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Arno Lustiger, a Jewish historian and Holocaust survivor, has started proceedings to sue the magazine’s German edition for publishing an interview with Horst Mahler, the former left-wing extremist who transformed into one of Germany’s most rabid neo-Nazi public figures. The interview appeared in the Nov. 1 print and online editions.

Filed Nov. 7 and released to the public on Nov. 21, the suit notes that Mahler denied and belittled the Holocaust, which is illegal in Germany.

The media continues to be mystified how so many left-wing extremists have magically transformed themselves into Fascists, Nazis, Neo-Nazis and Neocons. It never seems to occur to them that this is because Fascists, Nazis, Neo-Nazis and Neocons are all variants of a basic left-wing ideology which is dependent upon large and powerful central governments harboring expansionary ambitions.

Envirofreaks are the new Skoptsi:

Incredibly, so determined was she that the terrible “mistake” of pregnancy should never happen again, that she begged the doctor who performed the abortion to sterilise her at the same time.

He refused, but Toni – who works for an environmental charity – “relentlessly hunted down a doctor who would perform the irreversible surgery.

Finally, eight years ago, Toni got her way.

At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to “protect the planet”.

Now if we can just convince the feminists to follow suit – you know, for the planet – we can eliminate this equalitarian problem in a generation.

It’s been a strange year this year, with many ups and downs, but I am thankful to God for many things. This year, I’m particularly grateful for being able to see out of both eyes, for the daily joys of my family, and for the chance to be involved in so many diverse and interesting pasttimes.

I’m also deeply appreciative of the VP Ilk, as the various challenges so often posed here by friends and occasional foes alike tend to inure me against the temptation to sink into intellectual sloth. I’m also thankful for my extraordinarily open-minded publisher, BenBella Books, who informed me yesterday that TIA had gone to the printers earlier that afternoon.

So, in that light it seems only right that I should open the Responsible Puppet’s long-awaited discussion of the Open view of God by posting a brief excerpt from TIA which happens to relate to this subject. This excerpt is far from my complete word on the matter, as the Open view is only tangentially relevant to my response to a specific New Atheist argument and is barely touched upon in TIA, but it should nevertheless serve to get this conversation rolling.

The Contradiction of Divine Characteristics

In a chapter considering the arguments for God’s existence, Richard Dawkins muses briefly upon what he considers to be a logical contradiction. He writes:

Incidentally, it has not escaped the notice of logicians that omniscience and omnipotence are mutually incompatible. If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can’t change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent.

As Dawkins surely knows, this is a silly and superficial argument; indeed, he follows it up with a little piece of doggerel by Karen Owens before promptly abandoning the line of reasoning in favor of a return to his attack upon Thomas Aquinas. While the argument appears to make sense at first glance, it’s merely a variation on the deeply philosophical question that troubles so many children and atheists, of whether God can create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it.

First, it is important to note that the Christian God, the god towards whom Dawkins directs the great majority of his attacks, makes no broad claims to omniscience. Although there are eighty-seven references to the things that the biblical God knows, only a single example could potentially be interpreted as a universal claim to complete knowledge.

Among the things that God claims to know are the following: He knows the way to wisdom and where it dwells, he knows the day of the wicked is coming, he knows the secrets of men’s hearts, he knows the thoughts of men and their futility. He knows the proud from afar, he knows what lies in darkness, and he knows what you need before you ask him. He knows the Son, he knows the day and the hour that the heavens and the earth shall pass away, he knows the mind of the Spirit and that the Apostle Paul loved the Corinthians.
He knows who are his, he knows how to rescue godly men from trials, and perhaps most importantly, he knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.

The only straightforward claim to omniscience is made on God’s behalf by the Apostle John, who clearly states “he knows everything.” However, the context in which the statement is made also indicates that this particular “everything” is not intended to encompass life and the universe, but rather everything about human hearts. Not only does this interpretation make more sense in light of the verse than with an inexplicable revelation of a divine quality that appears nowhere else in the Bible, but it is also in keeping with many previous statements made about God’s knowledge.

After all, when Hercule Poirot confronts the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel and informs the killer that he knows everything, the educated reader does not usually interpret this as a statement that the Belgian detective is confessing that he is the physical manifestation of Hermes Trismegistus, but rather that he knows everything about the crime he has been detecting.

In keeping with this interpretation, Dr. Greg Boyd, the pastor at Woodland Hills Church and the author of Letters to a Skeptic, has written a book laying out a convincing case for the Open View of God, which among other things chronicles the many biblical examples of God being surprised, changing His mind, and even being thwarted. Moreover, it would be very, very strange for a presumably intelligent being such as Satan to place a bet with God if he believed that God knew with certainty what Job’s reaction to his torments would be.

The verse mentioned above is 1 John 13:18 which states: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”

And in answer to his two questions:

(1) I have no idea, I’ve never counted.
(2) A significant rewriting of the Bible which eliminates all of the many obvious implications and outright demonstrations that God is not actively managing every single Earthly event and individual action.

There is a strange similarity between omniderigistes and the New Atheists. Both groups take a small number of specific Bible verses, assign one reasonable interpretation to them, and then argue that it is the only possible interpretation in defiance of numerous equally possible alternatives that are better supported by historical facts, logic and other Bible verses.

The omniderigent interpretation of “sovereignty” is a good case in point. One of the Puppet’s commentors asked “What does it mean “to reign” if it doesn’t mean to exercise active control over creation?” I ask in return, is that really supposed to be a serious question? Queen Elizabeth II indubitably reigns over England, does she exercise active control over every event and action in her realm? As anyone who knows the first thing about every single sovereign in human history should recognize, references to God’s sovereignty over His Creation are a much stronger argument AGAINST the omniderigent view than they are one for it.

But regardless of one’s view of the matter, today is an excellent day to thank Him for His many blessings.

Despite being a massive advocate of ebooks, I am utterly unimpressed by Amazon’s Kindle. While I welcome Amazon’s interest in making ebooks more commercially viable, I have no interest in books being converted into a service.

I already have thousands of books and thousands of ebooks, the idea of having to pay to access them when I can simply fire them over Bluetooth from my laptop into my Treo is ludicrous. Also, having carried around my Alphasmart Dana for 18 months prior to switching to Treo, I can attest that having an ebook reader that fits in your pocket is far more useful than one that is actually the size of a book. And basing everything around DRM… please. No one on Earth wants to pay for a subscription to a free blog, although some of the newspaper subscriptions are probably a good deal, assuming that you are one of the aging dinosaurs who still actually read newspapers.

I think Amazon’s approach is incoherent, as it is positioning this primarily as a service for a gadget crowd that really doesn’t need it. We already have better ways of reading ebooks and we know how to get around DRM, so there isn’t likely to be a significant market there once the “hey, shiny!” factor wears off. I fully expect Apple to come out with something in the next year that is smaller, prettier, more colorful and capable of appealing to the non-early adopting masses in much the same way that those wretched iMacs did.

It should be somewhere between the size of a Treo and a Kindle, use all of the various proprietary and non-proprietary formats and have a various easy means of loading books both wireless and mini-SD. Ideally, it would also have a phone in it, as my Treo has made me allergic to carrying multiple devices. There should be two versions, one with a keyboard and one without, so that those who require email/Internet can have it and those who can get by without typing anything can have a smaller device.

The sens and dattirs of Norway are reeling:

“This is a bit of a slap in the face,” Janet Rog, 74, said of Norway’s recent announcement that it would shut its career consulate here [in Minneapolis] next year and send the diplomats home.

The consulate, opened in 1906 and upgraded in 1946 to its current status as consulate general, is a point of pride for the Upper Midwest, which is home to more Norwegian-Americans than any other region of the country.

On a brighter note, perhaps Somalia will consider opening one soon.

Multiculti foolishness squared:

One was a Somali refugee, the other an Argentine investment banker. Both are now high-profile Dutch women challenging this country to rethink its national identity. Princess Maxima, the Argentine-born wife of Crown Prince Willem Alexander, triggered a round of national soul-searching with a speech last month about what exactly it means to be Dutch in an age of mass migration.

“The Netherlands is too complex to sum up in one cliche,” she said. “A typical Dutch person doesn’t exist.”

How to destroy a nation in three easy steps:

1. Grant universal suffrage.
2. Permit mass migration. At least they got the term correct for once, it’s not “immigration”.
3. Act surprised when your society is transformed beyond all recognition.

Actually, you can skip that last step if you want to, but an awful lot of people seem to require it given their unthinking embrace of steps (1) and (2). If a traditional Dutch person doesn’t exist anymore, it’s because traditional Dutch society has been destroyed.

Strangely enough, my understanding of evolution would appear to have been somewhat in advance of Scott Hatfield’s:

In fact, the current hum-sci buzz is that a groundbreaking new paper is about to come out, authored by some big names in biology, arguing that not only has natural selection been at work through human history, it has actually been accelerating.

Suddenly that question about the average rate of TENS doesn’t look quite so clueless anymore, does it.

The Supreme Court finally threatens to show its cards:

The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether the District of Columbia can ban handguns, a case that could produce the most in-depth examination of the constitutional right to “keep and bear arms” in nearly 70 years.

The justices’ decision to hear the case could make the divisive debate over guns an issue in the 2008 presidential and congressional elections.

The government of Washington, D.C., is asking the court to uphold its 31-year ban on handgun ownership in the face of a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the ban as incompatible with the Second Amendment. Tuesday’s announcement was widely expected, especially after both the District and the man who challenged the handgun ban asked for the high court review.

I don’t really care which way they decide. If the individual rights are confirmed, as they obviously should be, then let the legal rollback begin. And if they are denied, then at least everyone will know what the score is….

However, I suspect they’ve already got a weaselly solution in mind that lets them strike down the ban without providing a substantive justification for overturning the 20,000 gun laws around the country. That’s all I expect to come of it, anyhow.

I can’t help but wonder if a recent exchange of emails with Mr. Derbyshire might have had a little bit to do with this post:

I’ve been predicting for a while now that the champions of human exceptionalism will give up on bashing poor old Chuck Darwin and migrate to neuroscience and “Consciousness Studies,” where the pickings are richer, and there are real mysteries defying our present understanding…. My prediction is coming true, though: For folk who want to rail against materialism, beating up on Darwin will soon be old hat—flogging a dead eohippus, so to speak. Neuroscience is where the action is, for human-exceptionalism affirmers and deniers both.

My publisher and I have pretty much reached an agreement upon what my next book is going to be, and it’s not going to be anything related to dating or the media. I finally decided that I’m really not interested enough in either issue to do the level of research I require of myself; I may despise the various media whores but they’ll be gone soon enough and ten years from now we won’t even remember who half of them were.

I can’t announce a title as yet, but I can say that the subject will be anthropeschatology. I’m interested on that area where science, religion, technology and philosophy all intersect, and the book is based in part upon my experience with artificial intelligence.

It’s kind of strange being at that point when you’re not only done with the book but have largely put it mentally behind you, while almost no one knows anything about it. I have been pleased, however, to learn that those few who have read TIA appear to think rather well of it, theists and atheists alike. I’ll try to post some of the comments here when we’re coordinating the surge around the release date.

UPDATE – speaking of TIA, this is rather nice. In the book, I wrote critically of Sam Harris’s position on stem cells and pointed out that a significant portion of his Letter to a Christian Nation was already outdated and irrelevant based upon new developments in stem cell-related research. This confirms that I was correct to do so:

Two prominent scientific journals—Science and Cell—are each today publishing papers that demonstrate extraordinary success with a technique called “somatic cell reprogramming.” Working separately, and using slightly different methods, these two teams (one of which is led by James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, the original innovator of human embryonic stem cells) have each successfully taken a regular human skin cell and transformed it into what appears to be the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell—all without the need for embryos, or eggs, or any other ethically controversial methods.

104 Black Mouth Curs
64 Cranberry Bogs

83 Masonville Marauders
61 East Mesa White Trash

79 Greenfield Grizzlies
50 Winston Reverends

65 W.C. Silver Spooners
40 Burns ICU

59 Mounds View Meerkats
58 Village Valkyries

Yikes! I thought I had the game well in hand when TO suddenly exploded for four touchdowns. Fortunately, the New England defense and Wes Welker bailed me out, no thanks to Tom Brady who insisted on throwing to Randy Moss. Masonville is showing itself to be the class of the league, pounding the defending champions, but speaking as last season’s regular season leader, that means little in the playoffs.

Cranberry’s got less to complain about, as at least their VPFL-leading point total has them in playoff position. I’m only two games out now, however, so I have a very remote shot if I can win out over the next four weeks. Burns, on the other hand, would be well-suited for the draft next year; if only they hadn’t traded their first-round pick to Bill Belicheat in return for the Titans DEF.