Don Surber on Our Would-be Rulers

 "Keeping us confused"

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/keeping-us-confused

Kristor on "Jubilee"

"Jubilee Incoming, Ready or Not; Why Not Make Ready, & Indeed Regular?"

https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2023/04/29/jubilee-incoming-ready-or-not-why-not-make-ready-indeed-regular/

KT Cat on "The Value Of Christian Study"

 https://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-value-of-christian-study.html

It's a good read ... even if KT is squishy on the scientism issue.

Re: "Distant Starlight Proves the Universe is Billions Upon Billions of Years Old"

 from the 52:58 mark --

=====

But what about light? What did this [Special Relativity] mean for light's experience of space and time? Travelling at the fastest speed possible in the universe, the effects of relativity become extreme.  Very Extreme.  All distances shrink to zero.  As does the time taken to cover these zero distances.  And so, for photons, no matter how far they travel across the universe, not a single instant of time will tick by.  Even though this light may have existed in time and space for many years [i.e. in time] or light years [i.e. in space], even though it would have been clearly formed by one electron in one location and vanished when absorbed by another electron in another location, the space-time distance between these two events would be exactly zero.  To the photon, it is born and dies at precisely the same moment. To the photon, it is as it it had never existed at all. [I'm not convinced that this last statement stands up.]

=====

Another way to say the above is that from a photon's "point of view" or "frame of reference" it exists *simultaneously* at all times and at all points in space on the particular path which it takes from its creation to its destruction.

I had grasped this point about light with respect to Special Relativity, all on my own, years ago.  This is why I have never been impressed with, nor intimidated by, the "Distant Starlight Proves the Universe is Billions Upon Billions of Years Old" assertion.

EDIT: What I mean is that it seems to me that the "Distant Starlight Proves the Universe is Billions Upon Billions of Years Old" assertion is based upon disregarding physics following Einstein and instead treating the now-considered-erroneous Newtonian physics as the measure by which to understand the universe.

https://youtu.be/bAedYtUredI?t=3179

Kin, Skin, & Sin (Doug Wilson)

 Wilson is wrong on his current position that "There is no such thing as race / There is only the human race", but otherwise and overall this is a good take on all this.

Firstly, the English word 'race' isn't *about* skin-color or ancestry or even about biology; it is about different ways of categorizing things or animals or people. That for about the past 150 years (i.e. since Darwinism took over the minds of the "progressives") we most commonly use the word to denote the broad continental origins of various ethnic groups doesn't change the fact that the word is not so narrow in its designations.

Secondly, if you're distinguishing an Englishman from a Welshman, or an Igbo (called 'Ibo' in my youth) man from a Yoruba man, you are distinguishing these men based on their ethnicities -- for which distinctions the word 'race' has historically been used.

But, what does ethnicity mean in a country like America? In the South Bend Indiana of my mother's youth (i.e. nearly a century ago), it mattered immensely whether one was "Polish" or "Hungarian". Or, it mattered not at all, if like her people, one was simply what is now disdained as "WASP". In my own youth in South Bend Indiana, some people just had difficult-to-pronounce family names.

The ethnicity of a black American and the ethnicity of a white America are singularly 'American'. Yet, sometimes, we do need to recognize the broadly continental origins of a person's ancestry.

While 'English' or 'Yoruba' are ethnicities, 'white' is not an ethnicity and 'black' is not an ethnicity. 'European' is not an ethnicity; 'African' is not an ethnicity; 'East Asian' is not an ethnicity; 'American Indian' is not an ethnicity. And so on.

And yet, there are recognizable differences -- generally unimportant, but sometimes critical -- between a person of primarily European ancestry and a person of primarily (sub-Saharan) African ancestry. To blind ourselves with the one leftist lie that "There is no such thing as race" is as foolish and potentially harmful as to blind ourselves with the other leftist lie that "All there is is race".

Kin, Skin, & Sin | Doug Wilson

Again, with the "Natural Born Citizen"

 It's getting to be that time again, when politicians who are not legally entitled to seek the US presidency will nonetheless seek the US presidency.  It is up to *you*, as US citizens and electors, to understand why these politicians are ineligible and to *refuse* to support them in their illegal quests.

The US Constitution *requires* that the President and the Vice-President of the USA be natural born US citizens.

But, what does "natural born US citizen" mean?  What requirement or requirements does one have to meet in order to be a "natural born US citizen"?

Some people -- generally Democrats or other leftists, but also GOPers who want to obfuscate the fact that their favorite politician is not a natural born US citizen – will say, “The Constitution does not define the term ‘natural born US citizen’”, as though that means anything; and with the generally unspoken assertion that the term therefore means nothing, or they will explicitly say that therefore we cannot know what it means.  Same difference.  But, this pseudo-argument is absurd in at least three ways:

1) The US Constitution defines almost none of the terms it uses. One of the few terms it does define is ‘treason’, and that is because it is redefining the term more narrowly than it had been understood since 1066.

2) To say that since the Constitution doesn’t define some term it uses, and thus that the term’s meaning is unknown or obscure, is to say that the Framers mindlessly put things in the document without knowing what they meant by those terms.  You know, sort of like Nancy Pelosi’s infamous “We have to pass it to find out what’s in it”.

3) To say that since the Constitution doesn’t define some term it uses, and thus that the term’s meaning is unknown or obscure, is to say that *all* terms used in the document are of unknown or obscure meanings.

Some people – much the same people as above, and for much the same reasons – will say that "natural born US citizen" means *anyone* born in the USA.  But, does that assertion stand up to scrutiny?  Are “anchor babies” natural born US citizens, and thus legally able to occupy the offices of President and Vice-President?  Are “birth-tourism babies” natural born US citizens, and thus legally able to occupy the offices of President and Vice-President?  I don’t know whether it’s still common, but some years ago it was popular with the more affluent subjects of (Communist) China to travel to the US just before their babies were due to be born, so as to take advantage of an at-the-time relatively recent supreme Court (capitalization intentional, as per the Constitution) re-interpretation of the first sentence of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. 

Are these people – Chinese “citizens”, born to Chinese “citizens”, reared in Communist China -- *really* natural born US citizens and legally able to occupy the offices of President and Vice-President?  Of course not, that’s absurd!

So, if merely being born on US soil does not suffice to make one a natural born US citizen, what does?

Here are the conditions that one’s birth must meet to in order to make one a natural born US citizen:

1) One must be born under the *sole* jurisdiction of the USA;

2) One’s parents (note the plural) must be US citizens at the time of one’s birth;

2a) which implies that one’s parents must be married to one another, as bastards “have no father”.

Concerning “birth tourism” babies and “anchor babies”, while indeed born in the USA, they fail on both counts.

Concerning Nikki Haley, Kamala Harris, Marco Rubio, while indeed born in the USA, they also fail on both counts.

Concerning Ted Cruz, he also fails on both counts – he was not even born in the USA, his father was not a US citizen at the time of his birth, and, get this, he wasn’t even legally a US citizen until he was 16 years old.

Concerning Barack Obama, we don’t know *where* he was born; he himself has given conflicting accounts.  But, we *do* know that his father was not a US citizen at the time of his birth.  Thus, Barack Obama is *not* a natural born US citizen, and his occupancy of the office of US President was unconstitutional, and thus illegal.

 

Error ... and Agency

Below is a (lengthy) response I emailed to an online friend. While I haven't included previous emails between us, I think there is enough here to reward your patience in reading it through --

======================

Me: ==… but my main point is that error -- to be more precise: the ability to *recognize* that one has made an error; the ability to correct the error (to the extent possible); and to know that the attempted correction is indeed a correction -- proves that we are agents, proves that "free will" is reality. ==

 

Kristor: ==That seems right intuitively, but I’m not clear on the argument, so let me try to flesh it out. A stone falling has a final cause, a telos ...== 

I almost never argue in those sorts of terms (nor, you may have noticed, by reference to Scripture, except when Scripture or Christian claims are the immediate point): partly because I'm a simple man; partly because the proponents of the false views I wish to argue against tend to ignore/dismiss those sorts of arguments; partly because the general populace has been noticeably dumbed-down within my own lifetime.  So, I try to argue 1) in terms to which I think most people won't react, "Well, that's over my head" and thus ignore the argument, and 2) in terms that the deniers of "free-will" *claim* to accept.

 Thus, I tend to argue by treating atheistic claims about reality *as though* they were true, and then drawing out the contradictions, either directly within the claim itself or against other statements about reality that we (in general) recognize to be true.

Kristor:  ==Error then is a character only of free acts. From the fact that we apprehend errors, then, it follows that we act.==

I think that's one way to put it, though not the way I would put it.  And, I suspect, most people would find such a formulation confusing. 

I am approaching the argument about the reality for “free-will” in terms of C S Lewis's distinction between "cause-and-effect" and "ground-and-consequent", rather than Aristotle's Four Causes.  To paraphrase Lewis's illustration of the distinction -- "cause-and-effect": the tea kettle is whistling because the fire under the kettle is heating the water, which is to say, it is "exciting" the water molecules, which ... and so on; "ground-and-consequent": the tea kettle is whistling because I wish to make a cup of tea.  Now, while these two explanations are *vastly* different, and don't even begin to touch on the same questions, they are not at all contradictory.

You could say that my general approach is to show that, when it is critically examined, we see that the atheistic view of the nature of reality denies (and must deny) "ground-and-consequent" causation, and agency, altogether, and that we all know these denials to be absurd, and thus we *see* that atheism is itself absurd.

Not that this sort of argument is any more successful than any other sort of argument in getting the typical God-denier to acknowledge the reality that God is. 

========

In your very first response to my initial note to you in response to your OP thread at The Orthoshpere, you said -- "Yes. What is not an act cannot be an error. The error generated by the Pentium CPU ["floating-point bug"] is such, not to the CPU, but to the user thereof."

I replied -- "Well, in the case of the Pentium CPU "floating point bug", the error was made by the Intel engineers."

I misread you, which is to say, ==>I made an error<== and then some days later, I ==>realized<== that I had made an error: I had initailly misread you (because I was skimming, rather that reading *attentively*) to be saying that the error generated by the buggy Pentium CPU was due to user error, when in fact, you were restating my point that the user, being an agent, might recognize the erroneous result as an error, but that the CPU, being no agent, does not and cannot.

So, my error in comprehending what you wrote, and my later recognition of the error, is just the sort of thing I was getting at in my first email on this topic to you.

============================

Background concepts (and mini-argument) –

We "theists" recognize two general categories of causation: mechanistic (i.e. "cause-and-effect") and agency (i.e. "ground-and-consequent").  Most people, including most God-deniers, will initially agree that these two categories are real, and distinct, and unbridgeable ... until they see where the argument is going. 

From recognition of the unbridgeable distinction between mechanism and agency, I argue that agency cannot "arise" from mechanism -- this is what the God-deniers who haven't denied agency from the start will then deny and this denial can then be shown absurd and thus false -- and thus that agency is, and must be, fundamental to nature of reality. 

==>But, as there is no such thing as 'agency' unless there is an actually existing agent, it follows that *an actually existing agent* is fundamental to the nature of reality.<== 

That is, *we* cannot be agents unless God (who is an agent) is/exists; or put another way: the fact that we *are* agents proves the reality of God and simultaneously proves the falseness of atheism, in all its forms.

On the other hand, *atheism* -- the -ism, in all its forms -- denies, and must deny, true agency.  For, as per the little argument above, to acknowledge the reality of agency is to acknowledge the reality of God.

Some *atheists* will try to posit random causation, or ‘randomness’ as a causation -- and these people will frequently try to subsume agency under 'randomness'.  But, this is absurd, and thus seen to be false.  For, to speak of ‘randomness’ is to speak of “a lack of correlation” between two or more things.  That is, to speak of a “random cause” is to literally speak of a “cause” which is not correlated with its alleged effect – literally, it is to speak of an effect which is not caused by a “cause”, and of a “cause” which does not cause an effect.

============================

So, back to my error and my recognition of the same; and treating the atheistic “explanation” of reality as being true; and pretending for the moment that to speak of a robot as understanding anything isn’t itself absurd; and ignoring the question of why a robot might reread something it had already read and “understood” –

According to Western-style (*) atheism, I am, in the words of Dilbert-creator, Scott Adams, a “meat robot”.  That is, I do what I do, not because I am an agent who freely chooses to do or to not do – for there are no such things as agents and no such thing as ‘agency’ – but because antecedent material/physical states mechanistically and deterministically cause me to do what I do.

So, assuming atheism’s mechanical determinism (whether of East or of West) to be the truth about myself (and ignoring the absurdity of saying that robot can understand anything), it follows that when I reread your email (which I had initially misread and misunderstood), either:

1) I would read it in exactly the same way as I had before; which is to say, I would misread it and misunderstand it exactly as I had before; or:

2) some (unknown) state or states (which states are, according to Western atheism, material/physical in nature) would cause me to read/understand it differently … which might result either in a correct understanding of it or in some *different* misunderstanding of it.  As a side note, the fact that there are more ways to be wrong than to be right implies that some different misunderstanding is more likely than a proper understanding.

But, assuming that some unknown state or states had caused me to read the email differently than I had at first, and assuming that on this rereading I correctly understood the content of the email, how do I *know* that I now correctly understand it?  After all, both my “understanding” of it, and my “knowledge” that I understand it, are due to some prior state or states, such that when I first read it I “understood” it as “this”, and believed myself to be correct, but when I reread it I understood it as “that”, and believed myself to be correct.  Perhaps if I read it a third time, I will understand it as “the other thing”, and will again believe myself to be correct.

Moreover, given atheism’s mechanically deterministic account of my nature, it isn’t even *meaningful* to speak either of me misunderstanding your email initially nor of correctly understanding it now.  Under atheism, effects are mechanically determined by prior states, not by choices, and not by meaning. 

CONCLUSION: Denial of one’s agency logically entails an infinite regress of denial that one *knows* anything.  And this is absurd, and ergo denial of the reality of one’s “free-will” is a false statement about the nature of reality.

On the other hand (as argued above), affirmation of one’s agency logically entails an affirmation of the reality and agency of God, and ergo denial of the reality of God is a false statement about the nature of reality.

It’s quite a conundrum for the God-denier … and explains why they *always* deny the reality of their own agency.

*I* say that I now correctly understand your email – and that I *know* that I correctly understand it – because you  *intended* the words you wrote mean “this” and not “that” and that when I *chose* to attentively read those words, I grasped/comprehended your intent.

But, under atheism, there really is no such thing as intent, there is no such thing as choosing, and there is no such thing as comprehending intent, nor of comprehending anything at all, for these things not only are not material/physical (as required by Western atheism), but also are not mechanically determined either (as required by both Western and Eastern atheism).

ULTIMATE CONCLUSION: Atheism, taken seriously, denies the reality of *everything*.  And this is absurd.  And thus we know that atheism is absurd, and false.  And thus we know that God is.

============================

(*) Western-style atheism denies the reality of the agent-self but acknowledges the reality of the physical/material world.  Thus, Western-style atheism’s denial of agency reduces to materialist/physicalist mechanical determinism.

In contrast, Eastern-style atheism denies not only the reality of the agent-self but also the reality of the physical/material world.  Thus, while Eastern-style atheism’s denial of agency also reduces to mechanical determinism, it does so without the materialist/physicalist element of Western atheism.

========================

EDIT (2020/11/17): 

The above post contains two arguments: 1) that our ability to see-and-correct error proves that we are agents; 2) that our agency proves that God is.  And they are linked because *everything* points to God, the creator-and-sustainer of all-that-is.

When I first started arguing online over 20 years ago that God is, and that we can know this to be true (i.e. we can know that we are not in error on this point), some people told me that I was approaching the question in a van Tillian presuppositional manner.  But, in fact, my approach is the exact opposite of presuppositionalism.

As Kristor frequently points out, the world *is* a world, it is a coherent whole.  That is, the world does not, because it can not, be either self-contradictory or absurd; for if it were, it would not be coherent ... and would not exist at all.   Thus, my argumentation builds on my belief that *all* atheistic arguments and/or assertions can be shown false by first assuming they are true and then drawing out the absurdities.

========================

EDIT (2020/11/20): 

=====

But, as there is no such thing as agency unless there is an actually existing agent, it follows that *an actually existing agent* is fundamental to the nature of reality.

=====

At the risk of appearing boastful, there is a very important concept expressed here.

Some God-deniers -- those who cannot bring themselves to accept atheism's logical entailment that they themselves don't even exist -- are trying to side-step the conundrum by abstracting out some aspect of personhood and positing that abstraction as being co-fundamental with matter to the nature of reality.  For example, the Hot New Thing for this set is 'panpsychism' ("the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world").  Now, no matter which word is used (and whether capitalized or not) -- 'Mind' (the word and capitalization formerly used), 'consciousness' (the word generally used currently), 'mentality' -- these words but refer to one abstraction or another, then reified.  But, there are no such things abstractions unless there is an actually existing mind who can abstract.

There is no such thing as 'Mind' unless there is an actually existing entity who is a mind.

There is no such thing as 'consciousness' unless there is an actually existing entity who is a conscious.

There is no such thing as 'mentality' unless there is an actually existing entity who possesses mentality.

The Paradox of Theseus's Maserati

Many people are familiar with the Paradox of Theseus's Ship; fewer are familiar with the Paradox of Theseus's Maserati. 

It seems that Aegeus had command of a time-traveling genie. Wanting to show his favor to Theseus, his newly discovered son, for his heroic acts as he had made his way to Athens, Aegeus commanded the genie to produce an exemplary gift, sure to quicken the heart of any young man, and so the genie nipped a Maserati straight from the factory. 

 Theseus, being a high-spirited youth, was instantly taken with the Maserati. He used to sit in it for *hours*, shifting the gears and twirling the wheel and making vroom-vroom noises. But, alas, as the genie had not thought to bring any gasoline/pertol back, that is all he could do with it. In time, the bloom of his enthusiasm for the Maserati had faded. 

Seeing Theseus moping about Athens, and being a doting, if belated, father, Aegeus inquired into the cause of Theseus's listlessness. Upon learning that shifting the gears and twirling the wheel and making vroom-vroom noises, even in a Maserati, gets old after a while, Aegeus commanded the genie to *do something* to reawaken Theseus's delight in the Maserati. 

 Not being the most quick-witted of spirits, the time-traveling genie returned to the scene of the crime, that is, to the Maserati factory. For days, he secretly observed the manufacture of Maseratii. And, while he never caught on to the requirement for gasoline/petrol in the tank, he *did* come to understand how a Maserati is put together, and all of the parts required. So, the genie nipped one of every single part which goes into the making of a Maserati, and took them back to Heroic Age Athens. 

As the genie's luck would have it, Theseus had a bit of a mechanical bent ... which would shortly serve him well in Crete. So, after the genie had explained how a Maserati might be assembled -- or re-assembled -- of the pile of parts, and still not understanding the necessity of gasoline/petrol, to say nothing of engine oil, Theseus's enthusiasm for the Maserati was rekindled, and he decided to swap-out every part in turn until he discovered just which part was the defective one preventing him from *driving* the Maserati. 

So, Theseus and the genie got to work (for, after all, the genie hadn't brought back the necessary tools) replacing parts on the Maserati Aegeus had given him. To keep from getting confused as to just which parts had been replaced, as each part was removed from the Maserati, rather that just dumping them in a jumble in some forgotten storeroom of the palace, the genie assembled each to all the other parts which had previously been removed from the original Maserati. 

At last, a day came when Theseus (and the genie) had replaced every single part of the Maserati Aegeus had given to Theseus -- and *still* it wouldn't start. Theseus was both frustrated and despondent. In his despair, he cried out to the Genie, “This is the Maserati which my father, the King, hast given me. Wherefore shall I tell him it that pleases me not?” But, pointing to the *other* Maserati which he had re-assembled, the genie replied, “Lo! This *also* is the Maserati which thy father, the King, hast given thee! Is this not a most wondrous gift which thy father, the King, hast given thee, in that *both* these Maseratii are one and the same Maserati?” 

Fortunately for Theseus’s sanity, the time had come once again for Athens to send to King Minos of Crete the tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. And, well, everyone knows that story.

The Boys Who Cried "Russia! Russia! Russia!"

 One of the problems with being known as a liar is that no one believes you when you finally tell the truth about something.

Amending the Constitution

 This is *my* ideal Amendment to the US Constitution --

No Bill shall be sent to the President unless it shall have been read aloud, in full, in the Chambers both of the House of Representatives and of the Senate, by the Presiding Officer of the respective Chambers.  And no Member of either Chamber who was absent for any portion of the Reading of a Bill shall vote on that Bill.  Nor shall any Regulation have the force of Law unless it shall have been enacted as a Bill duly voted by the Congress and either signed by the President, or if Vetoed by the President, that Veto over-ridden.