5 keys to a new politic

-Boring economics. No grand visions, just boring economics. Let the people do vision, the government do boring and whistleblowing and smart reg.

-play fair. For conservatives it means legalizing gay marriage somehow. If we don't outlaw adultery or non-marital sex, it's hard to outlaw gay marriage. Is it possible for the state to police morality? Obviously yes, but I think only in a libertarian way. This one concession I feel does not infringe a Christian's moral integrity. Christians working in Rome worked with far worse laws and they worked the old-fashioned way. Loving and witnessing to their neighbor while striving for personal moral purity. I think this should be our model. Also this concession can open up dialogue in many other areas. Gay-marriage can lead to a consistent libertarian politic that would allow for a smaller government.

-Swap gay marriage for super-progress on abortion issue. Abortion impedes our ability to help and witness as Christians to our neighbor. I don't feel same-sex marriage does this. There are numerous brilliant ways to stop abortion where everyone wins. PUSH PUSH PUSH.

-Let the income tax on high wage earners slide up after a fight (to pre-empt future hikes) and offer huge, enormous deductions for charitable giving. If we are investing in America, then encourage Americans to do so according to their conscience. This is classic American and, if we're being honest and truly non-partisan, should make everyone happy. Obviously you'd have to regulate so that the charitable giving is charitable and not a loophole/shelter. As per what qualifies as a charitable donation, I think the rules are necessarily liberal.

-Have an HONEST discussion on healthcare. This means both sides have to play nice. The Obama admin did an awful job of this by jumping the gun and bizarrely forcing down a huge government expenditure during an economic hardship. Stupid. A discussion of the philosophy and hard-nosed feasibility of the goal is required. I mean honestly, NO ONE wants to see people suffer medically and go into debt over cancer treatments or what not. Both sides have valid ideas and points. We can and should have an honest and no-nonsense discussion about this. Maybe it's just not possible. Maybe it can be innovative. Maybe it can be an option that's not on the current stuffy spectrum of left to right. Maybe we have to take the plunge. It needs to be talked about correctly. Nothing has come even close yet.

These 5 items would largely resolve all the turmoil in the current political arena. These 5 items resolved would leave us with little else to argue about.

Nietzsche

"Thus the question “Why science?” leads back to the moral problem: Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are “not moral”? No doubt, those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history; and insofar as they affirm this “other world”—look, must they not by that same token negate its counterpart, this world, our world?—But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine. "

Just in time for election season

An ongoing list of the miserable contributions to English by politics:

Fearmongering: In the words of the world's most interesting man, "I do not know what this is." I guess it means you point out the dangers in the perspectives of people with whom you disagree. To say both sides engage in this is to be redundant. Something I learned in Preschool though is usually the party doing the name-calling is most guilty of the act. Just an observation.

Hate- This is far different from anything the word used to mean. It is no longer something you do, but something you are. The sky is blue, the grass is green and my words are hatespeak. If it sounds Orwellian, it's because it is Orwellian. It's usually as a sophomore in college that kids really get a handle on the second meaning of this word. Then it begins to stick in their mouths like peanut butter. This annoys me college sophomores. Stop it.

One of the most interesting contributions I've heard regarding Dualism and the Soul.

Thank you God for this insight by Swinburne. Like all discussions, there will be a counter-argument, and the counter may indeed be convincing. Nevertheless, it presents (among other arguments) a strong case that the idea of a substantially different entity- a human soul- is a reality. I in no way think that dualism as it is perhaps traditionally understood (more a heritage of Greek Pagan philosophy than anything Hebraic) is necessary to the Triune God's reality. We are humans, whatever that means, and God loves us and can do anything. That said, here's the quote:

"It is characteristic of the advance of science that different branches of science have

become integrated with each other, such as optics with electromagnetism. But the
way in which such integrations have been achieved is by supposing that the subject
matter of optics and the subject matter of electro-magnetism are (despite appearances)
really the same sort of thing – physical particles or waves. That involves that
supposing that the secondary qualities by which we originally identify the subject
matter (the colour of the light, and the feel of the heat) do not really belong to the
physical thing, but are an effect of the physical things in us. But when you try to
explain mental things and properties themselves, obviously you can’t siphon off the
mental aspect of them! And so it is the very success of science in explaining physical
events , which makes it immensely unlikely that it will be able to take the final step to
explain the very different kind of events which are mental events."

This is very, very interesting. Think about when you're a child. As you learn, you may occasionally make mistakes concerning your perception of the world around you. You strongly associate the color red with apples, perhaps. This may lead you to think that a fundamental attribute of apples is its redness. That indeed, red is a fundamental thing. As you grow older, perhaps we learn that apples are a particular arrangement of atoms that happen to absorb all the colors of the visible spectrum, but reflects back the red wavelength which we see with our eyes and perceive as the color red.

What I mean is we learn that Redness is not a "thing" proper. Red is a geometrically located segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. Say that the radiation's wavelength is X hertz, then X hertz is what we perceive as red.

Now that's just the problem. As Swinburne says, it seems extremely difficult that mental events will be fully understood as physical properties. The electromagnetic spectrum is a thing that if we were blind, still exists as a wavelength. However, now that we're blind, redness ceases to exist. You could argue that is because we can't physically perceive them, which is not to answer the question at all. Redness still exists, but as a property of the mind.

I'm getting convoluted. As Swinburne says, we discovered more about the nature of electromagnetism when we didn't suppose the physical effect we saw was a property of the electromagnetism itself. Which is interesting, because that's really all science is anyway. The study of the mental effects it has on us, but abstracted in a way.

Electromagnetism has X properties. These properties don't include "redness", but rather a spectrum, a segment of which, we perceive as "redness". Scientific materialism has created the problem of dualism. If "redness" isn't a property but rather a mental perception, than how can we scientifically abstract redness as a thing?

Put another way, for scientific materialism to work, "redness" would need to be an actual thing on the same level as Apple is a thing, the electromagnetic spectrum is a thing, as atoms are a thing, as electrons and protons are thing, as quarks are things, as (theoretically) strings are things, as.... well, actually we can't go much further... there is no fundamental particle, another devastating flaw of materialism.

Put to wit, as soon as "redness" becomes a physically defined theory, then I think physically defined theories cease to mean anything. In other words, the scenario seems more likely that we are absolutely dual substances as humans, or that there is no such think as "material" and we may as well be existing in some bizarre sort of conscious thought. A model not at all irreconcilable to Christian Theism.

Again, it seems that the Triune God may be fundamentally inescapable.

This marks the third and significant avenue that terminates in necessary belief of God. I'd say there are 3 foundational doctrinal categories:

-The Triune God (this includes God the Creator, God the Son as atonement for our sin, and God the Holy Spirit as the sustainer and feeder of our faith)

-Original Sin

-Life everlasting (absolutely true should a "mind" or "soul" be admitted, absolutely possible if we're still only presently material beings)

Via Godelian logic, I think that God the creator is necessary. By the same logic, augmented, I'd say we have to have minds. This latest consideration is as addendum. And should the first two be admitted, it only makes sense that the resurrection is true too. After all, if God is verified in everything else He's said and revealed to us in Scripture, why shouldn't the Resurrection be believed as well?

_

Hidden behind a cloud.

Dear God,

Burn me away until I'm nothing but what can't behold you. Who are you? What am I? What is this?

Dear Father,

Bless your name.

Dear Son,

Bless your name.

Dear Spirit,

Bless your name.

Bless you Three in One, One in Three. Ineffable and incomprehensible.

Silence my enemies. Give me justice. Grant me peace.

Bless your servant and give him faith.

Forgive your servant and give him grace.

Love your servant and give him hope.

Dear unspeakable mystery,

Thank you for glimpses of Your glory.

Burn me away until I am yours. Flay me until I am yours.

Your servant is weak and you are strong.

Amen.

The Multiverse, The Trinity, and what the hey is reality anyway?

A quick contemplation of the multiverse:

It is if often implied that God is described in mathematics. I think this is certainly true: it can be a reflection of who He is. But it is certainly not the primary descriptor of who He is.

Nowhere in scripture is it ever even indirectly implied that He is a primarily mathematical being. He is a law-giver, yes. But the laws are typically interested in something far less mathematic. This is, after all, the God whose name, "I AM who I AM" revealed Himself as 3 beings in 1 and 1 being in 3. It's not a mathematic explanation. It's beyond it.

And ultimately, that is one half of the primary message about God in the Bible. One half is "fear what you do not know" and the other half is "what you infinitely do not know, loves you deeply."

It's the fundamental description provided in Genesis where God describes Himself as the Creator. The scientists of today are (in their atheistic moments) not unlike the pagans. The Pagans only believed what they saw. The moon-god, the sun-god, etc. The God of Abraham described Himself by what is Not Seen and what created us and everything which we do see.

He came down from heaven and in unimaginable power pointed His finger at us and said, "Bow before the One you cannot understand who created everything you can." He resists explanation but explains everything.

Godel-like, he validates our system. All our systems. Without His necessity, we are endlessly an aberrant computer program spinning off into an infinity which invalidates itself. Without the God-parameter, we are Wild E. Coyote feeling the nothingness beneath our feet before uneasily peeking down and falling into oblivion. God is the only and necessary terra firma.

And this post has been surprisingly uncomfortable to write. I think any honest encounter with the Almighty is.

And yet, inexplicably, He revealed Himself as human and in love. The person of Jesus is the ultimate resolution to every sickness.

I think perhaps the multi-verse is true. I really don't care either way. It doesn't surprise me that the infinite Creator God would reveal Himself as infinitely creative. It is amusing to see how the God of Abraham is necessary to keep the multiverse model from constructing its own destruction. God is terrifying and huge.

Perhaps in Genesis, he didn't give them a theory of everything. Not in our traditional, scientific sense, anyhow. This seems especially prescient considering the trend in physics that there is very unlikely to be a theory of everything. Instead, He gave us himself, who is the theory of everything. The doctrine of creation is supremely important.

And He loves us individually and deeply. Despite Hawking's protestations.

Dear Lord.

You exist.