"All is Relative, Except This Statement"

Self Destroying Contradictions

John Gray, in his gem of a book entitled Seven Types of Atheism, has a very clear view of the special pleading that is rife amongst so-called atheists.  The bottom line--as Gray demonstrates repeatedly--is that such atheists always end up engaged in special pleading for someone or something that escapes the mental scythe of atheism.  In other words, they are atheists except for "x" which is above the inevitable nihilistic world-view.  The "x" is the grand exception.  

Gray is honest enough to cite C. S. Lewis, a Christian philosopher/teacher, as an example of a clear-minded critic of atheism who understood that atheism was effectively a smokescreen by which its advocates sought to deny the truth claims of anything and everything, except itself except the particular cocktail of atheism which they were advocating or pushing.

He writes:

If progress means a 'more advanced' version of the human species, how do we know what is more or less advanced?  This question was the subject of The Abolition of Man, a prescient little book by the linguist, theologian, and writer of science fiction C. S. Lewis, first given as a lecture and published in 1943. Lewis argued that progressive thinkers who wanted to reshape society, and eventually the human species itself, had no way of deciding what progress meant. 

For many it involved increasing human power and using it to make Nature serve human ends.  But the power of human kind over Nature, Lewis pointed out,  means in practice the power of some human beings over others.  If society is planned so as to maximize power of Nature, other human valued will be crowded out.  Anyone who cherishes these values will be on the receiving end of power, not exercising it. 

The progressive thinkers of Lewis's day thought little of the average run of human beings.  Like Trotsky, they believed they could design a better version of the human animal.  After all, if most human beings are not just backward but obstacles, what is the point of them?  Surely it would be better to sideline these inferior specimens.  The future belonged to the post-human species.  As Lewis wrote, "Man's final conquest has proved to be the abolition of man."  [Seven Types of Atheism (London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2018), p. 65f.]

What's Wrong With "Alternative Facts"?

The Whiff of Hypocrisy

Not infrequently we find reason to chuckle while chewing on the morning's cornflakes.  One of the lines which has been seized upon by US President Trump's opponents is that the Trump administration has coined a phrase: "alternative facts".  This has resulted in much mockery amongst his political opponents (a category which includes most of the public media).

Hah, hah, hah.  Alternative facts!  A fact is either a fact, or not.  "Alternative facts" is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.  It confirms that Trump is living in an alternate universe.  His world is an unreal, make-believe world.  He is consequently to be considered clinically insane.  The man's an idiot.  Blah, blah, blah.

This reaction, for our part, has also generated a great deal of mirth.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Above Us Only Sky

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

Suppose with me for a moment. Suppose that about fifteen nano-seconds after the Big Bang all the trillion-plex trillions of atoms all joined hands together, forming their molecules, and then they all ran pell mell down the corridors of the space/time continuum, making history as they went. Some scientists think they all yelled whee! but I myself suspect it was something more like arghh! The question is hard to determine because apart from a few staff writers at National Geographic, nobody was there really.

What is not hard to determine is what this would entail, if true. It would entail John Lennon being a certified moonbeam. Go over his famous Imagine with a thoughtful eye and ear, and the only thing that makes any sense whatever would be the chord changes. But if, as he avers, the only thing above us is sky, then the chord changes making sense . . . doesn’t make sense.

Without transcendent reality, we don’t just lose transcendent reality. We lose everything down here as well.

It's All Relative, Said the Rabbit

The Madding Crowd

In his book, A Hobbit Journey, author Matthew Dickerson reflects upon why aspects of the writings of J R R Tolkien jar so gratingly upon the ear of the modern Westerner.  The world view of the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion reflects a cosmos with moral absolutes and true moral guilt.  It portrays evil as a personal hatred and malice towards others.  Increasingly in the West, this simply "does not compute". 

Such notions of true moral good and evil are being washed out of the modern mind.  Or the attempt is being made to wash them out.  Firstly, take materialism--the dominant worldview in the West, along with its kissing cousins of atheism, secularism, and progressivism.  In all these variants, there is no such thing as absolute, objective good or evil, right or wrong.  So-called evils are merely the result of particular or societal programming.  Morality and immorality is akin to--in fact, can be identified with--programming the machine.  We are what we are because of the alignment of electrons and quarks.  "We are what we are because we're not what we used to  be."

Anthropologist Ruth Benedict, writing in 1934, described this Brave New World: 

No Place For Popularity

Discerning Good and Evil in an Apostate Generation 

In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Aragorn, son of Arathorn--faithful prophet and king in a world in which the Law of God holds true in every place--thinks and speaks accordingly as he faces the challenge from the men of Rohan: 

"Our friends were attired even as we are," said Aragorn; "and you passed us by under the full light of day."

"I had forgotten that," said Eomer.  "It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels.  The world is all grown strange.  Elf and Dwarf in company walk in our daily fields; and folk speak with the Lady of the Wood and yet live; and the Sword comes back to war that was broken in the long ages ere the fathers of our fathers rode into the Mark!  How shall a man judge what to do in such time?"

"As he has ever judged," said Aragorn.  "Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men.  It is a man's part to discern them, a much in the Golden Wood as in his own house." [J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, III/ii.]

In our days, many in the Church are shapeshifters, bending themselves into the demands of the pagan world.  In our day, every man's truth is his own. There are no absolutes because the pagan world has denied the One--the eternal, infinite lawgiver.  All that is left is the creature.

Rotherham and Its Aftermath

Systemic Evil and Complicit Authorities

Some things are so bizarre and systemically evil that they appear incredible at first glance.  Far more strange than fiction.  Some of the worst exigencies occur when people believe they are going good as they perpetrate great wickedness.

There is a belief in the secular West that it represents the good, the kind, the generous and the loving.  It believes itself to be so morally superior that it is licensed to do evil, that good may result.  The asserted goodness of the secular, atheistic ideals justifies any collateral damage as inconsequential--a minor, justified price for the greater good.  Never has such moral degeneracy been on such proud display as in the United Kingdom recently--a once Christian nation.  We still shake our heads, as more and more of the truth emerges.

The Guardian has published a piece on Alexis Jay, who was responsible for exposing the Rotherham industrial rape and sexual abuse matrix which continued to flourish under the wilful blind eye of authorities--both government and police.

Empty Sophistry

Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts

By Justin P. McBrayer

New York Times

 

 

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?

I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.

What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame. But they aren’t. There are historical examples of philosophers who endorse a kind of moral relativism, dating back at least to Protagoras who declared that “man is the measure of all things,” and several who deny that there are any moral facts whatsoever. But such creatures are rare. Besides, if students are already showing up to college with this view of morality, it’s very unlikely that it’s the result of what professional philosophers are teaching. So where is the view coming from?

A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education. When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

Hoping that this set of definitions was a one-off mistake, I went home and Googled “fact vs. opinion.” The definitions I found online were substantially the same as the one in my son’s classroom. As it turns out, the Common Core standards used by a majority of K-12 programs in the country require that students be able to “distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.” And the Common Core institute provides a helpful page full of links to definitions, lesson plans and quizzes to ensure that students can tell the difference between facts and opinions.

So what’s wrong with this distinction and how does it undermine the view that there are objective moral facts?

The Suicide of the Human Mind

The Suicide of Thought

G. K. Chesterton ran the numbers on how the modern world has sought to dance with numerous partners--all of which have destroyed the dance itself.  There are hypotheses which end up destroying the very possibility of thought and reason.  Here is Chesterton's list of rationalist suicides, destroying the very possibility of thought: