Matteo on Determinism

I don't know why I didn't think to share with Gentle Reader Matteo's onservation when he first made it, as it's just the sort of thing I made the "overheard" category for.

Matteo on Determinism: "But for too many, the tastiest cake is the one you can have and eat, too. I suppose a lot of folks want just enough determinism to make God an impossibility, but not so much as to make themselves an impossibility."

Here is the context in which Matteo originally made the observation.

Journoquiddick -- VRWC vs VLWC/2

Matteo and Kathy Shaidle have a number of posts and links to others' posts concerning the latest liberal-media political scandal to come out of the 'JournoList' usergroup ... In this case, it is the "coordination" by a number of "objective" journalists (which is to say, wholly-owned mouthpieces for the DNC) to bury the story about Jeremiah Wright as relates to alleged-President Obama.

Matteo: The Hits Just Keep On Coming
Matteo: Legally Actionable?
Matteo: All You Need To Know About The MFM

Kathy Shaidle: But remember: minorities can't be racists, and liberals can't be 'haters'
Kathy Shaidle: 'Rev. Wright is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life'
Kathy Shaidle: Wow, this sounds so familiar ...



The "liberals" seem always to be in a tizzy about the famous so-called "vast right-wing conspiracy" ... I think it's because they're *jealous* of conservatives, with our lone imaginary "vast right-wing conspiracy." And they're jealous because all their conspiracies always turn out to be merely half-vast.

In political calculus, it appears to be the case that iVRWC > x(VLWC/2) for all values of 'x' -- it appears that one imaginary "vast right-wing conspiracy" is greater than any number of "half-vast left-wing conspiracies."

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Look, boys and girls, this newest scandal, like all the rest, *is* "liberalism," and there can be no compromise by sane persons with it. "Liberalism" is wicked, it is morally evil, and thus it necessarily corrupts all who embrace it. "Liberalism" has not a damned thing to do with "helping the disadvantaged" -- and even that self-congratulatory phrase is morally and rationally offensive (*) (**) -- rather, "liberalism" is all about the acquiring of and holding onto power over the lives of others.


(*) Concerning "the disadvantaged" -- to call poor persons "disadvantaged" is to at least imply that those who are not poor are so due to some unfair and unearned advantage ... and it is to imply that poor are poor because the not-poor cause them to be poor. Calling poor persons "disadvantaged" is, at best, but another reflection of the "liberal" refusal to understand wealth and its creation and uses.


(**) Further, no one is holding a gun to "liberals" heads so as to stop them from using their own wealth as they see fit to help the poor, if that is really what they wanted to do ... and let's not even get into the question of whether the sorts of help they are ever willing to consider can actually help anyone (***). Rather, it is "liberals" who are always gung-ho for holding guns to everyone else's heads so as to compel them to "contribute" "their fair-share" toward "helping the disadvantaged."


(***) The adage, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life" expresses a conservative understanding and approach. The "liberal" version of the adage is: "Teach a man to fish and you have a job for today; give a man a fish and you have a lifetime employment."

From the fury of the Northmen

A thousand years ago, our cultural ancestors prayed, "From the fury of the Northmen, Lord, protect us!"

Today, we ought to pray, "From the tender mercies and caring solicitude of the Good Intentioned, Lord, protect us!"


The above thought was sparked by Matteo's post: The Next Move

Humility

Similar to the distinction between knowledge and wisdon which I recently posted, I've just read an excellent contrasting of humility to what it is not, which I wish to share with my lone reader --
"The humble person does not think less of himself. He merely thinks of himself less."

This is followed by a CS Lewis qoutation which expands upon the idea expressed.


Also, I recommend to Gentle Reader the context in which that comment was made, Matteo's post called 'We Played The Flute For You, And You Did Not Dance; We Sang A Dirge, And You Did Not Mourn,' in which he discusses a recent foolishness of the fool, PZ Myers.


===== Bonus Post =====

Ah, I see that Gentle Reader misunderstands: when I call someone a 'fool,' I assuredly am not calling him 'stupid.' That is the schoolyard misunderstanding of the term -- to call someone a 'fool' is to make a moral assertion about him (as witness the anger with which those who incorrectly think that 'fool' is a synonym for 'stupid' spit out the accusation), specifically, that he lacks intellectual honesty.

A fool is a person who knowingly and willfully says or acts in a false manner, consistently.

A fool is a person who is intellectually dishonest; a fool is worse than a mere liar -- for the liar lies episodically, whereas the intellectually dishonest man, the fool, lies systemically. The liar lies about some specific thing, whereas the fool lies about the very nature of truth.

It wasn't just about Limbaugh

What the Limbaugh Quote Hoax Really Tells Us

Gentle Reader will want to read it all, rather than only what I've excerpted --

Listening to the contemporary American left’s views of the rest of us is increasingly like listening to a paranoid schizophrenic slip farther into delusions that they are surrounded by malevolent people. Just as we have to worry that the schizophrenic might act on their delusional beliefs and strike out violently against the evils they imagine, we have to be increasingly worried that leftists will strike out against the rest of us based on their delusional fantasies about what we non-leftists believe.

And make no mistake about it, leftists do harbor dark delusions about non-leftists. The fact that so many leftists fell completely for the Limbaugh quote hoax proves it.

...

Only someone seriously immersed in a deep fantasy about Limbaugh’s beliefs would swallow such quotes without checking them or thinking about the practical possibility of Limbaugh making such statements without every person in the world knowing about it within the hour. More troubling, not only would they have to believe that Limbaugh thinks that way but that his audience does as well.

They fell for the hoax because their fantasy about the evil of non-leftists tells them that most non-leftists think this way. They didn’t need to check on the provenance of the quotes any more than the rest of us need to check an assertion that the sun came up in the East this morning. It was just that obvious to them.

So, we come back to the main question: What methods could these deluded leftists justify using against the rest of us if they really believe we hold such beliefs and values as are inherent in the fake quotes? What couldn’t they justify doing to drive such people from politics or even the nation itself? We even have to ask, what level of violence could they justify using against us?

This isn’t about Limbaugh. They clearly view Limbaugh as just the most visible manifestation of tens of millions of Americans pining for the good old days of slavery. Make no mistake. They aren’t just targeting Limbaugh as someone so evil that they can justify any extremity in fighting him.

They are targeting the rest of us as well.

(h/t Cartago Delenda Est)

Matteo and the Robot

On "Cartago Delenda Est:" Dialog Concerning Free Will

Rejecting Just One More

Matteo, of the "Cartago Delenda Est" blog, recently made an interesting observation in his item called "Reason!"

[Matteo is quoting from another blog, and I'm quoting from Matteo's blog. Read Matteo's post here; Read Mark Shea's post here.]

Mark Shea highlights a rejoinder to some atheist "reasoning":

I [Mark Shea] scrolled up to see who Rosemarie was replying to and got as far as this mixture of parrot talk and "original thinking":

Just like you are a-zeus-ist, a-allah-ist, a-fairy-ist, a-invisible-pink-unicorn-ist... basically you are very similar to me, you're an atheist in almost everything but the religion you were indoctrinated into by your environment. I'm just atheistic in a few more things.

I still have to get to reading some of this Aquinas fellow, though I have the vague suspicion that he doesn't adress the Plantinga Disaster.

That last one is a good one. I'm [Matteo] sure an atheist would agree with my reasoning if I said, "Now I know that you reject spontaneous generation, perpetual motion, the luminiferous ether, and phlogiston. In rejecting Darwinism, I'm just rejecting one more theory than you!"

Right?

And, of course, Matteo's final question is rhetorical and ironic -- the typical 'atheist,' even the one who has just mindlessly parrotted the "I simply reject one more god than you do" line, will vehemently reject the validity of the argument which is inherent and implied in that line when it is being employed as Matteo employed it.