The Logic Of Time Travel (Part 1)

Time travel has been featured in many stories of fiction, sometimes to the intense puzzlement and confusion of readers, moviegoers, and gamers!  Today, I start a mini-series on what distinguishes logically possible scenarios of time travel from scenarios that are objectively impossible.  Although I suspect that many readers of mine already know what time travel is, I will define my terms anyway.  Time travel is the process of migrating from one point in time to another that is not the usual method of moving through time--living in the present as future moments become the present and fade into the past. 

The past, of course, refers to moments and durations of time that have already elapsed; the present, to the current moment of time that is just about to become part of the past; the future, to moments and durations of time that have not yet elapsed.  Time travel is often utilized in stories in ways which render the stories incoherent and self-contradictory.  To demonstrate what it means for time travel to form a contradiction, I will address the infamous grandfather paradox before inspecting an example of logically-impossible time travel from a popular movie.  In the sequel to this post, I will explain an example of time travel that does not create a contradiction.  Now, onward to the grandfather paradox!

The grandfather paradox refers to a hypothetical scenario where someone travels back in time and kills his or her grandfather.  Let's say that Amanda travels backward in time and kills her paternal grandpa before he helped produce her father.  This would mean that since her father no longer exists, she can no longer exist as well.  Thus Amanda could not have traveled back in time to kill her grandpa.  Though it is called a paradox, it really becomes a contradiction.  Amanda cannot perform the action she went back in time to enact without nullifying the very biological basis for her existence, preventing her from being able to travel back in time because she does not exist.  The deductive reasoning here is simple.  A variation of this would be me going back in time to kill myself as a baby or young child, ending my existence because I could never have existed in the present to go back in time to kill myself.

Now, for a time travel contradiction that is utterly impossible, I will reference one of my favorite movies.  In James Cameron's film The Terminator, soldier Kyle Reese is sent from the year 2029 to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor, whose son John will lead a human resistance against a faction of robots called Skynet.  As he guards Sarah, the two eventually become romantically involved and have sex, with Kyle impregnating Sarah.  She gives birth to John Connor, who goes on to fight Skynet and send Kyle back in time to protect his mother.  The contradiction lies in the fact that had John Connor not already existed in the future to send Kyle Reese into the past, Kyle would never have existed alongside Sarah, meaning she would not have become pregnant and given birth to John.  Since in this instance what happened in the year 1984 could not have occurred without something having already happened in the future year of 2029, and since the past must by necessity occur before the future, the time traveling scenario in The Terminator is logically impossible.  This scenario is not a paradox, where something seems to be a contradiction but on a closer examination is actually possible or true; it is an impossible contradiction.  It could never happen.

While the time travel plot in The Terminator is inescapably impossible, in the next post in this series I will examine an instance of time travel from the future to the past in a popular video game that does not violate logic.  At that point I will elaborate on what makes the time travel from the video game in question possible as opposed to the incoherent nonsense from The Terminator.  Yes, I love The Terminator and I love its immediate sequel even more, but the contradiction at the heart of its premise does not vanish because of my appreciation for the movie.  But not all time travel is logically impossible!

A Sacrifice In The Name Of Truth

Truth demands sacrifices of us all.  It may contradict our desires, our preferences, our conveniences, or our expectations, but until we embrace truth with absolute devotion it will demand that we sacrifice a part of ourselves in order to pursue it.  Whether that sacrifice involves surrendering false notions, learning to yield to reality instead of preference, or adjusting our priories until they conform to reality, we may indeed need to sacrifice.  One thing I have had to learn to sacrifice during this process is dependence on other people.  At large, they will not join genuine seekers of truth, and may even oppose them.  I, however, have no problem sacrificing relationships with humans that obstruct my pursuit of truth.

One who pursues knowledge of how things are and not how they seem--one who walks in the light of reason and not the darkness of error--will likely find before long that most people do not share such a priority and can even be quite hostile towards it.  And, towards those who consistently, incorrigibly fail to share that priority even after being shown the futility and stupidity of their mindset, I have a deep indignance.  I am not only able but willing to walk away from them and metaphorically abandon them to some degree.  Oh, I still prefer for such people to reform their minds and embrace truth and reason.  I want a fallacious mind to shed its erroneous ways far more than I want to have a target for my intellectual ferocity.  I want to see irrationality and sin get exchanged for rationality and morals.

But I would sacrifice practically any human relationship for the sake of my own understanding of truth.  There is a handful (a very small handful) of relationships I have that I would without hesitation do absolutely anything short of violating my Christian ethics or silencing my passion for rationalism and truth to preserve--but I would toss aside any other relationship that interferes with my quest for truth and knowledge.  If any person becomes an obstacle to that quest (and nothing is even metaphysically capable of objectively mattering besides truth [1]) and if that person does not change when confronted with reason, then I would sever my ties with him or her as far as is possible or necessary to maintain the integrity of that quest.  At that point, he or she has become an obstacle to the only quest that can prove meaningful in the end and thus, unfortunately, must be pushed aside to some degree for the quest to continue.

Most people do not seem to care for truth and reason that much--so much so that many of their affections for other humans pale in comparison and are seen as ontologically inferior.  Many people do not appear to truly seek reality and reason above all else; they seem to seek gratification and intellectual procrastination in their place.  I am walking on a pathway to truth with reason as my guide, and I will welcome any who I happen to encounter and invite them to join me.  But if they interfere with that journey, I have no problem pushing them aside so that I can proceed as before.  As far as I know, I have met very few who can honestly say the same about themselves.


[1].  If what is true has no meaning or significance, then nothing has intrinsic meaning.  A subjective sense of fulfillment or joy does not mean something is meaningful; only objective truth can be meaningful.

A Theory On The Age Of The Universe

 

The age of the universe according to the Bible represents a controversial topic among Christians today, with some attempting to distance themselves from the issue, others minimizing the importance of such an inquiry, others claiming the topic possesses great importance, and others holding a position of agnosticism regarding the subject.  While I ultimately fall into the last of those four categories, I recognize the valid options available.  The Bible does not state in any one place that the universe is a certain number of years old, which only compounds the problem.  Regardless, I will present a possibility I do not recall hearing being widely put forth as a legitimate option: the creation days of Genesis 1 can be literal and the universe can still be billions of years old.  I have usually found that people allegorize or loosely interpret the entire creation week, interpreting each "day" as lasting far longer than 24 hours, or cling to a literal creation week of 24 hour days without any possibility of the universe being in its billions.  Here, I will show that 24 hour creation days and an "old" universe are not necessarily incompatible.


Does the Bible teach that any models of the age of the universe
other than young earth creationism (with the earth being around
6,000-7,000 years old) are untrue?

Unless there are genealogy errors that the Bible neglected to acknowledge, even going so far as to deceitfully represent the number of generations from Adam to Christ or the ages of the main figures in those generations, and unless the creation days are not literal (which could be very difficult to definitively demonstrate), there is only one way that one could interpret the Bible to not mean anything fanciful by the word "day" in Genesis 1 and have that interpretation remain compatible with a universe that is billions of years old.

Here are the first five verses of Genesis:


Genesis 1:1-5--"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light 'day,' and the darkness he called 'night'.  And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day."


Now, let us assess this passage.  The Bible is unclear as to whether or not the first creation day, where God separated light from darkness (Genesis 1:3-5), occurred within an actual 24 hour day of the initial creation of matter in Genesis 1:1.  In this potentially lengthy gap of time during verse two, thousands to billions of years could have elapsed, enabling for both the seven creation days of Genesis to be literal 24 hour days and the universe to be up to billions of years old.  By this I mean that there could have been billions of years after God created matter but before God separated light from darkness, at which point a series of 24 hour creation days occurred.  Does this theory boast the confirmation of outright Biblical agreement?  No, but the fact that Genesis 1:1-5 leave this possibility open means that people cannot dismiss it casually.



An "old" earth (and universe by extension, since God created both
simultaneously according to Genesis) and a literal creation week
consisting of 24 hour days are not necessarily logically exclusive.

Now, let me not be slow to proclaim that all of this is just a theory, a possibility that does not logically contradict itself or any specific passage of the Bible.  I am not saying this possibility is undeniably true, only that it is possible!  Yes, Matthew 1:17 says explicitly that there were "fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the Exile to Christ".  Yes, the Bible provides the lifespans of at least many of the central figures within the genealogy presented in Matthew 1.  Still, even if the Biblical genealogies and ages add up to only several thousand years from Adam to Christ, the universe can still be billions of years old.  It is possible that the universe is less than 10,000 years old; it is possible that the universe is billions of years old.  Neither option is, in a logical sense, impossible, and a literal understanding of Genesis 1-2 is not intrinsically irreconcilable to an "ancient" universe.  I only intended to make such a fact clear, not to claim anything more.

The Morality Of Anger

Have you ever heard of Christians condemning all anger as sinful?  I have, and ironically I get indignant when I hear about such teachings because they are demonstrably untrue.  While proper management of anger is a key necessity to living a righteous life, anger itself is not intrinsically sinful, as I will demonstrate the Bible teaches.  As with other areas, some people misrepresent Biblical morality and legalistically condemn anger as if people need to avoid all forms of anger in order to avoid sinning.  Since anger is sometimes a natural emotion and reaction, we need to know what divine revelation illuminates about it, lest we misunderstand how we should engage with this feeling or attitude that we find ourselves experiencing sometimes (as an aside, this post marks the one year anniversary of my blog!).

Anger is not universally condemned by the Bible.  The object of anger,
the motivation behind it, and the way it is expressed determine the
morality of anger.

Let's look at a verse from Psalms:


Psalm 4:4--"In your anger do not sin . . ."


This verse explicitly brings to light the fact that not all anger is associated with evil activity or illicit wrath.  If one can be angry without sinning, then it is true by necessity that anger in itself is not always sinful.  After all, God himself expresses deep anger all throughout the Bible.  One must acknowledge this important distinction when analyzing what the Bible actually teaches about anger.

Now, I will examine a quote from Jesus about anger that can seem puzzling at first.


Matthew 5:22--"But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment."


But doesn't this verse seem to contradict the one I explained before this?  First of all, Psalm 4:4 already distinguishes between sinful and permissible anger--anger itself is not intrinsically sinful and does not have to lead to sinful behaviors.  Anger is not always the same as a desire for vengeance (which the Bible does condemn: see Leviticus 19:18, Romans 12:19) or a desire to inflict harm on someone.  Second, Jesus became externally angry while on earth (John 2), so anyone who says that Jesus was perfectly righteous must concede that anger is not always sinful.  Third, even a footnote in the translation I used for Matthew 5:22 here (the NIV) admits that other translations add that the anger being addressed is anger "without cause".  The Bible obviously condemns anger without cause, disproportionate anger, or anger that entertains sinful behaviors or thoughts.

When dealing with anger, perhaps ask yourself the following questions:

1).  Do I have a reason for my anger?  Is it without cause?

2).  Am I acting in a manner which the Bible condemns because of my anger?

Such questions and honest answers to them can help us evaluate whether our anger is morally good or destructive and sinful.

Not all anger is abusive or malicious.  Since God himself gets angry at
certain things (Romans 1:18, Exodus 22:24, etc) and we are
commanded to be imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1), we are
commanded to express righteous anger as well.

Rage of some sort has practically always been a deep part of my personality and identity as a person--rage over perceived moral misconduct and eventually over irrationality.  As my blog has evidenced [1], I have embraced that ferocity in no small measure.  I experience it often.  I consciously allow fury (not malice) to fuel my words and actions.  And, as long as that rage is exercised within proper moral guidelines and aimed in legitimate directions, there is nothing sinful about this according to the Bible.  I am enraged that most people forsake reason for shallow, inconsistent reliance on fallacies, preferences, and assumptions.  I become very irate when Christians condemn or question me for engaging in practices that Biblical morality does not prohibit.  I get deeply frustrated and angry when people live as hypocrites.  Simply discussing or reading about things like sexual abuse, illicit torture, racism, sexism, and anti-intellectualism has provoked a great deal of both inner and verbalized indignance from me.  As I said, such anger is a part of my existential identity.  My kind of anger is not opposed by the Bible, nor does it evolve into malice (malice being the active desire to harm someone, anger being a state of heated attitude towards someone).

To teach that God discourages all forms of human anger is to greatly distort the Bible.  Until abused, anger is always either neutral or good.  The Bible instructs people to imitate the character of God--and anger is one of his characteristics, albeit one not that is necessarily popular in the American church at large at the moment.  Anger is not always tainted by sin.  In fact, it is morally good by Biblical standards for Christians to express healthy anger towards actual evils like injustice, anti-intellectualism, and legalism.  Because of this, we need not always fret over its presence in our lives.  Do not allow anger to transform itself into something illegitimate--but do not demonize all anger, as the results of doing so can be devastating.


[1].  I'm not normally subtle in my blog posts at all when I refer to certain people or ideas as asinine, pathetic, intellectually useless, or damaging!

First Principles

In order for knowledge to exist, it must have a set starting point.  Otherwise one would have no basis for where to begin, always needing to start at least one step back and never able to make any progress--an inevitably futile manner of seeking knowledge.  Thus is the dilemma which foundational truths called first principles deliver us from.  First principles encompass axioms and logic, the infallible starting points for knowledge.  They are called first because upon them every other facet of human knowledge inescapably hinges.  There is nothing more foundational, nor are there any propositions which are self-evident [1] other than those in this class.

Allow me to contrast first principles with a favorite philosophical target of mine: Christian presuppositionalism, a belief system which says that we have to assume that a certain type of deity exists for us to know that truth exists, that logic is reliable, and to even have a coherent worldview at all.  It rejects use of the intellect as the pathway to revealing truth (very ironic, since presuppositionalists have to make an intellectual case against the reliability of the intellect!) because doing so makes "humans the judge".  One of the great errors of Christian presuppositionalism (alongside the fact that the Bible teaches the opposite of it [2]) is that it assumes something to be true without proof, as opposed to identifying that for which it is impossible to be false and starting knowledge there.

Whereas it is impossible for nothing at all to be true, it is certainly logically possible that murder is not wrong or that God does not love us.  The fallacies of presuppositionalists are abundant, yet they routinely demand epistemological answers from other worldviews that they do not give for their own ideologies.  While first principles reveal to us what is inescapably true no matter what else is, presuppositionalism denies the self-evident as being true by necessity and fabricates the false premise that the Christian god must be invoked for such first principles to hold.

Only first principles deliver us from total ignorance, for without them we would be adrift in a seemingly infinite fog of unverifiable assumptions, skepticism, and uncertainty.  To claim that the Christian god must be assumed for first principles to be reliable is not only demonstrably and laughably incorrect, as things like truth exist even apart from the existence of any deity (although logic proves that an uncaused cause does exist by pure necessity)--it is a claim utterly powerless to falsify the same claim from Muslims and religious people of all other stripes.  Why is the same not true about the Islamic deity of the Quran?  Why not some other miscellaneous deity?

I have met some who deny the intrinsic veracity of first principles, and no other irrational position could ever surpass the folly, the inconsistency, and the lunacy of such an asinine denial.  To my dismay, I have never met more deniers of these first principles in one place than I have at my college, HBU, where an astonishing number of people have called me "too skeptical" (quite possibly because I reject the unverifiable claims they want me to accept) and opposed my total embrace of reason (as they use reason to argue against my rationalism, ironically!).

Many of those who have denied first principles in my presence have also told me either that they would not believe in truth or reason unless they believed in the Christian god or that it is impossible to know practically anything without assuming that such a deity exists.  If you deny or doubt first principles but think that assuming a worldview arbitrarily is the solution to skepticism, you cannot help skeptics because you are not seeking to present reality to them, only an illogical assumption you cannot defend rationally.  Presuppositionalists and presuppositionalism are useless for any legitimate epistemological investigation about the start of knowledge or the core of reality because of the idiocy and intrinsically fallacious nature of their claims.


[1].  I have addressed axioms, logic, self-evidence, and absolute certainty elsewhere:
A.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-self-evidence-of-logic.html
B.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-error-of-presuppositions.html
C.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-truth-of-axioms.html
D.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-problem-of-criterion-reflection-on.html
E.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-nature-of-absolute-certainty.html

[2].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-necessity-of-reason.html

The Cruciality Of Memory

I do not hear enough people talk about the vital nature of memory regarding knowledge and how to critically assess the epistemology of memory to lead me to think that people truly take the issue as seriously as it demands we do.  If our memories are not reliable, then almost all of our alleged knowledge is in jeopardy, either totally uncertain or lost in a fog.  All knowledge derived from sense experience, empirical observation, and education is entirely unstable and elusive if our memories do not retain it adequately.  The significance of this cannot be overstated.  Of course, it is logically possible that I have never subconsciously forgotten anything in my entire life but I am unable to consciously perceive and unlock all of these memories--but I can neither verify nor falsify such a possibility.

While the specific line between short term or long term memory is perhaps only arbitrarily defined, I can identify key differences between certain memories of mine.  Although some of my words to follow here will indeed assess the difference between memories of mine having to do with relatively recently events and things in the more distant past, what I mean by "recent" and "old" memories may not totally align with the current consensus on how to classify short term and long term memories.  For instance, short term memory is believed to only hold around 5-9 things at once and to hold them for several seconds to around a minute, but when I talk about "recent" memories in this post I am sometimes referring to any memories in the past 24-48 hours, which would involve far more than just 5-9 bits of information.  Anyway, here I will show how both recent and old memories are indispensably crucial to my ability to live and function on both a practical and an intellectual level.

Recent memories, or memories from the past 1-2 days, allow me to do things like effectively continue conversations in the present without constantly asking "What are we talking about?", remember where I am walking to, what I might want to cook for dinner this evening, and to recall what I ate earlier in the day.  Without these memories I would be lost amid confusion about my plans for the immediate future.  Because of its newness, though, such things stored in my memory--like information for a hypothetical exam tomorrow that I only studied last night--are more vulnerable to being forgotten than older memories cemented in my mind.

My older memories are, at the very least, far less susceptible to memory purges due to forgetfulness, more permanent, more expansive, and easier to access than some information in my recent memories.  I can recall with exact clarity what I remember doing years ago in 2015 with my best friend on my birthday, but I cannot remember what I ate for lunch exactly two days ago.  I can remember intellectual matters like the specific subjects of particular verses in Exodus 21 or how to prove that I cannot know if alien life exists and I can recite these facts without conscious effort, yet I cannot recall what I said when I had an informal conversation with a sibling yesterday.  I can easily recall the main plots of my favorite video games, but I cannot recite the function of every button on a controller for a game I played yesterday.  These are some ways that the differences between recent and older memories manifest themselves in my own life.

If either my recent or old memories did not work correctly, it is very possible that I would die within 24 hours depending on what I did next.  The cruciality of my memory to my everyday survival is something of immense significance.  Did my old memories not work, I might not remember that I have seen alligators in a body of water near my house and proceed to swim in that water and get eaten; I might haplessly run into freeway traffic on foot and get hit by oncoming vehicles because I don't know what vehicles are; I might forget what food is and slowly die of starvation.  Did my recent memories not work, if I was in a room I knew was filling with invisible but deadly gas, I could not react properly in order to escape because I might forget I was in danger.  In other words, a very dangerous situation might spontaneously arise that I could not handle if my memory of very recent events did not correctly function.  It is memory that keeps me alive on a day to day basis in these regards.

In matters other than survival, things like the very integrity of my worldview hinge on the quality and reliability of my memory.  What do I believe and why do I hold to it?  My memory preserves my knowledge of both.  Thankfully, a wealth of information about logic, philosophy, and Christian theology is stored in my old memories (in this case, my old memories are synonymous with what others call long term memories).  I do not have to struggle to recall this information for longer than a few minutes to a few days; I can remember many of these things perfectly and distinctly.

It is mostly my older memories that are especially crucial to my survival and worldview.  Recent memories may survive long enough for my mind to cement them in itself, carrying them over into what is often called long term memory, and thus they can still serve as stepping stones into the deeper recesses of my mind.  Both types, though, are necessary to either the formation of preservation of knowledge.  In other posts, of course, I have defined memory and proven that the faculty itself is reliable as a mechanism even if not every individual memory corresponds to objective reality [1].  But in relation to survival and epistemology, the cruciality of each of the two types of memory that I explored here is immense, and yet I recall few conversations where people have brought up the great significance of them.


[1].  I have memories--recollections of past events; all I need to do to prove this to myself is think, and to have memories I must by necessity have a memory to hold them.  My mind is constantly cycling through a wide variety of specific information.  It is not empty, and I know this with absolute certainty by constant and immediate experience.  I would be clueless about a great many things--almost everything around me--if my memory did not retain a large amount of information consistently.  I am not clueless about almost everything around me.  Therefore my memory retains a large amount of information consistently.  For more, see http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-reliability-of-memory.html.

The Vastness Of The Cosmos

New atheists have proposed some viciously dumb arguments before--but I have chosen one in particular to target here.  I have previously encountered the claim that the universe is so vast that its size either certainly or possible indicates that God does not exist.  After reflecting on the stupidity of this argument which I remember hearing earlier in my life, I had to post on why the magnitude of the universe is totally irrelevant to the issue of theism.  Now, time for the definition of a key word.  When I refer to the "cosmos" I refer to the totality of the material world, which might encompass a possible multiverse, a plurality of universes of which our universe is but a single unit of.

First of all, the argument rests on a total non sequitur.  It does not follow at all from the proposition "the cosmos is large" [1] that God does not exist.  Really, one only needs a quite basic grasp of reason to realize this.  The size of our universe, or of any possible multiverse, has utterly nothing to do with whether or not God exists; the size of the cosmos, whatever it actually amounts to, has no relevance or connection whatsoever to the issue of theism's veracity.  Anyone who uses this as an argument against theism has nothing but a major non sequitur and a blatant red herring to ground his or her case.  Again, the conclusion that God does not exist does not follow from the premise "the universe/cosmos is vast" and that very premise has no relevance to the conclusion anyway.

The universe may inspire in some people a sense of awe
or a sense of insignificance--yet the enormity of our
universe, or, indeed, the hypothetical multiverse, does
not falsify the claim that a deity of some sort exists.

Secondly, one can prove logically that an uncaused cause exists by pure necessity [2].  No, proving an uncaused cause exists is not the same as proving that a being with a moral nature who wants a personal relationship with humans exists--as I have explained before.  When I use the word God in this paragraph I refer to an uncaused cause, not the specific deity of any organized religion.  But I have addressed this point before in other places where I have written about the concept of the uncaused cause, so I will not elaborate on such a point here any longer.

Now, someone could say that, although the size of the cosmos has nothing to do with whether or not God exists, the scope of the cosmos and our minuscule size by comparison shows that the human race does not ultimately possess any cosmic or existential significance.  True, the latter can be correct despite the falsity of the claim about God's nonexistence based on the same observation about the universe/cosmos' size.  But even that does not logically follow at all.  The furthest someone could get with that argument is that it is possible that the scale of the universe and our comparatively puny size reflects some meaningless status of humanity, and that it is possible that we are indeed still of great inherent value.  After all, whether or not humans have intrinsic dignity, purpose, and moral obligations has nothing to do with the relative immensity or smallness of the cosmos!

The argument for atheism (or, indeed, for agnosticism regarding God's existence) based on the perceived size of the cosmos represents perhaps one of the most asinine arguments against ordinary theism that I have ever seen.  It is logically invalid, since the conclusion does not follow from the premise.  It relies on a red herring.  It is, quite simply, an argument that only an untrained or unsound mind would ever judge to be correct.  Only a fallacious person would ever treat it as anything but the erroneous argument it stands as.

[1].  Nothing is objectively "large" or "small" in and of itself, only objectively larger or smaller in comparison to something else.  Compared to a human, the cosmos is enormous, but without reference to some specific object or thing words referring to size have a purely arbitrary meaning.

[2].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

On Dating

During recent months, for the first time in years I have considered dating--and, of course, that means I had to ensure that I revisited my thoughts on the topic of dating as a Christian rationalist.  Dating represents a subject that seemingly occupies at least the partial attention of a great number of minds on a regular basis.  Because of these two facts, I have compiled my recent thoughts on the matter.  First, as usual, I must explain what I mean by the word dating!

Simply going on a date with someone is not the same as engaging in the process of consistently or exclusively dating them.  It is also not the same as a man and woman who are friends hanging out, whether casual friends or BFFs.  For instance, someone can meet with and hang out with members of the opposite gender all the time, yet never go on a date with any of them or have any desire to do so.  Going on a date is a possible first step into the consistent process of dating, a time to contemplate possible romantic compatibility, a thing which may or may not lead to subsequent dates or a further desire to meet not as friends but as romantic partners.  It seems to me that romantic exclusivity usually occurs around the point that a couple moves from merely going on dates to dating.  By this definition, one could even go on multiple dates with the same person without having dated them in a more formal sense.

Of course, the morality of dating must be addressed, especially since certain evangelical legalists have constructed beliefs about extra-Biblical fallacious bullshit regarding dating.  By Christian standards dating is not sinful, for nowhere does the Bible prohibit this practice and both the Old and New Testament explicitly condemn adding to revealed moral commands [1] (Deuteronomy 4:2, Matthew 15:3-9).  Any Christian who objects to what I have just said must rely on logical fallacies like appeals to emotion, authority, tradition, novelty, and popularity to support his or her case, or commit a variety of other fallacies like non sequiturs, begging the question, circular reasoning.  And contrary to what some Christians may have asserted, dating does not intrinsically involve a sexual component (not that premarital sex is inherently wrong; see the footnote).  Dating does not "train people to divorce" their spousal partners.  People may train themselves to accept gratuitous divorces, but dating itself is an amoral practice which at worst is used irresponsibly by fallible humans--the fault for such irresponsibility has nothing to do with the system and everything to do with the people who use it.  Legalistic guidelines like not dating alone are not moral necessities; logic and the Bible oppose those who claim otherwise.  A Christian who claims that extra-Biblical morality is either necessary or obligatory does not represent Christian ethics accurately and has replaced reason with preference and Scripture with tradition.

Now, there is more to a truly committed romantic or marital relationship than merely physical attraction.  A romantic relationship that acknowledges the fullness of both partners will not be fueled solely by physical attraction--though there is certainly nothing wrong with allowing that to flourish.  There are other dimensions to personhood and humanity than merely the romantic and sexual, and a thoroughly Christian approach to dating (and marriage) will acknowledge each of these aspects of human nature instead of ignoring some selectively.  To be made in the image of God is to have more than just a single characteristic or dimension.

Also, though the Bible has no moral objections to dating, pointless dating can create emotional problems.  Dating that is aimless, gratuitous, and not intended to actually lead to a more committed, intimate relationship has no real long-term point and thus people who want to not waste their time will avoid such dating as much as they consciously can.  To constantly date one person and then another may become quite exhausting and draining, as the level of emotional intensity involved in romantic relationships is not always easy to casually invest with no intention to go anywhere with it.  Such relationships and the complexities that surround them can demand much focus and elicit much excitement.  In short, pointless dating can be very emotionally unhealthy, not to mention existentially meaningless and a waste of time for committed Christians.  However, dating a person that will not become one's spouse does not in and of itself have to be a wasted time at all.  A person can use the time invested in a romantic or dating relationship (even if it ultimately goes nowhere) to develop communication skills, empathy, attentiveness, generosity, and a host of other virtues and abilities.  Dating can provoke a great sanctifying energy that shifts affections and love from inward to outward.

Dating is not something to fear, as some Christians treat it, but it is also not something to venture into without forethought or intentionality.  Time spent dating can be squandered--but doesn't have to be.  Although it is untrue that everyone needs or wants to get married or be in a romantic relationship, many people do indeed seem to desire to date, and thus dating ranks as an important issue on a personal level for many.  And Christians do indeed need to address the subject in a way that does not invent an extra-Biblical moral system, use loose definitions, neglect the merits of dating, or commit logical fallacies.  They will need to do so to both stay relevant to cultural issues and to pursue truths that they may personally long to know.


[1].  There is a handful of things that are evil which the Bible does not condemn, yet only a purely logical extension of a Biblical command or principle can identify something that is sinful which the Bible does not specifically condemn.  I addressed this point in the footnote of another post:

"By purely logical extension I mean something that follows logically without resorting to any fallacies.  For example, consider pedophilia.  The Bible does not mention pedophilia specifically in Mosaic Law, but it condemns rape and bestiality, both forms of non-consensual sex, as capital crimes (Deuteronomy 22:25-27 and Exodus 22:19 respectively).  It also says that unengaged and unmarried singles who have sex should get married (Exodus 22:16-17; no, premarital sex is not sinful in and of itself--see http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/on-exodus-2216-17.html) and married people are forbidden from having extramarital sex (Exodus 20:14, Deuteronomy 22:22).  Based on these various passages, it is explicitly clear that the Bible condemns sex that is forced and that does not either lead to or occur in a committed relationship.  Thus, although the Bible does not condemn pedophilia by name, pedophilia is condemned by a purely logical extension of explicit Biblical commands."
--http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/05/misrepresented-harshness-deuteronomy_28.html

The Genius Of Dawkins

Despite his numerous asinine claims about, well, almost everything about philosophy [1], I have to give Richard Dawkins credit for one brilliant thing--creating the word "meme"!  Dawkins reportedly introduced this term in his book The Selfish Gene--I say reportedly because I have not actually read this book myself.  Of course, now people often use the word meme to refer to an (often humorous) image with comedic text shared on the Internet, not the more intellectual concept of one idea spreading from one person or geographical area to others that Dawkins originally intended.  I find great delight in seeing how the word for a concept meant to represent a legitimate reality has come to embody comedy for Internet users!

Yes, this is a much more lighthearted post than many of the others on my site.  After appreciating some quality Star Wars memes this morning, I happened to reflect on how I have Dawkins to thank, at least in part, for the name of this phenomenon!  As of the moment of writing this I am still basking in the humor of memes.  Remember, not everything funny to come about from new atheist material has to do with the philosophical positions of new atheists!  This is one case where I will unashamedly call Dawkins an unintentional genius.

Yes, I am aware of the high level of sarcasm embedded in this post.


[1].  Including ethics, epistemology, science, and theology.  He has said some VERY dumb things!

God Did Not Create Everything

Have you ever heard Christians say that God created everything?  I'm going to prove that such a proposition is inescapably incorrect--impossible even!  I will present three examples that refute this notion regardless of Christianity's veracity and one specific additional example from Christian theology.

God did not create the following:


Logic.

The three laws of logic existed before God created the universe.  Before creation, God was still God, God did not both exist and not exist at the same time (because he existed), and the fact that God existed meant he did not not exist.   Without the three laws of logic, none of these things would have been possible.  God did not create logic because it is impossible for its three laws to not exist and be binding, even in an atheistic universe.


Truth.

Truth exists by pure necessity regardless of the specific details about how the world is.  Even if no material world existed at all, it would be true that no material world exists and thus truth would still exist.  If God did not exist, it would be true that God does not exist [1].  The existence of truth as an abstract, necessary immaterial concept has nothing to do with whether or not God exists.


Himself.

The uncaused cause, what I mean by God (when talking about God as a concept and not as the specific Christian deity Yahweh), does exist by pure logical necessity also--all I have demonstrated so far is that the existence of logic and truth do not rely on the uncaused cause for their own existence; they exist independent of it.  For something to be an uncaused cause, it (obviously) must be uncaused--meaning it always existed [2], and thus it did not create itself.  Now, whether the uncaused cause is the Christian deity is a totally unrelated issue to whether or not the uncaused cause exists.


Morality.

The first two premises and the first conclusion are true regardless of the veracity of Christianity or the Bible, but every statement in the syllogism after those is true if Christian theology is true.

1. Anything that never had a beginning was never created.

2. God never had a beginning.

3. Therefore God was not created.

4. Anything that is a part of God's nature was not created.

5. God has a moral nature.

6. Morality is grounded in God's moral nature.

7. Therefore morality never had a beginning and was not created.

God always existed and since God's nature does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17), God was always just, loving, and always possessed his other moral attributes the Bible reveals about him.  He did not invent moral commands, as if he merely fashioned nonsensical and incoherent moral demands to impose on humans, for true moral propositions merely reflect his own inherent character.  And since he has always existed and his nature does not change, morality has always existed.

God created the material world and all initial life forms (Genesis 1), but he certainly did not create everything--logic, truth, and himself were not part of his creation because they are by necessity uncreated things.  Since morality reflects his own character, morality too was not created.  No, God did not create everything, and to say so is to contradict reason and the Bible!

[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/atheism-does-not-deny-truth.html

[2].  I have proven that what I call the uncaused cause exists in a different post:

http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

The Fallacious Mind

I was told a few days ago that a certain act is immoral--because, according to those I argued with, if it was wasn't immoral, more people would do it in the presence of others!  As a result of this laughably unsound argument, I began to contemplate the nature of a fallacious mind.  When I mentioned that agreement does not affect moral truths, my two ideological opponents told me that the point was not debatable.  I protested--because they were objectively in logical error.  I did this not only because reason proves my objections correct; I did this because were the issue at hand abortion or some other important topic to today's moral debates, these people would very likely have immediately affirmed that consensus does not determine moral truths.  Fallacies are errors in reasoning; a fallacious mind is one that uses or believes fallacies; therefore the people I conversed with had fallacious minds.

Just as others have asked what makes otherwise moral people lapse into evil behaviors, I now ask what makes otherwise sound people collapse into fallacies?  What produces this cognitive dissonance that can go undetected by the very people experiencing it?  The fallacious mind is disconnected from reality; it is intellectually diseased at the most fundamental, basic level.  It has exchanged truth for error, actually believing its own demonstrably false delusions.  To do so it must try to extinguish or flee from the light offered by consistency and reason.  Of course, consistency [1] and reason still have authority even where unacknowledged--nothing can stymie them.  Reason is self-evident despite denial [2].  The erroneous assumptions, claims, contradictions, and stupidity of individuals who do not grasp this do not affect or alleviate this truth.  Refusing to confront actual reality, the fallacious mind has succumbed to identifiable errors.  Reason, which I am using synonymously with the word logic in this case, is the great light, the source of knowledge that illuminates the pockets of truth we can discover with other things like sensory perceptions [3], divine revelation [4], and general experience.

The fact that people can align themselves with reason or refrain from doing so means that people can indeed, within certain boundaries, actively resist reason.  Some people take this to signify that reason itself is unreliable, but this represents a self-refuting misrepresentation of what actually takes place when people reject reason--after all, if reason is unreliable then we could never have any basis for claiming it is unreliable!  Logic still exists and is reliable by pure necessity.  From the standpoint of Christian theology, just because the Fall darkened the human intellect by enabling humans to come to false conclusions and succumb to fallacies does not mean that reason itself lost its innate reliability, a thing impossible to come about.

But the fallacious mind, at best, suppresses this knowledge or tries to evade it; at worst, it loses its desire or ability to recognize truth as real and falsities as the lies they are.  It has an inner condition that I neither can relate to nor understand beyond mental awareness of its nature and its results.  Such a mind serves as an example of the contradictions that one lapses into when one deviates from the illumination of reason.  Compartmentalized surrender to fallacies can be very damaging as well despite its more limited range of errors, for a person who remains sound in some areas yet resorts to fallacies in others may have great difficulty realizing this disparity.

There is only one hope for the fallacious mind--that it recognize its intellectual blindness, whether this be by its own internal reflection or with the assistance of divine intervention (not that one excludes the other).  What causes otherwise sound people to become selectively fallacious?  Nothing more than their own fantasies and delusions.  The fallacious mind can seem a lost cause; a wholly fallacious mind is a thing incorrigible, useless, and deeply frustrating to those who seek truth.


[1].  Consistency alone does not mean something is true.  I could invent my own false religion tomorrow and make it internally consistent, but that would not change its lack of veracity; it would still be false regardless of its consistency with its own tenets.  However, if a belief is true it MUST be consistent internally and with external truths.

[2].  See here:
A.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-self-evidence-of-logic.html
B.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-error-of-presuppositions.html

[3].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-reliability-of-senses.html

[4].  No matter what people say, reason is what ultimately enables us to understand a religious text like the Bible to begin with.  Some information needs to be revealed by God in order for humans to access it (example: truths about his character), but reason is what allows us to correctly interpret and comprehend the Bible.

Reputations Of Reasonableness

Ask people if they are reasonable, and you may find that they like to be thought of as such.  Ask people what they believe about specific claims, and you may find that they know little of reason or of truth.  Ask people why they don't understand reason or utilize it consistently, and you may find that they do not have the desire to actually conform to reason.  For all their talk, such people do not desire consistency, knowledge, and truth, as they are content to wallow in errors and stupidity instead.

Reason is not fashioned by any individual or society and neither category can diminish its authority by their words.  Reason will prevail because it is infallible--it will outlive the asinine comments and behaviors of humans and it never relied on us to begin with for either its necessary existence or its intrinsic authority.  Although many may claim to honor and live by reason, few do either.  Unfortunately, some people would rather have a reputation of reasonableness than actually be reasonable.

People inside and outside the church have this problem.  How many Christians could one halt the arguments of by simply asking for Bible passages that support their point?  I doubt that more than a small fraction of the Christians I have met could even point out a single specific Bible verse when asked where the Bible says Jesus is divine, much less what the Bible actually says about miscellaneous moral issues like torture or sexuality.  As many in the secular world claim reasonableness although their beliefs are thoroughly fallacious, many in the church think they understand the Bible when they know almost nothing about what it actually teaches.  If they did understand, they would have very different ethical philosophies and theological epistemologies.

Do you think you are reasonable?  Do you truly grasp and apply reason?  If so, do you do so consistently, without standing on assumptions, preferences, and fallacies?  I hope that readers of this blog can answer in the affirmative.  Far too many would be swift to call themselves reasonable seekers of truth; only a fraction seem to actually live that claim out.  I hope my readers are not among them.

Two Limitations Of Science

Science has inherent limitations, though scientists like Dawkins and Harris seem reluctant to acknowledge the ramifications of this truth!  Two particular limitations of science that I will address here are inductive reasoning and reliance on the senses.  These twin epistemological factors render science incapable of delivering us absolute certainty regarding, in specific, any claim about the future behavior of causal relationships and whether or not our observations about science conform to the objective external world.

Belief in scientific claims relies on induction--the expectation that things that happened a certain way in the past will happen the same way in the future (for instance, in scientific experiments).  But just because the sun has risen each morning of my life does not mean that it will rise tomorrow during the time I would call "morning".  Just because I have fallen to the ground every time I have jumped in the past doesn't mean the same will hold true in the future.  Just because putting gas in my car has made it run in the past doesn't mean gas will have the same effect in the future.  The problem of induction mean science is disqualified from legitimacy when it comes to any search for absolute certainty about how the natural world operates.  The best a philosophy about science can amount to is a kind of probabilism that is always left open to possible revision.

Now I come to my second observation.  Using and documenting the scientific method inseparably relies on the senses.  My senses, as I've explored elsewhere [1], cannot be verified, only used.  This means that any information my senses feed me (except that I am perceiving certain things and that I am contacting something external to me) is totally questionable when it comes to veracity.  In other words, for example, even if I discover extremely overwhelming evidence for a particular theory in physics, I have no idea if any of the accompanying scientific laws or expectations have anything to do with objective reality.  Logical and mathematical truths are true by pure necessity and apply to all possible worlds, but scientific "laws" (I use quotations marks because nothing in science is absolutely certain, unlike in logic) do not possess this property.  I could wake up one morning to find gravity altered and particle behavior drastically different, for instance.  Nothing about the future of scientific observations is absolutely certain.

In light of these points, do I not appreciate the products of science?  I do appreciate them!  Am I willing to use scientific evidence to support claims of mine?  Sometimes!  But I never rely on science to dictate my worldview, as I allow logic, the only self-evident authority, to do that instead.  If reason (I am using reason as a word synonymous with logic in this case) proves something, no amount of scientific evidence can legitimately threaten that logical truth.  Scientific predictions cannot escape relying on induction and the senses--and thus science cannot offer the high degree of certainty some may seek from it.

(By the way, this marks my 200th post!  I really appreciate all the comments, reads, and support I have received so far!)


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-reliability-of-senses.html

Purpose And Meaning: Distinct Concepts

Purpose and meaning are two words casually and informally interchanged, as if they meant the same thing.  Yes, I understand that much of human language is purely arbitrary, shifting and without any inherent etymological definition.  Yes, concepts remain objective and fixed despite the flexibility and malleability of the languages used to capture them.  Yes, ultimately what matters most for my own pursuit of truth is that I understand concepts myself.  But I think that the concepts signified by the words "purpose" and "meaning" are actually quite different.

Suppose I create a teacup for myself.  As the creator of the cup, my purpose for it is to hold tea so I can drink out of it.  I objectively assigned the teacup a subjective personal purpose.  But there is not necessarily any significance to my action.  The teacup may have a purpose intended by me without the production or use of the teacup having any meaning or significance.  Perhaps another way of stating this is to say that in a nihilistic universe, a cosmos without any meaning whatsoever, my purpose for the teacup would still exist.  Of course, as I've mentioned, it doesn't follow at all that anything I've done is meaningful in any way--and yet my creation of the teacup did have an objective purpose.

Sometimes people seem to mean identical things when they say "I've finally found purpose" or "I have meaning in my life again".  Usually, it seems to me, they really mean that they have experienced subjective fulfillment and thus have declared whatever triggered that internal sensation to be something that contains purpose or meaning.  But, with the definitions I used above, the terms meaning and purpose are not synonymous, actually communicating very different concepts (and perceptions of fulfillment do not in themselves indicate the presence of objective meaning).

The Christian worldview harmonizes both concepts by holding both that God had an intended purpose behind the creation of the material world and everything contained in it and, by nature of God's metaphysical characteristics, meaning can be found in him and him alone.  This does not mean that nothing but prayer, church, and other directly spiritual activities has meaning, but that apart from the existence of God nothing can have any meaning--any significance--at all.  In the absence of God's existence, no ontological anchor for objective meaning exists, and therefore all human longings for meaning and subjective perceptions of meaning do not connect with any higher reality.  Of course, a fact hardly admitted by Christian apologists is that it does not follow from the logical fact that an uncaused cause (what I mean by God when I am not referring to the Christian Yahweh) exists that therefore meaning does.  But I'll save that for another time!  Until then, remember that purpose and meaning, although used interchangeably sometimes in informal language, can represent very different ideas.  Remember that precise language and consistent definitions matter!

Praying With The Opposite Gender

I was told recently by a figure of some authority at my church, as were others, that praying with a member of the opposite gender to whom one is not married is an activity that involves intimacy reserved only for marriage.  In honor of hearing this stupidity, I decided to target this nonsense and spend some time explaining why it is so asinine.  Upon hearing this, after I asked myself "What the f-ck?", I realized that I was likely the only one present who not only lives contrary to such legalistic advice but the only one who knew where to begin refuting such an erroneous position.

First of all, the Bible does not say that anything within a marital relationship is or needs to be exclusive except for sex [1].  In short, anyone who does not agree with this does not agree with the Bible.  Never does the Bible discourage or prohibit individual, unmarried men and women from praying together, an activity that glorifies God and cements relational bonds between persons.  The Bible also never exalts marriage as the one place where relational intimacy between men and women is expected, legitimate, or morally acceptable.  When Christians forget this, they wreak havoc on interaction between the genders and deviate from truth and reason.

Irrational and unbiblical beliefs like this threaten the reconciliation of the genders, obstructing fellowship and friendship between them.  They violate Biblical commands to not add to God's revealed moral obligations and can create perceptions of false guilt.  They suffocate nonsexual intimacy between men and women.  They encourage baseless feelings of insecurity and awkwardness.  They contribute to a pathetic and destructive societal stigma against cross-gender friendships, much less deep, close ones.  They foster confusion, mistrust, and sexualize or romanticize practices that have nothing to do with either sexuality or romance.  As a rationalist, a Christian, and someone who does not fear the opposite gender, I am repulsed by idiotic beliefs like this.  They have no place in Christian congregations and the worldviews of rational Christians.

The man who said this has done nothing except use his position of authority to teach a vile lie built upon nothing but errors in reasoning, extra-Biblical personal preference, and a severe misrepresentation of the nature of relationships between men and women.  The despicable lie that men and women cannot or should not do normal things together independent of romantic feelings has infected the mindsets of the many Christians, manifesting itself in teachings like this.  And this bullshit has definite consequences.

Does the Bible condemn the activity in question?  No.  Does reason demonstrate it to violate a purely logical extrapolation of Biblical commands?  No.  Can one condemn it without using fallacies?  No.  These questions all answered unanimously and verifiably in the negative, according to the Christian worldview (Deuteronomy 4:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:21) there is nothing wrong with praying in solitude with members of the opposite gender to whom one is not married.  People need to either accept this fact or receive stern correction in the name of reason and Scripture.  I, for one, am utterly irate, saddened, and frustrated because of the things Christians and secular people alike tend to believe about how men and women should interact with each other.  If your feelings contradict reality, you have nothing legitimate to object with when others contradict your feelings.


[1].  Yes, I have repeatedly mentioned on my blog that Exodus 22:16-17 shows that premarital sex is not sinful in and of itself.  Here I am merely referring to activities within a relationship that already possesses marital status and saying that the Bible says only that the sexual aspect of this relationship is exclusive to the marriage partners.

The Bible does not condemn individuals who live with the opposite gender (1 Kings 17), public nudity (Isaiah 20:1-6), or those who communicate or spend time with members of the opposite gender.  None of these things are sinful (or sexual by themselves), though people can misuse them just as they can any good or neutral thing.

My Postmodernism And Christianity

I recently received a puzzled look from a Christian as I explained to her that I am both a postmodernist and a Christian.  Confusing postmodernism for relativism, she could not understand how I could adhere to both ideologies simultaneously.  I will repeat the major points of my explanation here, for I truly hold to both postmodernism and Christianity and grasp both because of my commitment to reason.

I am a postmodernist because I can prove that humans have insurmountable epistemic limitations and that, left to themselves, humans perceive everything outside of pure logic on a wholly subjective level.  The truth claims about values and metaphysics made by different cultures and individuals cannot all be correct at once and many of these truth claims rest on fallacies, assumptions, and subjective perceptions instead of on reason, which inescapably affirms the postmodernist doctrine that human endeavors and perspectives are drenched in a subjectivity that keeps truth largely in obscurity, beyond our ability to know or understand.

But I am also a Christian.

I am a Christian because I have committed myself to living in accordance with what all the evidence I have examined points to.  Only some parts of Christianity can be proven, but as a worldview it boasts more evidential support than any other competitor.  I am not a Christian because I was born in America, raised in a Christian household, or had an emotional experience in church; I am a committed Christian because I have surveyed the available evidence and noticed that Christianity stands tall.

Nothing about these two philosophies negates or contradicts the other!  Postmodernism is almost purely an epistemological treatise, certainly not a denial of objective truth (otherwise postmodernism could not itself be true) or of reason (otherwise we could not know postmodernism is true), and Christianity is an ontological treatise, a system that makes claims about how reality is, not about how we perceive it.  No contradiction exists between my postmodernism and my Christianity!  And anyone who thinks my postmodernism dilutes my dedication to Christianity needs only to read my blog extensively to see that such a notion is false.  I realize that my points here may offend some, but seekers of truth do not turn aside when others object on illicit grounds, as they instead continue onward towards reason and truth without regard for the shock of those around them.

Age Does Not Signify Authority

I might as well open with a controversial but true claim: anyone who thinks that the old in any society should be treated by default as if they are reasonable, right, or helpful for inquiring into matters of truth has beliefs infected by fallacies.  I know that this will offend some, but I care about discovering and defending truth, not protecting the feelings of others or preserving illusions for the sake of either societal or individual order or happiness.  The young and old often have different fallacies, but each general group (of course not everyone within each group is unsound or irrational!) usually does have major errors in their reasoning and different assumptions that they either inherited or chose to operate on.

Paul targeted this attitude when he charged the younger Timothy with not allowing anyone to look down on him because he is young (1 Timothy 4:12).  Because of both reason and Biblical revelation, young Christians need not be anxious or hesitant to challenge the beliefs of their elders, for unchallenged beliefs can easily both become and conceal false ideas.  If you seek truth, do not yield to appeals to authority, tradition, and popularity; do not hesitate to tear down the feeble walls that anyone older than you thinks will protect his or her ideas.

The age of a person, whether it makes them "old" or "young"--and there is nothing that is objectively old or young, only things that are old or young by comparison to other things--has nothing to do with the veracity of any claim from that person and thus, totally irrelevant to matters of truth, needs to be wholly ignored in investigating the correctness or maturity of the person in question.  A recent conversation with someone who asserted that she would automatically judge an older person to be correct and sound over a younger person reminded me that this asinine belief needs to be challenged, dethroned, and exposed for the fallacies it represents.

Do you believe the following four statements?

An "old" person does not possess or need to be granted special believability or perceived trustworthiness simply because of his or her age.

An "old" person's conclusions are not true or logically sound simply because of his or her age.

A "young" person is not incorrect, foolish, inexperienced, or unsound simply because of his or her age.

A "young" person's conclusions are not untrue or logically unsound simply because of his or her age.

Do you disagree with the previous four statements?  If so, you are illogical and not reliable as a seeker of truth in at least this area.  A genuine seeker of truth will challenge every authority, never give a status of assumed authority or truthfulness to anybody (those who do this commit the fallacy of special pleading), and will trample on the fallacious traditions of the majority.  I want to see these bullshit attitudes and beliefs disappear entirely from Christian subcultures.  To defend them is to oppose reason itself, which no rational person will do.

Understanding Biblical Slavery

A common yet asinine objection to the Bible that seems to survive and flourish in fallacious parts of the Internet is moral outrage over the fact that the Bible allows and codifies slavery.  Yes, I've dealt with this issue before on my blog, but I felt like writing about it again after brushing up against it once more.  What Biblical laws teach about slavery seems to relentlessly stir up controversy, moral indignation, and shock.

But let me point out a few details about what Old Testament laws say about slavery.

Mosaic Law inflexibly classifies kidnapping and slave trading--including either buying or selling slaves--as capital crimes (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7), prohibits returning runaway slaves (Deuteronomy 23:15-16), calls for the release of slaves permanently injured by their masters (Exodus 21:26-27), demands punishment for masters who kill their slaves (Exodus 21:20-21), and says that slaves must be freed every seven years AND generously supplied with material goods as they leave (Exodus 21:2-6, Deuteronomy 15:12-15).  Also, the slavery of the Bible had nothing to do with the systematic oppression of a particular ethnic group or nationality.  As such, it had nothing to do with the type of slavery associated with early America, which involved nonconsensual relocation of blacks, horrendous mistreatment aboard the slave trading vessels, racial discrimination, and the denial of certain legal rights to slaves.  Atheist websites straw man Biblical slavery all the time by misrepresenting it quite drastically in order to inflame passions against it, yet those who have objectively analyzed Mosaic Law will know that the Old Testament does not teach an abusive form of slavery at all.

Honestly, anyone who thinks that the slavery of the Bible is identical to the slavery of past pagan nations or of 1800s America is stupid, uneducated, slanderous, or all three at once.  I'm tired of the bullshit people believe about what the Bible says about slavery.  Anyone who objectively examines what the Old Testament actually teaches about regarding the ethics of slavery will find that the Bible universally condemns slave trading, racism, and the abuse of servants.  Biblical slavery is not some nationalistic or racist system that endorses or tolerates cruelty and neglect; it is a system that one could enter into voluntarily (unless one committed certain crimes--see Exodus 22:3) and leave after a fixed period of time, having full legal rights and protection during the entire process.

Of course, moral realists who object to Biblical slavery never have a source of ethics that is both objectively sound and objectively knowable on grounds other than the fallacious emotions of an individual or consensus of a group.  Anyone who makes a moral claim but cannot demonstrate that he or she has sound moral epistemology has no basis by which to even make a moral claim to begin with.  I'm still waiting for people to stop making moral arguments based on appeals to emotion, tradition, popularity, novelty, and authority!  I hope that before long the stupidity of the slavery objection to Christianity becomes apparent and that intelligent people purge this senseless reason for criticizing the Bible from the public mind.

The Senselessness Of Tolerance

People I have encountered during my lifetime, whether from my generation or one prior to my own, can struggle with the temptation of tolerance.  Indeed, certain groups demand tolerance (sometimes only unilateral tolerance, not a kind that extends both ways) as if it were obviously a moral virtue or a rational thing to demand.  I want to demonstrate that it is impossible for tolerance to be logical or ethical good.  To tolerate an evil or illogical person or action is to either peaceably coexist with it or to be apathetic towards it.  Why does tolerance make no sense from a logical or ethical standpoint?

If there is no such thing as an objective moral obligation and all values are subjective preferences, then tolerance is not good because there is no such thing as good.

Moral relativism and moral nihilism cannot justify the belief that tolerance is good or obligatory.  Those who deny that any objective moral truths exist contradict themselves every time they advocate for tolerance as an inherent good.  Throughout my life, this asinine inconsistency has aggravated me greatly!  As an aside, know that the hypocrisy and logical inconsistency of some moral nihilists alone does not refute their denial of ethical obligations.

If there is such a thing as objective moral good, how could it be morally good or commendable to tolerate what deviates from moral goodness itself?

It does not make any logical sense to claim that we have an objective moral obligation to tolerate things or people that oppose objective moral good.  That is like saying it is logical to deny logic (though I know some people who would do so and call themselves rational for doing so)!  How can it be good to tolerate that which is opposed to good itself?  While mercy, not giving people what they deserve, and grace, giving people good that they do not deserve, can be appropriate and even morally mandatory (in very specific contexts, as with Luke 17:3-4) within the Christian worldview, neither is synonymous with tolerance.

The unbiblicality and and logical incoherency of pursuing tolerance does not mean that there is no objective obligation to love other people, but loving others does not amount to tolerating their errors.  Loving another human is a commitment to the wellbeing of that person, an objective which ideologically excludes both ignoring opportunities to refute their false beliefs and looking away as they indulge in evil or illogicality.  The Bible commands us to love, but never to tolerate.  Besides, tolerance has no logical grounds, as the above sentences in bold highlight.  I hope that people realize the utter stupidity of pursuing tolerance because of its intellectual and moral shortcomings and, as a result, exchange nonsense for reason in this arena.