Maverick Philosopher

Sunday Morning Sermon: Moral Struggle

We must struggle against our moral and other limitations, but we must also accept that we cannot make much headway with them on our own. Fail we will, and often. We shouldn't let this fact bother us too much. Prosecute the moral struggle with equanimity and detachment from the outcome. Learn humility from moral failure.

Buddhism

We are told not to become attached to the usual objects of desire such as name and fame, pleasure and pelf, land and stand. Why not? Because they are impermanent (anicca), insubstantial (anatta), and do not ultimately satisfy (dukkha).

So there is something permanent, substantial, and finally satisfying?

No!  Nothing is!

Well then, you have no basis to devalue ordinary objects of desire! If nothing is or can be permanent, then it is no argument against anything to point out its impermanence. And similarly for the other two marks.

Buddhism in its root (radical) Pali form issues in nihilism.  If everything bears the three marks, then nothing is worthy of pursuit or avoidance. The quest for Transcendence voids itself.

The mistake is to think that desire as such is the root of woe when it is misdirected desire.

These ideas are presented in rigorous and scholarly fashion in my No Self? A Look at a Buddhist Argument, International Philosophical Quarterly 42 (4):453-466 (2002). 

This here is but a bloggity-blog summary.

The Age of Celebrity

The Age of Celebrity  helps explain the ascendancy of a political outsider like Donald J. Trump, but also the mindless focus on the man as opposed to his policies. 

But it is entertaining to watch the knuckleheaded pseudo-journalists of CNN and MSNBC make fools of themselves as they dig up dirt and avoid ideas.  Andrew Klavan is enjoying himself immensely.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Sitting and Chairs

Mississippi Sheiks, Sitting on Top of the World

Phil Upchurch Combo, You Can't Sit Down

Mose Allison, (I'm sittin' over here on) Parchman Farm

Mississippi Fred McDowell, I Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down

George Jones, I Don't Need Your Rockin' Chair.  Clever lyrics.

Eric Clapton, Rocking Chair. The old Hoagy Carmichael tune from the '20s.

I've saved the best for last, The Band, Rockin' Chair.  Lyrics included. Read 'em.

UPDATE (4/8)

Drawing upon his vast store of musical erudition, London Ed writes:

I enjoyed your Saturday night special as always. (Except for Eric Clapton, but I forgive you). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lH6FgtG8Ck Muskrat Ramble by Benny Goodman and his Boys 1929.

My question to you is whether the chorus beginning at 0:17 sounds familiar. It should be. 

Benny Goodman’s boys formed the nucleus for a number of musicians who become famous as Dixieland jazz developed into swing in the 1930s. These included Glenn Miller, though not featured here, Goodman himself, Jimmy Dorsey and (I think) Tommy Dorsey. The less known Wingy Manone was also one of them. He composed Tar Paper Stomp which later transmogrified into the famous but much derided In the Mood.

They also played with Miff Mole in the wonderfully titled ‘Miff Mole and his little Molers’.

Well, as the Preacher saith in Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV):

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

The Tar Paper Stomp begat In the Mood, and, to answer Ed's question, the chorus beginning at 0:17 of "Muskrat Ramble" begat Country Joe and Fish's I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag from 1965.

Well, it's one, two, three
What are we fightin' for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn
Next stop is Viet Nam.

Why Clapton rather than Carmichael? Because I like Clapton, and to irritate Ed who, for some reason, has a 'thing' against his countryman.

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Private and Public Morality Again

Elliot submits the following and I add comments in blue:

After reading Machiavelli, Arendt, and the Important Difference between Private and Public Morality, I thought you might be interested in J. P. Moreland’s A Biblical Case For Limited Government. 

His position seems similar to yours (and mine) is several respects. Here are some relevant quotations.

-- “In my view, the more secular a society becomes, the more its citizens turn to government to give them a sense of transcendence.”

I agree. As Schopenhauer said, "Man is a metaphysical animal." He is not content with a merely physical existence and the petty meanings and purposes of ordinary life.  Those no longer able to take religion seriously seek  a substitute in political activism. They seek transcendence where it cannot be found, in the immanent sphere of the political.

-- “As naturalism and postmodernism gain ascendency, [ascendancy] the idea of individual, responsible agency vanishes, and therapeutic justice and a culture of victimization take its place. Now those that advocate free will and responsible agency tend to want government to be small and off people’s backs. By contrast, those who eschew such agency tend to want government to provide care for various victims of the natural lottery.”

Agreed.

-- “... the state cannot show compassion. As an individual, a representative of the state can have compassion in his heart as he gives to the poor; but this compassion is exhibited by him qua individual and not qua representative of the state.”

Right.

-- “Jesus held that the church and state had separate callings and spheres of authority.”

Render unto Caesar . . . Matthew 22:20-22

-- “It is widely agreed that two features are at the core of Jesus’s ethical teaching—virtue ethics and the love commands... I am among a growing number of thinkers who believe that Jesus was primarily a virtue ethicist.”

-- “In a biblical ethic, helping the poor by the coercive power of the state is of little ethical value.”

I should think that this holds for any ethic worth its salt.  

“Such actions count for very little in God’s eyes because they do not reflect the features of Jesus’s ethic identified above.”

 -- “...when it comes to caring for the poor, which is clearly a moral duty placed on believers, Jesus never intended such action to be forced on people by the state. Such acts were to be voluntary and from a freely given heart of compassion.”

Some thoughts of mine with which J. P. may or may not agree.

The state is coercive by its very nature. Now either that coercion is morally justifiable or it is not. If it is justifiable, and the state takes money from me for a good cause, then, while I have not been morally violated, my contribution has no moral value.  

If, on the other hand, the coercion essential to the state is not morally justifiable, and the state takes money from me for a good cause, then it is the case both that I am been morally violated and that my contribution has no moral value.  Money has been stolen from me to benefit someone else.  That is not what is going on in the first case. If the state and its coercion are morally justified, and the state takes my money via taxation for a legitimate function of government such as the securing of the nation's borders, then that money has not been stolen from even even though it has been taken by force.

Other questions arise concerning the state's coercive taking of money from citizens to fund what many consider to be evil enterprises such as abortion providers.  

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Maverick Philosopher: Machiavelli, Arendt, and the Important Difference between Private and Public Morality

Machiavelli, Arendt, and the Important Difference between Private and Public Morality

Reader R. B. writes:

I have been enjoying your posts about immigration because they are insightful. I'm on the border (haha) about the issue for the most part. I work with illegals from Mexico (in a restaurant) so you can imagine how that plays into my thinking. The problem as I see it is this: it is extremely difficult to gain citizenship in America and extremely expensive; most immigrants do not have the money and are trying to escape their shitty situation in Mexico. They are left with a nasty choice of returning to Mexico or purchasing an illegal visa (which the majority of the time is a scam for a large amount of their money). I am a Christian so I think it's important to think about how God treats the other--the outcast, the poor, and the immigrant. 

 

A professor friend has written an interesting paper on the subject, entitled "Love and Borders."  If you have time let me know what you think. 

My overall view is as follows.  Maybe later I'll discuss the details of the paper in question.

Christian precepts such as "Turn the other cheek" and "Welcome the stranger" make sense and are salutary only within communities of the like-minded and morally decent; they make no sense and are positively harmful in the public sphere, and, a fortiori, in the international sphere.  The monastery is not the wide world.  What is conducive unto salvation in the former will get you killed in the latter.  And we know what totalitarians, whether Communists or Islamists, do when they get power: they destroy the churches, synagogues, monasteries, ashrams, and zendos. And with them are destroyed the means of transmitting the dharma, the kerygma, the law and the prophets.  

An important but troubling thought is conveyed in a recent NYT op-ed (emphasis added):

Machiavelli teaches that in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good. The virtues taught in our secular and religious schools are incompatible with the virtues one must practice to safeguard those same institutions. The power of the lion and the cleverness of the fox: These are the qualities a leader must harness to preserve the republic.

The problem referenced in the bolded sentence is very serious but may have no solution.  That's the aporetician in me speaking. 

The problem as I see it is that (i) the pacific virtues the practice of which makes life worth living within families, between friends, and in such institutions of civil society as churches and fraternal organizations  are essentially private and cannot be extended outward as if we are all brothers and sisters belonging to a global community.  Talk of  global community is blather.  The institutions of civil society can survive and flourish only if protected by warriors and statesmen whose virtues are of the manly and martial, not of the womanish and pacific, sort. And yet (ii) if no  extension beyond the private of the pacific virtues is possible then humanity would seem to be doomed  in an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.  Besides, it is unsatisfactory that there be two moralities, one private, the other public.

Consider the Christian virtues preached by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.  They include humility, meekness, love of righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, love of peace and of reconciliation.  Everyone who must live uncloistered in the world understands that these pacific and essentially womanish virtues have but limited application there.  Indeed, their practice can get you killed. (I am not using 'womanish' as a derogatory qualifier.)

You may love peace, but unless you are prepared to make war upon your enemies and show them no mercy, you may not be long for this world.  Turning the other cheek makes sense within a loving family, but no sense in the wider world.  (Would the Pope turn the other cheek if the Vatican came under attack by Muslim terrorists or would he call upon the armed might of the Italian state?)  My point is perfectly obvious in the case of states: they are in the state (condition) of nature with respect to each other. Each state secures by blood and iron a civilized space within which art and music and science and scholarship can flourish and wherein, ideally, blood does not flow; but these states and their civilizations battle each other in the state (condition) of nature red in tooth and claw.  Talk of world government or United Nations is globalist blather that hides the will to power of those who would seize control of the world government. United under which umbrella of values and principles and presuppositions?

What values do we share with the Muslim world? 

The Allies would not have been long for this world had they not been merciless in their treatment of the Axis Powers.  

Israel would have ceased to exist long ago had Israelis not been ruthless in their dealing with Muslim terrorists bent on her destruction.

This is also true of individuals once they move beyond their families and friends and genuine communities and sally forth into the wider world. 

The problem is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):

     The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all
     earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular
     -- be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian -- have been
     frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended
     protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of
     the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the
     wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned
     against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who
     for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good
     for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for
     others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth
     interests of the community.) [Arendt cites the Nicomachean Ethics,
     Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]

There is a tension  between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen.  As a philosopher raised in Christianity, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian  "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to  influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops many of whom are woefully ignorant of the simple points Arendt makes in the passage quoted. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his  perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I   cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug smuggler or a human trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law breaking. I must be concerned with public order.  This order is among  the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's law breaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" as the New Testament enjoins us to do.

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops  and others who confuse private and public morality. 

The article referenced above is Thomas M. Crisp, Love and Borders. 

The Maoist Left in the U. S.

Here:

Just a few years ago in France, Islamic radicals sympathetic to ISIS stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satire magazine, and murdered the employees. Thankfully, in this country, the leftwing mob has not made the leap to taking the lives of those they disagree with. For now, at least, they are content just to ruin lives and businesses.

What we are seeing is an American Culture Revolution, unleashed by a narrow-minded group of leftists who have more in common with Mao than Washington. They have become dominant in the American media and have systematically purged conservative voices from the air and print. Conservative thought is more and more relegated to a ghetto and should any prominent conservative try to leave the ghetto, the leftwing mob will take action to destroy them. Liberals like Chris Cuomo can have a show on CNN attacking a variety of conjured conservative straw men under the veneer of objective news, while a conservative like Kevin Williamson cannot even write columns in The Atlantic.

The result will increasingly be that fringe ideas grab hold of people's imagination. The left has continually reduced the window of what topics are acceptable to those they agree with. Those ideas, in turn, change constantly depending on what group wakes up feeling oppressed on a particular day. They have exiled credible conservative voices, claiming that the most mainstream and innocuous are as racist and bigoted as the alt-right fringe. And if there is no difference between the two, more and more will gravitate to the truly extreme through emotional appeal. The left's insistence on determining who is reasonable on the right will only help bolster the most unreasonable voices on both sides.

Kevin Williamson is a NeverTrumper, which is never good, and Nick Gillespie lays into him effectively here, for failing to appreciate the libertarian accomplishments of Trump.

A sound conservatism incorporates some libertarian ideas even if the Libertarian Party is a 'losertarian' joke and the libertarian worldview taken in toto is a disaster. Open borders? Legalize drugs?  Ron Johnson and the boys certainly do smoke a lot of dope.

Leftists Love Criminals

You will never understand the Left until you understand that they reliably take the side of losers, underdogs, and criminals, who comprise their clientele and path to power.  And with lefties it is always about power, first and forever.

Here we read about a 78-year-old Englishman who, in defending himself against a screwdriver-wielding home invader, caused the miscreant's death and is now facing a murder charge.

Dear old England, the mother country. It is sad to see your mother, senile and decrepit, go down the toilet, having lost all her moral sense and the will to live.

Once again one sees the justification for my political burden of proof:

As contemporary 'liberals' become ever more extreme, they increasingly assume what I call the political burden of proof.  The onus is now on them to defeat the presumption that they are so  morally and intellectually obtuse as not to be worth talking to.

Actually, that is far too mild a statement. Perhaps tomorrow I will tell you what I really think.

The Greatest Risk We are Taking

Patrick J. Buchanan:

But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants, many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million, composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.

Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation and one people?

There is none. Most people with a bit of life experience know that one can get along and interact productively with only some people. There has to be a broad base of shared agreement on all sorts of things. For example, there ought to be only one language in the U. S. for all public purposes, English. It was a huge mistake when voting forms were allowed to be published in foreign languages. Only legal immigrants should be allowed in, and assimilation must be demanded of them.

No comity without commonality as one of my  aphorisms has it.

The Left, however, wants the end of America as she was founded to be, "one nation and one people." That is why leftists support the illegal invasion from the south.  But being mendacious leftists they will never openly admit this, but instead speak with Orwellian obfuscation of "comprehensive immigration reform."

The enemy has been identified.

Do not think of leftists and 'progressives' as fellow citizens; they are merely among us as disorderly elements and domestic enemies.  There can be no peace with them because they represent an 'existential threat.' Not to our physical existence so  much as to our way of life, which is of course more important than our mere physical existence as animals.

But I must add, contra certain of the Alt Right, that "one people" should not be understood racially or ethnically. An enlightened nationalism is not  a white nationalism.  America is of course  'a proposition nation.' You will find the propositions in the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence.  

I don't give a flying enchilada whether you are Hispanic or Asian.  If you immigrated legally, accept the propositions, drop the hyphens, and identify as an American, then I say you are one of us. I'll even celebrate the culinary diversity you contribute.

That being understood, it is also true that whites discovered these America-constitutive propositions and are well-equipped to appreciate and uphold them, and better equipped than some other groups. That is a fact that a sane immigration policy must reflect.

My view is eminently reasonable and balanced, don't you think? It navigates between the Scylla of destructive leftist globalist internationalism and the Charybdis of racist identity-political particularism.

What's In It for Mexico?

My man Hanson:

Mexico keeps sending its impoverished citizens to the U.S., and they usually enter illegally. That way, Mexico relieves its own social tensions, develops a pro-Mexico expatriate community in the U.S. and gains an estimated $30 billion a year from remittances that undocumented immigrants send back home, often on the premise that American social services can free up cash for them to do so.

Read it all.

From Agitation to Quiescence

The freshness of morning mind ought to be respected and cultivated. But it is not easy to keep the early hours free and clear of all internal rants and rehearsals, especially in these trying times. This morning I succumbed and when I hit the mat of meditation at 3:45 my mind was far from quiescent.

One might be tempted to write off such sessions as inauspicious, and quit the mat, but this is a mistake. Some of my best meditations have emerged from mental turmoil.  The depth of the dive is often in inverse relation to the febrility of the initial ratiocination. But daily persistent practice is essential.  

And of course no electronics whatsoever in the early hours: from 2 AM to 5 AM or later everything is off or disconnected: land line, cell phones, modem, radio, television. Wifey is asleep; cats are up but they don't talk.  One can taste sweet solitude in one's home as hermitage if one wants it.  It helps to live in a quiet neighborhood with neighbors few and far-between, far from the madness of cities which breeds the madness of leftists.

Three Reasons the Left Wants Ever More Immigration

Here:

The first and most obvious reason is political. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, chain migration, sanctuary cities and citizenship for immigrants living in the country illegally will give the left political power. An estimated 70% to 80% of Latin American immigrants will vote Democrat. So, with enough new voters from Latin America alone, the Democrats would essentially be assured the presidency and Congress for decades.

[. . .]

The second reason for the left's support for virtually unlimited immigration is that one of the most enduring tenets of the left — from Karl Marx to the present-day Democratic Party and left-wing parties in Western Europe — is that the nation-state is an anachronism. [. . .] That's why the left opposes a wall at America's southern border. The wall signifies the affirmation of America as a distinct nation.

[ . . .]

The third reason is the power of feeling good about oneself. It would be difficult to overstate the significance of feeling good about oneself as a primary factor in why people adopt left-wing policies.

Those who support bestowing American citizenship on the children of illegal immigrants — the so-called "Dreamers," based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act — feel very good about themselves. They are the compassionate, the progressive, the enlightened.

This is why German Chancellor Angela Merkel brought a million refugees into Germany, a majority of them Middle East Muslims: She wanted to feel good about herself and Germany — especially in light of Germany's evil history — "Look, world. We Germans really are good people."

Why do Democrats support sanctuary cities, and even sanctuary states? Because, in addition to first two reasons, it enables them to feel good about themselves. In their eyes, they are moral heroes protecting the stranger, the oppressed, the marginalized, the destitute. 

Lunacy in excelsis at the 'Universities'

This from a reader: 

You might be interested to know that a Canadian university recently had a job ad that might be even worse than the one you mentioned from the University of California at San Diego:

. . . candidates shall demonstrate a capacity for collegial service and a commitment to upholding the values of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion as it pertains to service, teaching, and research activities.

So not only will the successful applicant spit out Far Left idiocies in class but, in addition, he'll make sure that his philosophical research demonstrates his commitment to Far Left idiocies.  It's okay to argue that God doesn't exist, or that no one knows that the external world exists, or that Bruce Jenner is a woman.  It's not okay to argue that Equity, Diversity and Inclusion are questionable ideals.  It's not even okay to hold on to a few shreds of dignity by just ignoring the topic.  No.  The successful applicant will demonstrate his commitment to these idiotic "values" in published work.  

They didn't explain how to do that if you only do research on vagueness or compatibilism, say.  I'm guessing it would be enough, for now, to choose the right kinds of examples.  Maybe if you wanted to illustrate some point about vagueness you could say this:  "Satumbo is counting the pink hairs around Bruce's pierced nipple, in Arabic..."  Or if you were writing about compatibilism:  "Suppose that Sally is trying to decide whether ze will come out as genderqueer on Facebook.  Suppose ze has a higher-order desire not to desire to come out..."  I don't know.  Just guessing.  Maybe in the future it won't be okay to write about these topics at all, since they make it hard to demonstrate one's Far Left commitments.

What Have You Done for Diversity Lately?

Are you thinking of applying  for a faculty position at the University of California at San Diego?  As part of your application you will be required to submit a statement detailing your work on behalf of diversity and inclusion.

A bit more evidence that the universities of the land have become leftist seminaries.

It is a curious development. The private universities in the United States founded by religious orders have almost all been stripped of their religious character. It survives only as window dressing. But the move has not been in the direction of ideological neutrality, but toward a substitution of leftist indoctrination for religious indoctrination.

The public universities too have become seed beds of leftism, at least in the non-STEM disciplines.

The sad upshot is that indoctrination dominates inquiry in all the institutions of so-called 'higher' education in the land. There are a few holdouts, of course, and again I am speaking of the non-STEM fields, or most of them: climate science has become highly ideologized.

So I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that university is dead.  It is dead in its idea, in its classical understanding.

Part of what killed it is the levelling consequent upon the foolish notion that everyone can profit from university studies. But that is a large separate topic.

Hat tip: Rod Dreher 

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On the Promiscuously Commendatory Overuse of 'Democracy'

'Democracy' is one of those words that is almost always used in a commendatory and non-pejorative way, even though a little thought should uncover several negative features of the term's referent.

This is a large and important topic. I will just touch on one point this morning.

In today's Washington Examiner we find an opinion piece entitled 'A people without borders' is a people without democracy.

The title is instructively false. If the people north of the Rio Grande, both U. S. citizens and illegal aliens, decide to do away with political borders, then we would have a people without borders that is a  people with democracy.

Is that not obvious?

Just give everyone who lives in the U. S. the vote, regardless of citizenship status, and at the same allow all who want to come into the country to come.  You will then have achieved, by democratic means, a borderless country and a borderless people. 

Isn't this what the Democrat Party wants?

If the people decide, then they can decide to do away with political borders, or their enforcement, which for practical purposes amounts to the same.  (A political border that is not enforced is, practically speaking, no border at all.  It is like a speed limit that is not enforced. Unenforced speed limits limit no one's speed.)

So why does the above-cited opinion piece have such a moronic title?  It is because people foolishly think that democracy is this incredibly wonderful thing about which no on must ever speak a critical word.

But if you can think at all, you must be able to grasp that there are certain principles and values that ought not be up for democratic grabs.  One of these is that a nation without enforceable and enforced borders is no nation all, a corollary of which is that there is a distinction between citizen and non-citizen.

The U. S. is not a democracy but a representative republic.

Addendum (4/4)

Here is another example of the fetishization of the word 'democracy' in an otherwise good article:

Nations that don't control their borders cease to exist. Their laws no longer mean anything. Democracy ceases to function. It's a constant lesson from history, one the U.S. would be wise to heed.

It is not democracy that ceases to function but the constitutionally-based representative republic.  If the people decide to do away with the rule of law, how is that undemocratic?

If the people decide, then they can decide who the people are. They can decide that the people are those present in a given geographical area, whether citizens or non-citizens.  Or they can decide that only 'people of color' are real people and that whites are 'racists.'

Remember how George W. Bush used to go on about bringing democracy to the Middle East? The knucklehead just loved that word 'democracy.' Sounds good until the people decide for Sharia. Does democracy then become undemocratic?

Opposing as I do pure democracy, I am not advocating monarchy or anything like it. I am advocating a return to the principles of the American founding.

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Miracles and Resurrection

Thomas Beale writes,

Quoting from your quote of Ian Hutchison:

...Miracles are, by definition, abnormal and non-reproducible, so they cannot be proved by science’s methods.

Today’s widespread materialist view that events contrary to the laws of science just can’t happen is a metaphysical doctrine, not a scientific fact. What’s more, the doctrine that the laws of nature are “inviolable” is not necessary for science to function. Science offers natural explanations of natural events. It has no power or need to assert that only natural events happen.

I think this is pretty hard to swallow from a scientific perspective - the first statement more or less says that miracles are by definition 'abnormal' and thus unprovable, but in fact science does pretty well with all kinds of abnormal. He really means 'law-breaking', and is thus saying that miracles by definition must confound science. But science isn't generally confounded by having its current set of laws broken; its usual way of responding (at least in the modern era) is to try to find new paradigms or at least theories that accommodate the new evidence, just as we had to wait for Einstein to explain the lensing of starlight around heavy bodies. If his statement still holds, then all it means is that completely arbitrary things can happen.

BV: Hutchison may be confusing laws of science with laws of nature. 

There is a distinction between a law of nature and a law of science. If there are laws of nature, they have nothing to do with us or our theorizing. They are 'out there in the world.' For example, if we adopt a regularity theory of laws, and I am not saying we should, the regularities, and thus the laws, exist independently of our theorizing. Surely, if there are physical laws at all, and whatever their exact nature, their existence antedates ours. Laws of science, on the other hand, are our attempts at formulating and expressing the laws of nature. They are human creations. Since physics is a human activity, there were no laws of physics before human beings came on the scene; but there were physical laws before we came on the scene. Physics is not the same as nature; physics is the study of nature, our study of nature. It is obvious that physics cannot exist without nature, for it would then have no object, but nature can get on quite well without physics.

The laws of science are subject to qualification, revision, and outright rejection; the laws of nature are not.  For example, the Additivity of Velocities was once thought to hold universally, but now the qualification is added: at pre-relativistic speeds. Nature didn't change, but our understanding of nature did.

The concept of miracle is very difficult. Here is a conundrum for you.  John Earman, Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford 2000), p. 8:

. . . if a miracle is a violation of a law of nature, then whether or not the violation is due to the intervention of the Deity, a miracle is logically impossible since, whatever else a law of nature is, it is an exceptionless regularity.

Now consider:

1. A miracle is an exception to a law of nature.
2. Every law of nature is an exceptionless regularity (though not conversely).
Therefore
3. A miracle is an exception to an exceptionless regularity.
Therefore
4. Miracles are logically impossible.

This argument seems to show that if miracles are to be logically possible they cannot be understood as violations of laws of nature. How then are they to be understood?  Please note that (2) merely states that whatever a law of nature is, it is an exceptionless regularity.  Thus (2) does not commit one to a regularity theory of laws according to which laws are identified with exceptionless regularities.  The idea is that any theory of  (deterministic) laws would include the idea that a law is an exceptionless regularity.

The second part gets into the debate about whether laws are natural, or human inventions. One such law that does appear to be part of the universe's functioning is the second law of thermodynamics, which happens to be the one that ultimately prevents biological cells reversing their death state, and thus dead organisms reviving. For those who believe that God directly created the universe the way it is, i.e. with its law-like behaviours, quarks weighing what they do, the speed of light being what it is, and Planck's constant as we know it, it seems hard to claim that arbitrary abnormalities can occur without disturbing the space-time fabric so to speak, because everything is so strongly interrelated (try changing c ...). Reversing the arrow of time in order to resurrect someone is likely to have catastrophic consequences for a patch of the universe around it.

BV: Yes, there is a problem here. Augustine was on to it. See Augustine and the Epistemic Theory of Miracles.

Another way of looking at the whole thing for the scientifically oriented might be to think more in terms of inference to the best explanation (admittedly dodgy territory). If we thought that no natural laws could be broken, we might theorise that Christ had not really died (undoubtedly he looked as if he had), and that therefore he could rise again three days later, with good care. Alternatively we might believe that he really died, and that the person presented as the risen Christ was someone else; from there, numerous variations on a theme become possible.

BV: The first theory is called the Swoon Hypothesis.

I have often wondered if the first theory would really harm Christianity. The idea that a man (at least connected to the divine, if not incarnating it) sacrificed himself for humanity, was crucified by the Romans, nearly died from his injuries and pain, but survived just long enough for friends to take him down in the storm, was cared for and then 'rose' again three days later. That takes nothing away from the heroic act, and perhaps showed that even the Roman empire couldn't kill this man. Would this Christ be any less than the one we are taught today?

BV: Would he be any less?  I should think so.   No orthodox Christian can gainsay what Saul/Paul of Tarsus writes at 1 Corinthians 15:14: "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." (KJV) See Is Christianity Vain if not Historically True?

Ignorant Liberals

NPR writer doesn't understand what Easter celebrates.

Articles of mine urging the defunding of NPR. Should the NRA receive tax monies? Of course not. Then why should organs of leftist propaganda - - and in the case of Planned Parenthood, propaganda and butchery -- get them?  

But there are too many pussy-wussies among the GOP ever to stop these outrages. 

As I have said before, we need the separation of Leftism and State.

UPDATE (4/3):

Mark Steyn weighs in:

You don't publicly flaunt what NPR and Todd wrote because you're an atheist or agnostic; you do it because you're entirely severed from your civilizational inheritance. The old joke is that Nietzsche respected God enough to kill Him. To respect Him enough to kill Him, you have to know something about Him - as nineteenth-century atheists certainly did. Today we have know-nothings, cut off not so much from scripture but from all that derives therefrom . . . .

A Couple of Important Points About the Second Amendment

 1) The first is that is that it is not reasonably interpreted as a group right, a right one possesses only as a member of a group such as a militia. This mistaken reading is suggested by the Amendment's unfortunate wording:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It is obvious, however, that a reason for X needn't be the only reason for X. So if a reason for the right is militia-related, there could be others, and it is obvious that there is another, namely, the right to the means of the defense of one's life, liberty, and property, and that of one's family.

The right to life is in every case an individual's right to life; it is plainly not a group right. Now if you have a right to life, then you have a right to defend your life and the  right to the means of defense which, in this day and age, won't be an 18th century musket.

Ask yourself: Is the right to free speech mentioned in the third clause of the First Amendment a group right? Of course not; it is an individual right. And the same goes for the right against "unreasonable searches and seizures" mentioned in the Fourth Amendment.  The right to the means of the defense of one's individual right to life is also -- wait for it -- an individual right.

Even SCOTUS, mirabile dictu, came around to this eminently reasonable view in District of Columbia v. Heller.

2) The second point is adequately made by the following cartoon. It is an indication of how moronic 'liberal' positions are that they are refutable by cartoons.

 

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The Afterlife of Habit Upon the Death of Desire

Desire leads to the gratification of desire, which in turn leads to the repetition of the gratification.  Repeated gratification in turn leads to the formation of an intensely pleasurable habit, one that persists even after the desire wanes and  disappears, the very desire without whose gratification the  habit wouldn't exist in the first place.  Memories of pleasure conspire in the maintenance of habit. 

The ancient rake, exhausted and infirm, is not up for another round of debauchery, but the memories haunt him, of pleasures past.  The memories keep alive the habit after the desire has fled the decrepit body that refuses to serve any longer as an engine of pleasure.

And that puts me in mind of Schopenhauer's advice.  "Abandon your vices before they abandon you."

Want to Repeal 2A?

Stop talking and do it.

From the Pretty to the Pedestrian

Philippa Foot's maiden name was 'Bosanquet.' Her grounding of the normative in the natural, however, is decidedly Aristotelian, and thus peripatetic, and therefore pedestrian, in keeping with her married name.

Running with the pun, my Foot notes are accessible here.

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3quarksdaily: Philippa Foot was one of a group of brilliant women philosophers who swam against the tide of 20th-century moral thought