you make the choice to follow him.

The common statement that "nobody put a gun to your head" is misleading, because you still have the power to make a choice even in that situation. If not, we would have no martyrs.

Philosophical Football!

2008-03-27T13:42:00.001-04:00

I just couldn't resist!

Meme - Thoughts you have once and cannot go back.

2008-03-15T17:15:00.003-04:00

A certain individual has "tagged" me with a meme. Seeing as it was her birthday, which I forgot (sorry!), I feel obligated to actually participate.

I want to admit openly that I had to look up the meaning of this word on our friendly internet information site before I had any idea what was going on. From what I can tell a meme is something which is supposed to function as an intellectual virus; some idea, phrase, or irritating jingle that gets stuck in your head, lays it's eggs and moves on to a new host via your own propagation.

For the record I hate the whole idea of memes because they disseminate information without any regard for the truth or falsity or even the aesthetic quality of the information they "infect" you with.

Onward and upward! I will list four ideas that once you have, you can never really shake (I tried for five but grew bored with the topic). Are you ready? Because you might not want to read further.

1.) The world is not real. The matrix was a good movie because it capitalized on this idea. The special effects and fight scenes were cool, but it was this idea that actually made the movie great. All our sensory experiences, the only way we know the world without a priori knowledge, could very well be an illusion. You don't think so? Neither do the people we lock up in psyche wards.

2) You are a selfish, bad person. Odd, I know. We don't think of ourselves this way, but can you honestly tell me one good thing you have ever done? Something which was good in and of its self but didn't do ANYTHING for you personally? Not even make you feel good? This one gives me the heebie jeebies.

3) Life is absolutely and totally pointless. Just about everything science (the great hope of our age) tells us points out very clearly that the existence of life, most especially rational life, is nothing more than a rather uneventful blip in the history of the universe. Yes, I have spent more time thinking about this than your average atheist.

Alright, those are depressing. How about a good one?

4) There actually is a God and He really does have an opinion on what you are doing with your life. In some ways this one is quite a bit more frightening than the others!

An interesting point is that the polar opposites of these statements are also infectious and pretty difficult to shake. I hope that you have fun with these ideas and that you are able to adapt to them without developing mental leprosy or anything.

I guess the thing to do here is to "tag" three other people so they are forced to pass this virus on to other people. I guess I'll tag the three people I know who blog and actually visit my site from time to time: The Princess, The Capitalist, and Mr. Mandal. Not partaking in this meme challenge may result in being speared on the horns of a frightfully paradoxical philosophical dilemma.

The Politics of Fear

2008-03-12T19:24:00.005-04:00

I was poking around on a couple of internet news sites today, being amused at how I always seem to be seeing some sort of story about Obama or Clinton and I haven't seen one about McCain, when I stumbled upon an article called The Politics of Fear.

I find this article to be disturbing on a number of levels. First of all, I will admit that (judging from this story at least) it seems like these anti-terror organizations are going too far in their efforts. But to the second level, how can we seriously suggest that an individual who openly and repeatedly professes a desire to destroy a public building, killing with indifference women and children as they shop, is not a threat? This seems absurd. Even though the story plays up the idea that this man had no way of getting his hands on a weapon (something which I am a bit skeptical about) if he was sincere in his desire, he could certainly have created something explosive enough to be dangerous.

If Mr X parades around yelling about how he intends to kill a bunch of people, should the fact that he happens to be poor make me dismiss him as harmless? Call me paranoid, but I think I will keep an eye on him.

Faith - A Point in Passing

2008-03-11T11:33:00.004-04:00

I want to take just a moment to discuss a point about faith which was not included in our earlier conversation. Do not be confused; I am not under the impression that I am finished with faith, and I certainly don't suddenly understand everything about it. However, there is something else to say about faith, which I was previously too confused to mention.

The word "faith" has a certain practical application which is important to everyone's day to day life. This manner of using the term is really where I should have started as it is by far the lesser meaning of the word, and it would have been better writing to have gone from a lesser to a greater. It seems that I just got so worked up about the whole idea that I was not thinking very clearly. Faith, in this sense, is simply holding onto your current understanding until you have a real rational reason for changing your mind. As such this term applies to the materialist and atheist as much as it does to the Christian and the Muslim. Even though it is popular to think that faith is all about believing the absurd, I don't think you will find very many people who actually hold to opinion that you ought to put your trust in God, if all your reason is telling you that God doesn't exist. This is certainly not my position at least.

I think that an example of faith in this sense will be good illustration. Let's pretend for a moment that we genuinely believe that the Earth is flat. We have pretty good reason for thinking that the Earth is flat (it looks flat doesn't it?), but with some thought and the assistance of a friend who thinks that the Earth is probably round we encounter a crisis of faith. That which we believed before is challenged by a new concept. What should do now? We have two mutually inconsistent ideas, both of which cannot be true. We must trust to our reason to guide us through. By using logic and mathematics, we are able to determine that the Earth is in fact round. Simple right?

There is one complication as a crisis of faith can occur in one of two ways. The first is demonstrated above, we receive a real challenge to what we believe to be true and upon reflection are able to see that one or the other is actually correct. The other has more to do with society, and even our own moods, than logic and reason.

Finding oneself in a group of individuals who hold a radically different opinion we can again undergo a crisis of faith. To use the previous example, we now have good reason to believe that the Earth is round and are confident that it is so. However, we find ourselves in a group of people (friends, respected associates, parents... whatever) who are making fun of those silly idiots who actually believe that the Earth is round in spite of the evidence of their own eyes. Again we have a moment of doubt. If we were purely rational creatures, this would not happen; once we accepted a proposition to be true we would continue to hold it until we came across a valid logical challenge, but we are not.

So again we have a moment of doubt. This crisis of faith is quite a bit different than the first, but it is difficult to immediately see the difference. There is a great compulsion to swap back to the flat Earth theory, but what is convincing us is not our reason but our desire to not look stupid to these other people. Faith, then is the ability to resist these surges of emotion, popular opinion, style and the like, and without it we cannot really develop any understanding of the universe at all.

Without faith, in this sense, we are condemned to eternal confusion, and will never be able to understand much of anything.

Virtue - The Classical and the Christian Views

2008-03-05T13:03:00.003-05:00

Here we have another topic which my reading has tricked me into. Plato and I were getting along fine, chugging our way through his thoughts on Friendship, State Responsibility, Piety and the like without any real difficulty, when I stumbled headlong into his thoughts on Virtue. Today we don't hear too much about virtue, but I can assure you that this was not always the case. I assume that this is not even the case in all circles today, but I haven't personally heard anyone talk about virtue for years and years. So I thought it best to start up a conversation on the subject as soon as I could, just to see if anyone out there still cares at all about the topic.

It turns out that I have a library of books which discuss virtue. I was a little surprised about this, because I have read all these books and never given a second thought to virtue. In fact, I have a whole library of books which talk about faith too but I have paid them so little attention that it never even occurred to me to use them in our little talk on the matter.

Plato lists five aspects of virtue; wisdom, temperance, courage, justice, and holiness. However, over the course on his dialog Protagoras, Plato demonstrates how all of virtue is truly wisdom and that wisdom is the root or cause of all virtue. This solution is elegant and simple, and possesses a great deal of appeal. Essentially his argument goes something like this: Virtue is characterized as choosing good over evil, good being that which is pleasurable and evil being that which is painful. No one knowingly chooses evil over good. That which distinguishes between good and evil is wisdom. Therefore, wisdom is the root of all virtue. Plato, of course, does a much better job of it than I do, and he is careful to answer objections and explain difficulties. From this it seems pretty simple to say that virtue is wisdom and to attain virtue one must only pursue wisdom.

Yet, it was here that I hit my difficulty. You see, I have read a number of books on the subject, and, while it appears that I didn't pay too much attention to what I was reading, I certainly didn't recall the question of virtue being dismissed quite so easily. After all, I quite clearly remember that there are seven deadly sins (from that movie!), and I seemed to also recall that there were seven corresponding virtues. As Plato has only listed five, there must be some difference of opinion between the two.

So I went to the one book which I knew had something to say on the matter, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Lewis explains that there are seven virtues and that these virtues correctly belong in two categories called the Cardinal Virtues and the Theological Virtues. He writes that "the 'Cardinal' (virtues) are those which all civilized people recognize," (p 76 Mere Christianity), and so it is no real surprise that we find they are very similar to Plato's. The are Temperance, Justice, Prudence (similar to Plato's Wisdom), and Fortitude (similar to Plato's Courage). I noticed immediately that of the five Plato lists the one missing from Lewis' is Holiness. It would seem that Plato's argument that virtue is rooted in wisdom is still binding on the Cardinal Virtues, but what about the Theological Virtues?

Lewis writes that "the 'Theological' are those (virtues) that, as a rule, only Christians know about," (p 76 Mere Christianity), but it is no real surprise that they have some relationship to Plato's virtue of Holiness. I don't want to over stress the similarities because this is the point where the Christian view and the Classical view of virtue diverge, but it is clear that the three theological virtues do have something to do with holiness. The theological virtues are Faith, Charity, and Hope. It is here that Plato's argument that virtue is rooted in wisdom breaks down. It is not that Faith, Charity, and Hope have nothing to do with wisdom, but that Plato's conception of virtue is rooted in the idea that good and evil exist primarily as pleasure and pain, while the Christian conception of good and evil is rooted in something different entirely.

Where is all this going? No idea! I suppose that now I should jump into an all out conversation on the theological virtues and the nature of good and evil, or into a discussion about why we should care about virtue at all. I just don't quite have the energy for all that today.

The Works of Plato. Copyright 1928 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Random House Publishing.

C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. Copyright 1980 C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Harper Collins Edition 2001.

Quote of the Day - Plato

2008-03-03T15:32:00.004-05:00

"He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing."

Plato - Apology

The Works of Plato. Copyright 1928 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Random House Publishing.

More Thinking Music

2008-02-27T21:45:00.004-05:00

This song provides a nice segue into the next thing which I would like to talk about, Hero's. Who knows if I will really talk about that, but if I were to post right now, that's what I would write about.

If you are a big nerd like me you might know the actual story going on in the video. I think I'm going to have to buy that TV series.

Faith

2008-02-25T12:16:00.004-05:00

I have been reading Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" again. This was one of those books which I read through and reached then end of having only actually understood about ten percent of. Unfortunately, this seems to happen to me rather frequently.

At any rate this book is all about Faith. What is Faith? Who has Faith? Where does it come from? The more I read the less I seem to understand. This is not the first book that I have read on the subject, and it is perhaps not the definitive one. However, it seems to me that Kierkegaard has latched onto something which most talks about Religion pass over. Namely, that Faith is very hard. Hard to understand, hard to have.

Most people hear the word faith and what comes to mind as a definition is something like blind acceptance. At least half of the work I have put into the blog has been in an effort to show that Faith is not just blind acceptance, but is rather both reasonable and ultimately rational. I still believe this, but I am not quite as certain anymore that this is the whole story.

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that there are certain difficulties, certain forks in the path of understanding which one cannot really begin to understand until you have walked a distance down the path. I thought I understood that quite well and unlike my reading of Kierkegaard I was quite sure that after putting down Lewis' book I understood most of what he was getting at. I see now that the question of Faith is one of those forks in the road to which I had not yet come. Lewis warns his readers that to try to get ahead of yourself and to tackle a problem before you have yet come to that particular fork in the road will likely do more harm than good and that we should often leave well enough alone. Perhaps, this is what I should encourage you to do here.

Most of the issues which have been raised until now have been basic. These are questions which are typically raised and discussed in a first year philosophy or theology course. The question of Faith is much harder. A lot of what I have been working to do is to demonstrate how our duty to ethics is tied inherently to God. Yet Kierkegaard keeps making me stare straight at Abraham and Isaac. That Abraham, the Father of Faith, could have marched his son three days into the desert and up the mountain in Moriah, with the intention of murdering him there is mind-bendingly difficult.

If, as I have been trying to prove, ethics is ethics for the simple reason that "the source" says so that we can get around the difficulty quite simply. After all, if "the source" says that killing your son is just what he wants you to do, than doesn't that make murdering this kid ethical, in fact does it not make any other action unethical? Well, no, it just doesn't work that way. What is ethical is by its very nature universally applicable to all people in all times. If it is not, that we live in an irrational world and everything that I have been trying to say is moot. Now, the only loophole which we actually have is that Abraham did NOT kill Isaac. However, if he marched his son for three long days through the desert and up the mountain with the intent of killing him, is he not still a murderer, at least in his own mind? A murder happens at two times. Once in the actual act and once in the decision to act.

Is it possible that Abraham did all of this and yet still believed that his son would not be killed? Could he possibly believe that the God which demanded his son's life was a good God and would not allow Abraham to kill his own son? Could he believe this in the face of God's own request? If he could not believe this than he did not have Faith, yet how could he be so mad as to believe it? Faith. Faith which I do not understand.

I hope that I am not confusing anyone with all of this. It is important that people never forget that the path of Faith is not easier than the path of disbelief. People have the very mistaken opinion that people of religion are taking the easy way out and that those atheists who stare bravely into oblivion somehow are brave. I must humbly disagree.

Songs For Thinking

2008-02-15T17:50:00.000-05:00

Freedomain Radio

2008-02-13T12:18:00.007-05:00

I came across a series of conversations on YouTube as I was going around looking at what different people have to say about Truth, Morality, God, and Philosophy/Theology in general. I found that there were a number of these by a guy named Stefan Molyneux which I think are particularly good. I tracked them back to his site and have been impressed with a lot of what he is trying to do and how he is going about it. Now I happen to disagree with a lot of the things which he has to say, but that is quite alright!

I am adding a link to his podcast site into my "Blog Links" section if anyone is interested. There is a whole lot of different conversations going on on his site and he delves into all sorts of interesting stuff so if you have some free time, check it out!

Freedomain Radio

I would like to post his thoughts on the whole "Is Ought" problem but I can't seem to get the MP3 to upload properly. If you want to check it out, go to the above link and check out his 148th podcast and give it a listen. He has a great deal more respect for certain philosophers than I do, but that's also all right! I am very satisfied that Stefan has done a good job of pointing out the failure of the position of Ann Rand.

I do feel that he has approached this issue rationally and he has come to the end of his argument in the only place which he could end. Quite interesting that he feels impelled towards morality but cannot justify it. I would suggest that this is the ultimate dichotomy which has to tear apart these types of philosophers.

A Solution for Hume's Guillotine

2008-02-11T13:45:00.000-05:00

I started to reply to this comment but found that I was taking up way too much space for a comment. Instead I am going to have to post it here. I am wondering why is it that it is assumed that I would have an answer to this problem? Some of the greatest philosophical minds have held that it is impossible to resolve this problem! I might just be talking about a difficult problem for modern philosophy, and really that is how I started out.

That said... I now think that there is one way to resolve Hume's Guillotine. I actually just worked this out and have no idea if this line of reasoning is valid or if anyone else has ever come up with it first. Perhaps I am the only one to come up with it and shouldn't be posting this to the internet and blowing my chance for a book deal!

Alright, my solution has to do with purpose. While everything written above still stands, it seems to me that there is one way which it is not totally irrational to suggest something "Ought" to be different than it is, and this has to do with objects with a purpose. You can say that an axe is dull and that it ought to be sharper - in order to cut better. The axe actually has a purpose, a function which it was created to serve, and is either serving this function well or poorly. If it is serving this purpose poorly than it could be said that it ought to be something other than it is, in order to better fulfill that purpose. One can say this about the axe because it was made for a reason. One could not make the same claim about a rock. The rock is what it is and has no purpose by its essential nature that I know of. The only way one might suggest using the term ought in regards to the rock is if they wanted to use that rock for a specific purpose.

As human beings who are rational and in possession of free will we are able to in the very limited fashion above sculpt some crude purpose out of the dead matter of our universe. The point where my line of reasoning breaks down is if one considers that we don’t really make anything, we just adapt it to suit our needs. The axe is really just a piece of iron and a piece of wood which we have put together, using the concept “axe” to give it some limited purpose which suits the whim of the moment. One might just as easily attempt to hammer nails with the axe and suggest that it ought to weigh less and have a shorter handle. The only response I could make to that is that this was not the reason for which it was created; it was created to cut wood.

Let’s make the analogy more complex. Let us imagine that a humanoid robot is created. This robot is made to do a specific task, let’s say to sew up a hole in your jeans. If the robot gets up and starts cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes, and fixing your car, you could say it really ought to stop all that and get right to sewing up the hole in your jeans because that was the reason which it was created for.

In this way human beings can fall into the realm of ought statements only if there is an ultimate purpose for which we were created. I would like to make one distinction between the limited form of “ought” which we are able to use on the axe and the robot and the form of ought which we find ourselves bound by. If the universe really was created out of nothing as religious people and astrophysicist maintain, than whatever did the creating really does have the right to use the term ought in its full sense. This creation was not the clumsy adaptation of one thing to suit the needs of one person but rather the creation of all matter and all people. The purpose for which these things were created is the true ought which ultimately governs the entire universe.

As far as I can see this is the only way to make it through the guillotine with your head still on.

Hume's Guillotine - The Is Ought Problem

2008-02-08T14:07:00.000-05:00

I have been meaning to go over some logical tricks and fallacies which provide barriers to our ability to clearly analyze philosophical issues There are quite a few of these and to many, these are actually rather self-evident.

The first little trick which I would like to discuss is the Is Ought problem. This is both timely and interesting because this is a central issue in the modern consideration of ethics and is one which was used in the debate over ethics which I posted below.

Essentially, the difficulty which moral philosophers run into is deducing what Ought to be from what actually Is. This is one of the things which Hume came up with and it is commonly referred to as Hume's Guillotine because it chops most ethical arguments neatly in two. What Ethicicists are essentially trying to do is derive a system for how the world Ought to be, deriving this from the only thing which they actually know; the world as it Is. The difficulty, you see, is on what basis are you to make the statement that anything Ought to be in any way different than it Is?

Let us consider an example for clarity. Sam happens to be a thief. This is something from the realm of fact with no moral judgment placed upon it, Sam takes things which do not belong to him. The problem in moving from the statement that Sam is a thief to the statement that Sam ought not to steal, is that we are moving from something real to something which is unreal. You see that Sam Ought not to steal is not connected in any way to the universe as we know it. It is an interesting question to wonder where this whole concept of Ought comes from at all.

We can take this from another angle and say that Sam's stealing from Betty inconveniences Betty. This is another statement of fact. However, the only way to move towards a moral imperative is through the mediating statement that Sam ought not to inconvenience Betty. So we have just taken the argument one step further and arrived back at the same difficulty. One can try to get around the difficulty by making the statement that stealing is wrong, but all that you are doing is using different words to say the same thing. So you end up back on the same difficulty.

There have been a number of attempts to get around Hume's Guillotine but none which holds any real validity. The blade of that guillotine cleanly cuts in half any line of reasoning which tries to move from what really Is to what Ought to be. An interesting problem no?

Back to the Basics

2008-01-29T10:18:00.000-05:00

I ran across this very interesting debate this morning over some delicious muffins and a cup of coffee. Yes, I do study philosophy and theology for breakfast. This debate focuses in pretty intently on one of my major questions in life: Is God Necessary for Ethics? If you have read much of my writing on this blog, than you know which side of the debate I happen to sit on.

This is a pretty long video and I do think that both parties do a good job of covering their own points. If you cannot watch it all, try to at least watch the two introductions. I feel a little poorly about representing the opposition as being irrational, which is not necessarily true.

Part of what I find really interesting about this debate is that it seems to be between a doctoral student and an actual doctor (I am assuming of philosophy). As I was working over stuff like this at a bar in Thailand, I think I deserve a honorary doctorate degree!

Busy

2008-01-23T18:06:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the lack of postage. I've been busy working on a project with the Princess.

Check it out!

For My Sister

2008-01-15T21:14:00.000-05:00

I was impressed by the aesthetic of this song. The tragedy was that I only knew of one person who might be able to appreciate the nuances of the lyrics. Enjoy!

(1/16/08) Edited because what was here before was dumb!

Huckabee on Evolution

2008-01-13T11:17:00.000-05:00

The previous video I posted brought up some controversy over the question of what Mr. Huckabee thinks about evolution. This is a pretty clear answer.

Of course the question of whether or not we are "descended from primates" is not really a moot one. However, it does seem to be a specific question which is secondary to the question of whether or not we accept the scientific theory of evolution.

I think that his answer is a bit of a cop out though. "I don't know," is the answer of a politico which I suppose is his way of not offending any voters.

Mr. Huckabee

2008-01-11T21:48:00.000-05:00

Politics. Apparently this is what I am talking about this week. I don't really know why. At any rate, I was looking for this Buddhist speaker who I really like and whose name I simply cannot remember when I stumbled upon this.

I don't any other background on this guy, but he seems pretty on the ball to me.

Political Fiasco?

2008-01-10T08:47:00.000-05:00

I would like to open by saying that I don't really follow politics. I am really not all that interested in politics as a whole. I am interested in political issues and how they effect societal and moral questions. This however, is purely political and was sent to me from my associate on the other side.

Check this out.

Voter fraud is something which people have been yelling and yammering about in every election that I can recall. To me this seems like people are trying to claim that reality always follows the set path predicted by statistical data, something which reality does not actually do on a pretty regular basis.

All I can say is that if this was a rigged job, than they didn't do a very good job at it. Recording zero votes for someone is way too easy to prove wrong. All you need is one person to come forward and say that they voted for Ron Paul to upset the results. A nice round number like 11, on the other hand...

The Other Side

2008-01-07T09:54:00.000-05:00

I had found another of those rather horrid videos which I was going to respond to scathingly as irrational and blind, but realized that I have posted very little on what is good and only on what is bad. So here we go. This is a much nicer video, and one which I find to be quite uplifting.

It is funny, because what led me to this video was a search titled "Bertrand Russell is an Idiot." You can see what I was doing, checking to see if my writing had popped up anywhere else! It hasn't, by the way. What I did find was a whole series of videos and essays railing against CS Lewis' blindness and his "irrationality" titled "CS Lewis is an Idiot." I suppose I could have posted one of those here and attacked that, but I am afraid that I don't quite have the energy for all that.

It is interesting to compare my own life to that of Lewis', so vastly different yet similar in such odd ways. I am not sure if you are aware, but I was convinced that I was going to be a writer for years and years. Since I was very very young, perhaps no older than 13, this has been my dream. I certainly have not given up on that dream, but it does seem to have become a little tarnished these days.

I suppose that what I really need is a moment to turn away from the dark and into the light. It is very possible to spend all your time defining what is Wrong, or what we are Not, without any real consideration of what is Right or what we Are.

Well, I am off to finish one of the books that I started writing a couple of months ago. I think the idea is really quite clever!

Bertrand Russell is an Idiot

2007-12-11T09:23:00.000-05:00

I do not understand how or why certain people become famous for their works in the area of ethical philosophy. Bertrand Russell is a perfect example of one of the people who should not be considered an authority in anything philosophical, though (like Dawkins) I understand his science was rather good. If anyone ever wants to reference the book after my book ticker on the side has moved on, the text is Why I am not a Christian, by Bertrand Russell, copyright 1957 George Allen & Unwin Ltd. and published by Touchstone Books.

I have not finished the book, and I am not sure if I am going to be able to. I can only take so much of certain things before I give up and discard a book as useless. I suppose that I could just choose to not read it and instead listen to what other people say, but no if I did that I would still think Russell was a genius. Let us look for a moment at some of the things that Russell is really all about. I am going to pass over his Anti-Christianism, which is really the major focus of the book, as it is unnecessary to dispute this point to reject the major philosophical ideas which Russell presents.

Ethics: "All moral rules must be tested by examining whether they tend to realize ends that we desire. I say ends that we desire, not ends that we ought to desire. What we 'ought' to desire is merely what someone else wants us to desire," (p 60 Not Christian). Part of this is, of course, completely true. What we ought to do is almost always something which we don't really much desire to do at all, and is instead something outside of us which we feel we should do or not do. The true irony of this is that we find this book to be absolutely rife with things that Russell feels that we ought to do, or not do! For example Russell feels very strongly that we ought to teach kids about sex early on, and that we ought to promote the use of contraceptives, and ought to allow for extra-marital relations. You might notice that Russell is a bit caught up on sex and he insists on talking about it endlessly as if it is the most important ethical issue in the world. I don't want to imply my own position on any of these things, because what is really important, and fatal to Russell's point, is that he has contradicted himself. If those things which Russell wants me to do don't lead to ends which I happen to desire than, by Russell's own rule, I had better begin ignoring them right away.

Free Will: This one is a little harder to nail down with a single quote but I will paraphrase a several paragraph explanation for the sake of brevity: As all of matter follows the laws of physics and all actions of man are actions made in the realm of matter, even thought is electrons following neuron paths in the brain, even if there were such a thing as free will it would never be able to impact any action or even thought. Therefore, we might as well assume it does not exist, (p 37-9 Not Christian). To make this idea more palatable Russell follows it up with a specific situation: If someone happens to annoy us, we should simply "face the fact that his annoying behavior is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible," (p 40 Not Christian). This is again, partially true. There are clearly things which psychology and genetics have set up in a specific manner in each of us and these things do have a bearing on our actions or disposition. However, if Russell were correct in saying that free-will does not really exist than why is he writing this book? Clearly he is trying to get people to change their minds about certain things, specifically the truth of any religion. Furthermore, if Russell is correct than his arguments against all religion fall apart as well! If the priests and crusaders Russel rails against for atrocity had no free will in the matter, than it is clearly ridiculous to suggest that they did anything wrong or in fact could have ever done anything different!

I actually find this to be rather depressing. I keep picking up books of people who are supposed to be great philosophers and enormously brilliant men but, in the end they don't seem to be saying much of anything at all. Perhaps, I am just too thick to understand them.

Into the West

2007-11-30T19:25:00.001-05:00

As one of those nerdy people who really gets into the work of Tolkien this is just great. Enjoy my nerdyness!

The Fall of the Greater Good

2007-11-27T09:21:00.000-05:00

Welcome back everyone. That was a excellent little vacation, there is nothing like a big turkey and several tasty adult beverages to set the scene off right! I trust that my American readers enjoyed a similar event. You Canucks out there should know better than to celebrate an event started by a failed "great northern passage" explorer, even if this event does have the distinguished honor of being Newfie in origin.

I promised quite some time ago to deal with the ethical question of "The Greater Good," and I suppose that it is about time for me to make good on that promise. I started out by writing a short story. This did not really suit my fancy so I threw it out. Unfortunately, this means that our discussion is going to continue in the much more boring logical essay format which I have pioneered (or really stolen from long dead philosophers).

The moral theory of the Greater Good asserts that what we call morality is derived from a need to place the good of all mankind (or the larger social group) above the good of individuals (or smaller subsections of the social group). This position has one key strength and several irreconcilable flaws.

The great strength of this argument is that there really IS a moral imperative to often sacrifice or jeopardize ones own personal wellbeing in favor of another's. Risking one's life to save the life of another, or giving food to the hungry for example. Really this is the very basic foundation for almost all moral development, "treat other people the way that you want them to treat you." As such the concept of placing the Greater Good above our own personal well being has a certain legitimacy.

However, if this is how we derive all morality we will very quickly get into some pretty sticky situations. The classic rebuttal is to offer the situation (this is what the short story was going to be about by the way) in which an entire world is granted peace and freedom from pain and discomfort by the intermediary of having one innocent (a child if you like) live a horribly tortured existence. Is this situation morally correct? A whole world lives in peace at the price of only one child. The net gain (for the Greater Good) is enormous, think of all the children who would suffer and die is this bargain were not put into place! To expand on the example, consider the situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany. The Jews were a minority group, would their torture and extermination then have been morally correct, if it had furthered the Greater Good?

Another objection to this entire theory is the question of who is to determine what this "Greater Good" really is? It is easy to say in a situation where there are two people with plenty of food to go around but one is starving. It is much harder, near impossible, to determine on the basis of this theory what to do if there are two starving people with only food enough for one. What do you do in the situation where the mathematical "good" is equally good or equally bad?

One may suspect that the motivation for pursuing the concept of the Greater Good, is in part derived from the fact that it does not appeal to anything outside of nature. This is to say that there is not need for a God to present or affirm this moral theory. Instead we may say such things as "it is an evolved instinct" or we could instead attribute it's conception to our own genius if you prefer.

Unfortunately, the system is unable to function without sacrifice and there is not and never will be any person who is impartial enough or smart enough to genuinely say what sacrifices should be made. Just think, that individual would have to know every single detail about every single life before making any decisions!

This moral theory is created from the mere shadow of another moral theory and as such does not hold much weight.

The Sultans

2007-11-21T21:52:00.000-05:00

Happy Turkey Day everyone. Is it just me or does that guitar look suspiciously familiar? Maybe I'm just going crazy or something...

Sorry about the volume!

Won't Get Fooled Again

2007-11-06T09:04:00.001-05:00

I have to admit that I don't really like this video. I wanted to post the song and the only versions that I could find that weren't live were anti-Bush propaganda ads. That's not really my thing either so I chose the lesser of two evils!

Wrapping Up - The Source

2007-10-24T08:40:00.000-04:00

Alright, well I wanted to wrap up my little series of logical proofs regarding the existence and nature of The Source. This is not to say that I will never return to the subject but that I am not really sure how to extend the argument using pure logic much further.

What we have really been talking about here is a branch of Theology called Natural Theology, which looks into those things that can be said about The Source of the universe using only what we can derive from the actual material world and using basic logic. As you can see there is much more that can be said using nothing more than Natural Theology than many would have you believe!

However, to get into the really interesting and difficult aspects of the nature of The Source and human spirituality you have to appeal to something other than derivative logic. Really if The Source is non-material, outside of time, and all the other stuff that we have been able to say about It, than the only way that we are going to be able to know very much more about It is if The Source actually breaks into the material universe in some truly bizarre manner and comes right out and tells us.

This is what Theology calls Special Revelation and is the only way that we are going to be able to go very much further in our discussion. In Christianity this is supposed to have happened in the prophets, to Abraham, Moses, and (of course) Jesus. In Islam this is supposed to have happened through the above people as well as in the prophet Mohammed. In the Hindu religion this is an ongoing process of the Source's self revelation through meditation and yogic practice.

For those who are skeptical of any form of Special Revelation I am certainly able to empathize. I almost want to agree with Kant’s evaluation of Special Revelation (he says that if someone has an experience that defies your understanding of the universe either that person is mad or, if you believe them, you are). However, we have had enough purely scientific statements that are radical enough to meet Kant’s criteria (consider quantum physics, planetary orbits, and black holes) that it renders his argument a little absurd. At some point we all have to re-evaluate our understanding of the universe.

We have come a long way together from the basic premise of the universe's existence in an atmosphere of intense skepticism. We could look into the fundamentals of all the major world religions and consider them from the perspective of natural theology and philosophy but this would be a study that I could only poorly discuss. I will leave that to the experts.

Work

2007-10-05T08:10:00.000-04:00

I don't write about work as a general rule (you never know where the powers that be are lurking) but I am having a pretty crappy week. It seems that my job is becoming more and more a "shut up, keep your head down, and don't ask us any questions" situation. For someone who really does think that an open discussion of situations can lead to real and genuine progress this is pretty hard to swallow.

Anyway, aside from wallowing in self pity I am also up to my neck in coursework, so posting has become something that is on the back burner. See you when I see you.

A High Level of Discretion is Advised

2007-09-27T19:57:00.000-04:00

This song has been stuck in my head all day (unlucky radio station this morning) and is driving me NUTS!

Here is the chorus (courtesy of azlyrics.com):

No, we're never gonna quit
Ain't nothing wrong with it
Just acting like we're animals
No, no matter where we go
'Cause everybody knows
We're just a couple of animals

Aside from the fact that it is just bad music, what really bothers me about this song? The whole lyric "just acting like we're animals" which is preceded by a "nothing wrong with it" line. What does he mean by saying that they are acting "like animals?" It's not difficult to figure out. This is obviously not a sophisticated argument for human life being essentially biological in nature. Now what does it mean to say that you are acting like a decent human being? Why are these two things different and why does Mr. Nickleback insist that there "is nothing wrong with it" so insistently?

Gah... I need to get that song out of my HEAD!

What does the Source have to do with ME?

2007-09-25T18:03:00.000-04:00

So we have determined that the Source exists and that It exists outside of time and matter. One of the implications that we have determined is that the Source interacts with every portion of matter and every moment of time equally.

I would like to take a moment to reflect on how far of an advancement in knowledge this is. Some of the questions that people have spent their lives struggling to answer, we have answered. This is big stuff! But enough of that, on to the next new thing!

So far the Source that we have been discussing is impersonal and distanced from humanity, although at the same moment incredibly intimate (interacting with every moment of our existence). The very real and difficult question that arises from all this is: What does this Source have to do with me? The Source is the cause of everything and sure maybe that includes me, but really what difference does the existence of the Source make in my day to day life?

This is really the hardest question that we have tackled yet. There are some philosophical questions that are answered by the Source we have proven but they are pretty abstract things which most people don't interact with on a daily basis. What we would need to demonstrate is that the Source is somehow "interested" in us, and that is difficult. Only a person can really be interested in something and the Source that we have here is not really a person. It is more of some funky type of force.

If there were such a thing as a "Personal Source" (currently unproven) than this would clearly have serious implications on ethics which would be an important tie in to our everyday lives. I am not sure if I can prove that a "Personal Source" exists, but I am working on it. If anyone else has any ideas, feel free to chip in.

Some Things I do Only for Myself

2007-09-11T19:05:00.000-04:00

Free Will - The Complications of a Source that Exists Outside of Time

2007-09-10T14:08:00.000-04:00

Welcome back everyone (not that there are really a lot of people here!). Just so you are aware I am taking a class right now so you can expect my postings to become a little more irregular. The wedding was great, for pictures see the Princess' Blog, and I am not only wishing them the best but looking for an appropriate wedding present for them. The Capitalist suggested a brick of gold (how appropriate) but I won't be doing that. We had a great trip and the Grammar Nazi was missed. Hopefully we will see you again soon!

Moving along to our next area of discussion! We have had a long look at The Source and it's relationship to time. What we were able to say is that The Source exists outside of time. This required to look more closely at what time is and how we interact with it as conscious beings. The conception of time that seems to be the most accurate was that presented by The Good Reverend (*chuckles* what would Chaucer say about that title?). Time is another form of "location." As human beings we exist in four dimensional space (time being the fourth dimension), which does not easily form itself to graphing. To locate an object in space you need three dimensions (X, Y, and Z). To locate an object in time you need four (X, Y, Z, and t).

As we have been discussing the beginning of the universe we can say that x, y, z, and t came into existence with the universe. The Source then exists in an area beyond the t variable, much like It lies beyond the X, Y, and Z variables. The question then is how does It exist in time? This is all pretty sticky stuff!

The term eternity has been thrown around a bit. I would like to define eternity as that which exists without beginning or end. This will break the t variable entirely, but if the Source exists prior (logically not temporally) to the big bang than we are going to have to concede that most of our terminology and concepts (based as they are in materialism) are going to be broken in a conversation of the Source. One way to conceive of this is to place the t variable at infinity + 1, meaning that the Source interacts with every point in time equally but still has that existence prior to time. This is a bit of a crude model, I know.

One can also consider the other three dimensions to equal infinity + 1 in the same sense. If I have put all this together correctly this would explain the theological conception of an "omnipresent" God figure.

How does this pertain to the problem of Free-Will? If all time is present to the Source that means that THIS moment is present and two weeks from now are present. If the Source knows what is going to happen two weeks from now, it can be said to be predetermined what will happen. If it is predetermined what will happen, how can we say that we have free will? Haven't we reverted to a slightly more elaborate form of determinism than the materialist advocates?

Not really. The loophole is that the Source may know what will happen, but this does not preclude free will. For instance, I happen to have a friend whose tastes are very monotonous. I may be able to guess very accurately what he is going to order from a restaurant menu. When he comes in and picks the same thing that I knew he was going to pick, he has still exercised his free will. Advance knowledge does not necessarily imply determinism. Of course my knowledge of what my friend will order is not nearly as absolute as that of the Source (being present at the moment of the future choice) but it is a sort of dim analogy.

I have gone on a bit here and am no longer sure I am making any sense. It has seen a long week already!

Breakdown

2007-09-09T21:49:00.000-04:00

That's it! It's all been too much. I have finally snapped and lost my mind. Now I won't be happy until you have all lost your's too! Bring on the crazy.

The Fishman

2007-09-03T11:29:00.001-04:00

My older sister recently asked a very important question about an old family legend. I thought that the best way to reply would be with this clip.

What has happened to the Fishman? Well sister, there is a simple answer:

After These Messages... We'll be Right Back!

2007-08-16T09:20:00.000-04:00

We have been moving and I am still waiting on internet service and phone lines being set up. This upcoming week we are going to be headed up to good old NFLD for a wedding, so expect some dead time.

We should be back in a week and a half. See you all then (or before then if you can make the wedding).

Modern British Literature

2007-08-07T13:14:00.000-04:00

People may have noticed that I am rather compulsive about reading and re-reading books. I will read a book and sometimes pick it right back up and read it again. The book that I am currently re-reading, which I had just finished, is a book by C.S. Lewis called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. These come from Lewis' popular series of children’s books, The Chronicles of Narnia, which I know from my childhood.

What really triggered my desire to re-read the book yet again is that I was remembering a book that I read in Japan. If you ever want to improve your literacy, move to a country where you can't speak the language and start buying books. I was compulsive. I read every book that I could find, whether or not it was interesting or good or absolutely horrid. I had inherited a number of books from the previous English Teacher, who was British, and I traded books with the other English Teacher at my school, who was also British. I read and re-read these books and learned quite a bit about the country and even about myself as a result.

As you may be aware England is a country which was at one point in time very religious, this is where the Anglican Church (Episcopal in the US) originates. It is the Church of England, which, before religious freedom came about, was the church of the entire country. Over time the Religious sentiment faded and England is now a very atheistic country. One of the interesting results of this is that a lot of writers feel the need to express how stupid religion is and how everyone who believes in any sort of deity is a trifle daft or simply naive. I happen to think that this point of view is a little silly but am happily willing to say that their free will grants them the same "right" to draw conclusions about the universe as my own. However, it has rendered a lot of modern British literature to be a bit crappy. I want to be clear that it is not the fact that they are Atheistic writers that makes their literature crappy; it is that they have come to the conclusion that life is pointless that makes their books pointless and crappy.

One of the writers, whose name I cannot recall, wrote a short story about his childhood. In the short story he grew up in a religious family and went to school at a religious school. His character makes a large number of satirical comments about his family and the silliness of religion and goes on to draw a number of conclusions about religion that make the child a genius (which he may have been).

What really made me want to re-read the Voyage of the Dawn Treader was that the British character talks about the books that he liked as a child and how he liked the Chronicles of Narnia until he was struck by the analogy of Eustace (from the Voyage) and Saul (from the New Testament). The author thought that Eustace's conversion from being a regular "prig" into being a pretty decent fellow who still had a bad spell or two was Lewis' comparison to the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus. The character from the British book draws the conclusion that Lewis was trying to "pull something" and decided to never read anything that Lewis wrote again.

Now there is no question that Lewis genuinely WAS trying to "pull something" and that Eustace's conversion was in fact a Christian analogy, what surprises me is that the British author was so far off as to what the analogy actually was! Eustace's conversion is very clearly an analogy for baptism, from the washing away of sins to the immersion in water. What I want to say, and I have taken a great deal of time to get to the point, is that the British gentleman was so dead set on attacking anything that has to do with Christianity that he didn't even bother to take the time to see that his argument was incorrect.

I suppose that part of my irritation is caused by the assumption that because so many people agree that one does not have to actually back up the things that we say. If everyone agrees with what you have to say, then you have to work twice as hard to make sure that what you are saying is correct.

Reassessing the Nature of Time

2007-08-02T18:50:00.000-04:00

Allow me to start with what we have agreed on to date. We are agreed that there must be a beginning to the universe, that it cannot have existed forever, and that it had a cause which we are calling the Source. We are agreed that the Source must exist outside of the material universe and cannot be a part of it.

Some discussion has been had on the nature of Time and in what way the Source might interact with time or be subject to time, and that is what I would like to look at today. There are a couple of premises that I would like to put forward for consideration, they may be found invalid and discarded if necessary.

1) The first premise that I would like to introduce is that "time is a property of matter". It can be defined as the rate of change in matter based on a single perspective. For most of us time seems to be constant so my insistence on a single perspective might seem a little odd. However, Einstein’s papers on Relativity and Special Relativity have killed the notion of time being consistent for all things. This means that every material creature experiences time differently depending on velocity and gravitational forces.

2) If the Source exists outside of the material universe, than it must be non-material in nature.

3) If the Source is non-material and time is a property of matter, than we can say that the Source exists outside of time.

This is something that is foreign to us as human beings are material creatures and all the things that we physically encounter are also material and therefore subject to time. What can it mean that something exists "outside of time?" It is very difficult for us to get a handle on this concept but logically we are left with no alternative. In order to explain this we are going to have to look closer at our notion of what time really is. Hence a second proposition which opens our real discussion:

4) Our single perspective of time is part of a larger fabric of time called Eternity. 5) Eternity is to time what the universe is to matter; the sum total of all of it. In the same way that we can come to understand that there is more to the universe than what we can see or touch, we can also come to see that there is more to time than the passing perspective that we ourselves possess. 6) As an event comes into NOW it comes out of Eternity and into NOW, as the moment passes it passes back into Eternity. 7) The Source, being timeless, does not exist in time, but instead exists in eternity, which means that all moments are NOW.

I am indebted to the Reverend and Mr. Mandal for their discussion of eternity and am counting on them to help me refine this concept.

This does have certain implications on Free-Will which we will be discussing next.

Placing One Foot in Front of the Other

2007-08-01T08:30:00.000-04:00

I am going to be adopting a new writing style in my posts on logic. If my argument is going to build upon the result of a previous argument I will link the previous argument and sum up in the first paragraph. My following paragraphs will be broken into logical segments and numbered. I am hoping that this will make discussion about the various points that I bring up easier and more succinct. I worry that my failure to remain focused on one topic and to follow clearly and logically from one point to another might be causing more confusion rather than alleviating it.

This means that when you object to something I have said, you can clearly identify the premise that you want to disagree with and state your reasoning. As always, I welcome dissent, this is designed to be as much of a learning experience for me as it is for anyone else. I have had to seriously reconsider some of my arguments as a result of our conversations.

Thanks, and let’s keep it up!

One step Forward, Two steps Back

2007-07-26T15:27:00.000-04:00

It seems that I have muddied water that should have been clear with various obscurities and tangents. My point about ethics presupposes the existence of God. Stating that without God there can be no true ethics may very well be valid, but there is no stated necessity that ethics be true at all. This is a logical fallacy called the appeal to emotion. I was appealing to people's emotional response to the idea that all ethics is arbitrary. The Capitalist is quite right to point out that my If/Than statement could go either way and ultimately proves nothing. I do believe that ethics can be boiled down to the two options discussed, but that no one has presented an alternative to my options hardly proves that I am right in any logical manner, much less that I am logically correct in choosing the option that I happen to choose.

Let's return to the ground that we are agreed upon. I think that the usage of the terminology "The Source" is appropriate as it avoids the implications of my usage of the term "God" and avoids the disputed scientific nature of the term "The Big Bang." By disputed I merely mean the question of whether the Big Bang was the cause or the effect; I was using the term to mean the effect while others were using it to mean the cause.

The Source then is currently defined as the initial cause. The cause that made the big bang happen. I believe that we are agreed that the Source is logically necessary based upon the argument based on causality which was discussed here. To clear the water let's be clear about what we have NOT proven. We have not proven the existence of the God of any religion, nor have we proven that the Source is conscious. I want to move back beyond even the point where we said that the Source is timeless, as that point is still under dispute. Let us just leave things for the moment right there.

The Source exists and, whatever else it may be, we can only be sure right now that it has led to the existence of the universe. Perhaps this is where I will have to stop.

Pass me a Bottle, Mr. Jones

2007-07-22T23:08:00.000-04:00

"If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?"

~ Soren Kierkegaard (Fear & Trembling)

The Myth of "Human Potential"

2007-07-17T13:04:00.000-04:00

I had hoped that Bertrand Russell would be better than Dawkins. I seem to have been equally mistaken on this count. He is more articulate but does not address the real thrust of the Proofs either, instead making vague comments about infinite regress and suggesting that the universe does not NEED a cause. As we have already disposed of the infinite regress argument and have proven the need for a cause we can push his rebutting arguments off the table as well.

What it seems most of these Atheist writers are really saying is that we need to get away from the foolish, sentimental, traditional beliefs that are articulated in religion (namely Christianity), and that once we have done so we will somehow gain the ability to fully live up to our potential as human beings. Each writer presents the idea in a slightly different manner and every writer presents the same old tired examples of how religion (specifically Christianity) is really evil. These examples are typically things like the inquisition, the burning of witches, wars fought over religion, and religious extremists such as the KKK who commit all sorts of heinous acts. One hears these things over and over again.

Firstly, I would like to know what they mean by "fully living up to our potential." I might be mistaken but it seems that all they are saying is that they want to be able to do whatever they feel like without being recriminated, and that the ethical and moral code that they personally choose to believe should be accepted by everyone. I can see no plausible argument to defend either of these positions. If all ethical and moral standards are removed I see no reason to hurry to replace these standards with those that someone else happens to hold. Why not just stick with my own and say that whatever I do is morally right, no matter what this happens to be. Even if this is not their argument, I am curious what they mean by potential. Potential to be what? To be the best moral person? To be the best bullfighter on the planet? The worst? I feel it is very appropriate to ask the question why. Why should I fulfill my potential to be any of those things? And really what do they mean by moral person anyways?

Secondly, while I personally agree that all the above examples were and are real moral evils, I am curious as to what their standards for determining a moral evil might be. If it is simply nothing more than something they happen to disagree with, then they are using the word evil in a totally different way than I am and would strongly suggest that they choose another word. On the other hand if they have a real standard I would be curious where it comes from and what gives it any binding authority over me, or any other human being for that matter.

The whole process seems to be highly suspect to me, and I don’t seem to be getting any answers. Perhaps the whole atheistic movement is aimed more at discrediting anyone who happens to disagree with it than with actually proving anything or saying anything at all.

I do think that there is a real human potential that everyone should be striving to live up to, but then the only arguments that lead up to this involve God in some way, so Russell and Dawkins would laugh me off the screen.

Richard Dawkins - The Failure of a Propagandist

2007-07-15T12:52:00.000-04:00

I am getting really frustrated with Mr. Dawkins. If anyone else has read his book and is particularly excited by what he has to say, let me know, because as far as I can tell the man has no idea what he is talking about ninety percent of the time he is writing. I am discarding the book as nothing more than propaganda. Read it if you like, but be wary, he is not offering philosophical or even scientific truths but is trying to make you into a little Richard Dawkins.

I was reading the book with a certain eagerness because I was hoping that he might be able to say something about the Logical Proof that I presented here. I was disappointed. He does mention the proof based on causality but dismisses it as being to "improbable." To be precise he says that positing a "Cause" that caused the Big Bang is necessary more improbable than simply saying that the Big Bang happened. I am willing to agree that it is mathematically more improbable, because you are adding another link in the chain of cause and effect, but probability proves nothing. You are still left with the problem of the Universe Existing at all! And (I find this to be particularly entertaining) if somethings improbable nature makes it not exist, then Dawkins love affair with Evolution is absurd to the extreme; conscious human beings having evolved from simple elements and an electrical charge are incredibly improbable, yet here we are!

Another interesting proof that Dawkins was unable to find an adequate response to, but which I did not present earlier because it is a little harder to understand, is known as the ontological argument. It goes something like this: God is defined as that being which nothing conceivable can be greater than. Existence in reality is greater than the existence in imagination. Therefore, God must exist in reality: if God did not, than God would not be that being which nothing conceivable can be greater than. A real God is conceivable after all.

Dawkins failure to adequately defeat the proofs for the existence of God, which is granting him the stronger position as it is easier to break down an argument that to create one, renders his entire premise invalid.

I have had another crack at Hume as well and think I am able to understand his arguments about causality a little better now. I will try to approach this matter again.

Time and Being

2007-06-26T19:16:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about writing about time for awhile. I find it to be a pretty interesting subject which both physics and philosophy (and theology) have things to say and I think this is a good tie in to our earlier dialog about God existing.

To recap briefly: We were able to logically determine that the universe definitely had a beginning. This beginning is what modern cosmology calls the big bang. The cause of the big bang (whatever the cause was) is a cause that is totally different from all other causes in that it exists outside of the chain of cause and effect and started it all moving. This cause is known as God by traditional theology.

From the distance already covered we can say several things about The Cause (to avoid unnecessary controversy this is the term I will use). The first thing that is clear is that if the big bang is the source of all matter and started all cause and effect, The Cause that lead to the big bang is non-material, not matter at all. This means that we won't really have much luck in looking for The Cause within the domain of science (although science can help us out a little in validating some of our thoughts on The Cause). I apologize to anyone who is devastated to realize that there is some reality beyond matter.

A good example of the validation of our thoughts by science is time. One thing that is evident about time is that it is really a property of matter. Time can be defined as changes in matter. This has been demonstrated (relatively recently) by physics: Einstein showed us the rather stunning fact that time is affected by gravity (a property of matter) and is therefore also a property of matter. If time is a property of matter and The Cause is non-material then The Cause is timeless. The big bang happened billions of years ago yet The Cause is still ongoing (if the word ongoing can be used in relation to something that is timeless. Our language is really not well suited for this type of discussion). One way to think of this is to imagine all of space time existing in a balloon with The Cause standing outside of the balloon able to view it from all angles. This is terrifically difficult for us as we are stuck in time and even our thoughts are subject to it but try to figure it out for awhile and you may get a dim glimmering of the concept.

Physics suggests at certain places in our universe, such as the event horizon of a black hole, time becomes mathematically infinite. Would this mean that someone falling into a black hole would have a similar experience, in a dim way, to the timelessness of The Cause? It is impossible to say. This is a poor analogy at any rate as anyone falling into a black hole would still have had a beginning.

This really shows that Nietzsche never paid much attention to what he was saying or his famous quote "God is dead" (or "The Cause is dead" if you like) would have been immediately recognized as absurd. It is the thought of one who never really considered timelessness or what it would mean.

Moving back to properties of The Cause, we can say that The Cause must be infinite as it exists outside of time and therefore has no beginning or ending. Beginning and ending are things that happen within time.

I think maybe it is best to stop here for today. I don't want to be accused of moving too fast and this way I can be more sure that my reasoning is correct. If you disagree on any of my points, let me know. I might have skipped something or I may simply be wrong.

Rambling On

2007-06-25T20:37:00.000-04:00

If we forget Today to live for beauty, truth, and love,
There may come a Time when such things pass utterly from the Earth.

We live our lives suspended in one Moment
a drop of water floating on an Endless sea.

If we don't do it Now,
we Never will.

Richard Dawkins

2007-06-22T11:57:00.000-04:00

I have begun reading Mr. Dawkins who, I was interested to note, has a lot of the same interests as me. He is certainly an impassioned man who believes that he is righting a horrible wrong in the world. Thus far I am just having trouble thinking that his generalizations have anything to do with me. He certainly is not describing me when he talks about religious people. I am not sure yet if he is falling prey to the Straw Man fallacy but we shall see.

I like my Muzak

2007-06-07T19:01:00.000-04:00

Logical Proof for the Existence of God

2007-06-01T12:55:00.000-04:00

I wanted to rise to the challenge of proving the existence of God. The actual nature of the challenge is to "scientifically" prove the existence of God. I am going to have to back off of this challenge a little because I cannot prove that God exists using science. Science is a series of observations that essentially amounts to "when these material conditions exist, such and such a result happens and this is what we think is happening to cause it." Using this methodology it is impossible to prove that God exists because it relies on reaction in matter and God is necessarily immaterial.

What I am able to do is logically prove that God exists. Logic is a pre-requisite to science functioning so I am actually appealing to a level of "knowing" that is deeper than that which science is able to offer.

There are a series of logical proofs that have been developed by various people at various times. I am not particularly concerned with the validity of all of these proofs and have no intention of presenting them all here. This would be unnecessary and confusing as many of the proofs use totally different means and methods to reach their goal. I will content myself with one simple proof which, if valid, is enough to definitively prove that God does exist.

What this proof does not do is say anything about the nature of God. It simply demonstrates the necessity of a Creator that could as easily be Hindu or Native American or Greek as the modern Judaeo/Christian God. Discussing the actual NATURE of God is a much bigger and harder task that I am not willing to attempt at this point. Also, if we cannot prove that there is a Creator then it is ridiculous to try and say anything about His nature.

This proof is one which has been briefly touched upon previously but I want to go into this in much greater length and detail here.

Let us start with an observation from the universe. We are able to observe that Cause and Effect are real and follow successively; one cause leads to an effect which is also a cause for another effect and so on. This is the basis for most conversation about the universe and is certainly the basis of modern science.

Cause and Effect can be traced back in time successively and without break or interruption to the beginning of the universe. I say beginning of the universe but there are really two options in considering the nature of the universe; either it simply began at one point or it has existed for ever.

The universe cannot have existed for ever. If the universe existed for ever then the chain of cause and effect would be infinitely long. If the chain of cause and effect were infinitely long it would take an infinite amount of time for any effect to result from a cause that occurred an infinite distance away down the cause and effect chain. If it takes an infinite amount of time to travel down the chain then it will never arrive. As we can see ourselves that effects occur on a regular basis we can be assured that the universe has not existed forever.

Therefore the universe had to have a beginning point. If it had a beginning point then there had to be an initial cause that got the whole domino chain of cause and effect rolling. Something had to push that first domino over and that first thing cannot be the domino itself. Logically no effect can be its own cause. This is where the necessity of a Creator comes in. Something not bound by cause and effect or the material universe (something totally inconceivable) stepped in and pushed that first domino over. This inconceivable thing is the Creator of the universe.

This is an old proof and certainly not one of my own creation. However, it is solid and forever ends the question as to whether or not God exists. The only way to deny that there is a Creator would be to say that the universe does not follow cause and effect. Unfortunately, we are able to see that the universe does.

If anyone is interested in modern science then it is interesting to note that the astrophysicists are coming around to this very model of the universe. The Steady State theory of the universe, in which the universe has existed for ever, has been pushed out the door by an increased understanding of how light is impacted by the velocity of its source, red shifting. The Big Bang theory has gained prominence and is currently the primary understanding or the nature of the universe. Physicists are avoiding the “Creator” aspect of their theory by stating that before the Big Bang occurred Cause and Effect could not have functioned as we know it now and all prior events are therefore unknowable.

Ethics - What does it mean?

2007-05-11T07:32:00.000-04:00

I have discussed several modern conceptions of what ethical and moral behaviors are and how they are developed. My first discussion was on the Social Contract, the second was on a system of belief that is quite prevalent today. Both of these are symptomatic of one side of a long standing two sided debate on the nature of ethics.

What we really have, if you strip all of the particulars away, are two views of ethics that have really been around for quite a long time. One of these states that ethics is something that is unchangeable and permanent; there is an ultimate right and wrong that applies equally to today, to tomorrow, and to five hundred years ago. The other states that ethics is variable; there is no ultimate right and wrong, merely subjective right and wrong, and what we say is ethically right today for me may not be right for me tomorrow, and probably is not ethically right for you at all.

It is interesting, though not surprising, that the first of these is generally associated with God. The second is typically agnostic or atheistic (or confused) in nature. These flow pretty naturally from the nature of ethics. If God does exist then what He says is right and wrong IS right and wrong, because he created ethics, for all of time. If God does not exist, then there can be no ultimate right and wrong and each individual is free, if you believe in free will, to say whatever he or she likes and dislikes is right and wrong respectively. If you don't believe in free will then there is not much to be said on the matter, your system of ethics is simply what you believe in because that is what you believe and it could never have been different. Most people have a strong opinion on the existence of God, for or against, and by associating one of these with God it may have pushed some readers in one direction or the other. *shrugs* so be it. I am not here arguing for or against the existence of God. I am simply observing something about the nature of ethics.

I have talked to people who try to take the middle road between these points, but that is mere confusion. You can't believe in a just God (although a unjust one might) saying that what I do today is right but if I do the exact same thing tomorrow, or five hundred years from now, it is wrong. Just like you cannot believe, save through delusion, that a cold dead universe run by chance could give a fig about ethics.

A couple of things logically follow from both points.

For the first position: First, if ethics is ultimately God's opinion on right and wrong, there is no point in arguing with Him; you are wrong and He is right. Second, unless you are God, you do not know ultimate right and wrong. Third, we can only know right and wrong if God sees fit to tell us.

For the second position: First, if there is no ultimate right and wrong we need to stop using those words (their meaning is tied into the first position); instead we should say that this thing displeases or upsets you, not that it is wrong. Second, if ethics is simply a matter of opinion, trying to persuade someone who disagrees with you is an exercise in absurdity, propaganda, or is merely entertainment.

This means that if you hold to the first position (and I happen to agree with you) then you may disagree with me and I would have to consider what you say, because I know that I am not in possession of an understanding of ultimate ethics. On the other hand, if you hold the second position (and I happen to agree with you) you might feel like writing about ethics here, but I really would have no reason to care if you agree or disagree, your beliefs and mine are both arbitrary.

So to those who hold the first position: be very careful, you are working with a system that you do not really understand that allows no room for leeway or variation. You are not going to change God's mind about what right and wrong is! To those who hold the second position: I have nothing to say to you and you have nothing to say to me. We cannot really disagree, both our positions are arbitrary.

Chicken Music for the Soul

2007-05-10T19:49:00.000-04:00

If you stopped by earlier today, yes this is a different version of the song. Apparently I really hate their live version. If you ignore the actual video it's what I was shooting for.

No, I am not learning to play the guitar.

Abortion - The Breakdown of Communication

2007-05-07T12:21:00.000-04:00

I guess it is time for me to get into some trouble. I want to talk about abortion. This is a conversation that stirs up heated emotions in people on every side of the discussion and I want none of that here. Don't make me turn comment moderation on you guys! I am willing to discuss opposing viewpoints but will insist that things be kept civil.

Ok, right into the thick of it. First of all, abortion is a simple issue. It really is not as complicated as everyone makes it out to be.

Let us start at a point that everyone (or almost everyone, Mr. Mortin and Nietzsche are excluded from that "everyone") can agree upon. It is wrong to murder someone. Don't get hopping mad and click the comment button just yet! I haven't said that Abortion is murder. I just want to start at a place that everyone can agree: It is wrong to murder another human being. Murder is here defined as an intentional, premeditated act that leads to the deliberate death of another human being.

The tricky part comes next. Is a fetus a human being? If so, then abortion, meeting the above standard, is murder and therefore wrong. If not, it is a distasteful action that removes a burden and obligation (a parasite is the term I believe). This is really the whole center point of the Abortion conversation. Everything else is really superfluous. I have heard a whole bunch of opinions on this from biologists, to philosophers, to theologians, to random people off the street and just about everyone disagrees. I have heard arguments for human life beginning at conception and arguments for human life beginning at the age of two. There are arguments about the development of the brain and the existence of the soul. I feel that most of these arguments can be simply skipped over as unnecessary. Interesting, but not the most pertinent to the issue at hand.

I really only want to make two points: First point, genetically, a fetus is a living human organism (though clearly not fully functioning or developed) that will eventually (in almost all cases) lead to the birth of a human being. I don't think that many people are seriously trying to contend that a baby is not human. My second point is best explained by analogy. I am not sure how you feel about people who are in comas (and we don't need to get deep into that point here), but I want you to imagine that someone is in a particular type of coma. This particular coma is one that has been medically documented millions of times and has a simple progression. When the coma victim first falls into the coma they have nearly no brain activity, they are essentially vegetables. They are totally dependent on modern medicine and machinery to live. However, within a couple of months there is a great stir of activity that continues and eventually results in the person coming out of the coma and returning to normal. This coma is well documented and follows a nine month course (give or take a couple weeks) in 99% of occurrences. Would you consider it to be ethical to pull the plug and let this person die, even though we know that the person will revive in nine months? I assume my analogy is clear and that the answer is no. If not, post and we can hash this point out.

I would like to address one other aspect of the issue that people consider to be incredibly important but is ultimately irrelevant. This is the question of whether or not abortion should be acceptable in the event that an unfortunate woman is raped and becomes pregnant as a result. This is tragic, but a reality. I would like to refer to my coma analogy. If the person in the coma's father happened to be a rapist (or Hitler for that matter), would that change how we have to treat the coma victim? No. That would be killing one person for crimes that he/or she did not commit. The same applies to the unborn.

I am open to opposing viewpoints. There may be some aspect of this issue that I either misunderstand or am misrepresenting. I will concede the possibility that I might be wrong. If so, prove it and we can talk.

Equality - What do we mean by the term?

2007-04-25T20:48:00.000-04:00

There is an ideology that gets a lot of respect these days that, if taken seriously, leads to absurdity. This is the ideology of Equality. Like a great many simple and confused ideologies, this one seems to be immediately appealing. Yeah, everyone should be equal. Isn't that obvious?

In one sense yes. In another, the more common meaning of the term, not at all. If you mean that everyone, every human being, should be seen as equally human, then yes, that really is obvious. A human is a human. This is a tautology. On the other hand, if you mean that everyone should be literally equal then we have a problem. If we really wanted to make people literally equal then we would have to level the playing field on all counts, from intelligence to athletic ability. There was a great short story about this, by Kurt Vonnegut. The point that Vonnegut makes is that if there is a difference between two people then they are not equal; this is how we know they are different, we compare them.

Now people have yet to really suggest Vonnegut's absurd level of enforced equality, but there are many equally absurd things that people are trying to defend using the ideology of equality. For instance, gender equality. We are continually trying to break down gender stereotypes. From one point of view, as stated above, men and women are absolutely equally human beings. From another perspective it is absurd to state that men and women are equal. They are biologically, physiologically, psychologically (and much more) different. The ability to bear children is a simple, yet profound, difference between the sexes. This means that gender equality is biologically foregone; unless we engineer men to bear children, or sterilize all women, there can be no true equality.

Let us be clear: I am not opposed to providing legal methods of defending the essential humanity of every human being. I oppose this ideology because it is founded in the glorification of lazy reasoning.

Revisionists Note (4/30/07): I did not pay to much attention to where I was getting that blurb on Kurt Vonnegut but I am not in support of providing materials to plagiarists.

~ The Management

Travel Troubles?

2007-04-25T20:25:00.000-04:00

For those of you who are interested in the travel difficulties that were encountered on my recent trip, you can find the details here. I will grant that they were not quite as bad as those of my errant sister but they were bad enough to freak out my other half.

There will be no pictures of recent events posted to this site. The Blueberry-Princess may on her site, but she isn't sure yet.

Welcome Back Everyone

2007-04-22T17:19:00.000-04:00

The title just about sums it up. I have to admit that I am a trifle disappointed in the lack of suggestions for those questions that other people find to be interesting. I was taking a couple of seconds here and there to post little blurbs of things that I might want to talk about and saving them as drafts. As a result I logged in this afternoon and discovered I had the following headings: Marriage - What is it? Love - Define the term. Gay Marriage. Abortion - The failure of Communication.

They all seemed a little overambitious for the moment (and a bit more political than I had expected) but they were to topics that I was either talking about or thinking about while I was away. If you are interested, check back in a couple of days. I will get to them eventually. That is assuming that nothing more interesting distracts me in the meantime!

Out of the Office

2007-04-01T13:25:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends,

I will probably not be posting for a couple of weeks. I have a couple of pretty major events coming up which will be taking up most of my time. *grins*

Fear not! I shall return to discuss the meaning of life, the universe, and anything else that I happen to be momentarily interested in.

The Management

Lives in Becoming

2007-03-30T07:39:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about human beings and how we exist in time. Our experience of time is one of gradually accelerating movement forwards. One of the things that this means is that the “I” that writes these posts is gradually changing as well. Human beings are creatures in "becoming." What I mean by this is that we are not solid, complete finished works. We are works in progress, developing and changing every passing moment into who knows what?

Of course we are only truly able to interact with time in this current moment; in the ever-present now that we live and act in. However, every action has reverberations forwards, and sometimes backwards, in time. Doing something today will actually change who we are tomorrow. The amazing thing is that through our own free will we are able to mold and shape who we become. C.S. Lewis talks about this a little bit in one of his books, I can't remember which one. He says that we are continually making choices which, given enough time, will turn us into either angel's or demons, and in a very real way he is right. You are able to see this even over the course of a human life, mere decades. People who start out as moderately bad people, unless they do something to halt the course, tend to grow worse and worse.

This is not meant to be discouraging. We have the opportunity here and now, and because we can only interact with time in the now our only opportunity is now, to make decisions that will change the entire course of our lives.

Perspective and Truth: Mark II

2007-03-20T13:38:00.001-04:00

As part of the human condition we find that we are isolated within our own personal point of view. We are born this way. Everything that we see, feel, think, or know exists primarily in our own heads. This, quite naturally, creates a sharp separation between what we call our "self" and everything else. As Descartes pointed out, we can be sure that WE exist (individually at least) even if we cannot be sure that anything else does. So, as a result of the way we are built, we are born into isolation. The isolation of our own perspective.

After awhile, we may become aware that there is such a thing as other selves. Unfortunately, what generally follows from this is a strong sense that what one person thinks is drastically different from what every other thinks. The whole study of the philosophy of language is based on this problem. This is one of the big reasons that we always have to be so careful to define our terms as accurately as possible, we have to be sure that what we mean by a word is what everyone else means by that same word. This is only natural as we have different associations with different words and concepts. What seems inevitable from this position is that we should decide that there is no unified view because no one can see every issue from every perspective.

On the other had there is something called Truth which claims to be the reality beyond our perceptions. Some reject Truth on the grounds that it is something that is greater than individual perspective, and if individual perspective is all that we have then it cannot be demonstrated to exist at all. What I would like to point out here is that if there is no such thing as Truth than nothing can be said to be true, and this would include the statement that there is no such thing as Truth.

Another interesting idea is that what is ultimately True would be the sum total of all human knowledge. This is actually built on the idea that each one has an individual perspective and that if we were to combine them we would have all the perspectives that are possible and that this would be true. This is interesting because it touches on the manner in which human knowledge is actually gathered. However, even if we gathered all human knowledge into one massive database it would still be unable to tell us if any proposition were fundamentally True or not. This might be the closest we can humanly come to knowing the Truth but it would not ultimately be the Truth.

Horowitz - Ballade 1 by Chopin

2007-03-02T23:35:00.000-05:00

For those, like myself, who have never known real music.

David Icke - Secrets of the Matrix

2007-03-02T11:01:00.000-05:00

So I didn't really want to post these. I have gotten rather disgusted with this guy and so was just going to try and pretend that I had never even considered talking about him. However, influence has been placed upon me (fear the man!) to post the others so that people can watch them in full length. Someone clearly wants this information to be made available to the public!!!

I didn't want to post them because I think that it actually lowers my credibility just to have put his name on the site. Oh well.

This is the second portion of David Icke's - Secrets of the Matrix:

This is the Third:

I have only watched the first and half of the second. I couldn't make it through the whole of the other ones. They are good examples of poor reasoning though! I had planned on breaking down his arguments one by one but with about six hours if video I just don't want to waste the time.

What do I think this is all about? I think that it is amazing how important you feel if you think that the whole world is against you! Imagine: You are the lone defender of truth against a global power that is continually striving to crush you down! You are the lone last hope of the human race against these monstrous inhuman forces! Sounds familiar to me.

*shrugs* If this stuff were true either this guy is working for them OR he would have been dead after discovering the first little thing that "the Illuminati" didn't want him to see. It's as simple as that.

Free Will - To be or not to be?

2007-02-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

The question has been legitimately posed: Does free will exist? Is there really any such thing as choice or do we only act in certain ways due to the structure of our genes and the events that have happened to us over the course of our lives? To put it simply: Did I really choose to eat a bagel and cream cheese for breakfast this morning or did I eat that bagel and cream cheese because my past experiences and heredity made me do it?

In some ways the determinist position (positing no free will) has a lot of support. The whole of the material world seems to operate on the basis of cause and effect. (As a side note for those who have read my discussion on Hume and Cause and Effect - I will here assume that cause and effect does truly exist. Hume's contention was about the a priori necessity of the phenomenon, not the existence of it.) What caused the cup of coffee to fall on the floor? I dropped my hat, which knocked over my pen holder, which in turn knocked over my cup of coffee, which then fell to the floor. The line of cause and effect can be (theoretically) traced back to the beginning in an incredibly complex network of cause and effect. The only part of the line of cause and effect which poses the slightest problem is me. Why did I drop my hat?

The determinist position is that the forces that are at work in me as a human being are actually the same sort of mechanical forces that we observe at play in the world of matter, just working at a higher level of complexity. I dropped my hat because I was not holding it tightly enough. I wasn't holding it tightly enough because my mother once yelled at me for wrinkling her hat and my mother yelled because she was also the victim of this chain of cause and effect. One of the obvious things that happens when we adopt this position is that all our talk of right and wrong and fair play goes right out the window. It makes no sense to blame someone for torturing and murdering if they were bound to do it with no choice. We might kill them, because of our own cause and effect chain, but we couldn't with honesty blame them for it any more than we could blame the cup for falling when my pen holder hit it. This does not disprove determinism in any way (unless you hold morality to be real) but it does demonstrate that it, or a great deal of human behavior at least, is rather odd. You see, we all act as if the torturing murder did actually have a choice in the matter and made the wrong one.

Here we get into some pretty deep water because the determinist position says that what we have is the illusion of free will but that in actuality this is also just part of our upbringing and our heredity. In short, the illusion of free will is something we are taught to have. Now Occam’s razor has a couple of things to say about this argument, but as a reasoning tool the razor is certainly not always correct so we will let the argument stand for now.

Here we have an apparently logically consistent position. However, there is another side of the argument which says that there is indeed such a thing as free will and that it is demonstrated a thousand times a day in our every little choice. Will you have the wheat or the white? Will you shake his hand or slap him in the face? This argument is that the evidence of our lives is sufficient proof that there is such a thing as free will. Clearly one position must be correct and the other incorrect.

The key to this little puzzle lies in the nature of consciousness. The whole determinist argument functions on the assumption that we are essentially the same as all other matter in the universe. This, however, is untrue. There is a fundamental difference between a Human Being and a rock and that is that one is conscious and the other is not. Consciousness cannot be an illusion, as Descartes demonstrated (I think therefore I am). Clearly the rock cannot have a choice as to what is happening; it is not even aware that anything is happening at all. Before one can make a choice, they must be aware that there is such a thing as choice. On the other hand, Human Beings are aware that there is such a thing as choice. We have the potential to choose. Treating a Human Being as if he were simply matter is only dealing with part of the whole Human and it is the other part that actually possesses free will.

Of course this is not to say that we are not limited by our heredity and upbringing. These do set the stage and make us more likely to do or even to think certain things. However, the actual decisions that are made are made by the conscious individual. The murder may have been more likely to become what he became because of a horrible childhood but he still chose to commit the crime. If you abdicate your free will, which you can try to do, you are also abdicating your consciousness and all that makes you a rational human being. This is a very dangerous line because the more aware we are of our own free will the greater our ability to use it becomes.

Free Will

2007-02-26T11:52:00.000-05:00

Freedom is a necessary pre-requisite for love or the discovery of truth or even simple respect. Should Free Will be found not to exist, and that all human life is actually nothing more than the sterile byplay of mechanical determinism, in that same moment everything that makes life worth living would also vanish. Love cannot be love if it is forced; it is reduced to nothing by the mere attempt. One could not discover truth; in a deterministic world what we consider to be true is nothing more than what we are programmed to believe. Respect must vanish; there would be nothing to respect a brave man for if he never had the option of not being brave.

There are a couple of interesting and important things that necessarily go along with this. In politics we must ever remember that governments exist to serve the people. While it is necessary for governments to restrict freedom in certain ways (through laws), the goal must ever be to increase personal freedom. In personal relationships we must always remember that it is only through freedom that the possibility of love or basic goodness exists. If we move to restrict freedom then we are also moving to restrict all of the things that go along with it.

In the Free Will argument, which I will probably address directly at some point, as with a great number of other arguments it is possible to hold either of two positions without immediately obvious logical inconsistency. However, if you have a choice between two options, both of which may be equally valid, why ever choose the one that is obviously worse?

David Icke - Secrets of the Matrix

2007-02-23T16:41:00.000-05:00

I have been listening to some of David Icke's stuff and have watched the above video in it's entirety. I happen to know a little bit about a number of the things that David talks about in the video. Now, I certainly don't expect everyone to watch the whole video, it's more than two hours long, but I was hoping to get some opinions. What do other people think of him? What is your response?