Vox Popoli

As if the Minneapolis suicide bombers weren’t enough:

While many of the estimated 32,000 Somalis who settled in the state have struggled to adapt, Ali flourished, blazing a path to Minneapolis’ Augsburg College on a soccer scholarship by age 20. He studied political science and aspired to a political career modeled on President Barack Obama’s.

He was shot and killed last September outside a busy community center where he worked part-time as a youth counselor, and prosecutors said the 16-year-old accused of killing him was part of a gang. Ali was one of seven Minneapolis-area Somali men killed over a 10-month period, and authorities believe all were killed by fellow Somalis.

What was the benefit of importing these people again? The lesson of history is that mass migrations change the recipient culture as much as it changes that of the migrants. In twenty years there, I can’t think of a single Minnesotan who ever said “you know, this place would be much improved if it was just a little bit more like Somalia.”

‘Get out of war free’ card

The case of the missing birth certificate grows more and more curious. It has been fascinating to see how quickly various news sites have been frantically altering their assertions regarding Obama’s birth hospital ever since Jerome Corsi broke the news of Barack Obama’s letter to the Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women and Children on July 6. This means that Obama was either born twice in Hawaii, or he was not born at Queen’s Medical Center, as he claimed, (or, more accurately, was reported by UPI to have claimed), in 2007 when he first announced his presidential candidacy in Springfield, Ill.

Never, ever, buy a hardware device that is subject to post-purchase control by a corporation:

In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them. An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.

Since the Nokia N-97 has gotten some poor reviews due to its slow processor, I decided to have a look at the iPhone 3GS. It would theoretically make for a good PDF reader, but after seeing that there’s still no way to put data on the thing without going through the Internet, I completely lost interest what little interest I had in it. It would be nice if the smartphone manufacturers would focus on producing quality products rather than insidious new means of attempting to hold their customers hostage.

Joseph attempts to summarize my points. As is so often the case, this proves to be a disastrous endeavor since he is demonstrably incapable of grasping them, let alone responding effectively to them. My own words are in italics:

Vox: God is a limited being but can know everything. [This is a correct characterization. -VD]

“Furthermore, there is no intrinsic logical bar on a limited being reaching everywhere or knowing everything, as this entirely depends upon the way on the question of whether everything is finite or infinite, the nature of the being’s limits, and the ability of the limited being to extend its reach through other beings.”

Joe: A limited being cannot know everything because of relativistic limitations.

Actually, there is an intrinsic logical bar to a limited being knowing everything: the general theory of relativity. It is physically impossible for a limited being to know everything, since there are regions of the universe where information cannot be exchanged in any finite amount of time.

Vox: God is magic, so He doesn’t have to follow the rules. [This is not a correct characterization. -VD]

“Physical limits can’t logically apply to a being who is defined as being supramaterial.”

You claim not to believe in God’s omniscience, and yet here you are making arguments about that. I would have argued that your own “refutation” of Euthyphro [Joseph subsequently corrects himself and substitutes “problem of evil” for “‘refutation’ of Euthyphro” – VD] would have been exactly the type of logical bar to God’s omniscience that you claim does not exist, but I’ve been here long enough to know that day-to-day logical consistency is not your style. [This is downright stupid. Here Joseph shows his ankle-biting nature by attempting to invent inconsistency on my part rather than recognizing the distinction between a personal belief and an admission of a logical possibility. – VD]

You wrote: “Second, there is no reason to believe that relativistic limitations apply to the spiritual dimension.”

Relativity is humanity’s reasoning about the nature of space, time, matter and energy. You can claim that the spiritual world has nothing to do with our reasoning about space and time and matter and energy if you wish, but you can’t also claim that consciously departing from reason is itself reasonable.

You wrote: “If there is one thing we have learned from the history of science, it is that almost everything we know about existence is guaranteed to be incorrect. The irrational and ahistorical position is to assume that science has finally gotten everything right, that the limits of knowledge have been reached, and therefore preclude the possibility of God’s existence.”

The issue of God’s existence is not, strictly speaking, a scientific problem but an epistemological problem: is it rational to believe in the existence of a being that is unlike everything that we rationally know about beings?

Not only is Joseph’s characterization of my argument false, as the comparison between his statements and my words show, but he demonstrates a very limited ability to understand some fairly simple points. The present understanding of the universe’s physical elements are not “rules”. The effectiveness of my refutation of Euthyphro is not in question and has been successfully disputed by no one. That which is presently beyond that understanding is not necessarily magic. My belief in the Christian God’s Biblical lack of omniscience is totally distinct from my recognition of the logical possibility of a hypothetical creator god’s ability to reach everywhere or know everything. And “relativity”, both special and general, are more than mere reason, while reason is not limited to consideration of material things.

Finally, once Joseph realizes that he’s entered untenable ground regarding the dynamic state of scientific knowledge, he hastily attempts an inappropriate retreat to epistemology. But the answer to his question “is it rational to believe in the existence of a being that is unlike everything that we rationally know about beings?” can only be “it depends on what the evidence for the existence of that being is.” The reason this retreat is inappropriate is because it transforms the discussion from a general one to a very specific one.

As most regular readers have already recognized, there is no logical inconsistency here on my part. There is only the customary inability of a critic to construct a viable critique.

Next week’s reading is Chapter Six. The quiz for it will be posted on Saturday, July 25th.

Lest you wonder why the conservative leadership and commentariat has been so ideologically ineffective for so long:

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s president flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative commentariat, the conservative movement, and the Republican Party are full of tools who could not care less about political ideology. It’s all just Democratic and Republican laundry to them, so it shouldn’t be surprising that their purported efforts in the political arena are so reliably devoid of results. Most of them are for sale regardless of which side of the political spectrum they pretend to self-identify.

JB is a fan on certain issues, but he appears to have neglected to read TIA before sending in this attempt to disprove God’s existence through logic:

This applies to all gods, not only the Christian one. However, I will use the term “Christian” but that should not be taken to mean specifically Christians.

That which Christians call “God” must logically be one of the following two things:

1. The Totality, the sum total of the All, the Infinity of Existence, the totality of Nature.

or

2. Something less than the Totality.

There is logically no third alternative. It is one or the other. It is not possible to be more than the Totality, because the Totality, by definition, includes everything.

Now, the God that is identical with the Totality of all things may possibly be believed by some pantheists, but would not be believed in by many who would call themselves Christian. So, the God whose possible existence we need to examine is the second of the two alternatives – i.e., a God who is something less than the Totality.

Now is it possible for a “God” who is less than the Totality to be everything that Christians conceive him to be?

Christians conceive their God to be all-powerful – “omnipotent” – and all-knowing – “omniscient”. And Christians consider their God to be the creator of all things.

So is it possible for a being who is something less than the Totality of all things to be the creator of all things and have power over all things? No. It is not logically possible. A limited being cannot reach everything (by definition).

Is it possible for a being who is something less than the Totality of all things to be everywhere at once and to know all details about all things? No. It is not logically possible. A limited being cannot reach everything.

Thus the God of the common Christian is a logical impossibility and can never be more than a figment of the imagination. And just as a dream can be experienced, while having no logical coherence, and no reality beyond the imagination – so can the Christian experience his God.

I hope this leads you to re-consider your views on this issue.

The first point is correct. Either God is the Totality or God is something less than the Totality. The second point is also correct from both the Christian and other non-pantheistic perspectives; God is less than the Totality.

The third point is incorrect on two levels. 1) There is the usual confusion between capability and action. 2) Christian doctrine, as defined by either the Bible or the various theological doctrines of the major Christian churches, does not consider God to be omniscient in the sense it is used here. See TIA page 270 and “The Contradiction of Divine Characteristics”.

The fourth point – which is actually a series of related points – is incorrect. Completely incorrect. Not only can something which is less than the Totality be the Creator of all things, logic actually dictates that the Creator of all things MUST be less than the Totality for the obvious reason that otherwise there would be nothing to create. JB has gotten the logic entirely backward here. Furthermore, there is no intrinsic logical bar on a limited being reaching everywhere or knowing everything, as this entirely depends upon the way on the question of whether everything is finite or infinite, the nature of the being’s limits, and the ability of the limited being to extend its reach through other beings.

(I always find it amusing when omniderigistes or atheists insist that God must know and control absolutely everything at all times or He doesn’t exist. I mean, how would a God who doesn’t know everything and control absolutely everything interact with His creation. Most likely, one would imagine, through intermediaries He has also created. What a pity there’s nothing that might fit that description in any theological system….)

As is far too often the case, JB has attacked a childish strawgod; he is attempting to prove the nonexistence of the omniderigent “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” god of the Christian Sunday School. Let this be a lesson: if you are going to attempt a serious criticism, first master that which you intend to criticize. It also helps to know your audience, since presenting an omniscience-based proof of God’s nonexistence to me is rather like presenting a critique impossibility of socialist calculation based on the labor theory of value to an Austrian economist.

And with very good reason. Even Paul Krugman is beginning to see the downside with “saving the financial system”:

The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded — and you don’t have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don’t understand. And the events of the past year have skewed those incentives even more, by putting taxpayers as well as investors on the hook if things go wrong…. What’s clear is that Wall Street in general, Goldman very much included, benefited hugely from the government’s provision of a financial backstop — an assurance that it will rescue major financial players whenever things go wrong.

You can argue that such rescues are necessary if we’re to avoid a replay of the Great Depression. In fact, I agree. But the result is that the financial system’s liabilities are now backed by an implicit government guarantee.

No, the rescues were not necessary and Goldman Sachs should have been allowed to fail with all the other bankrupt banks. Max Kreiser’s perspective is both more forthright and more accurate that Krugman’s: “Goldman Sachs are scum. That’s the bottom line. They basically have coopted the U.S. government, they have coopted the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve functionality. They’ve coopted the Obama administration, Barack Obama dances to Goldman Sachs’s tune.”

What does Chairman Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve have to say about all this?

““The public in many countries is understandably concerned by the commitment of substantial government resources to aid the financial industry when other industries receive little or no assistance. This disparate treatment, unappealing as it is, appears unavoidable. Our economic system is critically dependent on the free flow of credit, and the consequences for the broader economy of financial instability are thus powerful and quickly felt.”

It’s time for the American public to tell both Bernanke and Goldman Sachs to go to Hell. The idea that the economic system somehow depends upon Goldman Sachs employees receiving millions in bonuses has got to be one of the biggest lies ever told in the history of economics. This is actually the last frantic looting of the pirates before the ship they attacked and boarded finally sinks beneath the waves. And the way out is absolutely not to build a new global system, because all that amounts to is allowing the financial pirates to board a new and bigger ship.

It would appear that bankruptcy looms:

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said. “Well, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, I’m telling you.”

Actually, the USA is going to go bankrupt no matter what it does now. It’s just a matter of time; although it’s impossible to say how much time, one can safely predict that it will be sudden and shocking whenever it does happen. It’s interesting that both Obama/Soetoro and Biden have come right out and told the country that the USA is out of money, but no one except Goldman Sachs appears to be taking them seriously.

Hollywood is filth. Its fanatically greedy denizens make Goldman Sachs look like relative paragons of financial honesty:

J.R.R. Tolkien sold movie rights to his “Lord of the Rings” novels 40 years ago for 7.5 percent of future receipts. Three films and $6 billion later, his heirs say they haven’t seen a dime from Time Warner Inc.

This is why I have so little interest in the film industry. It’s full of talentless, unimaginative thieves. I’ve been contacted at least four times that I can recall about the possibility of turning one or more of my novels into movies, and each time I tell them the same thing. I have absolutely no interest in the industry whatsoever, so thanks for your interest and have a nice day.

This thievery, combined with the brutal vivisection of one of my favorite Susan Cooper novels, only confirms my contempt for the industry. The lesson every creator should take from this is to refuse to accept any “cost” deductions from their royalties. If they can’t make money on their 93 percent of the take or whatever, then that’s really just their problem. I don’t go to movies or buy movie DVDs, but if I was interested in watching them, I’d feel an absolute moral duty to pirate them.