Jury Duty in the Time of Covid-1984

I have jury duty for the next couple of weeks.  Yesterday, I had to go to the courthouse for jury selection -- and, of course, because all the bureaucrats are still playing the absurd Covid-1984 Game, we potential jurors were "asked" (*) to wear face-diapers and practice "social distancing", and their procedure for processing us  has been stood on its head to play the game of "social distancing".

So, as instructed, 40+ of us (plus at least 10 waiting to go before the other judge for "re-entry") were there in the hallway-as-lobby outside the two courtrooms at 9:00 AM.  You know, practicing "social distancing" ... by sitting and standing next to one another.

I brought a face-diaper, but I did't put it on ... and no one at all gave a damn for an hour, until the bailiff came out to register us.  That's right, we (the jurors, *and* the defendant and some of his relatives, and the "re-entry" people) practiced "social distancing" in that hallway for an hour or more, before anything public happened.

Eventually, a lady sitting across from me, there for moral support for the defendant, noticed the writing on the face-diaper I was holding, and asked what it said.  I told her, "These face-diapers are not helping, Karen" and everyone within earshot laughed.  So, I was cheered by that.  What I mean is, when I go to the grocery store, I see no faces, just face-diapers, and it's easy to begin to believe that the majority of people actually believe this cargo-cult bull-shit that that a piece of cloth hiding your face -- hiding your humanity -- can stop viruses.  Turns out, most people are just trying to avoid being harassed by the Karens.

Eventually, the bailiff came out to register us, and she was a Karen -- she even sported the "I want to speak to the manager" hair-do (**) popular with Karens.  Eventually, Karen said to me, "We need (***) you to wear your mask". So, I put the face-diaper on ... and *pointedly* did not cover my nose ... and that was OK ... because the point of face-diapers is not about anyone's health, but rather about the bureaucrats forcing us mere tax-cattle to understand that they rule us.

Eventually, Karen seated us in the courtroom, entering the room one at a time to assigned seats spread over the room.  You know, to maintain the "social distancing" delusion.  I think it was 11:00 when the judge finally entered, and spent the next hour telling us how important-to-justice our role is ... but mostly, listening to himself talk.  Judges *are* just lawyers, after all.  And lawyers don't really give a damn about *justice*.

So, naturally, with all that talking, the judge eventually needed to take a drink.  And so, of course -- because the demand that we hide our faces has nothing to do with anyone's health -- he removed his face-diaper several times and did drink.  Meanwhile, the (armed) sheriff's deputy, who was sitting directly across the room from me (I was one of the last potential jurors assigned a seat, and I was in the jury-box), sometimes had his nose out of his face-diaper, and sometimes removed it entirely to drink from his thermos-cup.  Surely, you have guessed by now that Karen also removed her face-diaper more than once to take a drink.

Well, noon rolled around and the judge had finally heard his voice for a satisfactory amount of time, and was going to have the prosecution (there were three of them, but the second-in-rank did their part of these proceedings) begin their part of the 'voir dire' stage of the trial. However, she (the prosecutor) convinced him to call a lunch break.

Since I had walked to the courthouse, I wasn't about to go back outside.  So, other than a few minutes to go to the concessions room on the floor below, I sat in the hall/lobby -- face uncovered -- with several others, some also with human faces.  During this hour, I saw *many* employees of the "justice system" walking around without face-diapers: some were putting one on *as* they exited various offices, some (who looked to be mainly cops of various sorts) didn't appear to even have a face-diaper on their person.  I was sitting near the door to the family court lobby; on the door was one sign saying the only one person at a time could be in that lobby (never mind conditions just outside the door), and another sign saying that anyone who entered the room without a face-diaper faced a charge (i.e. an automatic *conviction*) of "contempt of court", with a $250 fine and/or 30 days in jail. Toward the end of the day, they send us out again while the prosecution and defense agreed upon which of us would be empaneled as the jury: again, I saw several "justice system" employees clearly violating the absurd face-diaper protocols and "rules" that they impose on us mere tax-payers.

EDIT: I had meant to mention that as the defence lawyer, a *very old man*, was speaking and asking various potential jurors questions, his face-diaper slipped from his mouth, and he, as a *sensible* old man, ignored that and continued to speak.  Eventually, Karen (who was seated behind him and to the side) noticed that the lawyer's face was uncovered, and so she came out on the floor and interuppted him to "remind" him to hide his face again.

(*) I *loathe* the use of "ask" to mean "demand"; but that is (of course) how they phrased it.

(**) One of the funny things about this 'do' is how silly it looks from the back, especially when it is done the way this woman's was: with the hair less than 6 inches long and relying on product to give it poof and body, but resulting in an amusing void at the crown of her head.  Do these women never *look* at their soul-sisters sporting that same look?

(***) And I really loathe the passive-aggressive "I need you to ..." construction.

The Handmaiden

James Hannam at Quodlibeta: Ethics and its importance to ancient Greek science -- "...The primacy of ethics and the belief in objective moral values explains both the multiplicity of Greek natural philosophies and the differences between them. It also shows us how utterly unlike modern science Greek natural philosophy was. Finally, it illustrates that the Greek attitude towards science was identical to that of early and medieval Christians. David Lindberg was fond of a metaphor he found in the work of Roger Bacon – that natural philosophy was the handmaiden of Christian theology. For the pagan Greek philosophers, whether they were theists or not, science was the servant of ethics."

Talk about not having eyes to see

Here is a comment made on Mr Wright's blog that I wish to share -- Comment by BobTanaka

I hate to be a damper, but I really want to know: how are we certain this is the Consecrated Host? Is it possible that the Satanists kept the real Host and gave back an unconsecrated one in its place? We’re obviously not dealing with honorable or honest men here.

Does anyone know?

Indeed: how does one distinguish the alleged physical body of Christ, that is, the alleged (actual) meat and blood of the consecrated elements (*) from mere bread and wine that hasn't been consecrated?


(*) I mean the physical thing which is asserted to actually become by consecration the actual flesh and blood of the Christ, rather than the mystical Body of Christ, which is the Communion of All Saints, of all the Redeemed throughout all history past and yet to be.


Edit:
Just in case it's not clear: I can rejoice with the Catholics that the Host was recovered and that the Satanists promise to not filch one again ... because it's important to them ... while still believing that the whole raft of their beliefs attached to the Sacrements (and priests and prelates) is absurd and, indeed, anti-Christian.

Reasoning with materialists

In short, it is logically impossible to reason with materialists, for the -ism they have freely chosen to assert utterly denies the very possibility of reason, and of freedom. Consider the argument at the end of this post --

Victor Reppert: "We have seen the argument that atheism must be true, because it's the wave of the future? But is it? Apparently atheists don't reproduce at the rate of religious believers, so the future belongs to...well, not the atheists. "

LadyAtheist: "But... 100% of babies born to believers are atheists!"

Victor Reppert: "If you are going to claim all the babies [for atheism] because they lack a belief in God, then I suppose you can have my cats, too. But, so much for atheists being brighter than the rest of us."

Martin: "And rocks. Rocks are atheists as well."

ME: "And, on average, [God-deniers are] as clear-thinking [as rocks]."

I don't know what 'skeptical' means: "Unlike theists, who are WRONG about so, so much."

My response --

So asserts the foolish materialist who also ultimately asserts that he himself does not, and cannot, exist.

And yet, you (singular and collective) never can manage to identify even one thing about which Christians are so, so "WRONG". The nearest you (again, singular and collective) ever come to making a rational argument against Christianity goes like this:
1) IF there is a Creator-God, then Christians would be right about that, and I would be wrong;
2) BUT, Christians are stupid "faith-heads", who by definition (for I have defined the terms) do not believe what they believe for rational reasons;
3) ERGO, Christians are wrong. PLUS, they’re stupid.

Notice, Gentle Reader, there is nothing rational about that; it a rationalization for the God-denier’s own refusal to reason about the reality of God -

1) IF there is no Creator-God (*), then the only sorts of cause existing ab initio are those of non-rational mechanical necessity;
2) No purely non-rational mechanically necessary cause can ever give rise to a free result, nor to a rational result;
3) THUS, *all* subsequent events in the history of the world are purely non-rational mechanically necessary;
4) BUT, “all subsequent events in the history of the world” includes all our own ratiocinations -
4a) meaning that it is not a free-and-rational comprehension of the logical truth of some matter that enables us to say ‘X’ - nor, contrarywise, a free-if-irrational refusal to say ‘X’ that enables us to say ‘not-X’ - but rather, our saying of ‘X’, or of ‘not-X’, is simply the purely non-rational mechanically necessary effect of some prior purely non-rational mechanically necessary cause. Tomorrow, due to some other purely non-rational mechanically necessary cause, we may well say ‘Y’.
4b) THUS, if there is no Creator-God, then we humans do not, for we cannot, reason.
5) BUT, we human beings *do* reason;
6) THEREFORE, there is a Creator-God -- which is the Necessary Being, and which is both rational and free ... which is to say, the Necessary Being is not a 'what', but a 'who': he is personal.

(*) who is a Necessary Being, and who is personal - being both rational and free

As I keep saying, *you* are the proof that God is!

Edit (2013/04/29):
Now, consider the response of this epitome of Reason Against Religious Obscurantism --

Me: "2) No purely non-rational mechanically necessary cause can ever give rise to a free result, nor a rational result;"

I don't know what 'rational' or 'argument' (neither alone nor in conjunction) mean: " Some mechanistic thinking machines work better than others. Addled by faulty religious programming, yours is not one of them.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/3195"

I'm not going to waste my time following his link -- I mean, even aside from the fact that "Free Thought Blogs" had next to nothing to do with either freedom or thought, all he has said, in both his first post and this one is, "Yer stoopid!" And some inane ramblings by Richard Carrier will never substantiate that risible asserting -- and I certainly don't expect Gentle Reader to follow the link.

There is not, and never has been, and never will be any such thing as a "mechanistic thinking machine" -- 'mechanism' and 'thought' are mutually exclusive: thus, "thinking machine" is an oxymoron.

But, let's set aside that truth, and pretend that there can be, and are, such things as "mechanistic thinking machines". Let us pretend -- for this is his strange assertion -- that human beings are "mechanistic thinking machines".

When this fool asserts, " Some mechanistic thinking machines work better than others. Addled by faulty religious programming, yours is not one of them." all he is really saying is: "You do not assert the same things I assert, *therefore* you are not thinking correctly" -- keeping in mind that he's not actually using the word 'thinking' to mean, well, thinking.

Surely, Gentle Reader can see, without it needing to be spelled out in greater detail, that to assert "You do not assert the same things I assert, *therefore* you are not thinking correctly" is to turn reason on its head; that such an attitude is the antithesis of reasoning. And yet, this is commonly how "free-thinkers" (ahem) reason.

Another thing "free-thinkers" like to assert, and he is at least implicitly doing it here, is not merely that Christians don't think correctly/logically and rationally, but that, due to our "programming", we cannot think correctly/logically and rationally, while, at the same time, asserting that *they* do think correctly/logically and rationally -- the "proof" being, of course, that they arrive at the "correct" "conclusion", and we do not.

To put it another way, they commonly assert, and he is asserting, that contrary to us, they can and do exceed their own "programming". But this assertion is absurd on so many levels. Non-exhaustively, and in no particular order --
1) If *I* were to say, "You do not assert the same things I assert, *therefore* you are not thinking correctly", you can be sure that *he* would never accept that as sound and valid reasoning; as it is not. Thus, it is intellectual hypocrisy -- hence, I call him, and all his ilk, 'fool' -- that *he* asserts that.
2) If human "reasoning", and results of human "reasoning", were indeed *caused* by mechanistic cause-and-effect, then there is no way, nor could be, for humans to distinguish sound and valid reasoning from the contrary;
2a) thus, we could not distinguish truth from falsehood;
3) In asserting that they can and do exceed their own "programming", these fools are *denying* the main thing they want to assert, namely that there is such a thing as a "mechanistic thinking machine", and that human beings are examples such;

So what was Pope Francis up to on Holy Thursday?

Get Religion asks: So what was Pope Francis up to on Holy Thursday?

My answer --

What he was up to is demonstrating that he's holier than Christ -- Jesus washed the Disciples' feet, the feet of people he well knew, to rebuke them their childish and sinful one-upsmanship. Francis washed -- and kissed -- the feet of criminals, people he does not and will not know, who were picked out and presented to him for his silly photo-op, to demonstrate to all the world how proudly humble he is! how he can out-do Christ in humility and holiness!

The phenomenon of presenting oneself as being more holy (and/or more moral) than God is very common in Western cultures -- even the anti-Christians do it. Francis' display of it just happens to be a very Catholic way of doing it.

As another example, consider the "liberal" promotion of injustice, which they call opposition to ‘vengeance’ -- this is at root a public display of moral one-upsmanship, not just over you, but over God himself.

Edit (2013/04/28):
Drew has further thoughts

I hadn't realized that the woman whose foot Francis was kissing was a Moslem ... but that detail makes the whole thing perfect, don't you think?

Nero is Back

Kristor: Good News: Nero is Back --

...
Thus began a grand tradition of state persecution of Christians. It persisted until 311, when Constantine and his fellow Caesars, whom he eventually superseded, agreed to tolerate us, despite the fact that we had “followed such a caprice and had fallen into such a folly that [we] would not obey the institutes of antiquity.” Constantine’s own conversion to Christianity was, among other things, implicitly a straightforward and utter repudiation of the old Imperial cult. Constantine was indeed officially anointed of the Lord, but was not himself personally a son of God.

That sublime recusal perdured throughout Christendom for 1700 years. It is now over, and the civil cult is once again arrayed against Christianity. The only difference is that nowadays the cult of the cosmopolis is atheist.

What may we expect?

There will come a disaster. It won’t be global warming; our future persecutors have been preparing our culpability for “climate change” for a couple decades now, but the climate isn’t changing, and the hoi polloi seem to be losing interest in the idea. The disaster will be something different; perhaps an economic or fiscal collapse, followed by food riots. Perhaps it will be manufactured, blown up out of all proportion by the press, but really not so bad in reality (when have we ever seen that happen, eh? Eh?). Perhaps our rulers will set the fire themselves.

We will be the scapegoats. ...

But then, did not Our Lord warn us that the world would hate us and murder us, as it did him? Did he not tell us to count the cost before claiming his name?

As I mentioned to Kristor in an email, I myself have always believed that we would see State persecution of Christians, right here in America, within my own lifetime. This, despite having been raised in the sort of churches that explicitly taught that this generation of believers would escape unscathed. I mean that, even as a child, I figured that what I was being taught on that particular matter was just wishful thinking.

Two-for-one Sale!

I'd read about this some time ago, but had decided at the time to not write about it.

Michael Egnor (quoting Wesley Smith): Belgium offers a two-for-one sale on lethal injection... -- "But, I must say, after fighting against this issue for twenty years, I am not surprised. This is the simple logic of euthanasia consciousness. Once killing is seen as an answer to human suffering, the meaning of the term becomes very elastic and the killable caste, like the universe, never stops expanding."

There's a first

This is something you don't see every day (and something I don't think I've ever seen) -- BenYachov arguing rationally

(h/t to Victor Reppert)

German Court: Just say No ...

via Laura Rosen Cohen

German Court: Just say No ... to the Mohel -- "A Cologne district court ruled on Tuesday that parents may not have their sons circumcised for religious reasons. The ruling has angered Muslims and Jews."

Riiight! Like the ban on circumcision -- which is harmless (and appears to be health-enhancing, especially amongst promiscuous persons) -- will really be enforced for the Muzzies, any more than the ban on 'female genital mutilation' currently is.


"The court now considers circumcision a crime of bodily harm.

The court decided that a legal guardian’s authority over a child does not allow them [sic] to subject the child to the procedure."

Yet, anyone who have been paying attention knows "that a legal guardian’s authority over a child *does* [] allow them [sic] to subject the child to the procedure" of having "doctors" intentionally amputate his dick so that everyone can pretend he is a she.

I told you he's a fool

William Vallicella: Sudduth, Simplicity, and the Plotinian One -- "... And a little Christian charity can't be a bad idea either, especially towards such 'apostates' as Michael Sudduth."

Michael Sudduth isn't a scare-quote 'apostate', he *is* an apostate.

Why doesn't Vallicella take his own advice and extend "a little Christian charity" toward the Christians who are criticizing the now-apostate Sudduth, rather than blogging on and on about what meanies they are?

ps. The reason for the 'atheism' tag is that paganism amongst moderns is just 'spiritual' atheism.