In and of itself, politics is a worthless endeavor, for all that truly and deeply matters in life, and all that one should be focused on, is 1) one’s love of God, 2) one’s honor (moral character and duties), and 3) one’s family–and in that specific order–and furthermore, since politics is all too often a vile pit where good men become soiled and where one’s principles get compromised and twisted it is thus best to avoid such a “profession”, and yet even acknowledging all this, the fact remains that since politics, and the decisions made by politicians–at least in this life–unavoidably encroach upon one’s ability to love God, and to be honorable, and to care for one’s family, then one must, sadly, engage in the political process with sufficient vigor to ensure that these other more important things are protected; and so, in this life, though good and Godly men may wish not to involve themselves in the affairs of the state, good and Godly men must actually do so, for it is only by doing this that they can remain good and Godly in their way without coercion and pressure not to be so, and so politics is a thing which a good man should always desire to avoid, and yet which he should always engage in as if avoidance of it was the last thing on his mind…the trick, of course, is maintaining this attitude once the power and prestige of the political process begins to be felt in one’s soul.
Morality
Evidence for the Romans 1 Suppression Thesis
It is an interesting thing to note–and, in my experience, I have noted it many, many times–how numerous atheists and unbelievers routinely employ hypocritical double-standards and selective hyper-skepticism when arguing against God and for their own positions, such as when, for instance, 1) unbelievers decry believing anything on blind faith and yet believe that, for example, rational subjective consciousness came from unconscious, non-rational, non-subjective chucks of bouncing around matter even though there is absolutely no evidence for this and it is simply accepted, on blind faith, as having somehow occurred, or when 2) unbelievers mock the fact that religious believers accept testimony for historical claims that are a few thousand / hundred years old, yet those same unbelievers often uncritically accept the testimony of scientists concerning their inferences about things that happened millions upon millions of years ago, or when 3) unbelievers demand extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims from religious believers even though for the extraordinary claims of abiogenesis and macroevolution, the evidence is paltry, at best, and yet it is still, for some reason, accepted as sufficient for belief; now, in light of the aforementioned points, I note that the ‘Suppression Thesis’, an idea born out of Romans 1, is the claim that unbelievers know that God exists and yet suppress this truth for moral rather than rational reasons, and in contemplating this idea, and in remembering that some fact or observation counts as evidence for one hypothesis (H1) over another (H2) if that fact or observation is more likely / more expected on the first hypothesis (H1) rather than the second (H2), I would like to argue that I believe that one piece of evidence for the Suppression Thesis is the fact that, as stated earlier, many atheists and other non-believers routinely use those hypocritical double-standards and selective hyper-skepticism to argue for their own position and against theism, which is, I contend, precisely what would be expected if the Suppression Thesis were true (for it would be expected that unbelievers wold use any means necessary to suppress the truth in such a case) but not what would be expected if the Suppression Thesis was not true, and thus the fact that atheists do this does indeed serve, I argue, as some evidence towards the truth of the Suppression Thesis.
Thought on Leftism’s Appeal being Easy Virtue
One of the things which has always struck me about modern liberal leftism is that, as opposed to the relatively harder morality wed to traditionalism, it seems to me that a great deal of the appeal of embracing a leftist / liberal political persuasion comes from the incredibly easy and external “virtue” and “morality” that such a vision provides to people, and thus people are drawn towards this point-of-view precisely because it is an easy and relatively cost-free way of achieving a great and vast feeling of moral righteousness and superiority; after all, consider, for example, that it is asininely easy to recycle and drive a Prius (liberalism), yet it is hard to stay chaste till marriage and faithful afterwards (traditionalism), and it is also easy to vote once every few years for a re-distributive socialist to have the government take money from everyone to “help” the poor (liberalism), but it is hard to actually donate 10% of your own wages or time directly every month to help the homeless bastard down the street (traditionalism), and it is no doubt also easy to be for “woman’s reproductive health” (liberalism), but it is actually hard to accept the consequences of your decisions and spend decades dealing them (traditionalism), and finally consider that it is easy to embrace an ethic of ‘everything’s OK so long as no one else is harmed’ (liberalism), but it is hard to embrace a morality that forces you to, say, personally oppose and strive against the seven deadly sins…and so, with just these few examples in mind, I think that you can see my point, and thus I truly believe that one reason for the modern appeal of liberal leftism is that what it deems to be virtuous is both easy and external, for it requires little pain, patience, or sacrifice, and that is why it is indeed so readily embraced today.
Thought on the Pathetic-ness of Atheists Lying for Nothing
It is without a shadow of a doubt that Christian apologists sometimes consciously twist arguments for the Christian faith, omit relevant facts that are not friendly to their position (such as, at times, avoiding certain Biblical verses that do not make the Old Testament look pleasant), exaggerate the strength of certain Christian-favorable evidences, and so on, and while this, to me, is rather deplorable and unnecessary conduct–for the Christian has nothing to fear from the truth, for Christianity is Truth–it is nevertheless the case that when Christians do this, certain atheists, rightly but pejoratively, yell out that these Christians are “Lying for Jesus”, and while, as stated, such Christian deception (if conscious) is immoral and wrong, at the very least, there is a certain understanding to it, for the Christian thinks that by convincing someone else of Christianity, the Christian is ensuring that that person is receiving the incomparable gift of eternal life, and so, even though the Christian’s behaviour in such a case is immoral, there is a certain kindness and understanding to his motivation that we can understand; and yet, on the other hand, some atheists, just like Christians, also often consciously omit facts, twist arguments, exaggerate claims and so on when they argue for atheism, and yet when they do so, it seems that they are literally “Lying for Nothing”, which is not only as pathetic as the Christian, but it is even less understandable and noble from a motivational perspective, and thus while Christians should be condemned when they lie in their apologetics, the atheist should almost be doubly condemned when he does the same given that he lies for nothing and for no good reason…and note that if the atheist claims that his motivation is to help remove a person’s delusion or improve their lives, then note that if atheism is true, it literally does not matter if a person is deluded or not (for on atheism we have no duty to believe or follow that which is truth), and numerous studies show that being religious makes people happier, healthier, and more evolutionarily successful (more kids, and thus more genes), thereby meaning that, if anything, atheism should not be promoted even if atheism is true, and so the atheists motivation in this case does not seem to make sense!
Thought on Atheism’s Euthyphro Dilemma
Atheists often assert that any moral arguments that theists try to make for the existence of God, or for the claim that God is required for morality, are negated by the so-called Euthyphro Dilemma–a dilemma which is meant to show that the theist must, allegedly, either accept that morality is utterly relative to God’s arbitrary will or that morality is independent of God, both of which are unacceptable options–but whereas the theist can easily answer the Euthyphro challenge made against him by pointing out that God’s commands and desires stem from His unchanging loving nature and thus cannot be arbitrarily changed (and the theist has pointed this out for years!), what the atheist does not realize is that his position suffers from its own Euthyphro Dilemma, and it is even worse than the theistic one, for the Euthyphro Dilemma that the atheist suffers from is one which points out that, 1) given the extreme difficulty in seeing how any absolute moral rules and duties could exist on atheism, and 2) seeing how many atheists themselves admit and argue that no moral rules or duties exist on atheism, and 3) given how many atheists even admit that God would be the best explanation for the existence of absolute moral rules and duties, then it is the case that in order to be a rational atheist, one should be, at the very least, agnostic about the existence of absolute moral rules and duties, and yet, at the same time, it is absurd and irrational to be agnostic about the fact that, say, child sexual abuse is absolutely wrong and we have an absolute duty to stop it or that extreme self-mutilation is absolutely wrong and we have an absolute duty to stop it, and so we can see that the atheist is indeed stuck in a serious dilemma, for he arguably cannot rationally affirm the existence of absolute moral rules and duties on his worldview and yet he knows that it is irrational to deny the existence of absolute moral rules and duties in some cases; so the atheist is in a hard dilemma, and anyway that he turns, irrationality awaits him, and that is the reason why the atheist has his own Euthyphro Dilemma to deal with, and it is a dilemma which is not as easily answered for the atheist.
Thought on a Sign of Moral Confusion
It is always interesting to wonder, and beneficial to know, what signs we should expect to see in both a person and a society which is in a state of moral confusion and degeneracy, for such signs can serve as a warning to us as to the state of the person in question, and, in light of this, I contend that one of the seemingly benign signs of such moral confusion and error is one which we see all too often in today’s modern culture: namely, 1) when we see people begin to treat animals better than other human beings, and 2) when we begin to see human beings not just have an affection for animals but where the animals themselves actually guide their human “masters”, and 3) when the animal’s needs are given main priority in a household, then we have a great and sweeping moral confusion in the mind of the person or the social psyche that is under the sway of this disordered animal “love”; now this is not to say that treating animals well, and even loving animals, is an unsound idea, but the fact is that men bear the image of God, which is something that animals, no matter how precious, do not, and so men are infinitely more valuable than any animal, and thus to ever care more for an animal than for a human person is to ignore the image of God in a way that it should not be ignored and also to twist one’s priorities in a way that is clearly backwards, and this is exactly why this animal “love” is indeed a sign of moral confusion…so be wary of this sign, and if you see it in yourself, then perhaps some reflection on this topic is urgently needed.
Thought on Why Jesus Could NOT Condemn Slavery
As has now been articulated in a number of previous ‘Thoughts’, we can begin to see that the idea of slavery, when looked at critically, is broad-ranging, and it can readily include what we in the West would call volunteer soldiers, and when we consider this fact, we note that no matter what an advanced civilized society does, whether it has a volunteer army (essentially, volunteering indentured servants) or a conscripted army (essentially, forced indentured servants), a society will always have these types of soldier-slaves in one form or another, and yet an advanced society needs a military (and police force) and cannot survive without one, and so it seems that any civilized society that wishes to survive must necessarily have slaves of one sort or another, and what this realization about the societal necessity of some type of slavery existing points us to is the fact that maybe the reason that Jesus did not condemn slavery in total, is because it would actually have been immoral for him to do so given that it would have been immoral for him to tell a society that it could not have an army to defend itself with (whether volunteer indentured servants or conscripted ones); instead, Jesus–and the New Testament scriptures–did precisely what they should have done: they did not immorally condemn an institution that a society could ultimately never escape from, but rather they advised the citizens of a society to treat the slaves that it would always necessarily have to have in a way that respected those slaves and indentured servants as being made in the image of God (which is precisely how we, today, treat the modern soldier-slaves that defend our societies from harm), and so not only was Jesus not immoral for failing to condemn slavery completely, but he was actually acting morally by not doing so and by focusing on how slaves and indentured servants should be treated rather than on whether such slaves and servants should even exist.
Thought on the Fact that We are All Slave Holders
As I mentioned in a previous ‘Thought’, unbelievers in the West often attack Christianity (and Jesus in particular) for not condemning slavery in its sacred scriptures, but not only is there nothing intrinsically wrong with the institution of slavery as understood in the scriptures (more often than not ‘indentured servitude’), it is also worth pointing out that this condemnation of Christianity about slavery is particularly rich coming as it does from people who are all slave-owners in the Biblical sense, as all such unbelievers are, for note that in our modern secular and democratic societies, where the people are technically the rulers, we have men and women who freely indenture themselves to serve for monetary compensation even though they lose their freedom when they decide to do so, and they can be ordered to risk their lives and die by their masters (us), and they suffer bloody hardships and pain upon the orders of their masters (us), and can be jailed if they disobey their masters (us), and so on, and we call these types of people ‘volunteer soldiers’, but what they ultimately are, once they sign the dotted line, are indentured servants (slaves) to the state, and the state can move them and use them like a piece of property; indeed, it is interesting to note that what volunteer soldiers are called to do and suffer is little different from what indentured servants (Biblical-type slavery) were called to do in the past, and yet, in a democratic society, we are all technically the owners of these military indentured servants and we are the ones, through our votes, that elect their immediate masters who command them to fight and die, and so not only should we, as actual slave-owners, not be so high-and-mighty in condemning the people of the past about their slavery, but perhaps we should also realize the point that I was making in the earlier ‘Thought’ about slavery: namely, that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the institution of indentured servitude / slavery–and democracies support this point by having military institutions filled with what are essentially indentured servants–but rather the problem with slavery is the practical and pragmatic problem of how slaves are treated.
Thought on the Fact that there is Nothing Intrinsically Wrong with Slavery
One of the ‘arguments’ that Christians routinely hear against the Christian message is that “Jesus never condemned slavery and the Old Testament actually encouraged indentured servitude, and so, in light of these points, both Christian/Biblical morality and the example of Jesus are suspect and unworthy of being followed”, but the fact of the matter is that–and I know that this will be a “shocking” point of view–the reason that Jesus never condemned slavery is because there is nothing theoretically / in-principle / intrinsically wrong with slavery, and a short thought-experiment can bear this claim out, for imagine a society where everyone was free to quit the work and they had and move around at will but all the work offered in every place was such that people had to work like dogs just to make enough to barely survive, they were given no holidays, they were fired from their job if they had a conscientious objection to some form of their work or complained about their conditions, they were fired from their work if they did not accept the advances of their superiors, they were fired for having the wrong religion or the wrong views, etc., but in another society nearly everyone are officially slaves who ultimately have to obey their masters, but these slaves have masters who ensure that the slaves’ hours are entirely reasonable, that the slaves are very well paid (based on merit) and have full health benefits, that the slaves can change to different positions if they wish to do so and are qualified to do so, that the slaves have holidays and family days, and that the views and opinions of the slaves are listened to and respected, that the slaves can move elsewhere if necessary, that the slaves can freely worship, etc.; now, in viewing these two societies, both of which are possible, it is–at least to me–clear that the immoral one, and the one that truly denigrates people made in the image of God, is the former ‘free’ society, whereas the ‘slave’ society is quite moral and genuinely respects men as human persons made by God, and so what this little thought experiment helps to show is that the institution of slavery, as a formal institution, is not, in and of itself, immoral, for what makes the institution immoral is the way that the slaves are treated, not the fact that they technically fit the definition of being a slave, and so given that slavery as such is not obviously immoral, then it is not surprising that Jesus did not address it directly, and so the objection against Jesus and Christian morality is baseless, especially in light of the fact that the scriptures do admonish masters to treat their slaves well (Ephesians 6:5-9), which is precisely the main moral point that should be addressed (however, it is obviously also understood that, in practice, sinful men, being fallen creatures, would readily abuse their authority and nearly always abuse their slaves, and so the institution of slavery should be abolished and remain abolished for pragmatic reasons, but this does not therefore mean that, theoretically-speaking, slavery as such is an immoral institution, but only that men cannot be trusted to faithfully institute such an institution here on Earth).
Thought on Atheism’s Appeal to the Multiverse and Romans 1
In the first chapter of the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul contends both that atheism and pagan unbelief in general is due to a suppression of the truth for moral reasons rather than evidential ones, and he also contends that in suppressing the truth, unbelievers will then imbue created things with the powers and nature of the Creator, and in light of that scriptural verse, what is fascinating to observe is how the modern atheistic push towards the multiverse supports this Christian claim, for with the multiverse, the atheist has a god-surrogate which–given an infinity or near infinity of universes–can do almost everything that God can do (create a fine-tuned universe, create life, create rational beings, cause “miracle-like” events, etc.), while simultaneously being a god-like surrogate which does not place any moral burden on the atheist, which is its one critical difference to theism; and so, the very fact that the modern atheist is willing to accept the existence of an a-moral entity from which even the most absurd outcomes arise (for almost anything that is possible can happen in an infinity of universes) in order to avoid having to accept the existence of a personal god-being who might make moral demands on them is indeed a clue that perhaps the atheist’s opposition to a god really is about morality, not about evidence, and so maybe Paul really was on to something when he wrote what he wrote in Romans 1.
investigative apologetics 