Author: VD

Reader DS writes: In your friends game if one of the characters committed an evil act how could your friend judge them as he is the one who created them to commit the evil act?

First, it’s not like our game had any sort of moral structure to it. That’s really taking the analogy too far. But if we insist on exploring this nontheless, then we should keep in mind that he didn’t program them to commit the evil act, he programmed them in such away that they were allowed to choose to commit evil, or to commit good. It is the quality of the decision that is being judged, which then determines the nature of the deciding character.

If you’ll excuse me going off on a judgment tangent, I’m not so sure that Hell should be seen primarily as some kind of punishment. The parable of the wheat and the chaff seems to suggest that those cast away are simply not useful or somehow worthless for God’s purposes. Again, I’m not saying that this is the case – obviously, I don’t know – only that this is the way it appears to me. And, of course, I have no idea what God’s purpose for us might be beyond this world, though I suspect it has little to do with sitting around playing harps.

Reader TD writes: I am incredibly curious as to how you resolve the paradox of free will and absolute omniscience. If the Judeo-Christian God construct is absolutely omniscient and has temporal insight into said omniscience, how does free will actually function? This is, of course, the paradox of Calvinism.

I see two obvious flaws with this apparent paradox. First, omniscience does not imply omniactience. (probably incorrect – I want the word for all-acting). A being who is all-knowing and all-powerful still has the ability to choose not to act, or even, so to speak, not to look. Let me give an example. I designed a computer game with a friend which was never released, but possessed a sophisticated AI-system which is still more advanced than any game available today. As the programmer, my friend had complete control over, and complete knowledge of, each of the AI-controlled characters. His powers in that computer world were god-like, as at any moment, he could see precisely what was going through the character’s head and know not only what it was doing, but why it was doing what it was doing.

Nevertheless, most of the time, my friend chose not to look or to control. Instead, he sat back and watched what resulted from the interactions of his characters. He was certainly capable of working out all the probabilities beforehand, but he seldom did. I am not saying that I am sure God really opts to act in this manner, only that it is dangerous and borderline blasphemous to say that He cannot. Given the evil state of the fallen world, I would submit that this point of view is consistent with both the Scriptures and what we perceive as the world’s reality. To know is not to dictate, and by the same token, to be able to know is not to make the decision to know.

Second, I increasingly suspect that God is trans-temporal. I theorize he stands outside of time as well as our physical space, seeing both as a sort of small, self-contained structure. This may account for the strange “I am” terminology used by both the burning bush of Moses as well as by Jesus Christ himself. This would necessarily require some implications which are generally not taken into account by either side of the Calvinist question.

I am no theologian, and I don’t know the great theological thinkers anywhere nearly as well as I know the economists, philosophers and historians of yore. My lack of interest in this regard is mostly because Jesus and Paul both tell us that not only do we not understand God, but that we are not even capable of understanding God. I am content to put my trust in Jesus Christ, with the hope that one day, he will not only shield me from the righteous judgment of God with his grace, but also explain it all to me.

That’s how one Coalition officer, in the US after a recent tour in Iraq, described the situation after the deadly attack on the Italian compound in Nassirya. He believes that everything will have to change, since the Coalition forces had previously attempted to avoid offensive actions that risk destabilizing the situation. Instead of actively targeting the many foreign jihadists from countries such as Bahrain and Yemen, the forces have primarily been tracking and monitoring them. Now that the situation has been destabilized despite this restraint, this officer expects that it is now necessary to hit the Sunni triangle hard, while at the same time going after known guerilla fighters in various local hot spots.

He could not talk about the upcoming response, either from the US troops or the Coalition contingents, but he left me with little doubt that it is not only the US troops who are now ready to “kick ass”. My conclusion is that the talk about speeding up the process of turning Iraq over to the Iraqis is not to bring our troops home, but to free them up to move on to the next stage of the war, which is more likely to be in the direction of Iran instead of Syria.

Is this desirable? I am of two minds on the subject, which is why I have written very little about it. But in any case, I believe it is inevitable, as I have ever since the morning of September 11th, 2001.

In ogni caso, gli occhi del mondo piangono per il sacrificio dai giovanotti italiani.

Daunte Culpepper is the best QB the Vikings have had since Fran Tarkenton. By the time he is done, he may well have done what our much-loved Georgia Peach couldn’t do, which is lead the Mighty Purple to a Super Bowl victory. How anyone can blame a quarterback with a 107.1 rating, 15 TDs, 3 INTs for three straight losses in which the defense leaked like an upwardly mobile Pentagon staffer is completely beyond me.

By the way, Howard Dean and the rest of the Southern-hating crew running for president might want to note that these idiot racists hail from one of the most liberal states in the country – and about as far North as it gets.

It’s insane. Donavan McNabb throws for 1 TD and barely more than a hundred yards while the Philly D stones the opposition, and he gets the credit. Daunte throws for 370 yards and 4 TDs while the defense gives up 42 points to a lousy Chargers team, and he gets the blame. Do these guys actually watch football?

Can’t find the link, but Mr. Franken was running off at the mouth the other day, as usual, crying out about the need for the American left to fight this and fight that. And yet he still hasn’t said a word about fighting ME, unfortunately.

If anyone has Mr. Franken’s email, do let me know and we’ll see if we can get a direct answer from him with regards to my little challenge.

Reader TT asks: Do you ever find your libertarian views of personal freedom conflicting with the idea of the Kingdom of God, or the Kingship of Christ in our lives as Christians?

No, I really don’t. The way I see it, God has the ability to force us to behave however He might like. And yet, He doesn’t. He says, look, here’s My Son. He’s the only way to Me and My Kingdom, but I’m not going to have him pick you up by the scruff of the neck and drag your butt over here, even though I’d really like to do that. Your freedom is so important to me that I’m going to leave the decision completely up to you, even though it breaks My heart to know that a lot of you are going to blow Me off.

Is that characterization in accordance with Scripture? I think so. And if so, does it sound more like the view of a Democrat, a Republican or a Libertarian deity.

I am free to do whatever I want. But if I want to please God, then I must choose what He says is right. No one ever said that freedom was without consequences, in fact, Jesus Christ said quite the opposite. The wages of sin are death. To argue that this is not a real choice is simply stupid, as all you have to do is look around you to see men and women making terrible, self-destructive choices every single day. The fact that the choice should be glaringly obvious to anyone with a brain doesn’t mean that it isn’t real.

In addition to the bizarre problems I’ve been having with my wireless card – it works when the loader says FAIL and doesn’t work when it says PASS – a friend of mine has now had grub eat his new Linux partitions and the boot loader can’t find anything but his old Windows XP partitions. I’m sticking with RH9 for my work machines for the nonce, and I’m going to give both SUSE and Mandrake 9.2 a whirl on Guinea Pig, she of the broken USB interface.

OS News expresses the opinion that Fedora Core 1 was released sooner than it should have been. From what I’ve seen as a new Linux user, I would tend to agree.

Marine DH writes: “Being a former Marine from the “Old Corps” (before kevlar, humvees, and “sensitivity training”), I concur with your contentions completely. It is sad that we are allowing hollywood to cultivate society in believing that any woman can beat any man. The “Women in Combat” issue has always been one of my pet peeves, and will continue to be until this nation wakes up and recognizes the error of its ways. I’m sure you have witnessed the plethora of info on the issue (both pro and con). There may be one absolutely stellar piece on this subject that you may or may not be aware of. I came across… this essay titled Women in Combat: Exploring the Issues by Rev. Leroy Vogel, Chaplain, US Navy (Retired). Being a marine, I felt an immediate affinity because marine chaplains are US Navy. This piece is an absolute gem. Probably the best essay on the current issue that I have come across so far.

What I find even more fascinating with Fr. Keefe’s dialogs, is his introduction of John Stuart Mill. Probably one of the original earlier feminists of the mid 19th century. (a man no less) What you begin to realize here is the direct connection of the issue of “women in combat” to pure (neo)liberalism. “Women in combat” is simply the epitome of the entire egalitarian movement. This really illustrates the entire elitists mind-set, and their convoluted understanding of liberty. That is, for them, liberty is for the “elite”; and slavery is for the common man to be so grateful to them to be led to the “way”. Now you begin to understand why elitists in power when they pass laws for “the governed”, but exempt themselves from these same laws.”

Good points throughout, to be sure, with only one minor omission The concepts of women in combat and an elite beyond the laws guiding society were developed long before John Stuart Mill was pushing the idea. You’ll find both notions articulated explicitely in Plato’s Republic, and I’ll even be touching briefly on the latter point in next week’s column on atheism.

Email from my Marine readers is always in-depth, thoughtful and articulate. Doesn’t surprise me in the least.

AT writes again: Why is it when its about sex, men seem to only reap the benefits and none of the consequences – the burden of the female sex, apparently. What nazis perceived to be a deadly enemy was pure, unadulterated brainwashing – kind of like men that think that women have abortions to get promotions and orgasms….. Are your parents like this to, or did you join a cult? I am just curious.

Let’s just count the flaws:

1. Yes, pregnancy is the burden of the female sex. This is news to you? Did you miss health class?

2. By AT’s absurd fairness-based logic, unless a man has the equal right to rip a baby out of his impregnated lover’s womb and kill it, he should not be held responsible for the child.

3. Yes, the National Socialists brainwashed the German population into believing that Jews were not humans, in much the same way that the murderous feminist movement has brainwashed a portion of the American population into believing that an unborn child is not a human.

4. Most women get abortions simply because they don’t wish to deal with the hassle of a pregnancy. And while a pregnancy is inarguably a physical and emotional strain, the abortionettes can’t even argue that the decision to kill the baby has anything to do with the burden of raising the child, since adoption is a perfectly reasonable alternative. Bringing side issues such as rape and health of the mother is irrelevant, since only a tiny percentage of abortions have anything to do with either. In any event, we don’t kill the children of criminals, so the fact that a child is the product of a rape is no justification for taking an innocent human life.

5. There are millions of people across the country who believe that killing babies, born or unborn, is murder. The fact that AT thinks it is necessary to be a member of a cult to believe this just shows how far removed from reality or any sense of morality she is.

I wonder how long the abortionettes would hold to their position that an unborn baby is simply an inhuman mass of tissue if someone started taking a baseball bat to the bellies of pregnant women who have supported abortion rights. Because, by abortionette logic, that’s nothing more than a simple case of battery, after all. Not even a felony. No wonder the Connor and Laci Peterson case empties their intestines.

We think we’re better than Nazi Germany, because we haven’t killed 6 million Jews. We’ve only murdered 40 million babies. Future civilizations will not only judge us, it will despise us more than we loathe Nazi Germany.

Hurray! ESPN delenda est!