CADRE Comments

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding chapter 27, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes chapter 28, "Principles of a Commonly Shared Nature".] In the most recent few chapters, I have deduced that I must exist within a reactive system which is itself a declension from (not equivalent to) God. I think this type--and source--of Nature accounts for many interesting features, not only of Christian doctrine (I'll get back to that later), but of science. Consider how Nature seems to be at once infinite and yet finite; no boundaries to a three-dimensional space are conceivable, yet we can measure the 'size' of the universe and wonder into what it is 'expanding'. When we try to figure out the 'age' of the universe, we are left with a series of paradoxes, which seem to indicate the universe had a beginning, and yet also that physical time cannot be calculated in such a manner at that point of space...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting chapter 27, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes chapter 27, "My Relationship To Creation And To God".] Here you and I are, reasoning together. The fact that we two derivative entities are doing this, leads me to conclude that one way or another this must reflect some (probably very many) true intentions of God when He created. Specifically: what would God have to do, in order to get us into this position? The answers will tell us useful truths about the reality that overarches and encompasses you and I. (Notice, by the way, that I am once more applying the Golden Presumption, looking to deduct propositions which conflict with it.) Whatever it means for me (and for you) to be an act-er, and yet be apparently derivative, and however God managed to accomplish this (which I am setting aside again just a little while longer), I am here. Thus God intended (at least generally speaking) ...

In one memorable scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas , Charlie Brown, feeling depressed (as is his norm) visits Lucy at her psychiatrist booth. Shortly, she begins to question him about his fears: Lucy: Are you afraid of staircases? If you are, then you have climacaphobia. Maybe you have thalassophobia. This is fear of the ocean, or gephyrobia, which is the fear of crossing bridges. Or maybe you have pantophobia. Do you think you have pantophobia? Charlie Brown: What's pantophobia? Lucy: The fear of everything. Charlie Brown: THAT'S IT! Yes, people have a lot of fears. However some fears in our PC world are not so much fears like the seasonably problematic fear of snow (chionophobia) or the incredibly ironic fear of complex scientific terminology (hellenologophobia), but are "fears" that are used as ad hominems . These are fears like Islamophobia (the fear of Muslims) or homophobia (the fear of homosexuals). Of course, these aren't real fears in the same way that...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, chapter 26, can be found here. ] [This entry begins chapter 27, "My Relationship To Creation And To God".] Let me pause to re-establish a previous point from a slightly different direction, before I continue. If my arguments are to be worth anything, either I must be considered to be capable of thinking; or at least someone must exist who can judge the worth of what seem to me to be my arguments. However, what I call thinking doesn't affect me as if something is knocking into me. True, I can mention some mental behaviors of mine which do behave like this: automatic psychological associations, for instance. But the interesting thing is that I can (and do) form a conceptual, and even a merely perceptual, distinction between the two states. My recognition that some of my mental behaviors happen automatically without truly willed intention on my part implies tacitly that I can distinguish betwe...

Here's a brain-teaser for the day: The capital's leading lobby of atheists and humanists is complaining because they have been excluded from an ecumenical prayer service on Sunday morning that will launch inaugural festivities ahead of Mayor-elect Vincent Gray's swearing-in. I have to admit, I find humanists amusing. As the article from which the above quote is taken reports ( Atheists Demand Equal Time at New D.C. Mayor's Prayer Service ), on the one hand, they say that there is no God and on the other hand they want to be included in a prayer service. One has to ask what an atheist could offer at a prayer service. After all, isn't a prayer service about ... well, prayer to God? And if there is no God to whom to pray (at the atheists so often tell us), what could an atheist have to do or say at a prayer service? Well, after intoning the usual objection to a prayer service at all ("'We would prefer that a government function such as an inauguration not be e...

While surfing the 'net, I came across an article that I thought would be of interest to those interested in apologetics. Carried on MacLeans.CA , the article is entitled Jesus historians get an earful from Maurice Casey . Coming from the so-called middle, Professor Casey has spent a life-time studying the texts of the New Testament and has issues his own book about the subject entitled "Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching." The article goes on to briefly say what he finds problematic with the conservative side (accepting "as historically valid such sources as the Gospel of John, which presents Jesus as fully divine, capable of walking on water and raising the dead, and virtually a Gentile, embroiled in constant tensions, not with scribes and Pharisees, but with 'the Jews'") and the liberals (the insistence on "mining documents of no historical value, including Gospels ascribed to the Apostle Thomas or Mary ...

I am a huge fan of the Teleological Argument because it is intuitively obvious that there is something special about out universe. For those that have never explored the Teleological Argument, it basically is the argument that notes how the basic conditions of the universe appears to be finely-tuned to support life. Moreover, contrary to the hopes and expectations of our atheist friend, as science has advanced, the appearance of fine-tuning in the universe has become more pronounced. Individual factors such as the expansion rate of the universe following the Big Bang and the ratio of protons to electrons appear (for no apparent natural reason) to be finely-tuned to allow life to arise. And these are not the only two factors. Rather, after noting that if "the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as one part in [10 to the 60th power], the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form" an...

The 14th verse of the second chapter of the Gospel According to Luke is, frankly, kind of hard to translate. The classic English translation works well enough: “Glory to God in the Highest! And on Earth, peace, goodwill to men!” Strictly speaking, though, the Greek reads... well, it could read several things. A number of rather different things in fact. {Doxa} ‘glory’ {en} ‘in’ or ‘among’ {huposistois} ‘(the) highest’ {the(i)o_} ‘to God’ {kai} ‘and’ or ‘now’ or even ‘but’ or ‘yet’ {epi} ‘upon’ {ge_s} ‘(the) land’ or ‘earth’ {eire_ne_} ‘peace’ {en} ‘in’ or ‘among’ {anthro_pois} ‘men’ or ‘mankind’ {eudokias} or {eudokia} ‘of his delight’ or ‘delight’ Does “highest” mean that glory is given among the highest angels to God? Or is the highest glory being given to God? Both of course would be true. Is the glory being also given to God upon the earth or land? And if so, is the glory on the land, or is God upon the land as well as in heaven?! Either or both could be true!--if the Incarnation i...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, chapter 25, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes chapter 26, "God's Relationship To Nature".] Although I was unable (yet) to deductively remove from the option list the concept that what we call 'physical Nature' is God, I will remind you now that my own status as either a rebel (even if only occasional rebel) or as a deluded victim of illusion, indicates (even if nothing else did) that I am not fully divine in and of myself; and this indicates that at least two levels of reality, or two substantially different systems, exist: God and (in one way or another) not-God (namely myself). Therefore, although I could only give a conceptual strike (not deduction) against 'practical pantheism' in the previous chapter, I do think I have deductively argued that pantheism must technically be false: not everything is fully God, because--as far as it is possible for me to tell--I a...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, chapter 24, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes chapter 25, "Supernaturalism".] By comparing my behaviors and characteristics with what I have discovered about God so far (and despite the wide-reaching implications, the actual number of details I have developed is still quite limited), I find that one way or another I must not be an entity with fully divine status. I am not God. I may perhaps be partially divine (whatever that means--and it's a topic I will get back to), but even the concept of being 'partially' divine necessarily indicates that a distinctive level of reality must exist which is not itself God. This means a distinctively real supersystem/subsystem relationship exists; and I seem to be representative of the subsystem. As I explained last chapter, this strikes a serious blow, in a technical sense, against pantheism. Either everything is equally God (including ...