Categories
Current Events Logic

“The crowd”

is not always right. Especially a Lefty crowd.

But see, Lefties don’t want to logically and patiently show that what they think is, in fact, correct. No, they have but one trick in their bag–ridicule and bash anyone who disagrees with them!

And for Heaven’s sake, don’t debate with anyone who is not already “on your team!”

Categories
Logic

NOT a

Conservative. But you don’t have to be a Conservative to talk sense sometimes. And that should give hope to Lefties: Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while…

Categories
Epistemology Logic

Let me say

this once again:

If you are an Atheist, you are necessarily a biological reductionist. And once you go there, you rule out any semblance of moral agency. And without moral agency, there is no Truth, only opinion.

Reflex is NOT Truth! It is mere mechanics.

In such a case, my thoughts are 100% determined and thus totally irrelevant to Truth.

Because if the IS no transcendent knowledge, if there is only “brain” and no “mind,” I have to ask where this brain comes up with stuff.

And for the Atheist/Materialist the only answer even possible is “personal inputs.” And if the only reason you think like you do is because of the inputs that you have (by chance) encountered, then by definition there IS no Truth! Nothing transcends experience.

I thus have no reason to believe you any more than I do a dog-faced baboon or some yet stranger monster (thanks, Socrates). Even if lots of people agree, that is certainly no sure indicator of Truth!

I am charmed with his doctrine… But I wonder that he does not begin his book with a declaration that a pig or dog-faced baboon or some yet stranger monster which has sensation is the measure of all things; then might he have shown a magnificent contempt for our opinion of him by informing us at the outset that while we were revering him like a god for his wisdom, he was no better than a tadpole.
–Theatetus

So why would you trust your brain to get to Truth? If it is merely an amalgam of past inputs, there is no reason at all to do so! This “thinking” is actually mere reflex. So a dog-faced baboon is every bit as much an arbiter of Truth as you are!

Sure, there is a complexity issue, but there is no fundamental difference. A baboon has senses, too. So yes, there may be a difference in quantity, but certainly not quality. For an Atheist/Reductionist, that is.

Atheism, by definition, cannot lead to Truth. “Data” on Star Trek is fundamentally crippled.

Categories
Energy Logic

Yes, the

battery/storage problem totally dooms wind and solar power. But here are the arguments I have heard:

  1. Yes, it sucks right now, but by subsidizing it you encourage people to invent things in this area. Technology will eventually save us, and we will someday be able to spin gold out of straw.
  2. We use REALLY big, commercial batteries, not drugstore Duracells (NOTE: the technology is exactly the same, and bigger is in no way qualitatively different. It is just MANY drugstore Duracell batteries bound together!)

In other words, the amount of energy storage that Germany is planning for 2031 is between 0.016% and 0.036% of what it actually would need. This does not qualify as a serious effort to produce a system that might work.

The bottom line is that wind and solar suck. You can say that it will work someday. To which I say, “Yeah, maybe…”

Categories
Current Events Lefty Political Philosophy Lefty Rigidity Logic

It is absolutely

true. For a Leftist, if you disagree with them, you are one of three things: 1) stupid, 2) evil/corrupt/racist, or 3) mentally ill.

They really have no other explanations. See, otherwise they would have to marshal actual facts and put forth rational arguments. But if you can be summarily dismissed as stupid, evil, and/or mentally ill, they don’t need to make a substantive argument at all! And it is much easier for them that way. Less effort.

Plus, this way they never put their beliefs and assumptions at risk. They know very well that a Leftist who argues a point often becomes a Conservative! So they can’t leave their “bubble” or “Circle of Safety” by rationally arguing a point–it’s far too dangerous to their beliefs!

And (said in a “whine” voice), “Logical argument is hard!”

Categories
Logic Ontology

Funny, I was just

cogitating this morning about how if you are not a theist, the ONLY other logical option is to be an Existentialist/Nihilist (OK, I’m odd). Quite a coincidence to see someone else talking about it! But I’m pretty “up” on such things, and it seems very clear to me that those are the only options.

So go ahead, make your choice. But if you choose Nihilism, you really have no moral leg to stand on. There simply is no Truth. ALL is just preference and a will-to-power. There IS no Truth! There IS no right or wrong. There IS no moral existence at all! At best there is mere mechanism, but just as a hammer doesn’t choose to hit a nail (and therefore doesn’t exist as a moral entity), YOU are merely a mechanism. YOU don’t exist as a moral entity! Maybe you are more complex, but you are still every bit as much of a mechanism as a hammer or a dishwasher or a USB hub.

See, without God and without moral agency, there IS no moral existence!

If you’ve read The Stranger by Albert Camus, the argument is quite clear: Sure. I killed him on the beach, but that was because it was hot and the sun was beating down on me, and that is no more or less moral or meaningful than not killing him.

Even you punishing me for the killing is meaningless.

ALL is vanity!

Sure, Camus tried to salvage some form of morality by ultimately saying that though you are literally in the place of Sisyphus, it would not be noble to kill yourself.

Really, Albert? So you spend years making an argument that there is no transcendent morality, and then at the end, ground your argument in… transcendent morality in order to make it work and to avoid a conclusion you don’t like? Wow!

Categories
Logic

Indeed, how

does an atheist explain the empty tomb?

But if His enemies had possession of His body or knew its location, they would have rolled it down Jerusalem’s main street as soon as the disciples began telling people Jesus was alive.

On a related matter, it seems to me that there is a big push all of a sudden to engage in a sort of neo-apologetics. To show that according to science (Meyer) and history (this) it is reasonable to be believing.

Now “apologetics” is often a term spat out with disdain and intellectual superciliousness, but I think that shows a very shallow (or at least incomplete) understanding.

Modern Apologetics is NOT about rationally proving the existence of God or arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Modern Apologetics is much more about showing that reason does not preclude belief, and that there are HUGE logical gaps in purely Materialist or Atheistic explanations.