Double Predestination and Determinism

The concept of Predestination has developed steadily over the last 1700 years. Beginning in the early 4th century, the idea of Predestination began with the church fathers. For many years, the debate continued to evolve until a certain ideal was reached by teh Catholic church. Because of certain heretical movements across Europe in the late 15th and early 16th century, the idea of predestination evolved into something new. Previously, predestination had been understood as being the foreknowledge of God of the state of the human souls and the knowledge of how the soul will lead their life such that they will either go to heaven of suffer damnation. However, in the 16th Century, with the Protestant heresies spreading across Europe there came a new understanding of predestination. John Calvin in his institutes of Religion, talks about the power, the omnipotence of God over all things, as they are his creation. furthermore, he sees that because God is all powerful and all knowing, that God essentially creates man with an end in mind for him. In other words, God creates man already destined for Heaven or Hell. For Calvin and the other Protestants of his time, this essentially meant there was a double predestination. Instead of saying simply that God decides to save some people who have lived virtuous lives in His name, Calvin instead postulates that God also goes and damns everyone else to Hell, regardless of the life they have led. In modern analytical philosophy today, there is a philosophy called Behaviorism. Best epitomized by Gilbert Ryle, this philosophy attempts to resolve the questions presented by Dualists such as Descartes and Augustine. Ryle, in his Concept of Mind deconstructs the basic issues surrounding the problems of Descartes and proceeds to present his own ideas about the mind and will as a sort of continuation of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. However, through some careless process, Ryle runs into some precarious issues and the logical conclusion of his philosophy on the Will is essentially a Determinist explanation which perfectly fits with the idea of the Double Predestination.

Opposition to Homosexuality

well here I go. I know that if I post this to facebook, I will probably catch flak but its often so hard to get people to understand why we are opposed to homosexuality because it always end up with ah hom. attacks and the like without any discourse to real reason. and I am sick and tired of people telling me that I just dont understand. Facts are indisputable, ideas are not. These are my ideas and I am willing to dispute them. anyways.

First, My opposition against homosexuality is primarily a religious one. I am Catholic with a capital C and I believe everything that the CCC says. Morality has been given to the Church to be the arbiter of and I will respect that to my dying breath. That being said, I understand the Church's position against Homosexual conduct in several ways:
a) Homosexuality is defined as evil in the bible. New translations today for the first time in 1500 years of bibles are suddenly saying that homosexuality is not mentioned, but that instead its just talking about boy prostitutes. And I am a hat. Basically those people are mistranslating because they have an agenda in mind and I am not going to sit by and respect them for it. Corinthians, Leviticus, Romans and Timothy all contain passages against homosexuality and its consequences. end of story.
B)Homosexuality is condemned through tradition. It makes perfect sense to me with the argument that sexuality is meant to be used in one way only and that's it. he fathers, the doctors of the church and basically all theologians up to the last 50 years have been unanimous on this. it has only been in the last 50 years that the bad theologians, those who start with an end in mind and then proceed to twist everything to achieve it, have been able to hijack the media (who are anti-catholic for the most part) to misrepresent the church is so many ways.

Second, I understand that homosexuality is wrong as a practice also biologically. If Darwin is right and survival of the fittest and procreating to maintain the gene pool etc is the basic idea behind all morality, then it follows that sexual behavior not oriented to child bearing is wrong. Thankfully this is not the only reason why its wrong. Some people claim that animals exhibit homosexual behavior towards one another. I answer that it really is not homosexual behavior because (as the research shows) the behavior demonstrated by the animals is temporary and as normal as preening is. "homosexual" animals still procreate. Furthermore, why do we derive moral actions from animal behavior? Some animals eat each other and kill each other, they steal mates form others and abandon young to the wild. Why do we not do that too? I think the answer is obvious: because we do not draw our morality from the instinctual nature of animals. Therefore, that argument is fallacious and does not prove anything.

Third, Psychological argument. I am a big big fan of the Eriksonian notions of sexual identification through rearing. I do sincerely think that there is something big behind the idea that proper parenting results in normal heterosexual conduct. some studies confirm this, while others deny it. Regardless, just as it is bad for a child to be raised in a single parent house, so too is it for the same reason for the upbringing to be denied to same-sex couples.

Fourth, Because there is something sick and perverse about an entire group of people that define themselves simple on their sexuality. I really do think that sex is supposed to be in the bedroom and not leave there, homosexual or not. Al sex int he public media does nothing but desensitize us to the original beauty of sexuality and it benefits no one to have it out there except to fulfill the perversions of others. With this is mind I whole-heartedly reject the homosexual movement as nothing more than a group of people who are trying to push me and the government of the USA to recognize their perversions as good, something which I am opposed to because if my government is supposed to mirror the ideas of the populace then I think that as long as democracy reigns over this country, and there are enough people that oppose homosexuality, we should have every right to reject is soundly. I think all sex should be removed from the public world. And when I see a bookstore for gays and look inside, what do I find? Sordid pornographic materials behind the facade of "love".

Fifth, I think that homosexuality, even if determined before birth/in the womb, genetically, environmentally or hormonally, does not excuse it from being a defect. 1 in 100 children are mentally retarded ans we see that as a defect. Downs syndrome is bad. ADHD is bad. Why do we consider these bad but homosexuality not? I think there is a proper, ordered kind of human being that is in all respects normal. Indeed, I think that if we can say that mentally retarded children are defected because they cannot perform mental processes well, then for that same reason can we say that homosexuality is a defect as well. It all depends on perception.

In conclusion, if everyone were equal in every way, then we would have a sad world. Read this: Its a short which is Kurt's best Because belive it or not, this is where we will be.

Greece Trip Highlights

I am sure this will end up on Facebook. Anyways, I was in Greece for the last ten days or so. It was a fantastic trip and I will not forget it soon. I took nearly 800 photographs but i think I have trimmed those numbers to about 600. I think that over time I will add to this

*Boat Ride over was amazing. Nothing like a good storm to get things moving. Many people got sick, but I think that I had the most fun that I have ever had in my life. oh and I got soaked and hit by tons of waves while I was at the front of the ship! :D

*Taking pictures IN ruins and not in front of them because the guard was distracted by Johnny on the Temple of Zeus. Running the race! Running on ruins.

*Bus ride to Delphi and Matt imitating Carl.

*Delphi: The site was amazing! Holy Cow it was beautiful!

Election Prediction

For all of you who are watching this election closely, this note is for all of you. Tagged are those who take classes with me and those that might just care. If I didn't tag you then I am sorry but I was not really thinking about tagging but what I was going to write. Anyways, here it is.

On the first Tuesday in November 2008 there will be a General election to decide one of the most historic campaigns ever. and before the night is out, Barack Hussein (Steve for all you Al Smithies) Obama will be the next president of the United States. And with a huge majority of the vote.

Yes, I just said that. Now before the liberals start cheering and the conservatives explode, I want to give my reasons for this prediction.

Over the course of the past 2-3 years the democrats have been fighting tooth and nail to decide who is going to lead them to victory. It was only decided a scant 3 months ago who this would be. In the meantime, this has allowed Obama to gain a foundation of supporters who have been combating Clintonites from the start. These people are not going to change their vote, and are so deep in the Obama trench that it will take much more than a Joe Biden gaffe to get them out.

The Clinton supporters are bitter. They fought for 3 years to get their woman nominated only to fall by a hair. But they are not just bitter against Obama, they are even more bitter against the party that has been in control of the white house for 8 years. The GOP has foiled them for too long in their view and it is more important to them to vote for a Democrat than to allow another GOP president into DC. Some People say that Palin is a woman therefore Clinton supporters will vote for her. I am sorry for this language but besides their sexual organs, there is no similarity between Clinton and Palin. 99% of Clintonites will not change their vote. Those that do do not really believe in what they stand for.

The majority of voters, over 50% of them, are Independents. Come November, they will vote for Barack Obama. Why? I think because of several reasons:

1) He is a better speaker. Damn that man can speak. JFK effect on Nixon. Answers may be above his pay grade but when he sticks to his script (like Palin) he can be as persuasive as Morgan Freeman (anyone who has no idea hat I am talking about can go flush themselves down a toilet). The uninformed voter will see an amazing speaker not a man who has done very little. It simply will not matter.
2) He is Black. Yes I just said that. No one wants to look racist. Moderate Liberals who lean towards McCain will vote for Obama come November simply because he is black. The fear of being perceived as Racist is a huge. Being PC for many people is being normal. Voting for an old white guy will be un-PC. and yes, the vast majority of Black people will vote Obama. They already tend to vote liberal, so the fact that he is black will simply serve to reinforce their votes and pick up an even larger percentage of voters. Case and Point: Colin Powell has endorsed Obama.
3) No more Bush. Obama's campaign has nailed McCain on one talking point. He will be a continuation of Bush policies. As true or untrue as this may be, people buy it. They think of Bush policy and what do they see? They see Iraq, Patriot act, the recent stock market meltdown roller coaster and Scooter Libby. They see corruption and skyrocketing prices. And because of reason #1, when Barack Obama says that Bush=McCain, people believe him.

Some political theorists point to the Bradley effect. I seriously doubt that people will say that they are voting for Obama but then will turn and vote for McCain. I do think that many older people will do so, but not the youth. I am predicting that huge numbers of youth will turn out to vote this year and that there is where the difference will be made.

This recent economic crisis has also changed votes. Whether or not it is Bush's fault is beside the point. Reason #3 dictates what some people will do about it. It may be that it is unconstitutional money creation that has caused this, it may be over regulation, it maybe the free market; the fact is, people do not care what caused it. People care about WHO caused it. and while it may be that it was liberal policies, no one really know for sure. By the time the truth comes out, no one care. Obama will have 4 years to get ride of the blame or to direct it into a total of 8 years as president.

Personally, I am voting for McCain. It is because I am pro-life and wish to have a pro-life candidate that will place strict constitutionalists in the SC. But because my vote only counts for .0000000000375% of the vote, I doubt that it will make the difference needed to make sure the alternative is kept out.

Comment please if you wish, but please do not flame me nor each other.

Why some "pro-life" people support Embryonic Stem Cell Reasearch

by Richard Stith J.D

In December of 2005 an op-ed piece by sociologist Dalton Conley appeared in the New York Times, stating that “most Americans... see a fetus as an individual under construction.” This widespread vision of the embryo and fetus as “under construction” is the key to understanding why good people may find pro-life arguments to be absurd or otherwise non-rational, e.g., religious, particularly with regard to embryonic stem cell research.

The construction idea also may explain how Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been able to support both the right to life from the moment of conception and embryonic stem cell research.

Just think of something being constructed, such as a house, or a scholarly article – or take a car on an assembly line. When is a car first there? At what point in the assembly line would we first say, “There’s a car”? Some of us would no doubt go with appearance, saying that there is a car as soon as the body is fairly complete (in analogy to the fetus at 10 weeks or so). I suppose that most of us would look for something functional. We would say that there is a car only after a motor is in place (in analogy to quickening). Others might wait for the wheels (in analogy to viability) or even the windshield wipers (so that it’s viable even in the rain). And a few might say, “It’s not a car until it rolls out onto the street” (in analogy to birth). There would be many differing opinions.

However, one thing upon which we’ll probably all agree is this: Nobody is going to say that the car is there at the very beginning of the assembly line, when the first screw or rivet is put in or when two pieces of metal are first welded together. (You can see how little I know about car manufacturing.) Two pieces of metal fastened together don’t match up to anybody’s idea of a car.

I think that this is exactly the way that many people see the embryo, like the car-to-be at the very beginning of the construction process. In the first stages of construction you don’t have a house, you don’t have a car, you don’t have a human individual yet. You don’t ever have what you’re making when you’ve just started making it. This does not mean that our “constructionist” friends are anti-life. They may believe that a baby should have absolute protection once it has been fully fabricated. But until that point, for them, abortion just isn’t murder.

What happens when a constructionist hears a pro-lifer argue that a human embryo has the same right to life as any other human being? Journalist Michael Kinsley, writing in the Washington Post, expressed his utter bewilderment: “I cannot share, or even fathom, [the pro-life] conviction that a microscopic dot – as oblivious as a rock, more primitive than a worm – has the same rights as anyone reading this article.”

There’s a deep truth at the base of Kinsley's puzzlement. Nothing can be a certain kind of thing until it possesses the form of that kind of thing, and the form of a thing under construction just plain isn’t there at the beginning of the construction process. It isn’t there because that form is being gradually imposed from the outside and the persons or forces doing the construction have not yet been able to shape the raw material into what it will eventually be.

There is a special relevance of the construction idea to the embryonic stem cell debate. Conley admits there can be a peculiar, lesser sort of dignity even in a work-in-progress. For example, if we thought God were engaged in fabricating a new Eve, out of a bone and a breath, we wouldn't want to destroy His work-in-progress, simply out of respect for Him. Again, many of us would think a Corvette-To-Be pretty special even on the assembly line, something not lightly to be destroyed, because it's on the way to becoming something that we really care about. But if the auto factory shuts down early on, those two pieces of joined metal on the assembly line are not "to be" anything; they're just recyclable waste. Likewise, an embryo conceived outside the womb – with no plans to implant it so that it could be born – is not on its way "to be" anything. Thus it has little or no work-in-progress dignity, and work-in-progress type dignity is all that it can ever have for Conley and those who agree with his construction model of gestation.

So there is a reason that people like John McCain, and some others who are strongly opposed to abortion, even in early pregnancy, could feel free to vote for embryonic stem cell research funding. They could think that an intrauterine fetus or embryo is a great divine or human work in progress, and thus shouldn’t be aborted, even when just recently conceived, but only because it is under construction. Since the thousands of frozen, test-tube-generated embryos that scientists want to use for experiments are not under construction, are just scrap left over from IVF treatments, they can be recycled without a qualm.

Development as an alternative to construction

Despite the great explanatory power of Conley’s construction metaphor for an understanding of contemporary life-issue debates, it is radically misleading concerning the nature of gestation. It is in fact not true that the bodies of living creatures are constructed, by God or by anyone else. There is no outside builder or maker. Life is not made. Life develops.

In construction, the form defining the entity being built arrives only slowly, as it is added from the outside. In development, the form defining the growing life (that which a major Christian tradition calls its “soul”) is within it from the beginning. If Corvette production is cancelled, the initial two pieces of metal stuck together can become the starting point for something else, perhaps another kind of car, or maybe a washing machine. But even if you take a human embryo out of the womb, you can never get it to develop into a puppy or a guppy.

Living organisms are not formed or defined from the outside. They define and form themselves. The form or nature of a living being is already there from the beginning, in its activated genes, and that form begins to manifest itself from the very first moment of its existence, in self-directed epigenetic interaction with its environment. Embryos don’t need to be molded into a type of being. They already are a definite kind of being.

This idea of development – as the continual presence but gradual appearance of a being – lies deep within us. Here is a non-biological example of development. Suppose that we are back in the pre-digital photo days and you have a Polaroid camera and you have taken a picture that you think is unique and valuable – let’s say a picture of a jaguar darting out from a Mexican jungle. The jaguar has now disappeared, and so you are never going to get that picture again in your life, and you really care about it. (I am trying to make this example parallel to a human being, for we say that every human being is uniquely valuable.) You pull the tab out and as you are waiting for it to develop, I grab it away from you and rip it open, thus destroying it. When you get really angry at me, I just say blithely, “You’re crazy. That was just a brown smudge. I cannot fathom why anyone would care about brown smudges.” Wouldn’t you think that I was the insane one? Your photo was already there. We just couldn’t see it yet.

Why do we sometimes find the constructionist view plausible, while at other times the more accurate developmental view seems to make more sense? The constructionist view is intuitively appealing, I think, whenever the future is shut out of our minds, even if we are using the scientifically correct term “development.” Whenever the embryo or fetus is described in terms simply of its current appearance, it is easy to fall into constructionism. For example, if a snapshot is taken in which an embryo looks like just a ball of cells, its dynamic self-direction is obscured. It seems inert. Since an entity that had merely embryonic characteristics as its natural end state would indeed not qualify as a human being, it is easy to imagine that the entity in the snapshot is not human. Scientific knowledge of its inner activity may not be enough to overcome this impression, for it is hard to recognize a form still hidden from view.

However, when we look backwards in time or otherwise have in mind a living entity’s final concrete form, development becomes intuitively compelling. Knowing that the developing Polaroid picture would have been of a jaguar helped us to see that calling it a “brown smudge” was inadequate. If we somehow had an old photo taken of our friend Jim just after he had been conceived, and was thus just a little ball, we'd have no trouble saying, "Look, Jim. That's you!" Thus the most arresting way to put the developmental case against embryo-destructive research would be something like this: “Each of your friends was once an embryo. Each embryo destroyed could one day have been your friend.”

Deconstruction and the disabled

The construction vs. development clash may also help us to clarify our mutual misunderstandings regarding euthanasia. If a Corvette is gradually deconstructed (dismantled), it eventually ceases to merit the appellation “car”. If you were given a disassembled Corvette body, without the motor or wheels, would you feel that you had been given a “car”? What if you got only a chunk of the frame? True, Corvette-lovers might still have a certain reverence for that body, or even for a piece of the frame, because of what it used to be part of, so that wantonly trashing it (for no good purpose) could still seem to them wrong. But it wouldn’t seem nearly as bad as destroying a whole car. (Remember, there’s nothing wrong with this thinking with regard to artificial creations like cars. Once the pieces necessary to form a car are gone, that form itself is gone and so the car is truly gone.)

Life, however, is different. The form (nature, design) of a living creature both precedes and perdures independently of its appearance and function. That activated form is imbedded within a living being’s every part and every cell (in its active DNA). As long as a disabled creature remains anything – that is, as long as it holds itself together in some way, rather than just becoming a collection of non-integrated objects – that is, as long as it remains alive – it remains what it always was from the beginning of its development.

Indeed, our photo analogy fails fully to capture the nature of life. A photo does not hold itself together. If you scratch it after it has been developed, it won’t even try to repair itself. Like a constructed entity, it is merely an assemblage of parts, without a continuing inner force maintaining its form. Since a living creature is not only an assemblage of parts, it actually cannot be merely constructed. Both ancient and modern constructionists switch (and have to switch) to the developmental understanding at some point during gestation, or soon thereafter, in order to account for the fact that living human beings do have this active inner unifying form, until the day they die.

A deconstructionist might forget this truth and claim misleadingly that someone in a so-called “persistent vegetative state” is no longer a human being, having lost forever what we think special about our species. But in point of fact such a person never loses the unifying force that strives to express her humanity, until the moment she dies. Every part of her wasted body, even her very genes, actively, though in vain, strives to repair her injuries and to express her natural reason, will, and connection to those whom she has loved. She never becomes something else, such as a vegetable. That’s why her condition is tragic, because she has a human nature that is utterly frustrated. We don’t find real vegetables tragic (“Poor little heads of lettuce. Look how they’re just vegetating!”) because they are able to exhibit their inner design or nature.

As a result of accident or of age, many of us will become no longer capable (in this world) of expressing well, or expressing at all, the speech, reason, choice, and love for which we remain formed. Our humanity will have once more become partially hidden, as it was when we had just been conceived, but it will still be there.

The Problem of Pro-Life

Being pro-Life. It is almost corny to mention for those Catholics who think of their faith as more than just what your mom and dad's Sunday practices. Its a tag line that defines the rhetoric of the modern day republican conventions. Among conservatives, its the rallying call used to bring the southern bible belt to bear.

But what does his mean? Does it mean anti-abortion?

No. Being pro-life is more than being against abortion. It includes being agaisnt the death penalty, being against war, being against Embryonic stem cell research. But this is not what the modern pro-life movement espouses. It is solely focused on he prevention and illegalization of abortion.

Do not get me wrong. I support the movement. But it has been corrupted by the ideals of the Republican party, especially in terms of the death penalty and war. This is the problem.

Until the movement pushes itself into those issues, organizations like NARAL and Planned Parenthood will undermine the popular opinions on the issue.

Protestants and their Silly Videos

SO I have been watching James the preacher lately to see what these evangelicals do hile they are not yelling at a bunch of sheep. And lo and behold, they....Yell at people on the street and all over the internet. James the Preacher is an offensive, self styled "preacher". He uses offensive imagery to justify his often baseless thoughts as to why he thinks Catholics are wrong. He even goes to say that Catholics were founded by the Devil! An extreme position and one that he offers no backing.

I always find it strange to see this claim. I mean was it not Jesus who founded the Church? Was it not Peter who became the first pope? Did not Peter nominate another? When the Church grew larger, was it not one of the popes that called for an election? Do not the greatest Christian thinkers support the pope up until the schism and then the reformation?

More to come ....