What it means to me.

"Twas brillig, and the slithey toves did gyre and gymbol in the wabe
All mimsey were the borogoves, and the mome-wraths outgrabe."

This is the entire universe as it really is from your, or my, point of view, disregarding our relationships with each other. The Sun rises and sets every day no matter how you're getting on with the wife and kids, no matter who is vying for political power at the City Hall, the local district etc., no matter if you're a CEO or a janitor.

It conjures up a picnic scene where we are sitting, relaxed, knowing that things are happening off in the distance. Off in the distance there may be a village or even a big city where the hustlers are hustling and the bustlers are bustling, where they hustle and bustle day in and day out.

If we imagine the city empty of people, there it would be, brillig while off in the distance the busy are busying. It's just the first layer upon which everything else rests, it being explained that there are always, in fact, other thingies doing their thingy. The farmers are farming, the butchers are butching, the mosquitos are doing little fly stuff and so on.

There is always a scene upon which stuff is going to happen, but no matter what stuff happens the scene will tend to go back to being the scene.

After this we could add anything at all. For example, "Twas brillig, blah, blah, blah, 'then Eve gave an apple to Adam', or, 'that's when the President pushed the Red Button'".

The first couple of lines of Jabberwocky is the ultimate scene-setting, the 'when' and the 'where', the 'could be anywhere', the 'nothing to see here folks, unless there's something to see'.

But I've been trying to make you see, which in a way corrupts the whole idea. For you to really see, to really notice what I'm trying to mean, you have to find those moments where it's all just 'there' around you. You may notice it if you practice yoga, or if you have jogged far enough, what do I know, "I'm not a doctor dammit, I'm not an elevator!", to corrupt 'Bones' imfamous saying to my purposes here.

The Supertramp line from their song, "If everyone was listening.", ".. the stage is in darkness and clear..", kind of sums it up too.

Commercials use settings to create moods favourable to selling their product. They have an idea where their target audience are, as far as mood goes, by the show they are interrupting, which has a setting within your setting, then they add another 30 second setting over that.

Like you're at home where homey things are happening all around and you're watching Star Wars where Star-Warsy things are progressing and suddenly you're in 'the kitchen' and 'she' is worried that her pasta isn't going to be perfect! Recommendation? Well, that company's pasta is going to make 'her' pasta-worries disappear, and of course, your pasta-worries too! Then on to the next commercial where, you'll never guess but, there is a solution to your car-worries, yes there is.

Bit of a digression but, have you noticed that most new cars resemble a shoe? I'm tempted to say, "What's up with that?", but I don't want you to feel as if I'm droning on purposelessly.

But what does it mean? Not the stuff about the commercials, which I was trying to use to explain what the Hell I am meaning.

I think that the great Douglas Adams gave it a shot, the 'meaning' thing that is, with his, "Don't forget to bring your towel."

At this point I'm going a bit Monty Python on you, with, "I don't know, what the Hell does it mean to you?"

There's the comment section 'down there'. Let it out! You know, if the scene is set for you to do that at this time.

I, for one, think it has it's own meaning.

Talking to rednecks!

Me:- Hey Redneck, I noticed your anti-Obama post. I know that you're not a rich man, so I'm proud of you for wanting to shoulder more of the tax burden in your country.

"Broaden the tax base" is the operating phrase, which means, well, you'll be paying more. It's that simple. ... I hope you don't consider the word 'tax' a profane word. LOL I realise you're not going to believe me about that tax thing even tho' I live in B.C. and indeed we have a 12% Harmonized Sales Tax making 12 bucks worth of groceries cost 13 bucks. our B.C. Liberals are badly named they're very right wing.


Redneck1:- @ IAN- LOL!!!! I am for less government, which really means I'm Anti most of the bozo's in office today. And the national sales tax idea is not a bad idea, one I have pondered a lot latley.


Redneck2"- Well you all need to realize that they all ready get way more taxes than they need to take care of this country so more taxes is not going to help any thing except give them more to waste. A plague should wipe all politicians off the face of The earth so we can start over.


Me:- Oh, the idea is no new net taxes, so a few billionaires will get the appropriate giant cut in theirs while you'll get to pay 12% on top of the price you see on the shelf. See something for 12 bucks? That'll cost you $13.44! When you start paying a surtax on everything, if they don't just hide it in the cost, you'll be reminded every single time that you buy something that your State and your Country is not one tiny bit better off for it.

And Redneck2, you're not going to get less government, just less governing. Some pictures of guys clearing the brush down on the ranch, that there had to be worth the 400 grand a year for the Prez, yea?

Redneck2:- Yes there will be less govering caues it will cause utter chaos and throw the world in a panic, in which case I would be way more happy to deal with than what we have now! Case closed.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

There we have a peek into the mind of madness, I suppose. Redneck2 WANTS utter chaos, he's rooting for utter chaos, case closed!

Two dogs humping.

Imagine looking around at reality without having any prejudices concerning what it's all about, just 'being there' observing, noticing the kinds of things going on and so on and so forth, then being told by someone that bestiality and homosexuality were not natural.

"Well, I don't know about you but when I look around I see dogs naturally being drawn to the smell of a bitch in heat and being so overcome by it that they'll hump just about anything. What better advocate of 'natural' could you have than animals doing what animals do?"

This idea, that what animals do sometimes just isn't natural, seems to stretch the meaning of the word 'natural' to it's breaking point, and I don't think that this goes totally unnoticed by people.

Seems to me that this is an area where religion is deliberately clashing with reality, making it's point that it can convince you of anything at all really.

Interspecies sex you say? TOTALLY UNNATURAL! DISGUSTING! A dog humping your leg now, now THAT is natural, he's just a dog and doesn't know any better than to be, you know, unnatural.

Isn't that the point, when ideas are brought together and they don't match up, where you realise that this religion 'thing' is just fucking with your mind? Hey, I'm a product of my environment, it gives me 'the creeps' just to think about dogs humping humans or vice versa and I'm not advocating it as something I'd like to see on the way to pick up a Big Breakfast. I'm just saying that it's not not natural, or it wouldn't be not natural.

I think that part of the problem there is that we get programmed with the notion that natural is good but the 'natural' we're thinking of that is good doesn't include yucky stuff like sex or poo or sex in the poo-hole or 'GAWDFORBID' poo in the sex-hole! YUCK!!!

I just don't think we're taking reality into account when we avoid the idea that we're walking bags of shit and that if it could be put to a life for life vote, just our own personal space would be billions, if not trillions to one in favour of poop, yummy poop!

Yea, I understand that E. Coli doesn't have a vote and shouldn't have a vote in the matter, I'm just pointing out that the idea that life is sacred is very specific to human life or at least 'higher forms of life', or at least 'naked-eye-visible' life, which just has to count when we're discussing whether we're 'accountable' for what we do with fertilized human eggs surely? It's just that there's another thing that is deemed 'not natural' therefore unGodly by the religious when controlling your own(if you're a woman) body seems at least 'as natural' to me.

I think it says something about us that comedians make good livings off of exposing our hyp9crisy when it comes to 'nature', you know, along the lines of, "By applause who here is kind of disgusted by poop?", followed by, "Now, by applause, who here refuses to take a shit on account of their disgust with it?"

What is that I hear you think, "But we're naturally disgusted by poop!"? Yes, yes and dogs are naturally NOT disgusted by eating a good lump of poo if they happen on one, isn't THAT right?

Camus said that you either have to admit that it's all just absurd or get yourself some religion, but I suppose, in this rant, I'm saying that even if you do get religion it's absurd anyways, you've just blocked yourself from thinking it is.

"Thank goodness" hardly anyone reads the shit I micro-publish anyways.

:o)

Spiritualism/Spirituality

'It' came up again in the conversation recently.

"What about emotions transmitted over distance?"

A couple of questions clarifying exactly what it was that was being asked, 'til we realised that it's that feeling you get that Grandma(for example) isn't doing so well, then you find out, "Oh. My. GOD! Grandma's had a stroke, I 'felt it'!"

Skeptics can point to the feelings you get sometimes that something is wrong when it turns out that there's nothing amiss. I don't think this helps much. True Believers are as apt to dismiss that as skeptics are to dismiss spiritual explanations. I don't think there is anything at all that one can say to a True Believer which could possibly step in between their idea that their feeling of impending doom for a loved one and the conclusion, that a loved one is in peril is valid evidence for, at the very least, an emotional level telepathy.

There's something seriously wrong with us, I think, when a huge portion of us take it for granted that there is some kind of mysterious force, more or less keeping us in contact with each other, but I do think I know it roots.

Have you ever noticed how you feel different when you are walking along the street by yourself compared to walking along with someone, or even with a dog?

Have you even noticed how the house feels different when there's someone else home?

I think it just has to do with how our brain works, how we are just paying attention to the fact that the wife is in the house somewhere, or that the dog is in the corner, or similarly that we're pacing our walk to accomodate our companion?

That there is your basic 'emotional communication', you ARE 'attached' to that other because you're getting clues, a breath, a footstep, some sound perhaps at the edge of our hearing range which is nevertheless comforting.

I think it's that we react, not to 'the situation', but to the 'change in the situation', which is converted by us to imagining that we are reacting to the situation, there's not much difference in the framing of it.

"We had a good walk.", means, more or less, "No uncomfortable situations arose.", and the same with other situations where your home with someone just being there.

Funny thing happens when you're walking along with a companion and they don't do what it is that you think they should be doing, if for example you're walking and talking, look around and they're not there!

The same kind of thing happens when you're interacting with your companion and they start playing with you, disagreeing with everything you say, disagreeing with the you that is you, they're playing with the emotional bond that you feel you have with them.

I'm trying to paint a picture of the emotional stew that is our daily lives, all our friends, relatives, pets, strangers, other peoples' pets and so on provoke emotional reactions in us which becomes our background, part of the 'I' that I project onto others and part of the 'you' and the 'him/her' that she/she projects onto me.

A stray thought of Grandma coupled with an odd feeling that something is amiss is likely not unusual since Grandma is likely to be old and I might feel that it's been too long since I've contacted her. Couple that with news that something has befallen Grandma and we have the makings of a hit, an instance of long distance emotional communication. That same thought with a quick call confirming Grandma is fine, isn't a miss, "What? I was merely concerned that I hadn't heard from Grandma for a bit is all!"

How simple is it for the True Believer to use such mundane emotional connections to their advantage and declare the rest of us, who are likely in the minority, closed minded?

Alan Roebuck said it! Guess that must settle it?

On Evangelical Realism, I said,

" [Mr.Roebuck said, quote]“…it is absurd and dangerous (not to mention invalid) to reject theistic evidence unless you have very good evidence for naturalism being true.”[end quote]

Not only shifting the burden of proof, sneeringly shifting the burden of proof!
Are we going to hear a couple of ‘nuggets’ which compose this ‘mountain’ of theistic evidence?
I doubt it.",

to which Mr.Roebuck replied,

"Your responses so far have been underwhelming. Perhaps this is just a site where atheists meet to kibbitz and I have committed a faux pas by intruding on a private conversation and asking that you justify your atheism. But you criticized my essay, so I defended myself. I wonder if you can defend yourselves.
My language is harsh, but fair and not insulting. Since I have to interact with you (I have to defend my essay), I might as well try to knock some sense into you."

Okay, I think that Mr. Roebuck is tacitly admitting that this is just a debate(let the best debater win!), and subject to each and every rhetorical trick in the book.

"There is no symmetry between our positions. Your position is defined by the “No!” you say to a vast sum of evidence and arguments. My position is that some of this sum is valid, and you need to justify your rejection of obviously good evidence. If you cannot justify it, you are probably wrong."

Seems to me that Mr. Roebuck hasn't read many atheist blogs if he doesn't know, and he doesn't seem to know that what atheist bloggers do is point out fallacies in anything remotely regarded as 'evidence' by theists. So, apparently we are being invited to step out of reality into Mr. Roebuck's 'world' as per usual when it comes to Christian apologists.

"Are you even aware of your own reasons for rejecting all the evidence?"

Indeed.

" How much of the evidence do you even know?"

Quite a bit more than I need to know to decide my position on this.

" Are you capable of doing more than sneering?"

This is a bit 'to quoque'ish, don't you think. I say that he is 'sneeringly shifting the burden of proof' and would you look at that, didn't even bother to look up a synonym!


"Do you know how one might investigate something that is not physical?"

Sure, you investigate something that isn't physical by it's effects on the physical world.

" There is at least one non-physical thing that you know exists: Your consciousness. Don’t say “Consciousness is caused only by the functioning of brain cells.” Even if that were true, consciousness itself, the thing you experience, is obviously not brain cells, nor is it functioning of brain cells. Your consciousness does not have weight or a chemical makeup, so consciousness does not equal brain cells. And your consciousness cannot be measured in volts and amps, so consciousness does not equal brain cell activity. Your consciousness is an irreducible thing, and non-material.
So at least one non-material thing exists. (Technically, I’m claiming it’s a “substance,” that is, something that exists in and of itself, and not as a property of something else.) Therefore other non-material things may exist.
We don’t have a direct experience of God, as we do of our minds. So how, in general, does one discern whether a non-material thing exists? Not by empirical evidence, because we cannot detect a non-material thing with our senses. Some other line of reasoning must be used.
The basic evidence for God is that the various aspects of reality cannot generate themselves, and therefore need a cause. Here are brief summaries of two lines of argumentation.
The universe (including space and time) did not always exist. Therefore something outside of matter, space and time caused it. Sure, this analysis does not show that the cause is God. But it does shows that the cause is not the matter that you tacitly assume causes everything.
Darwinists only believe that Evolution can account for the origin and development of all life because they assume God did not do it, and therefore matter is all that could have done it. But they are assuming their answer, not proving it. It is more plausible (unless you have an irrational presupposition of naturalism) that an intelligent Being caused life.
Question: If one does not beg the question by assuming that God is impossible, why specifically is a naturalistic explanation of the origins of the cosmos and of life more plausible than a theistic one?
Saying “science has proved Evolution” is an invalid answer. Science assumes the materialism that I am asking you to justify.
Saying “The Bible is full of mistakes” is in invalid answer. Mistakes do not justify naturalism.
Saying “Religious believer say and do many evil and foolish things” is an invalid answer. Mistakes and evil do not justify naturalism.
Can you justify your rejection of all the evidence?"

I haven't even read all of this yet, there's just so much meat here.

So far I've replied thus,

"Mr. Roebuck says, “There is at least one non-physical thing that you know exists: Your consciousness.”
Consciousness is a process or a word, the first word in this sentence. Now we both know we’re not talking about the word ‘consciousness’ here,so an analogy to consciousness would be ‘the flowingness’ of a river. The ‘flowingness’ is not the water itself, much like the consciousness is not the chemical reactions themselves.
Hey, you came here to teach us something, perhaps you might learn something instead, Mr.Roebuck?
I am underwhelmed(to use your word) that you can point out ‘things’ which don’t materially exist. I think you’re just mixing and matching your categories here.
(Please come to my blog and defend yourself there too! )",

but there's more coming!!!

Everything...

What is WRONG with everyone?


I noticed that a lot of people, too many people are more than willing to stretch a 4 by 3 picture onto a 9 by 16 screen.

This makes me crazy. These people should have been drowned when they were kittens, in fact this explains the GOP and fucking EVERYTHING!!

Let me count the ways!

We learn by repetition. Repeat this as many times as necessary until you understand that, we learn by repetition.

Now it's not surprising that some people have learned that it is easy to manipulate others by 'thinking outside of the box', using the fact that we learn by repetition, against us.

Magicians do this all the time. We know that when someone picks up an object in his left hand, it is in his left hand, through countless instances of this being true.

Politicians, people who make commercials, lawyers, theists, philosophers and so on, know how to manipulate language in the exact same way, by using variations in the meanings of words, to their advantage.

These people know how you think, as sure as they know the next number you are going to say when you are counting numbers.

They know that how to twist the system is as easy as redefining words to suit themselves. A great example of this being the redefining the meaning of the word 'torture' to suit themselves when it suited them.

Eric, who comments on The Chronicles of Saint Brian the Godless, is a master of this kind of diverting tactics, one of his favourite tactics being to use the examples of how Moral Philosophy are not as cut and dried as we'd learned(by repetition) that morality is.

Of course it is disingenuous to piggyback your religion on the notion that you can argue against your victim's lack of understanding that morals are NOT as clear cut as we have learned they are, isn't it?

And understanding that morals are not clear cut betray this tactic as one of the 'chess openings'(if debate is seen as a kind of verbal chess) that apologists are willing to use to distract, confuse and defeat an opponent's ideas.

And it's all framed(as per Pliny's framing post) in such a way as to suggest that they're right, they know all, and their opponents are wrong, and they know nothing.

Hey OBAMA, put your chess set away..

.. 'cos they're playing poker! Actually I think that the President knows this fine.

Trouble with poker is that you don't need to be the sharpest pencil in the box to play, and losing one hand means nothing. Using this analogy the right have the 'God card' and by default the Pro-life card, which most people can agree with 'in principle', just so long as it's not themselves.

The problem with Pro-life it seems to me is the difference between 'just' as in authoritative and 'just' as in fair. They say that it's not fair to the fetus AND that God is commanding us not to commit unjustified homicide, which is the standard taking both sides of the issue.

But 'we', I mean pro-choicers and non-religious, see the fairness issue as fair to the woman and of course there is no reason to browse 'sacred' books for guidance.

It makes no difference that neither God in the Old Testament said anything specific about abortion nor Jesus in the New Testament, I know that they just assume the fetus IS a person then God/Jesus must be talking about fetuses when they talk about all people and such.

This would be a great argument if the state was forcing women to have abortions, by the way.

Back to the 'poker cards' analogy. One card that everyone seems to fall for is the notion that the richest Americans should not be expected to pay to support the poorest. This is all very well if you want your country to resemble a Banana Republic where the infrastructure is left to rot because the rich can all afford helicopters and don't have to look at the poor. Also this plays into the hands of the deeply religious who imagine that non-believers and backsliders ought to live in a kind of Hell and only 'good Christians' ought to be educated tools of the rich or ministering the poor on how, we can see that if they only believed, the Church would provide charity and education to allow people to be, basically, party members, and accept their lot in life as minions.

I'm starting to feel lucky that I lived in the time I did. A generation or two earlier and we'd be at war for this freedom that wasn't available to most before that, and a generation or two later, it's back to oligarchs and robber-baron time because the free enterprise crowd together with the believers killed the socialist dream of casting out the worst of the greedy and the controlling religious.

I can't help thinking how easily the American people are duped by the wealthy into changing their votes though. After Bush, the people who would change their votes were going to vote for the Democrats. The wealthy created the Tea Party to resplit the voters 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3. Trouble is that 2 of those 3 thirds are for the GOP no matter if they vote 'straight' Republican or Tea Party!

It was a typical con of the 'con'-servatives. It's absolutely brilliant! The Tea Party claimed and are still claiming the opposite of what they really are, supposedly a 'populist movement' against 'big government', but not one of them votes against any right-wing 'security' move that lets government intrude on their privacy, thinks their personal welfare check or pension or other entitlement is at risk from their own supposed worldview.

I mean, what a bunch of simpletons! Not the Tea Partiers, likely YOU! All they needed to do was start the shenanegins, a few total nutbars, Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell and the so-called main-stream media's 'narrative' being written for them, and the wealthy get their way.

No one pointed out that whether the nutbars got in or not, the GOP were going to come out on top. The 'loony left' were so busy laughing at these few cartoonish characters, some of whom even got voted IN, that everyone was surprised that the narrative, that they might be crazy, but the left are all godless(or at least not Christian), totalitarian assholes to be feared, stuck like shit to a blanket.

"But Obama is such a good 'statesman'." you might say? He's still being forced to push the 'center' further and further right to try to please everyone, even the libertarians who now look a lot less fucked up than the Tea Partiers.

But the libertarians are the ones who think that they can leave which 'big government' that ought not to exist until the next disaster then say, "Oh, that one I wouldn't have touched, we can see that we need that one."

Fuck them.

"Dude, you seriously need to get laid."

verymissmary@aol.com said...
Dude, you seriously need to get laid.

This strikes me as a very odd thing to say. What would her first clue to the situation that she feels I'm in, be? I had to check out verymissmary's blog to try to get some kind of hint as to the kind of mind behind the thought here.

Didn't help. I don't know if it was supposed to be a put down or a joke or perhaps she was drunk at the time and couldn't think of anything else to say, who knows?

This kind of statement reminds me of another one that was common enough for a comedian to make fun of it. Seems he had heard the ladies, a few times, saying, "He's gay, but he doesn't know it.", so, of course he thought it would be funny to analyse that a bit.

Is the guy waking up at 3:30 A.M. some mornings with a sore butt and a guy snoring beside him thinking, "Hey, mebbe I'm gay? Naw, I'm pretty sure I'd know something like that!"

Back to the topic, such as it is. Was it the topic on my last post that elicited that response, I wonder? I spent the pause between that last sentence and the beginning of this one wondering if I'm subconsciously hiding some kind of code only detectable to strange blogger women/girls/ladies indicating somehow that I haven't had sex for awhile.

Let's think about that for a second. What is she thinking the consequences of my having sex would be here? My next post would be way more interesting for her?

Well, here's my 'next' post verymissmary and it's entirely about me puzzling over what you might have possibly meant by your comment that might have been in any way useful to me or even let me know what you thought about the post itself.

I'd like to think I'm a fair critic, myself, but when I read YOUR post on YOUR blog, I'm at a loss for words about that too!!

You live on a noisy street and find that police presence helps curb that tendency.

Oh well.

The Cold Facts

Seems to me that the cold facts of the story available to the writer, are that Abraham and Isaac went up the mountain and came back down.
There is no good reason outside the story why we ought to believe that God communicated anything to Abraham in a manner different to how any religious person may feel that he is being communicated with by God.
Seems to me that the story is a bit circular, in that it is proposed that Abraham is hearing God's WILL more clearly because he has such faith, yet the story concerns God testing Abraham's faith.
Matt's idea that God can will the resurrection of anyone he chooses seems to make a mockery of the whole idea of Jesus death.
Are the Gospels telling the story to believers who understand God's plan through the exact same story?
Point is that minimizing the killing part, the death part of the Abraham story seems to be special pleading for the Abraham story and ONLY the Abraham story if your not willing to minimize the killing of Jesus in THAT story.
All I'm trying to say here is that shifting emphasis using rhetoric 'a la' Matt here, can have untended consequences for other stories.
If we're going to make a parallel between Isaac and Jesus, we could easily make an unflattering parallel between God hardening the Pharoah's heart and God presumably ignoring the faithful prayers of the Sanhedrin requesting their God's Will??
Can we assume that the Sanhedrin believed in God?Can we assume that the Sanhedrin believed that they were faithful to God and were exacting God's Will?
Then there must be different kinds of faith then?
Or I'm missing something extremely subtle.

So what is wrong with religion?

Religions are corporations. Corporations are defined as 'persons'. Religion defines itself as a group of worshippers dedicated to exacting the will of their personal leader. The will of their personal leader is discovered by the edicts of religious leaders who are human beings studying sacred writings to convince the worshippers that their personal leader is guiding them to benefit themselves(supposedly the entire group, but not necessarilly). Religious leaders may come and go, like CEOs and board members, but the 'person' in charge is, of course their transcendental personal leader, who is, in fact, the corporation.

There is nothing wrong with this idea as far as religion is concerned, except that it justifies the existence of other corporations as persons.

The trouble is that corporations have only their own interests at heart no matter what the interests of each member of the corporation and certainly disregarding the opinion of anyone not even in the corporation.

If a group of people want to not be held responsible for their actions and be completely self-centred and have absolutely no regard for others, they incorporate, creating a transcendental 'being', a 'person' who isn't there, in effect a GOD.

C.S.Lewis, Old Nick and the Deacon

The story so far on Evangelical Realism, is that Deacon Duncan decided to criticize C.S.Lewis famous book, Mere Christianity.

"..in Chapter 1, he writes,
The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the laws of gravitation, and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law — with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Nature or to disobey it."

The big problem with this is that Lewis is making an analogy, that morality is a law, which, like gravity is natural, but unlike gravity, we can choose to ignore, which makes this law, named 'The Law of Nature", by Lewis, to avoid naming it morality, a prescriptive law, in need of a Law-giver, who, much to no-one's surprise is going to turn out to be none other than God.

Nick's objection is that Lewis, as a Thomist, is just using this analogy for convenience and doesn't really believe it.

I think that this just makes Lewis doubly disingenuous since he is hiding his prescriptive law of morality in with descriptive natural laws and naming it, "The Law of Nature" specifically to come to the conclusion that it IS prescriptive and that God is the prescriber.

The simpler analogy would have been that morality is a law, but of course everyone would see through this right away and Lewis is trying to sound fair.

Nick's objection that Lewis was a Thomist is a simple diversion basically saying that Deacon Duncan cannot object to Lewis' use of this analogy because Lewis doesn't actually believe the analogy himself, is somewhat tricky as it puts Lewis' reasoning above criticism.

All's fair in Christian apology, I suppose.

Kalam Cosmological argument

Kalam Cosmological argument

"The material world we sense around us comprises of temporal phenomena that depend for their existence on other temporal phenomena and so forth."

This is fine, sure time passes.

" Such a series cannot continue to infinity, for if it did no one thing would satisfy its dependence and nothing would exist. The fact that things do exist necessarily implies a finite series..."

This is okay too. "Something" started off the Universe, I can go along with that.

(Part duh!)
".. and, in turn, the existence of a being who determined both the existence of this series and the specific attributes or properties that define it."

NO! I can see why, since this argument has been around for so long, that a theist would want to rush through this part, this very important part.

"By rational extension, this being must be eternal and without beginning, otherwise it is temporal and forms part of the series."

I guess if you get away with quickly rolling by with the 'eternal being' thing, your work is done but you keep going as if that isn't just covering up the 'God-slide-in' there.

" It must also be sentient for a timeless cause producing a temporal effect requires an independent will."

I don't see why some 'timeless cause' requires a will.

" Finally, effecting so grand a creation as the universe and all that it contains necessitates knowledge and power."

Only if we are aiming at Allah or God in the first place, do we need some timeless cause to suddenly be knowledgable.

Seems to me that a meteor heading to destroy the Earth and wipe us out could be imagined to have knowledge (of us) and power(to kill us) too.

The Sun could be imagined to be shining just for us, just to be magnanimous!

So, to sum up, Part Duh!, is the part I have a HUGE problem with. Not so much the causal part or the timeless part but the 'powerful, knowledgable, willful being' part.

Especially since (let's call it) HE, seems to be hiding for no good reason at all, and we've backed into an essentially originally purposeless HE and are going to have to back a purpose into HIM later.

Anyone who suggests that the entire thing is a set up so that he can sneak into theists' minds of an evening? Well that just won't do.

Here's one of their favourite backup responses:-
"If the universe is not eternal and had a beginning, this implies that something came from nothing."

Seems to me that this is saying that 'God' is 'nothing' or that they have no clue what 'God' is except to go with the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing thang that they just WANT 'God' to be.

Can you say, "False dilemma."?