<<Because I had faith that everything does have meaning, and that the meaning ultimately is about drawing us to unity with Christ, I was able, like Javier Bardem’s Father Quintana in Malick’s To The Wonder, to carry on, while waiting for the wonder to return. Not only has it returned, but I now experience it in a way I never have. Extraordinary, just extraordinary. I’m not going to overthink this; I’m just going to relax into it, and praise God for it. >>
I must take exception to your use of Occam's Razor. Here is the Wikipedia article excerpt, which I find to be the most inclusive description of it.
"This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both hypotheses have equal explanatory power, one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions, and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. Similarly, in science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models."
To say, as you wrote, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one -- and yes, I may be nitpicking here, bear with me -- is not a statement of truth. In fact, it need not be true. The value of William's logical approach is in compartmentalizing the possible logical conclusions from a premise and argument. Words and context are important. In Science, in keeping with the rigorous application of the tenets of scientific methodology, Occam's Razor is summarized as the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. In Science, falsifiability requires scientists to be perennially open to the possibility that any theory, however strong it may seem, can be partially or completely debunked. All it takes is the revelation of data heretofore unknown or unavailable.
You know my views on enchantment. Often, I will kick Science to the side of the road, and just settle on the simplest view: we live in an enchanted world (immanence), we do not have the capability to apply Science to many phenomena, and indeed Science is not necessary for us to observe, value and learn from enchantment.
I wish to add (and end with) the notion that someday Science will debunk Religion. There is one adamant barrier to that. Science is rational -- evidence, objectivity. Religion is non-rational -- faith, personal and subjective. The atheists among Science fail to grasp that, to their detriment. People are too often irrational. I believe that they have lost both the ability to grasp evidence, and have lost faith of any level or variety.
"I believe that they have lost both the ability to grasp evidence, and have lost faith of any level or variety."
Ouch, that means the worst of both worlds where neither science nor the numinous inform. One does see examples - nicely summarized in that sentence, Franklin.
A real world impact of what you describe is lawyers complaining about the quality of juries becoming progressively worse in terms of evaluating arguments and evidence. Others can be readily found.
That's a frightening observation. I've been a jury member for both civil and criminal cases. The last time was about ten years ago. In every case, I found my fellow jurors to be sincerely committed to the requirements of justice as told to us by the judges.
I can only hope (as I learned from one judge, who took time from his tight schedule to explain some things to us and answer our questions) that this degeneration of "quality" will be balanced by appeals and judicial oversight. I can also be pessimistic about that.
We live in a time when lies are elevated to being of equal value to the truth. People believe lies because they want them to be true, or because they're afraid they might be true. There is no cure for that, and we are all vulnerable to it.
The first dozen or so of my Seeing Creation essays deal with issues such as this. Re "the notion that someday Science will debunk Religion", proper use of the falsifiability criterion alone prevents this. We really don't need to delve deeper into philosophy to settle this.
BTW, Ernst Mach reformulated Occam's razor into his Economy of Thought.
Perhaps I too am nitpicking here, but religion (at least my Catholic religion) is suprarational, not non-rational. Despite what many atheists believe, I do not need to make myself stupid in order to have faith. I need to go beyond what my reason alone can grasp, but my reason and my faith are not opposed. The latter builds upon and goes beyond the former. Superstition is non-rational, and unfortunately, too many non-believers fail to understand that essential difference.
I think the distinction you're looking for is irrational (below reason) vs. suprarational (above reason), both of which could be called "non-rational", since neither one is reason. When we're dealing with modern reason idolators, though, it can be rhetorically useful to emphasize the non-rational nature of faith and not worry about which kind, since to them it will appear irrational one way or the other, even if we know better.
I chose to use "non-rational" in an attempt to avoid the pejorative connotations of "irrational"; "suprarational" is not a term that came to mind, but it interesting to think about how to use it and what connotations it could carry within a specific context. I believe we should hold to a distinction between irrational and non-rational.
I'm fascinated by language and etymology. It is hypothesized -- because the further back in time we go, the more difficult it is to find direct evidence -- that "superstition" has a root in the early Roman nation (especially as it began to take on the attributes of empire), as it worked to embed and entrench religious law into their society. The root is speculated to be "above the law", with the connotation of violation of the law. It was (again, speculation) applied to among others the early Christians, in their refusal to abide by the worship dictates of Roman law.
Modern Pagans have an acronym we use to soften our disputes with each other over beliefs: UPG. Unsupported/Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis. It is the placeholder for agreeing to disagree. It epitomizes non-rational in the sense I intended to use it.
I'm thinking that Spinoza's three kinds of knowledge may be useful, here: imagination, reason, and intuition. Imagination is how reality appears to us at face value, so it can be very misleading as a basis of knowledge. "Superstition" in the ordinary sense, for example, is often based on all kinds of bad causal inferences that could be clearly shown to be false given a moment's lucid thought—and such thought would take us into the realm of reason. And then intuition would be above reason; it would be a type of spiritual touch that directly comprehends things in their totality and essence.
Also, your initial comment that faith is "personal and subjective" makes me think of Søren Kierkegaard's slogan: "Subjectivity is truth." But that doesn't suggest that the truth of faith is itself is subjective; it just means it can only be accessed from the subjective standpoint, through an approach of relationship. So in this sense, the subjective-phenomenological approach of faith (or what I more generally call poetry) is a specific epistemological *stance* that is not only valid but also higher than the objective-empirical stance of science, because it is rooted in intuition, which is higher than reason.
That still leaves unrefined imagination, though—and we could say one of the most important functions of reason is to purify the admixture of imagination and intuition that characterizes most people's approach to beliefs about anything. They could be arbitrarily right without knowing why, but they could also just as well be wrong, because the higher and the lower non-rational exist in just one soupy mush. (Also, I'm not specifically committed to Spinoza's lingo, but it seems like a useful framework for present purposes.)
I truly enjoy your writing. You offer me tangents which are valuable.
Your use of Spinoza leaves me begging a question: there is evidence (yes, arguable even so) that intuition is a transitional function between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. We are (according to the research within the sub-discipline of non-verbal communication) perceiving more "signal" moment to moment than we have the conscious capacity to process. The subconscious "receives" the overflow, and while we may not consciously be aware of it, the overflow is stored and is available to us.
I'm not offering argument here. Spinoza's work is consistent and logical. I just wonder, sometimes, how we can be so dislocated from our subconscious that we find it impossible to identify its value to us. Wisdom, according to some of the Zen masters, is not achievable solely via rational thought. Imagination is not disconnected from reality. They have a concept called (in Japanese, where I first encountered it) mushin no shin: mind without mind. Rational thought categorizes, compartmentalizes, and often blurs or hides connections which exist between rationally disparate things. Imagination and intuition retain those connections.
"Subjectivity is truth." I suggest that this is an accurate way to describe UPG. We don't question the personal truths of others. We may disbelieve them, even argue with them, but in the end it's mostly just dueling subjective truths. I prefer the process of consensus. We find common ground, we find solutions which work, and we set aside correct or incorrect until we mutually find evidence to decide that.
It's great to hear about what's happening to you, and I think you're right to talk about it: it gives people hope to hear eyewitness testimony that such grace is real.
What a blessing for you, Rod! May you stay safe under the Lord's wings.
You might be amused to hear that as my review of Living in Wonder reached the section about demonic powers and UFOs, my computer screen suddenly flipped upside down. I'd accidentally given a command I hadn't known existed. Happily, it was easy to fix. Last year, when writing about images of demons in art, I accidentally deleted half the article. Maybe I need to be prayed over again. . . .
Having now read Rod's book, I think that some of the ways he explains these matters, while not erroneous in and of themselves, might leave readers with the impression that "Nominalism" came after "Scholasticism," rather then being simply one Scholastic "school," the one that came to dominate most (but not all) universities in Latin Christendom in the 14th Century and maintained that dominance until the Reformation. (One reader asked me in some puzzlement what was the relationship between "Scholasticism" and "Nominalism.")
I think the confusion there could be reduced by referring to Nominalism as a feature of Late Scholasticism, which is the way I've tended to think about it over the years. I've noticed that many Orthodox critiques of Scholasticism fail to make the distinction.
I'm a late responder and I never have time to look into all the comments, but I'm sure a lot of people here pray for you. Thanks for sharing that. I think that being set free always involves forgetting ourselves, like Paul who was called to great things despite the shame of a career of wasting the church. keep looking at the cross, where our total forgiveness and acceptance is found. God bless
Quote: "What if there are layers of mystery built into a thing, and the purpose of the viewer (that is, you and me) is not to impute meaning to it, but to discover the meaning, the logos, that already exists in it?"
I've never studied philosophy and don't understand the distinctions you're making. But to me, the things that God created are a gift for us - like a wedding gift from the groom to the bride. We're not just to see Him (the logos) in what He has created, but to see His love for us in what He created. He created beauty in nature for us to enjoy.
The bible teacher I like to listen to the most (David Pawson) defines logos as "the reason why". Without God, there is no purpose to our existence. But our existence points to more than just Him. It points to His purpose for why He gave us existence.
I did study philosophy and a bit of religion and I get lost in the nominalism references, too. It's tough for me to understand that a 500 year old view of things could dramatically impact my psyche. But I'm open to it!
Thanks John for your kind words. I assume this philosophical stuff effects how the elites think and then it gets propagated to everyone else. Or maybe they end up just not effectively defending the faith because of it. I agree. It's tough to understand.
I also have to question how nominalism could have come to dominate an entire civilization when probably fewer than 1% of people, at any time, knew anything about it, or any of the ivory tower arguments of the time.
I guess that academia always punches way above its weight, right? A lot of the race and gender ideas that are mainstream in the culture today were percolating in the fringe corners of the liberal arts department when I was in college.
One question I have: to what extent is abstract theory developed to justify and buttress things we are already doing? That does seem, to me to be the case with a lot of the racialist DEI theory. Affirmative action has been around for a rather long time now, originally justified on wholly pragmatic grounds. But pragmatic rationals have weaknesses,., especially since as times change they may no longer make sense. Ideologues, and career bureaucrats, much prefer "eternal" rationals so that their practices can never be challenged.
For that matter a good deal of Christian theology seems to have brought up the rear, evolving out of devout practices which eventually needed formal justification when challenged by doubters (e.g., iconodulia contra the iconoclasts).
That seems like an almost Marxist sort of view, doesn't it?—that ideologies are the superstructure generated by the material conditions of the base? I'd think that it could go both ways. Sometimes the idea may emerge as the justification for an existing material reality, and at other times people really do become captivated by an idea first.
The book to read on that subject is Weaver's classic 'Ideas Have Consequences.' Also, Lewis's "The Abolition of Man" is basically a critique of nominalist ideas, although not by name.
I think the main point has to do with whether A) things have essences that we discern with greater or lesser fullness and clarity or B) things have no essence, so they have whatever meaning we willfully say they do. You could see it in the gender insanity: is woman a being with a given, objective essence that we may recognize, or is woman whatever we subjectively feel like calling woman at any given time?
Is that similar to the difference between saying I'm god, or I'm not god? If you don't think there is any god outside of you, then you can do what ever you want, you can attach whatever meaning you want to things. But if you are not god, and there is a real God outside of you, then what He says is the meaning of something is what's important. Or is that not what the distinction is here?
It is, at the least, saying that there is no God who grants essences and thus intrinsic meanings to things. It would suggest (for example) that the meaning of sex is not what God has declared it to be, but rather whatever meaning we may choose to find in it. And if we can make things mean whatever we want them to mean, then we'd sort of be gods. The distinction is between *discovering* the meaning that God has given to things vs. *creating* whatever meaning we want in things. So yes, I think you've got it right.
This is why Montgomery called nominalistic modernism a form of Gnosticism, or an "inverted Platonism." It still believes in essences, but the essences are created by subjective intellect rather than God, and then established by cultural or political authority.
I tend to think that references to "Gnosticism" in this sort of context typically amount to lazy slurs. It is unfathomable, for example, how one could get from what the ancient Gnostics actually believed to the proposition that "essences are created by subjective intellect".
The late literary/cultural critic Marion Montgomery would pose the question this way, I think: Does intellect recognize reality or does intellect determine reality?
I'd say that there's ultimately a sort of paradox and a dance: the intellect recognizes reality, but in a way, that recognition itself is a creative act. The light of spirit reflects on the water of consciousness, and that reflection itself is a type of second moment of creation, with light reflected in water being something new and other than light unto itself.
Quite a lot here today. Thank you, Rod. With regard to Ockham’s Razor, William of Ockham died before probability became a mathematical discipline. If he had been alive after that, he probably would have been able to express himself more clearly. From a perspective of mathematics, the simpler explanation has fewer dependent events and/or a higher probability of each of those events. In other words, the more complex an explanation, the lower the probability that it can occur.
The problem here is the hand waving that arbitrarily assigns probability to these events. If God exists, then all things are likely to have a supernatural essence or nature. Imminence of God is likely. Etc. To state from the beginning that God does not exist, or that it is unlikely, means that the materialist explanation is most likely. The question becomes less about the nature of things or their explanation and far more about the nature of that nature.
Assuming that you don’t subscribe one view or the other about the existence of God, Ockham’s razor really goes out the window. You essentially say that there is no basis for determining these things, because God is a variable with no definite value. The human mind then finds it far easier to default to our limited perspective and ignores the greater “world.”
The thing is, we have recorded testimony that God was among us in human form. We accept testimony and oral accounts when it comes to legal matters or historical ones, so why should these be any different? Applying Ockham’s Razor again, with this in mind, puts a great deal of weight behind God being the simplest explanation to quite a few things. Of course, it comes down to one’s willingness to accept that evidence. Is Jesus being the Son of God the simplest explanation? Is the simplest explanation for our existence that we are part of God’s creation? Can synchronicity and events with extremely low probability from a materialist point of view have an extremely high probability from a Christian point of view?
Ockham's razor has always struck me as misquoted and misused. Most seem to think it says "the simpler explanation is far more likely to be true". or some say, "all other things being equal, the simpler explanation is more likely to be true."
I can't see that it says anything like that. Rather, it merely seems to say that unnecessary steps should not be added to a proof. Always prove something in the shortest way possible, but don't leave something out if it keeps the thing from being proved. Quotes from Ockham - and he seems to go no further than this:
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate ("Plurality must never be posited without necessity"),
Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora ("It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer";
Does that sound a bit like "the simplest explanation is most likely true"? A thing still has to be proven - is there really more than one explanation for a thing? And is "my balcony is there because it was put there by invisible elves" - short and sweet - the truth because it is simpler than the many complex steps of building and engineering that put it there?
As for what was claimed above - there are always a near-infinite number of pre-existing conditions, branching this way that that, which brought something to be. Thus, nothing that happens is at all probable, in that sense.
Well, now I've gone and done it. I do not think I am expert enough to be quoted, but thanks. Ockham's razor might be well paraphrased as "when faced with competing hypotheses that make the same predictions, we should prefer the one that makes the fewest assumptions." So, according to one source, It's a principle of parsimony, of theoretical elegance - not a statement about truth or probability at all.
It is about preference for where to start. Examples - if you hear clopping hooves outside in North America, start from the assumption it is a horse, not a zebra, even though it could be a zebra.
You are likely well aware that the heliocentric model at first gained traction because it needed far fewer and complex postulates to explain the motion of heavenly bodies that the geocentric one. And of course, now we have confirmation of heliocentrism. But this does not mean -
Medicine can give sad, but perhaps understandable and necessary, examples. A doctor would prefer the explanation "stress" for headaches rather than a brain tumor. The doctor might even stop and recommend meditation or some such if it is found that the patient is quite stressed. But we don't have the funds, time or energy to test everyone for brain tumors. Rough stuff.
<"when faced with competing hypotheses that make the same predictions, we should prefer the one that makes the fewest assumptions." So, according to one source, It's a principle of parsimony, of theoretical elegance - not a statement about truth or probability at all.>
Yay! I should have read this before submitting my own reply. I think the "where to start" explanation you provide is interesting and informative given the popular connotation of Ockham's razor. I'm a bit confused by your medical example though because I would have thought the brain tumor was the simpler explanation with stress being amorphous and multiply determined. But that's just the psychologist in me speaking.
Is that how God asks an uppity archangel to get humble? "I know your usual job is monitoring the laws of gravitation and all, but now you're gonna go build a balcony."
Also, that sounds like some other law: don't ask an archangel for help when an elf could deal with it? Or maybe it's just a proverb.
When I learned the experimental method and empiricism, Occam's razor was simply introduced as a heuristic for judging the validity of two theories given equal outcomes. It's KISS with a more intellectual name. It's about which theory we go with given two theories that make the same experimental predictions. In some ways, it's a political heuristic because it can tell us which scientist, given two competing theories, should get the credit. The simpler (more elegant?) theory (and thinker) wins. Applying Occam's razor to probabilities and thinking probabilistically is an overgeneralization of a simple heuristic.
It also just occurred to me that using heuristics in thought/decisions is explicitly not thinking probabilistically. So to add probabilities to any heuristic is just not what a heuristic is for. Heuristics are short cuts. Thinking probabilistically is decidedly not a mental shortcut--which is why humans have to be trained to use probabilities correctly.
Also, being a little facetious, but only a little, anyone who calls for direct US involvement in Ukraine should be tried for treason. Why? Because us getting dragged into a pointless foreign war would be giving aid and comfort to our enemies.
The Constitiution defines treason quite precisely since the Founders wished to preclude the possibility of treason being used for political purposes, as kings had done against their rivals for centuries. Supporting an ill-advised war comes nowhere close to that definition.
People are throwing around the word treason way too lightly, from newly McCathyite liberals against Trump to Trump himself against liberals to Elon Musk against immigration activists
Right. What the Founders wanted to quash is what in old England was called a Bill of Attainder, a law passed against an individual, and which, I firmly believe, is what Pelosi, Letitia James, and Alvin Bragg did to Trump.
No, they impeachedTrump which is allowed under the Constitution. That is in no wise an attainder. The latter is a matter of the legislature acting as a court in order to try, convict and sentence someone. It made a certain sense back in Ye Olden Days when powerful nobles could flout ordinary courts. But the abuses were major and quite ugly.
Indeed! He was, as you know, originally impeached (by the House of Commons) but when it became evident that he would almost certainly be acquitted by the House of Lords, the "managers" of his trial substituted a Bill of Attainder, which itself squeaked through the Lords because the London Mob intimidated enough peers (especially bishops) from attending the Lords for the final vote - and then intimidated King Charles (who never forgave himself for the act) into signing the Bill by threatening his French wife.
I'm no scholar, but I have made a study of the English Civil War as the first irruption of leftism. (Also as to what put an end the great flowering of English letters.) The Commonwealth Men had all the Bolshevik traits: concealing their ultimate goals, engineering the establishment into acts of bad faith by their own disingenuousness, using the courts as their tools, etc., etc. I imagine you've read Clarendon. It's all in there. He was on the spot.
Could we suspend our principles in order to pass a bill of attainder that bans Bill Gates from owning farmland? That feels sort of emergency-level important.
Nope, because such laws can't mention Gates by name. Laws can be passed to restrict him, but there has to be objective criteria that meets a valid public purpose. For example, suppose hypothetically Gates wanted to stop agriculture on all his properties and return them to the 'natural' state, to the detriment of the nation's food supply. That could be stopped by law, even without taking the title to the land. It's all in the details.
Actually, one of the smarter lawyers we have brought an indictment (just before the statute of limitations would have stopped him) against a rapist, who was named by his unique DNA markers. As this prosecutor put it "We know nearly everything about him, we just don't know his name."
But of course, that is an exercise of judicial authority, not legislative.
There have been some very clever laws that provided subsidies to specific but unnamed (though very politically connected) individuals by setting up conditions which only one individual could meet.
Article III, Section 3, Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
I don't know. The Soviet Union was not an enemy of the USA when the Rosenbergs worked with them, they were an avowed ally. It will always come down to the prosecutor declaring whom the enemy is.
Furthermore, the assumption during their entire prosecution was that they almost single-handedly turned over the secrets of the atom bomb to the USSR, when it turns out that a naturalized British German-born communist named Klaus Fuchs, a physicist who was at the center of the actual research, provided the detailed material to the Soviets. This is similar to Jonathan Pollard being sentenced (not to death, only 25 years) on Caspar Weinberger's testimony that the information he admitted transmitting to Israel had been passed by a Soviet mole in Tel Aviv to the USSR, resulting in the execution of several prime American assets. That was before Hansen and the Aldrich Ames and John Walker spy rings were known -- the damaging information most likely went through one of these channels, not via Tel Aviv.
Sorry, the constitution requires that the United States actually be at war before treason applies, to giving aid and comfort to the enemies we are at war with. Whether it has to be a declared war is an open question. Ronald Reagan advocated that we should declare war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, so that anti-war protesters could be prosecuted for treason. None were for a mere "police action."
I'm afraid, the chances of a world war three actually happening have gone up significantly. We knew that North Korea would eventually enter the war, since Putin's visit there, that is basically what it was all about. From China, there are rumblings now, that the CCP has started moving industrial capacity inland, in preparation for a major Pacific war.
Apparently, there are government incentives and downright orders from central leadership to that effect. Most Chinese companies are now part-owned by the state and they have started moving plants that are crucial to the war effort inland, mostly to Sichuan province, which is undergoing a property boom as a result. The reasoning seems to be, that Sichuan is far enough inland to be safe from Allied air bases (US, South Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese) and is surrounded by mountains and rivers that make any ground invasion a near impossibility. I treat these reports, coming mostly from Chinese netizens, seriously.
I talked to one of my best friends, a Russian who lives in Moscow, recently and he was telling me that Russian citizens are now visiting North Korea pretty regularly. This is very much a new development.
Turner's congressional district includes Wright -Patterson AFB, which would make it fairly high on the list of potential targets, though in a nuclear exchange dying first might be a blessing. (The only way Turner pays a price for this career wise if some MAGA tries to primary him, not holding my breath on that.)
China is no where near where it needs to be and its soft power strategy will continue for at least a generation before it rocks any boats. From China's perspective it need only wait for Russia and the US to exhaust themselves in conflict and China will then succeed to the role of the world's chief power, or at least Asia's. Why risk war, which always and everywhere is a chancey business filled with unintended results, when events are already moving exactly where you want them to go?
I am more afraid that the intervention of North Korea in the Ukraine war might give Poland a reason to intervene. That would be dangerous. It is notable that the Polish Foreign Minister is Radek Sikorski, husband of Anne Appelbaum.
"From China, there are rumblings now, that the CCP has started moving industrial capacity inland, in preparation for a major Pacific war."
Perhaps, but if so, the Chinese are simply ignoring reality (and not at a little cost). If Ukraine can strike Moscow with drones, how does anyone believe that China can move anything far enough away to be safe from American missilery? Belief that American missiles could strike at the heart of the Soviet Union, whether launched from a moving submarine or a stationary silo, kept the MAD peace for 45 years. Perhaps it can still do so.
It is extremely unlikely that North Korean troops will go into Ukraine. There are all kinds of problems that would cause. Different language, equipment, logistics, tactics, training standards, etc. All that for a few thousand troop, which Russia doesn't need anyway?
It's probably a propaganda ploy, to justify some escalation on NATO's part. Then, after that happens, the press will simply stop talking about North Koreans in Ukraine. And in a couple of weeks, the mass public will have forgotten they were ever mentioned. They will be fixated on the next propaganda theme instead.
But there is a chance that western leaders BELIVE this. Because they need to believe that Russia is on the edge of disaster. The idea that Russia must be in a state of near-collapse is very strong in their minds. They believed that was what would happen back in February 2022. And they still believe it today, no matter what actual events since then have shown. That's because a Russian collapse, followed by a change in regime, is the only realistic way NATO can win. So therefore it just HAS TO BE true. We only need to push on a little further.
Re: All that for a few thousand troop, which Russia doesn't need anyway?
The Russians definitely need troops, and they even stooped to dragooning Indian nationals in Russia into the army before India (whose good will Russia also needs to get around sanctions) took extreme exception to that. But I agree with your point about Koreans being very difficult to integrate into the Russian military.
And good grief you cannot look at the facts of this war without concluding that the Russian military is a long way from being some overwhelming, well tuned juggernaut. This war is basically the Crimean War all over again.
There's been a very weird back and forth on the Russian military in the eyes of the west, that it somehow is potentially a threat to Europe, but also simultaneously vulnerable to being repulsed by a poor resource strapped country if we we just give that country a little more support. And the thing is, I think many people are capable of believing both things are true at the same time.
Given the advances in missiles delivering conventional explosives, I doubt that vulnerability to aircraft range will make a significant difference in a major war. That goes for the US too of course. We've never been in range of a major international war so far.
I read once about how the Getty museum in L.A. bought a painting for several million dollars. Prior to their purchase, they had several experts examine it and verify that it was genuine. But after it had been installed, the greatest expert on the artist visited the gallery. Before he even got close to the painting, he immediately recognized it as a fraud. The thing is, he had spent so much time studying the genuine paintings that his brain was trained to recognize the subtle details. And why had he devoted so much of his career on studying the paintings of that particular artist? Well, because there was depth in his works. There was layers of detail and meaning. There was a form of beauty and insight.
We have before us everyday the work of the most brilliant artist the world has ever known. And yet we pass it by and don't give it a second thought. We should rather study His work so that we better recognize His hand in things. So that when we are still far away, we can see whether He was involved in the work before us or not.
Psa 53:2 God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, [any] who seek God.
God has set a painting before us, and all around us. And then He looks to find out who will see, who will understand. The amazing thing is that this painting whispers to us, and reaches out to us to stir our hearts. This is really more than enchantment. This is a lover searching for a bride.
Beautiful comment, Dean. Funny thing, I was thinking of that very verse yesterday and it bugged me that I couldn’t remember where it was. Now I got the answer — Psalm 53:2.
I have a Word document that I keep adding verses to (that say something to me), and it keeps expanding. This is one of those verses. For some, I study them and write up my own paraphrase attempting to understand them better. Here's the paraphrase I wrote for that verse:
God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who “frequent the threshing floor”, searching after, seeking, contemplating, studying, and inquiring of God, any who turn their mind and attention to seeing and pondering God, becoming wise and gaining insight.
Just this morning, I was thinking about how this relates to the subject of enchantment. The verse is all about thinking, using your mind, contemplating, etc. But the difference is that these are done in the context of truly knowing that God is real. In other words, if you really know God is alive, then what does that mean? To me, it's implies something truly wonderful and marvelous.
Psalms 139:17 in NKJV reads: How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!
However, the Hebrew is ambiguous in that verse, and can just as well be read: How precious are my thoughts of You, O God! How great is the sum of them!
I think that is the correct reading. David couldn't get God out of his mind. David kept thinking and thinking and thinking about God! The entire first 16 verses are all David's thought about God. But look at verse 18:
If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You.
That last phrase never made sense to me - until I looked up the Hebrew for it. It's just three words: to awake, a continuance, with.
So to me, it should be read, "when I awake, the thoughts continue with me". In other words, I can't get these thoughts of God out of my head! In other words, David is the very one God was looking for in Psalms 53:2. He was the one who turned his mind and attention to seeing and pondering God. And God really liked that.
I love the phrase " frequent the threshing floor". Recall that the threshing floor became the foundation of the temple (2 Samuel 24), the nexus between God and man.
Interesting. I found that phrase looking at the commentaries on that verse. I can't remember exactly now, but somehow, it came from the German translation of the verse. I liked it because I imagined someone who spends time threshing while deep in thought about God.
Quote: "'What a delight it is to have some great journey to undertake, some great enterprise under way, so that all one’s thoughts and efforts are guided by its onward momentum.' Yes, that’s how I feel now..."
Rod, for me, this gets to *why* God has given you this grace at this time. Yes, He wanted to set you free of the Shame, but He also has a "great journey" that you are meant to undertake. And that journey requires you to be free. Many could say that your journey up to this point has already been great. But in my mind, God is just getting you started. This is in part because of the day in which we live. The day requires those who will take great journeys.
In other words, God has set you free for a purpose.
I've lost a few friends in these last few crazy years over politics. Some friends who were indie filmmakers, whose work I supported and my library still features their work. I also had an Army buddy I was close with (we went through 46R school at Ft Meade, Maryland and did a tour in Germany together) who unfriended me on social media when the politics got crazy. Interestingly, he did not block me and checks the messages I send him (he lives in Florida and I send extra prayers his way during hurricane season, and regular prayers every day.) But life is too short and connections with loved ones too important to ditch over this nonsense.
I lost a cousin to the Qanon cultic nonsense. She always had a thing for conspiracy theories and we didn't talk politics (her own mother couldn't talk politics with her) but now she's gone right into the deep end.
One of the great ironies (and certainly, tragedies) of history is that Ockham took his stance, in theory, to preserve God’s sovereignty. And yet the chain of events he initiated (to be fair, he did have help, and he did have predecessors) were huge influences in the overall loss of faith in the West. For anyone who might be interested, Ed Feser’s book The Last Superstition is a smart, entertaining chronicle of this process.
But it also should be said: Ockham was a provocateur. He seemed to take delight in making his points as extreme as possible, and in making people as uncomfortable as possible. Little wonder he was excommunicated eventually. He’d have fit right in, in our social media age.
Great advice from J.D. Vance. May everyone who reads it be able to follow it.
On the part of not disavowing friends over politics, I agree, but does that extend to transgenderism? I can think of 2 women, somewhat quirky and liberal, who decided that they were "men."
"Hun, no man walks like you do, who are fooling with this nonsense?" - what I really do want to say to them. I am getting tired of having to pretend that I *don't* notice these blatant incongruities.
I can also think of some male YouTubers who drank the transgender kool-aid (so to speak) and have become shrill and unsufferable.
All this to say, I will certainly be polite and cordial in casual conversation, but I do wonder if the differences in worldviews are becoming irreconcilable. Can there be common cause if there is no commonality?
I think we can and should continue kind conversations, but they will necessarily be surface level.
"K". one of my first cousin's daughters in Tennessee began dressing as a man well over 20 years ago. She is now married to a woman, still dresses as a man, but I never heard any announcement she was transgender. I long assumed she likely was, but at this point I know that I don't know. Anyway - K. is a lovely person and was kind to my mother (who I think had little idea of transgenderism but figured K. was both gay and eccentric.) I just talk to her like I would to anyone else.
The two married women come to Thanksgiving and Christmas at times. I was there once. I was not awkward. Everyone does wrong, everyone has disorders. They don't even see it as wrong or disordered. I assume they do not want to hurt children, so I am fine around them.
Which is really a great explanation of the problem.
That is, we can and should act kindly on a surface level, because that's the human thing to do, and it's quite possible to do it. But, the fact that we can't have political dialogue with each other without threatening the breakup of relationships and friendships means, in effect, that we can't have political dialogue at all, and that's a core part of our political polarization. It's a box we're in. The differences are very hard to dialogue over. So you can place religion and politics in boxes that are "no go zones", where you don't get into them in depth because they are divisive and threaten relationships you otherwise value, but all this means is that, in these areas, people remain in their respective silos, entrenched with fellow travelers and the like-minded, and the polarization continues to metastasize.
I have no idea what will break this, but I do know that while avoiding getting into politics in these kinds of contexts is wise (and I do so myself, of course), it also furthers our polarization. It does that because despite treating other people with kindness in those situations and seeing their "normality", our politics remain intact, unchanged, unchallenged, and therefore generally very polarized. Any desired effect of "humanizing our differences" seems not to penetrate the political polarization precisely because it is cordoned off.
It was one thing to do this with respect to religion, because the idea behind that was to move beyond religious disputes and create a society that tolerated all kinds of religious practices and views, because the state was not tied to any one of them. Trying to do the same thing with politics, though, which lies at the core of civil society and the running of that state itself ... well, that doesn't work. We can do find if we just don't talk about religion to each other, but we will break if we never figure out how to talk about politics to each other.
Again, I have no solution here in termsof *how* to do this. It's a true conundrum.
I kind of see the religion vs. politics division the opposite to how you do.
I see politics as being about pragmatic things, and I'm happy to discuss those. I mean: people can be perfectly decent, and yet hold very different views about the economy, environment, crime, immigration, etc.
The things that make friendly relations very difficult are more "religion", in the sense of deep values, irrespective of someone's explicit religious beliefs. I can't imagine wishing to associate with anyone who supports surrogacy or child transgenderism. Homosexuals would probably not wish to associate with me, as I view their lifestyle as sinful (although I would be happy to refrain from saying that unless asked), but they nearly all support surrogacy and transgenderism, so I wouldn't want anything to do with them anyway. I guess it's more common for people to fall out with me than vice versa, though. All my Jewish and Israeli relatives fell out with me years ago, but they've gradually cut themselves off from everyone, as their opinions have become increasingly extreme and bizarre; they were always violently anti-Christian. Several people fell out with me in 2016, when I merely posted on Facebook that I thought Trump was a lesser evil than Clinton; I thought that was really strange, as I'm not a US citizen anyway, and it's not like I was ever a massive Trump fan. I've noticed people unfriending me when I post anything pro-life; that seems to be a line that must not be crossed for many people.
Tallulah Bankhead was pretty nutty. Filming Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" required the cast to step up ladders to the lifeboat. Tallulah wore no underwear and shocked the cameramen.
So glad for Rod's continued deliverance. Continued prayers for a hedge of protection. Not sure, but would I irritate the devil unwisely if I imagined kicking his rear and saying "Hahaha, you don't win"?
Just to alert our host and the other posters. If Trump wins the presidency, JD Vance will have to relinquish his Senate seat from Ohio. Governor Mike DeWine will probably choose Mike Turner as Vance's replacement. Insane Mike Turner with his red lines regarding North Korean troops in Ukraine.
Hopefully, Bernie Moreno replaces Sherrod Brown in the Senate. Mike DeWine, a stodgy old-school Republican of the James Rhodes variety, is very unlikely to choose Jim Jordan or Vivek Ramaswamy as JD Vance's replacement. It could very well be Matt Dolan, who is from DeWine's wing of the Republican Party. Dolan's father owns the Cleveland ex-Indians baseball team. So we know that Dolan comes from cowardly roots.
It's still a thing with me. A team mentioned in Hemingway gets its name taken from it by a bunch of white idiots. And real Indians don't care, or are proud the team is named after them. Of all the smug, self-righteous crap.
Vance is exactly right. I am - anyone who knows me well will tell you - a person with strong political views and not afraid to share them. Indeed, I take a certain joy in the occasional political verbal sparring match. At the same time I am well aware that these days politics can be dangerous business. I have for many years kept in touch with a number of young men who were students of mine at a midwestern college I taught at several years ago. During election season several of these young men will post their views online making clear in no uncertain terms where they stand politically. It goes without saying that their views and mine are often at odds. Yet I've never - not once - engaged them on such matters. Yes, I realize there are non-confrontational ways of doing so but I've never thought it worth the risk. Over the years I've experienced the small joys of watching these guys grow up, become successful in their careers, get married, have children, etc. Why would I want to risk that over something so mundane as political differences? Political leaders have thrived for too long on feeding the body politic with divisive, sometimes even dangerously divisive, rhetoric. If America somehow is able to take Vances advice to heart we'll be a better nation (by far!) for it. It is for this reason (and so many more) that Trump's choosing him for VP might have been the smartest thing he's ever done in his political career!
JD Vance and Rod Dreher are correct. Politics aren't worth losing friendships. Politics aren't worth straining neighborly relations. Politics aren't worth straining family relations. My Democratic Sister-in-law and Green Party Brother-in-law will be visiting for Thanksgiving and I won't mention politics at all the whole visit.
As an aside, the last time my in-laws visited was right after Geert Wilders came in first place in the Dutch national election. My Brother-in-law, who is a charter airplane pilot, mentioned that he had flown to Finland in the past. My Sister-in-law, a devotee of Oprah Winfrey, piped up "Is Finland that country that just elected that nut?", the nut being Wilders. My Brother-in-law was kind enough to inform my Sister-in-law that Wilders was Dutch. Good thing my Sister-in-law is a CPA and not a social studies teacher or political commentator.
It wasn't so long ago that Rod's comment box had a really wide range of opinions. In fact, the majority seemed to be left-of-center people of good will, wanting to engage with someone from the Right who was actually open to dialogue.
There's still lots of good in Rod's comment boxes. But I miss those days.
A few left due to the Hamas-Israel conflict. I believe one was Mrs. S from England, a valued poster, but at odds with Rod over Israel's invasion of Gaza.
I think that a more seemingly-reasonable Democratic Party would bring back more comments from moderate, "traditional" dems.
Rod is never going to attract the 18-32 year-old women, fresh off of TikTok, to discuss the wisdom of puberty blockers for 12 year olds. That seems to be the demographic that is keeping that movement alive. I think it's quite difficult to discuss the wisdom of voting for Harris, when those of us more on the right can pull out trans-insanity, or immigration, as a trump card.
After the coming election riots, I bet that those interesting left-of-center types will start showing up again. Those of us on the right will also start becoming more critical of Trump, if he is alive. (Many of us were criticizing Trump constantly here, months ago....but now that we have to make a choice......)
I guess that's a long way of saying: its the election.
I disagree with Rod about some stuff, and agree about others. I'm not going to unsubscribe, but I guess it would be Gaza that would make me do so if anything. I think Rod has an enormous blind spot about Jews, Israel, and the Middle East, which I struggle to understand, but I doubt he sees it like that.
I personally get a little annoyed by his ignorant slurs against Christian esoterica and how he won't understand its congruence with his enchantment project. But hey, that's okay: if he never annoyed me about *anything*, I guess that would be kinda weird.
Rod, it's not your fault. I miss Mrs. S as well. Every point she made was honest and true even if I did not always agree. The wonder of your site is that we argue intelligently, perhaps occasionally like a bunch of friends downing two or three beers at the local bar. No two persons agree on everything. Mrs. Leaberry and I don't always agree but that's human nature.
Not to be overtly sexist but I believe women take disagreement a little harder than men do. Katja and Linda Arnold might comment on my assertion. I always value their insight.
Well, I think it's true that as a *general* matter, women are less differentiated between reason and emotion. If men operated like that, they would be considered effeminate—and that's part of why the wokist men do indeed seem effeminate.
I know people who relish getting online in order to hash it out with others. I don't get that at all. However, I grew up generally feeling like I was the odd one out, and there's a streak of stubbornness in me that just said "I don't care". If I had been male, then I might have been the type to go around and be a little belligerent with that at times. However, being female, I think the strategy I used was to try to find common ground with people.
Being somebody who is interested in a lot of things makes it a lot easier to find common ground with other people. I suppose I build from there... at Touchstone, for example, I met a couple from Alberta, and not only were they shocked I could name various places in the province, I started talking about visiting Calgary just before the big flood in 2013. And if I don't know much about something, I'm more than happy to listen... Again, at Touchstone, I was part of the conversation that lasted until 1am, though I don't know much about some of that British and French history, it was an absolute joy to listen and learn.
But back to the statement... In most cases, I find it easier to outwardly disagree when there is some sort of base that's been established in the relationship; I suppose the people whom I am most likely to "write off" are ones who are willing to destroy that base over something stupid. I have a friend whom I was very close to in high school, and we kept in touch for about a decade afterward. He posted to Facebook a short video of Glenn Beck with the caption "I can't believe that Glenn Beck said X". Well, I watched the video, and Glenn Beck didn't say X, but he said Y, which may have been somewhat similar but definitely changed the meaning of the statement. When I pointed this out to my friend, he completely flipped out and hasn't spoken to me since. I am very, very sad that this happened, but I can't go running after him because of the friendship if he's going to force me to subscribe to his version of reality for that friendship to continue.
I miss those days too, though I acknowledge Rod ran himself himself ragged trying to moderate the comments. The old TAC blog was free and as with many free blogs it attracted trolls who would post atrocious things which Rod constantly had to screen for.
You are so right, Jon. I spent between one to two hours every day moderating. We have less ideological diversity here, but I almost never have to moderate. People who pay for access to a site have a clear interest in keeping it a clean and usable space.
There was a large amount of concern-trolling as well, which wasn't necessarily mean-spirited, but did tend to suck a lot of air out of the comboxes. Remember the one black fellow from New York who made everything, and I do mean everything, about race, for instance?
If everything in the world participates in an eternal, necessarily existing Platonic Form, then that clearly violates God's aseity--God *alone* exists a se. Attempts to reconcile Platonism with God's aseity all have serious problems.
I am very dubious about "eternal" forms. There may a few such at the lowest level of physical reality (the fundamental particles and forces all appear to be stable over vast eons of time), but further up the ladder things are ever in flux. The background Forms (or Fields) must also be subject to Time, though maybe in a very different way. Only God's essence is truly outside Time.
" . . . when we encounter reality . . . we make it conform to what we believe is true."
Except as an academic exercise, such a statement is absurd. Reality does not conform to anyone's understanding. I cannot make a hotdog into a dachshund no matter how much I believe it to be so. By the same token God is (or is not) what he is (or is not); any beliefs to the contrary do not make him any more or less so. This is not to say that one's beliefs about the supernatural do not affect how he sees reality. Another's beliefs alone do nothing apart from the believer.
I'm not sure who/what your quote refers to, but it seems to me that what it's saying is that we do that in terms of our perception of reality, not as to what is actually out there. In other words, put the phrase "in our minds" after the ellipsis.
Actually, the quote came from Rod's article, and I tried not to remove anything critical to its meaning by use of the ellipsis. In its context, Rod was referring to enchantment and the spiritual world that affects our reality. My take is that reality, what is real, cannot be altered by the mere mind of man, by our beliefs. It is either objectively true, or it isn't. This kind subjectivity has spread to our political discourse to the extent that both sides to any argument can proclaim truth and offer evidences that the other side objects to and refuses to accept as fact. We have reached an epistemological crisis, and I don't see a clear way forward.
I added this to the online version:
<<Because I had faith that everything does have meaning, and that the meaning ultimately is about drawing us to unity with Christ, I was able, like Javier Bardem’s Father Quintana in Malick’s To The Wonder, to carry on, while waiting for the wonder to return. Not only has it returned, but I now experience it in a way I never have. Extraordinary, just extraordinary. I’m not going to overthink this; I’m just going to relax into it, and praise God for it. >>
I must take exception to your use of Occam's Razor. Here is the Wikipedia article excerpt, which I find to be the most inclusive description of it.
"This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both hypotheses have equal explanatory power, one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions, and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. Similarly, in science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models."
To say, as you wrote, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one -- and yes, I may be nitpicking here, bear with me -- is not a statement of truth. In fact, it need not be true. The value of William's logical approach is in compartmentalizing the possible logical conclusions from a premise and argument. Words and context are important. In Science, in keeping with the rigorous application of the tenets of scientific methodology, Occam's Razor is summarized as the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. In Science, falsifiability requires scientists to be perennially open to the possibility that any theory, however strong it may seem, can be partially or completely debunked. All it takes is the revelation of data heretofore unknown or unavailable.
You know my views on enchantment. Often, I will kick Science to the side of the road, and just settle on the simplest view: we live in an enchanted world (immanence), we do not have the capability to apply Science to many phenomena, and indeed Science is not necessary for us to observe, value and learn from enchantment.
I wish to add (and end with) the notion that someday Science will debunk Religion. There is one adamant barrier to that. Science is rational -- evidence, objectivity. Religion is non-rational -- faith, personal and subjective. The atheists among Science fail to grasp that, to their detriment. People are too often irrational. I believe that they have lost both the ability to grasp evidence, and have lost faith of any level or variety.
"I believe that they have lost both the ability to grasp evidence, and have lost faith of any level or variety."
Ouch, that means the worst of both worlds where neither science nor the numinous inform. One does see examples - nicely summarized in that sentence, Franklin.
Thank you. I take no joy in my accuracy.
A real world impact of what you describe is lawyers complaining about the quality of juries becoming progressively worse in terms of evaluating arguments and evidence. Others can be readily found.
That's a frightening observation. I've been a jury member for both civil and criminal cases. The last time was about ten years ago. In every case, I found my fellow jurors to be sincerely committed to the requirements of justice as told to us by the judges.
I can only hope (as I learned from one judge, who took time from his tight schedule to explain some things to us and answer our questions) that this degeneration of "quality" will be balanced by appeals and judicial oversight. I can also be pessimistic about that.
We live in a time when lies are elevated to being of equal value to the truth. People believe lies because they want them to be true, or because they're afraid they might be true. There is no cure for that, and we are all vulnerable to it.
The first dozen or so of my Seeing Creation essays deal with issues such as this. Re "the notion that someday Science will debunk Religion", proper use of the falsifiability criterion alone prevents this. We really don't need to delve deeper into philosophy to settle this.
BTW, Ernst Mach reformulated Occam's razor into his Economy of Thought.
Thank you for the Mach citation. His formulation makes sense to me.
Perhaps I too am nitpicking here, but religion (at least my Catholic religion) is suprarational, not non-rational. Despite what many atheists believe, I do not need to make myself stupid in order to have faith. I need to go beyond what my reason alone can grasp, but my reason and my faith are not opposed. The latter builds upon and goes beyond the former. Superstition is non-rational, and unfortunately, too many non-believers fail to understand that essential difference.
I think the distinction you're looking for is irrational (below reason) vs. suprarational (above reason), both of which could be called "non-rational", since neither one is reason. When we're dealing with modern reason idolators, though, it can be rhetorically useful to emphasize the non-rational nature of faith and not worry about which kind, since to them it will appear irrational one way or the other, even if we know better.
I chose to use "non-rational" in an attempt to avoid the pejorative connotations of "irrational"; "suprarational" is not a term that came to mind, but it interesting to think about how to use it and what connotations it could carry within a specific context. I believe we should hold to a distinction between irrational and non-rational.
I'm fascinated by language and etymology. It is hypothesized -- because the further back in time we go, the more difficult it is to find direct evidence -- that "superstition" has a root in the early Roman nation (especially as it began to take on the attributes of empire), as it worked to embed and entrench religious law into their society. The root is speculated to be "above the law", with the connotation of violation of the law. It was (again, speculation) applied to among others the early Christians, in their refusal to abide by the worship dictates of Roman law.
Modern Pagans have an acronym we use to soften our disputes with each other over beliefs: UPG. Unsupported/Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis. It is the placeholder for agreeing to disagree. It epitomizes non-rational in the sense I intended to use it.
I'm thinking that Spinoza's three kinds of knowledge may be useful, here: imagination, reason, and intuition. Imagination is how reality appears to us at face value, so it can be very misleading as a basis of knowledge. "Superstition" in the ordinary sense, for example, is often based on all kinds of bad causal inferences that could be clearly shown to be false given a moment's lucid thought—and such thought would take us into the realm of reason. And then intuition would be above reason; it would be a type of spiritual touch that directly comprehends things in their totality and essence.
Also, your initial comment that faith is "personal and subjective" makes me think of Søren Kierkegaard's slogan: "Subjectivity is truth." But that doesn't suggest that the truth of faith is itself is subjective; it just means it can only be accessed from the subjective standpoint, through an approach of relationship. So in this sense, the subjective-phenomenological approach of faith (or what I more generally call poetry) is a specific epistemological *stance* that is not only valid but also higher than the objective-empirical stance of science, because it is rooted in intuition, which is higher than reason.
That still leaves unrefined imagination, though—and we could say one of the most important functions of reason is to purify the admixture of imagination and intuition that characterizes most people's approach to beliefs about anything. They could be arbitrarily right without knowing why, but they could also just as well be wrong, because the higher and the lower non-rational exist in just one soupy mush. (Also, I'm not specifically committed to Spinoza's lingo, but it seems like a useful framework for present purposes.)
I truly enjoy your writing. You offer me tangents which are valuable.
Your use of Spinoza leaves me begging a question: there is evidence (yes, arguable even so) that intuition is a transitional function between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. We are (according to the research within the sub-discipline of non-verbal communication) perceiving more "signal" moment to moment than we have the conscious capacity to process. The subconscious "receives" the overflow, and while we may not consciously be aware of it, the overflow is stored and is available to us.
I'm not offering argument here. Spinoza's work is consistent and logical. I just wonder, sometimes, how we can be so dislocated from our subconscious that we find it impossible to identify its value to us. Wisdom, according to some of the Zen masters, is not achievable solely via rational thought. Imagination is not disconnected from reality. They have a concept called (in Japanese, where I first encountered it) mushin no shin: mind without mind. Rational thought categorizes, compartmentalizes, and often blurs or hides connections which exist between rationally disparate things. Imagination and intuition retain those connections.
"Subjectivity is truth." I suggest that this is an accurate way to describe UPG. We don't question the personal truths of others. We may disbelieve them, even argue with them, but in the end it's mostly just dueling subjective truths. I prefer the process of consensus. We find common ground, we find solutions which work, and we set aside correct or incorrect until we mutually find evidence to decide that.
Please see my reply to Sethu, under his reply to you.
It's great to hear about what's happening to you, and I think you're right to talk about it: it gives people hope to hear eyewitness testimony that such grace is real.
What a blessing for you, Rod! May you stay safe under the Lord's wings.
You might be amused to hear that as my review of Living in Wonder reached the section about demonic powers and UFOs, my computer screen suddenly flipped upside down. I'd accidentally given a command I hadn't known existed. Happily, it was easy to fix. Last year, when writing about images of demons in art, I accidentally deleted half the article. Maybe I need to be prayed over again. . . .
Having now read Rod's book, I think that some of the ways he explains these matters, while not erroneous in and of themselves, might leave readers with the impression that "Nominalism" came after "Scholasticism," rather then being simply one Scholastic "school," the one that came to dominate most (but not all) universities in Latin Christendom in the 14th Century and maintained that dominance until the Reformation. (One reader asked me in some puzzlement what was the relationship between "Scholasticism" and "Nominalism.")
I think the confusion there could be reduced by referring to Nominalism as a feature of Late Scholasticism, which is the way I've tended to think about it over the years. I've noticed that many Orthodox critiques of Scholasticism fail to make the distinction.
I'm a late responder and I never have time to look into all the comments, but I'm sure a lot of people here pray for you. Thanks for sharing that. I think that being set free always involves forgetting ourselves, like Paul who was called to great things despite the shame of a career of wasting the church. keep looking at the cross, where our total forgiveness and acceptance is found. God bless
Quote: "What if there are layers of mystery built into a thing, and the purpose of the viewer (that is, you and me) is not to impute meaning to it, but to discover the meaning, the logos, that already exists in it?"
I've never studied philosophy and don't understand the distinctions you're making. But to me, the things that God created are a gift for us - like a wedding gift from the groom to the bride. We're not just to see Him (the logos) in what He has created, but to see His love for us in what He created. He created beauty in nature for us to enjoy.
The bible teacher I like to listen to the most (David Pawson) defines logos as "the reason why". Without God, there is no purpose to our existence. But our existence points to more than just Him. It points to His purpose for why He gave us existence.
I always enjoy your perspective, Dean.
I did study philosophy and a bit of religion and I get lost in the nominalism references, too. It's tough for me to understand that a 500 year old view of things could dramatically impact my psyche. But I'm open to it!
Thanks John for your kind words. I assume this philosophical stuff effects how the elites think and then it gets propagated to everyone else. Or maybe they end up just not effectively defending the faith because of it. I agree. It's tough to understand.
I also have to question how nominalism could have come to dominate an entire civilization when probably fewer than 1% of people, at any time, knew anything about it, or any of the ivory tower arguments of the time.
I guess that academia always punches way above its weight, right? A lot of the race and gender ideas that are mainstream in the culture today were percolating in the fringe corners of the liberal arts department when I was in college.
One question I have: to what extent is abstract theory developed to justify and buttress things we are already doing? That does seem, to me to be the case with a lot of the racialist DEI theory. Affirmative action has been around for a rather long time now, originally justified on wholly pragmatic grounds. But pragmatic rationals have weaknesses,., especially since as times change they may no longer make sense. Ideologues, and career bureaucrats, much prefer "eternal" rationals so that their practices can never be challenged.
For that matter a good deal of Christian theology seems to have brought up the rear, evolving out of devout practices which eventually needed formal justification when challenged by doubters (e.g., iconodulia contra the iconoclasts).
That seems like an almost Marxist sort of view, doesn't it?—that ideologies are the superstructure generated by the material conditions of the base? I'd think that it could go both ways. Sometimes the idea may emerge as the justification for an existing material reality, and at other times people really do become captivated by an idea first.
The book to read on that subject is Weaver's classic 'Ideas Have Consequences.' Also, Lewis's "The Abolition of Man" is basically a critique of nominalist ideas, although not by name.
I think the main point has to do with whether A) things have essences that we discern with greater or lesser fullness and clarity or B) things have no essence, so they have whatever meaning we willfully say they do. You could see it in the gender insanity: is woman a being with a given, objective essence that we may recognize, or is woman whatever we subjectively feel like calling woman at any given time?
Is that similar to the difference between saying I'm god, or I'm not god? If you don't think there is any god outside of you, then you can do what ever you want, you can attach whatever meaning you want to things. But if you are not god, and there is a real God outside of you, then what He says is the meaning of something is what's important. Or is that not what the distinction is here?
It is, at the least, saying that there is no God who grants essences and thus intrinsic meanings to things. It would suggest (for example) that the meaning of sex is not what God has declared it to be, but rather whatever meaning we may choose to find in it. And if we can make things mean whatever we want them to mean, then we'd sort of be gods. The distinction is between *discovering* the meaning that God has given to things vs. *creating* whatever meaning we want in things. So yes, I think you've got it right.
This is why Montgomery called nominalistic modernism a form of Gnosticism, or an "inverted Platonism." It still believes in essences, but the essences are created by subjective intellect rather than God, and then established by cultural or political authority.
I tend to think that references to "Gnosticism" in this sort of context typically amount to lazy slurs. It is unfathomable, for example, how one could get from what the ancient Gnostics actually believed to the proposition that "essences are created by subjective intellect".
Have you read Voegelin?
The late literary/cultural critic Marion Montgomery would pose the question this way, I think: Does intellect recognize reality or does intellect determine reality?
I'd say that there's ultimately a sort of paradox and a dance: the intellect recognizes reality, but in a way, that recognition itself is a creative act. The light of spirit reflects on the water of consciousness, and that reflection itself is a type of second moment of creation, with light reflected in water being something new and other than light unto itself.
Quite a lot here today. Thank you, Rod. With regard to Ockham’s Razor, William of Ockham died before probability became a mathematical discipline. If he had been alive after that, he probably would have been able to express himself more clearly. From a perspective of mathematics, the simpler explanation has fewer dependent events and/or a higher probability of each of those events. In other words, the more complex an explanation, the lower the probability that it can occur.
The problem here is the hand waving that arbitrarily assigns probability to these events. If God exists, then all things are likely to have a supernatural essence or nature. Imminence of God is likely. Etc. To state from the beginning that God does not exist, or that it is unlikely, means that the materialist explanation is most likely. The question becomes less about the nature of things or their explanation and far more about the nature of that nature.
Assuming that you don’t subscribe one view or the other about the existence of God, Ockham’s razor really goes out the window. You essentially say that there is no basis for determining these things, because God is a variable with no definite value. The human mind then finds it far easier to default to our limited perspective and ignores the greater “world.”
The thing is, we have recorded testimony that God was among us in human form. We accept testimony and oral accounts when it comes to legal matters or historical ones, so why should these be any different? Applying Ockham’s Razor again, with this in mind, puts a great deal of weight behind God being the simplest explanation to quite a few things. Of course, it comes down to one’s willingness to accept that evidence. Is Jesus being the Son of God the simplest explanation? Is the simplest explanation for our existence that we are part of God’s creation? Can synchronicity and events with extremely low probability from a materialist point of view have an extremely high probability from a Christian point of view?
Ockham's razor has always struck me as misquoted and misused. Most seem to think it says "the simpler explanation is far more likely to be true". or some say, "all other things being equal, the simpler explanation is more likely to be true."
I can't see that it says anything like that. Rather, it merely seems to say that unnecessary steps should not be added to a proof. Always prove something in the shortest way possible, but don't leave something out if it keeps the thing from being proved. Quotes from Ockham - and he seems to go no further than this:
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate ("Plurality must never be posited without necessity"),
Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora ("It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer";
Does that sound a bit like "the simplest explanation is most likely true"? A thing still has to be proven - is there really more than one explanation for a thing? And is "my balcony is there because it was put there by invisible elves" - short and sweet - the truth because it is simpler than the many complex steps of building and engineering that put it there?
As for what was claimed above - there are always a near-infinite number of pre-existing conditions, branching this way that that, which brought something to be. Thus, nothing that happens is at all probable, in that sense.
So Occan's razor is more an invention of his successors, who amplified and generalized his ideas? If so I'd like to quote you!
Well, now I've gone and done it. I do not think I am expert enough to be quoted, but thanks. Ockham's razor might be well paraphrased as "when faced with competing hypotheses that make the same predictions, we should prefer the one that makes the fewest assumptions." So, according to one source, It's a principle of parsimony, of theoretical elegance - not a statement about truth or probability at all.
It is about preference for where to start. Examples - if you hear clopping hooves outside in North America, start from the assumption it is a horse, not a zebra, even though it could be a zebra.
You are likely well aware that the heliocentric model at first gained traction because it needed far fewer and complex postulates to explain the motion of heavenly bodies that the geocentric one. And of course, now we have confirmation of heliocentrism. But this does not mean -
Medicine can give sad, but perhaps understandable and necessary, examples. A doctor would prefer the explanation "stress" for headaches rather than a brain tumor. The doctor might even stop and recommend meditation or some such if it is found that the patient is quite stressed. But we don't have the funds, time or energy to test everyone for brain tumors. Rough stuff.
<"when faced with competing hypotheses that make the same predictions, we should prefer the one that makes the fewest assumptions." So, according to one source, It's a principle of parsimony, of theoretical elegance - not a statement about truth or probability at all.>
Yay! I should have read this before submitting my own reply. I think the "where to start" explanation you provide is interesting and informative given the popular connotation of Ockham's razor. I'm a bit confused by your medical example though because I would have thought the brain tumor was the simpler explanation with stress being amorphous and multiply determined. But that's just the psychologist in me speaking.
100%! It has nothing to do with probabilities. In my limited view, anyway.
Wait—you're saying it wasn't elves?
Dude, you know very well it was an archangel.
Is that how God asks an uppity archangel to get humble? "I know your usual job is monitoring the laws of gravitation and all, but now you're gonna go build a balcony."
Also, that sounds like some other law: don't ask an archangel for help when an elf could deal with it? Or maybe it's just a proverb.
Well, in addition to gravity, they usually build the church arches, but this one had the day off.
The more you know . . .
My first response was too quick for your edit, but yes: Posit not archangels when elves will do.
When I learned the experimental method and empiricism, Occam's razor was simply introduced as a heuristic for judging the validity of two theories given equal outcomes. It's KISS with a more intellectual name. It's about which theory we go with given two theories that make the same experimental predictions. In some ways, it's a political heuristic because it can tell us which scientist, given two competing theories, should get the credit. The simpler (more elegant?) theory (and thinker) wins. Applying Occam's razor to probabilities and thinking probabilistically is an overgeneralization of a simple heuristic.
It also just occurred to me that using heuristics in thought/decisions is explicitly not thinking probabilistically. So to add probabilities to any heuristic is just not what a heuristic is for. Heuristics are short cuts. Thinking probabilistically is decidedly not a mental shortcut--which is why humans have to be trained to use probabilities correctly.
Also, being a little facetious, but only a little, anyone who calls for direct US involvement in Ukraine should be tried for treason. Why? Because us getting dragged into a pointless foreign war would be giving aid and comfort to our enemies.
The Constitiution defines treason quite precisely since the Founders wished to preclude the possibility of treason being used for political purposes, as kings had done against their rivals for centuries. Supporting an ill-advised war comes nowhere close to that definition.
People are throwing around the word treason way too lightly, from newly McCathyite liberals against Trump to Trump himself against liberals to Elon Musk against immigration activists
Right. What the Founders wanted to quash is what in old England was called a Bill of Attainder, a law passed against an individual, and which, I firmly believe, is what Pelosi, Letitia James, and Alvin Bragg did to Trump.
No, they impeachedTrump which is allowed under the Constitution. That is in no wise an attainder. The latter is a matter of the legislature acting as a court in order to try, convict and sentence someone. It made a certain sense back in Ye Olden Days when powerful nobles could flout ordinary courts. But the abuses were major and quite ugly.
Like poor Strafford.
Indeed! He was, as you know, originally impeached (by the House of Commons) but when it became evident that he would almost certainly be acquitted by the House of Lords, the "managers" of his trial substituted a Bill of Attainder, which itself squeaked through the Lords because the London Mob intimidated enough peers (especially bishops) from attending the Lords for the final vote - and then intimidated King Charles (who never forgave himself for the act) into signing the Bill by threatening his French wife.
I'm no scholar, but I have made a study of the English Civil War as the first irruption of leftism. (Also as to what put an end the great flowering of English letters.) The Commonwealth Men had all the Bolshevik traits: concealing their ultimate goals, engineering the establishment into acts of bad faith by their own disingenuousness, using the courts as their tools, etc., etc. I imagine you've read Clarendon. It's all in there. He was on the spot.
Could we suspend our principles in order to pass a bill of attainder that bans Bill Gates from owning farmland? That feels sort of emergency-level important.
Nope, because such laws can't mention Gates by name. Laws can be passed to restrict him, but there has to be objective criteria that meets a valid public purpose. For example, suppose hypothetically Gates wanted to stop agriculture on all his properties and return them to the 'natural' state, to the detriment of the nation's food supply. That could be stopped by law, even without taking the title to the land. It's all in the details.
Can it mention him by Social Security number? . . . Okay, fine, point taken.
Actually, one of the smarter lawyers we have brought an indictment (just before the statute of limitations would have stopped him) against a rapist, who was named by his unique DNA markers. As this prosecutor put it "We know nearly everything about him, we just don't know his name."
But of course, that is an exercise of judicial authority, not legislative.
There have been some very clever laws that provided subsidies to specific but unnamed (though very politically connected) individuals by setting up conditions which only one individual could meet.
Yes, we saw that very recently with the Panera Bread franchise owner in California.
I agree, Jon. Turner is a damned fool but not a traitor.
Article III, Section 3, Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
I don't know. The Soviet Union was not an enemy of the USA when the Rosenbergs worked with them, they were an avowed ally. It will always come down to the prosecutor declaring whom the enemy is.
The Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage, not treason.
By golly, you're right.
Furthermore, the assumption during their entire prosecution was that they almost single-handedly turned over the secrets of the atom bomb to the USSR, when it turns out that a naturalized British German-born communist named Klaus Fuchs, a physicist who was at the center of the actual research, provided the detailed material to the Soviets. This is similar to Jonathan Pollard being sentenced (not to death, only 25 years) on Caspar Weinberger's testimony that the information he admitted transmitting to Israel had been passed by a Soviet mole in Tel Aviv to the USSR, resulting in the execution of several prime American assets. That was before Hansen and the Aldrich Ames and John Walker spy rings were known -- the damaging information most likely went through one of these channels, not via Tel Aviv.
Sorry, the constitution requires that the United States actually be at war before treason applies, to giving aid and comfort to the enemies we are at war with. Whether it has to be a declared war is an open question. Ronald Reagan advocated that we should declare war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, so that anti-war protesters could be prosecuted for treason. None were for a mere "police action."
I'm afraid, the chances of a world war three actually happening have gone up significantly. We knew that North Korea would eventually enter the war, since Putin's visit there, that is basically what it was all about. From China, there are rumblings now, that the CCP has started moving industrial capacity inland, in preparation for a major Pacific war.
Apparently, there are government incentives and downright orders from central leadership to that effect. Most Chinese companies are now part-owned by the state and they have started moving plants that are crucial to the war effort inland, mostly to Sichuan province, which is undergoing a property boom as a result. The reasoning seems to be, that Sichuan is far enough inland to be safe from Allied air bases (US, South Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese) and is surrounded by mountains and rivers that make any ground invasion a near impossibility. I treat these reports, coming mostly from Chinese netizens, seriously.
I talked to one of my best friends, a Russian who lives in Moscow, recently and he was telling me that Russian citizens are now visiting North Korea pretty regularly. This is very much a new development.
Turner's congressional district includes Wright -Patterson AFB, which would make it fairly high on the list of potential targets, though in a nuclear exchange dying first might be a blessing. (The only way Turner pays a price for this career wise if some MAGA tries to primary him, not holding my breath on that.)
China is no where near where it needs to be and its soft power strategy will continue for at least a generation before it rocks any boats. From China's perspective it need only wait for Russia and the US to exhaust themselves in conflict and China will then succeed to the role of the world's chief power, or at least Asia's. Why risk war, which always and everywhere is a chancey business filled with unintended results, when events are already moving exactly where you want them to go?
I am more afraid that the intervention of North Korea in the Ukraine war might give Poland a reason to intervene. That would be dangerous. It is notable that the Polish Foreign Minister is Radek Sikorski, husband of Anne Appelbaum.
"From China, there are rumblings now, that the CCP has started moving industrial capacity inland, in preparation for a major Pacific war."
Perhaps, but if so, the Chinese are simply ignoring reality (and not at a little cost). If Ukraine can strike Moscow with drones, how does anyone believe that China can move anything far enough away to be safe from American missilery? Belief that American missiles could strike at the heart of the Soviet Union, whether launched from a moving submarine or a stationary silo, kept the MAD peace for 45 years. Perhaps it can still do so.
It is extremely unlikely that North Korean troops will go into Ukraine. There are all kinds of problems that would cause. Different language, equipment, logistics, tactics, training standards, etc. All that for a few thousand troop, which Russia doesn't need anyway?
It's probably a propaganda ploy, to justify some escalation on NATO's part. Then, after that happens, the press will simply stop talking about North Koreans in Ukraine. And in a couple of weeks, the mass public will have forgotten they were ever mentioned. They will be fixated on the next propaganda theme instead.
But there is a chance that western leaders BELIVE this. Because they need to believe that Russia is on the edge of disaster. The idea that Russia must be in a state of near-collapse is very strong in their minds. They believed that was what would happen back in February 2022. And they still believe it today, no matter what actual events since then have shown. That's because a Russian collapse, followed by a change in regime, is the only realistic way NATO can win. So therefore it just HAS TO BE true. We only need to push on a little further.
Re: All that for a few thousand troop, which Russia doesn't need anyway?
The Russians definitely need troops, and they even stooped to dragooning Indian nationals in Russia into the army before India (whose good will Russia also needs to get around sanctions) took extreme exception to that. But I agree with your point about Koreans being very difficult to integrate into the Russian military.
And good grief you cannot look at the facts of this war without concluding that the Russian military is a long way from being some overwhelming, well tuned juggernaut. This war is basically the Crimean War all over again.
There's been a very weird back and forth on the Russian military in the eyes of the west, that it somehow is potentially a threat to Europe, but also simultaneously vulnerable to being repulsed by a poor resource strapped country if we we just give that country a little more support. And the thing is, I think many people are capable of believing both things are true at the same time.
Did somebody say Orwell?
Well we've always been at war with Eurasia
No. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
Given the advances in missiles delivering conventional explosives, I doubt that vulnerability to aircraft range will make a significant difference in a major war. That goes for the US too of course. We've never been in range of a major international war so far.
I read once about how the Getty museum in L.A. bought a painting for several million dollars. Prior to their purchase, they had several experts examine it and verify that it was genuine. But after it had been installed, the greatest expert on the artist visited the gallery. Before he even got close to the painting, he immediately recognized it as a fraud. The thing is, he had spent so much time studying the genuine paintings that his brain was trained to recognize the subtle details. And why had he devoted so much of his career on studying the paintings of that particular artist? Well, because there was depth in his works. There was layers of detail and meaning. There was a form of beauty and insight.
We have before us everyday the work of the most brilliant artist the world has ever known. And yet we pass it by and don't give it a second thought. We should rather study His work so that we better recognize His hand in things. So that when we are still far away, we can see whether He was involved in the work before us or not.
Psa 53:2 God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, [any] who seek God.
God has set a painting before us, and all around us. And then He looks to find out who will see, who will understand. The amazing thing is that this painting whispers to us, and reaches out to us to stir our hearts. This is really more than enchantment. This is a lover searching for a bride.
Beautiful comment, Dean. Funny thing, I was thinking of that very verse yesterday and it bugged me that I couldn’t remember where it was. Now I got the answer — Psalm 53:2.
I have a Word document that I keep adding verses to (that say something to me), and it keeps expanding. This is one of those verses. For some, I study them and write up my own paraphrase attempting to understand them better. Here's the paraphrase I wrote for that verse:
God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who “frequent the threshing floor”, searching after, seeking, contemplating, studying, and inquiring of God, any who turn their mind and attention to seeing and pondering God, becoming wise and gaining insight.
Just this morning, I was thinking about how this relates to the subject of enchantment. The verse is all about thinking, using your mind, contemplating, etc. But the difference is that these are done in the context of truly knowing that God is real. In other words, if you really know God is alive, then what does that mean? To me, it's implies something truly wonderful and marvelous.
Psalms 139:17 in NKJV reads: How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!
However, the Hebrew is ambiguous in that verse, and can just as well be read: How precious are my thoughts of You, O God! How great is the sum of them!
I think that is the correct reading. David couldn't get God out of his mind. David kept thinking and thinking and thinking about God! The entire first 16 verses are all David's thought about God. But look at verse 18:
If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You.
That last phrase never made sense to me - until I looked up the Hebrew for it. It's just three words: to awake, a continuance, with.
So to me, it should be read, "when I awake, the thoughts continue with me". In other words, I can't get these thoughts of God out of my head! In other words, David is the very one God was looking for in Psalms 53:2. He was the one who turned his mind and attention to seeing and pondering God. And God really liked that.
I love the phrase " frequent the threshing floor". Recall that the threshing floor became the foundation of the temple (2 Samuel 24), the nexus between God and man.
Interesting. I found that phrase looking at the commentaries on that verse. I can't remember exactly now, but somehow, it came from the German translation of the verse. I liked it because I imagined someone who spends time threshing while deep in thought about God.
Quote: "'What a delight it is to have some great journey to undertake, some great enterprise under way, so that all one’s thoughts and efforts are guided by its onward momentum.' Yes, that’s how I feel now..."
Rod, for me, this gets to *why* God has given you this grace at this time. Yes, He wanted to set you free of the Shame, but He also has a "great journey" that you are meant to undertake. And that journey requires you to be free. Many could say that your journey up to this point has already been great. But in my mind, God is just getting you started. This is in part because of the day in which we live. The day requires those who will take great journeys.
In other words, God has set you free for a purpose.
I've lost a few friends in these last few crazy years over politics. Some friends who were indie filmmakers, whose work I supported and my library still features their work. I also had an Army buddy I was close with (we went through 46R school at Ft Meade, Maryland and did a tour in Germany together) who unfriended me on social media when the politics got crazy. Interestingly, he did not block me and checks the messages I send him (he lives in Florida and I send extra prayers his way during hurricane season, and regular prayers every day.) But life is too short and connections with loved ones too important to ditch over this nonsense.
I lost a cousin to the Qanon cultic nonsense. She always had a thing for conspiracy theories and we didn't talk politics (her own mother couldn't talk politics with her) but now she's gone right into the deep end.
Pray for her, man. All you can do. I'll pray, too.
Of course. All my kin are in my prayers regularly.
Close to something I recall you saying the other day, things like that are like a drug. Prayers
Thanks!
One of the great ironies (and certainly, tragedies) of history is that Ockham took his stance, in theory, to preserve God’s sovereignty. And yet the chain of events he initiated (to be fair, he did have help, and he did have predecessors) were huge influences in the overall loss of faith in the West. For anyone who might be interested, Ed Feser’s book The Last Superstition is a smart, entertaining chronicle of this process.
But it also should be said: Ockham was a provocateur. He seemed to take delight in making his points as extreme as possible, and in making people as uncomfortable as possible. Little wonder he was excommunicated eventually. He’d have fit right in, in our social media age.
Great advice from J.D. Vance. May everyone who reads it be able to follow it.
On the part of not disavowing friends over politics, I agree, but does that extend to transgenderism? I can think of 2 women, somewhat quirky and liberal, who decided that they were "men."
"Hun, no man walks like you do, who are fooling with this nonsense?" - what I really do want to say to them. I am getting tired of having to pretend that I *don't* notice these blatant incongruities.
I can also think of some male YouTubers who drank the transgender kool-aid (so to speak) and have become shrill and unsufferable.
All this to say, I will certainly be polite and cordial in casual conversation, but I do wonder if the differences in worldviews are becoming irreconcilable. Can there be common cause if there is no commonality?
I think we can and should continue kind conversations, but they will necessarily be surface level.
"K". one of my first cousin's daughters in Tennessee began dressing as a man well over 20 years ago. She is now married to a woman, still dresses as a man, but I never heard any announcement she was transgender. I long assumed she likely was, but at this point I know that I don't know. Anyway - K. is a lovely person and was kind to my mother (who I think had little idea of transgenderism but figured K. was both gay and eccentric.) I just talk to her like I would to anyone else.
The two married women come to Thanksgiving and Christmas at times. I was there once. I was not awkward. Everyone does wrong, everyone has disorders. They don't even see it as wrong or disordered. I assume they do not want to hurt children, so I am fine around them.
I would never terminate any relationship over either politics or religion.
As an aside, Rod's book came late yesterday and I got a couple chapters in before lights out.
Which is really a great explanation of the problem.
That is, we can and should act kindly on a surface level, because that's the human thing to do, and it's quite possible to do it. But, the fact that we can't have political dialogue with each other without threatening the breakup of relationships and friendships means, in effect, that we can't have political dialogue at all, and that's a core part of our political polarization. It's a box we're in. The differences are very hard to dialogue over. So you can place religion and politics in boxes that are "no go zones", where you don't get into them in depth because they are divisive and threaten relationships you otherwise value, but all this means is that, in these areas, people remain in their respective silos, entrenched with fellow travelers and the like-minded, and the polarization continues to metastasize.
I have no idea what will break this, but I do know that while avoiding getting into politics in these kinds of contexts is wise (and I do so myself, of course), it also furthers our polarization. It does that because despite treating other people with kindness in those situations and seeing their "normality", our politics remain intact, unchanged, unchallenged, and therefore generally very polarized. Any desired effect of "humanizing our differences" seems not to penetrate the political polarization precisely because it is cordoned off.
It was one thing to do this with respect to religion, because the idea behind that was to move beyond religious disputes and create a society that tolerated all kinds of religious practices and views, because the state was not tied to any one of them. Trying to do the same thing with politics, though, which lies at the core of civil society and the running of that state itself ... well, that doesn't work. We can do find if we just don't talk about religion to each other, but we will break if we never figure out how to talk about politics to each other.
Again, I have no solution here in termsof *how* to do this. It's a true conundrum.
I kind of see the religion vs. politics division the opposite to how you do.
I see politics as being about pragmatic things, and I'm happy to discuss those. I mean: people can be perfectly decent, and yet hold very different views about the economy, environment, crime, immigration, etc.
The things that make friendly relations very difficult are more "religion", in the sense of deep values, irrespective of someone's explicit religious beliefs. I can't imagine wishing to associate with anyone who supports surrogacy or child transgenderism. Homosexuals would probably not wish to associate with me, as I view their lifestyle as sinful (although I would be happy to refrain from saying that unless asked), but they nearly all support surrogacy and transgenderism, so I wouldn't want anything to do with them anyway. I guess it's more common for people to fall out with me than vice versa, though. All my Jewish and Israeli relatives fell out with me years ago, but they've gradually cut themselves off from everyone, as their opinions have become increasingly extreme and bizarre; they were always violently anti-Christian. Several people fell out with me in 2016, when I merely posted on Facebook that I thought Trump was a lesser evil than Clinton; I thought that was really strange, as I'm not a US citizen anyway, and it's not like I was ever a massive Trump fan. I've noticed people unfriending me when I post anything pro-life; that seems to be a line that must not be crossed for many people.
Personally I'm way in favor of Marlene Dietrich in white tie and tails.
So did Tallulah Bankhead.
My father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine.
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead was pretty nutty. Filming Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" required the cast to step up ladders to the lifeboat. Tallulah wore no underwear and shocked the cameramen.
I think her grave is on Marylands Eastern Shore and I used to go by it when I went to Cambridge.
?
So glad for Rod's continued deliverance. Continued prayers for a hedge of protection. Not sure, but would I irritate the devil unwisely if I imagined kicking his rear and saying "Hahaha, you don't win"?
Just to alert our host and the other posters. If Trump wins the presidency, JD Vance will have to relinquish his Senate seat from Ohio. Governor Mike DeWine will probably choose Mike Turner as Vance's replacement. Insane Mike Turner with his red lines regarding North Korean troops in Ukraine.
The Senate is the world's most expensive debate club but it accomplishes precious little in the real world.
OK, that is sad, but we should still vote Trump. And we can pray for wisdom for DeWine and/or Turner.
Also, here is the Washington Examiner on likely Vance replacements. Only Ramaswamy, Jordan, Dolan and Moreno are named.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/congressional/3084442/jd-vance-senate-seat-replacement-vp-call/
Hopefully, Bernie Moreno replaces Sherrod Brown in the Senate. Mike DeWine, a stodgy old-school Republican of the James Rhodes variety, is very unlikely to choose Jim Jordan or Vivek Ramaswamy as JD Vance's replacement. It could very well be Matt Dolan, who is from DeWine's wing of the Republican Party. Dolan's father owns the Cleveland ex-Indians baseball team. So we know that Dolan comes from cowardly roots.
It's still a thing with me. A team mentioned in Hemingway gets its name taken from it by a bunch of white idiots. And real Indians don't care, or are proud the team is named after them. Of all the smug, self-righteous crap.
My sincere wish for the Redskins was that they would have changed their name to the Braves, then left everything else exactly as is.
I was talking about Cleveland.
Yes, I know -- but Washington was in the same situation. I would have thought the connection was fairly obvious.
Yeah the “Guardians”…gender neutral, non offensive, milky white toast. No courage
Might as well call them the Oatmeal Eaters or Squirrels.
Has to do with the statues on the bridge, but ourside of Cleveland who actually gets the reference, which is dumb on its face, btw?
Vance is exactly right. I am - anyone who knows me well will tell you - a person with strong political views and not afraid to share them. Indeed, I take a certain joy in the occasional political verbal sparring match. At the same time I am well aware that these days politics can be dangerous business. I have for many years kept in touch with a number of young men who were students of mine at a midwestern college I taught at several years ago. During election season several of these young men will post their views online making clear in no uncertain terms where they stand politically. It goes without saying that their views and mine are often at odds. Yet I've never - not once - engaged them on such matters. Yes, I realize there are non-confrontational ways of doing so but I've never thought it worth the risk. Over the years I've experienced the small joys of watching these guys grow up, become successful in their careers, get married, have children, etc. Why would I want to risk that over something so mundane as political differences? Political leaders have thrived for too long on feeding the body politic with divisive, sometimes even dangerously divisive, rhetoric. If America somehow is able to take Vances advice to heart we'll be a better nation (by far!) for it. It is for this reason (and so many more) that Trump's choosing him for VP might have been the smartest thing he's ever done in his political career!
JD Vance and Rod Dreher are correct. Politics aren't worth losing friendships. Politics aren't worth straining neighborly relations. Politics aren't worth straining family relations. My Democratic Sister-in-law and Green Party Brother-in-law will be visiting for Thanksgiving and I won't mention politics at all the whole visit.
As an aside, the last time my in-laws visited was right after Geert Wilders came in first place in the Dutch national election. My Brother-in-law, who is a charter airplane pilot, mentioned that he had flown to Finland in the past. My Sister-in-law, a devotee of Oprah Winfrey, piped up "Is Finland that country that just elected that nut?", the nut being Wilders. My Brother-in-law was kind enough to inform my Sister-in-law that Wilders was Dutch. Good thing my Sister-in-law is a CPA and not a social studies teacher or political commentator.
It wasn't so long ago that Rod's comment box had a really wide range of opinions. In fact, the majority seemed to be left-of-center people of good will, wanting to engage with someone from the Right who was actually open to dialogue.
There's still lots of good in Rod's comment boxes. But I miss those days.
A few left due to the Hamas-Israel conflict. I believe one was Mrs. S from England, a valued poster, but at odds with Rod over Israel's invasion of Gaza.
I think that a more seemingly-reasonable Democratic Party would bring back more comments from moderate, "traditional" dems.
Rod is never going to attract the 18-32 year-old women, fresh off of TikTok, to discuss the wisdom of puberty blockers for 12 year olds. That seems to be the demographic that is keeping that movement alive. I think it's quite difficult to discuss the wisdom of voting for Harris, when those of us more on the right can pull out trans-insanity, or immigration, as a trump card.
After the coming election riots, I bet that those interesting left-of-center types will start showing up again. Those of us on the right will also start becoming more critical of Trump, if he is alive. (Many of us were criticizing Trump constantly here, months ago....but now that we have to make a choice......)
I guess that's a long way of saying: its the election.
Edit to add: its "also" the election.
I disagree with Rod about some stuff, and agree about others. I'm not going to unsubscribe, but I guess it would be Gaza that would make me do so if anything. I think Rod has an enormous blind spot about Jews, Israel, and the Middle East, which I struggle to understand, but I doubt he sees it like that.
I personally get a little annoyed by his ignorant slurs against Christian esoterica and how he won't understand its congruence with his enchantment project. But hey, that's okay: if he never annoyed me about *anything*, I guess that would be kinda weird.
I had wondered what happened to her. I miss her.
Rod, it's not your fault. I miss Mrs. S as well. Every point she made was honest and true even if I did not always agree. The wonder of your site is that we argue intelligently, perhaps occasionally like a bunch of friends downing two or three beers at the local bar. No two persons agree on everything. Mrs. Leaberry and I don't always agree but that's human nature.
What happened to Erin Manning?
Aw, that's why she's not around anymore? That's sad. And don't forget Talib, who was pretty all right too, although not nearly as cool as her.
Not to be overtly sexist but I believe women take disagreement a little harder than men do. Katja and Linda Arnold might comment on my assertion. I always value their insight.
Well, I think it's true that as a *general* matter, women are less differentiated between reason and emotion. If men operated like that, they would be considered effeminate—and that's part of why the wokist men do indeed seem effeminate.
In general, I think you're correct on that. :)
I know people who relish getting online in order to hash it out with others. I don't get that at all. However, I grew up generally feeling like I was the odd one out, and there's a streak of stubbornness in me that just said "I don't care". If I had been male, then I might have been the type to go around and be a little belligerent with that at times. However, being female, I think the strategy I used was to try to find common ground with people.
Being somebody who is interested in a lot of things makes it a lot easier to find common ground with other people. I suppose I build from there... at Touchstone, for example, I met a couple from Alberta, and not only were they shocked I could name various places in the province, I started talking about visiting Calgary just before the big flood in 2013. And if I don't know much about something, I'm more than happy to listen... Again, at Touchstone, I was part of the conversation that lasted until 1am, though I don't know much about some of that British and French history, it was an absolute joy to listen and learn.
But back to the statement... In most cases, I find it easier to outwardly disagree when there is some sort of base that's been established in the relationship; I suppose the people whom I am most likely to "write off" are ones who are willing to destroy that base over something stupid. I have a friend whom I was very close to in high school, and we kept in touch for about a decade afterward. He posted to Facebook a short video of Glenn Beck with the caption "I can't believe that Glenn Beck said X". Well, I watched the video, and Glenn Beck didn't say X, but he said Y, which may have been somewhat similar but definitely changed the meaning of the statement. When I pointed this out to my friend, he completely flipped out and hasn't spoken to me since. I am very, very sad that this happened, but I can't go running after him because of the friendship if he's going to force me to subscribe to his version of reality for that friendship to continue.
I miss those days too, though I acknowledge Rod ran himself himself ragged trying to moderate the comments. The old TAC blog was free and as with many free blogs it attracted trolls who would post atrocious things which Rod constantly had to screen for.
You are so right, Jon. I spent between one to two hours every day moderating. We have less ideological diversity here, but I almost never have to moderate. People who pay for access to a site have a clear interest in keeping it a clean and usable space.
It was however an effort you will be remembered fondly and with respect for, until the final age of the world, and possibly beyond.
There was a large amount of concern-trolling as well, which wasn't necessarily mean-spirited, but did tend to suck a lot of air out of the comboxes. Remember the one black fellow from New York who made everything, and I do mean everything, about race, for instance?
He was fun to spar with though, and he could be right now and then -- just not universally, and he thought it was universal.
One can affirm God's omnipresence and holding the world in existence continually without being a Christian Platonist. Please see William Lane Craig's work on this: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/divine-aseity/god-and-the-platonic-host
If everything in the world participates in an eternal, necessarily existing Platonic Form, then that clearly violates God's aseity--God *alone* exists a se. Attempts to reconcile Platonism with God's aseity all have serious problems.
I am very dubious about "eternal" forms. There may a few such at the lowest level of physical reality (the fundamental particles and forces all appear to be stable over vast eons of time), but further up the ladder things are ever in flux. The background Forms (or Fields) must also be subject to Time, though maybe in a very different way. Only God's essence is truly outside Time.
" . . . when we encounter reality . . . we make it conform to what we believe is true."
Except as an academic exercise, such a statement is absurd. Reality does not conform to anyone's understanding. I cannot make a hotdog into a dachshund no matter how much I believe it to be so. By the same token God is (or is not) what he is (or is not); any beliefs to the contrary do not make him any more or less so. This is not to say that one's beliefs about the supernatural do not affect how he sees reality. Another's beliefs alone do nothing apart from the believer.
I'm not sure who/what your quote refers to, but it seems to me that what it's saying is that we do that in terms of our perception of reality, not as to what is actually out there. In other words, put the phrase "in our minds" after the ellipsis.
Actually, the quote came from Rod's article, and I tried not to remove anything critical to its meaning by use of the ellipsis. In its context, Rod was referring to enchantment and the spiritual world that affects our reality. My take is that reality, what is real, cannot be altered by the mere mind of man, by our beliefs. It is either objectively true, or it isn't. This kind subjectivity has spread to our political discourse to the extent that both sides to any argument can proclaim truth and offer evidences that the other side objects to and refuses to accept as fact. We have reached an epistemological crisis, and I don't see a clear way forward.