One of the proofs that Jesus is God goes along the following. Historical records, in this case the gospels, state that Jesus claimed to be God. Specifically, he applied the name I AM to himself: before Abraham was, I AM (John 8:58). We know both from the book of Exodus and the Jews' reaction that I AM is effectively the secret name of God, who when Moses asked for his name, said I AM WHO AM. From this we can conclude a few possibilities: either Jesus was telling the truth, he was deliberately deceitful, or was crazy. By eliminating the latter two, we arrive at the conclusion that Jesus was telling the truth, and is indeed God.
However, there seems to be arguments against this proof, claiming that it sets up a false dilemma. A false dilemma is when two (or more) options are pitted against each other and are claimed to represent the whole of possibilities, when this is not the case. For example, a false dilemma is to state: Either you support Barack Obama's bid for the presidency, or you're a racist. This doesn't actually partition the whole space. A true partition that makes use of both is the following. First divide the populace between those who support Obama and those who don't. Then divide the populace between those who are racist and those who are not. We end up then with four categories: Barack/not racist, Barack/racist, not Barack/not racist, and not Barack/racist. What the false dilemma actually tries to assert is that the categories of Barack/racist and not Barack/not racist are empty, but is this really the case? A simple poll will show that some people support Barack simply because of his skin color (which is a racist view), and some people who have no problems with a black president don't like Obama simply because they disagree with his policies (which is not racist).
The claim that the original argument is a false dilemma simply states there must be other alternatives than what is offered in the argument. Suppose, for example, Jesus was simply a holy man, a good philosopher, but not God, as a number of different groups might claim (e.g. Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, agnostics, and even some atheists). But do alternatives really hold any water?
Let's examine the divisions that are made in the original argument. Either Jesus was telling the truth, lying, or crazy. Let's handle truth first. Either Jesus' claim was true, or it was false. There's no fuzziness there, so let's move onto the second division that is made, i.e. Jesus' intent. Either Jesus intended to tell the truth, or he intended to deceive. Now we have four categories:
1. Jesus' claim was true and he intended to tell the truth
2. Jesus' claim was true and he intended to deceive
3. Jesus' claim was false and he intended to tell the truth
4. Jesus' claim was false and he intended to deceive
We could, potentially, further divide the categories, or we could discard these particular categories and invent new ones, but it is obvious that these completely partition the space. (But wait, some might argue, couldn't his claim be either true and false, or neither true nor false? Couldn't Jesus have had no intent at all? I hope these aren't strawmen arguments, but they're all I could think of at the moment. But a proposition is either or true or false. It cannot be both, and it cannot be neither. And to deny that Jesus had an intent flies in the face of what he set out to do.) If we have completely partitioned the space, there can be no false dilemma.
The first case is obviously the one the original argument means to prove. The second is tricky. If Jesus was indeed God made man, then the only way he could intend to deceive (by claiming to be God) was to believe he wasn't God. Could such a thing really happen? Because this is such a tricky case, it is often lumped together with the fourth argument, where the consideration of deceit is handled by reference to empirical evidence. What is the intent of someone who goes about claiming to be God? What does it say that Jesus freely chose to give himself up to death, and how does that work with the intent of someone falsely claiming to be God? In other words, we only handle the "liar" aspect of both the second and fourth argument. For the third argument, we have a word for someone who claims to be God, truly thinks that he is God, but is not actually God. That word is crazy.
So now we're back at the original argument. It posed that either Jesus was telling the truth, was a liar, or was crazy, and we have just shown how these three conditions fully partition the possibility space. One might object to arguments against Jesus being a liar or crazy, but one cannot claim that the argument itself poses a false dilemma.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
In Honor of C.S. Lewis...
To all junior demons,
We are about to launch a new seminar to prepare you or to aid you in dealing with your patients. We believe strongly that too many of our field operatives, and yes that includes some of our finest workers dedicated to Our Father Below, have failed to keep ahead of recent trends in the mortal realm. We have every indication to believe that our past efforts have sparked this monumental surge forward in divisiveness of our Enemy's ranks and the increasing flood of deserters from our Enemy's cause. However, this does not permit us to be lax in our management of our patients--to the contrary!
It is the unfortunate result that our Enemy designed these pitiful bipeds with the capacity of reason. How more providential to our cause if He would have disdained rationality for emotionality, abandoned all necessity of reasoned thought to the dictates of gut feelings! For we all know, being able to see the entirety of our Enemy's Church, the inevitable success our Enemy must attain, and how against reason it is to declare its defeat, much less its nonexistence. As our efforts continue to, temporally, bear fruit in these realms, we must in turn step up our efforts to distract our patients from noticing how unreasonable they are being.
Our seminar will comprise six sessions, and attendance will be mandatory unless our advisory board deems that a patient cannot be left unattended for the duration. Thus, unless the patient displays imminent, but reversible, inclination towards the Enemy's camp, the mandatory requirement will not be waived.
Our first session will deal with the new advances in the biped's notion of love, how it has developed in recent years, and how difficult our battle will be to continue to nurture this notion of love. Remember, we are not opposed to love, only that love for our Enemy that we find so distasteful. Self-love, on the other hand, provides us with no end of entertainment, and it is towards this that we have worked so hard. And it has indeed born fruit in unexpected arenas, and deserves direct attention so we can properly handle its cultivation.
Our second session will stress the recent upsurge in atheism. In some of your reports, I have seen gross complacency when the patient embraces a wholly materialistic view apart from anything supernatural, and this must be curbed. The atheist, while deep in our camp, holds the most untenable position of them all, and we must, I repeat, must be diligent in our efforts to maintain this position. We must keep forward in our efforts all those feelings that would lend credence to this ridiculous notion that our Enemy does not exist, including foremost that the biped's notion of the Enemy must be correct and thus contradictory. We will visit classic arguments, such as "Can the Enemy create a rock He cannot lift?" While this is elementary for most of us, it deserves to be revisited, for it encompasses most of the flawed arguments the bipeds will latch onto.
Our third session will address the topics of suffering and addiction. The bipeds in the developed world have discovered lifestyles that, initially, seem to remove even the slightest discomforts from their lives. Always in the past, our efforts have been directly predominantly at the unfairness of the immense suffering man has had to endure, but in the developed world, we can no longer guide our patients down this course. The ease of their lives and the abundance of their wealth, coupled with that accursed reason bestowed by the Enemy, eventually gives rise to the notion that they can actually help those worse off than themselves. All thoughts in this direction must either be curtailed or monitored carefully. We advise that any charitable thoughts must be redirected back at the patient, so that the patient uses the semblance of charity for personal benefit. However, this is a fine line to walk, and we will discuss how best to approach this.
Our fourth and fifth session will be devoted to those recent medical discoveries that have raised controversial issues across the developed world. We will touch upon the materialistic demotion of man to an expendable resource and review how that ramifies into all areas of the bipeds' society. We must be careful in this area to always keep the patient's focus on the utility of discovery, even at the expense of others. This past century has seen some of the most delightful evils come to pass in the mortal realm because of this misguided notion, and with care, we should be able to cultivate an even greater harvest in the future.
Our last information will cover the dissemination of information. In the modern world, anyone has the ability to make his viewpoint, his findings, his opinions, and even his blatant lies known to thousands if not millions of others. This in turn is a great resource we must tap into. We must always keep in mind that a lie repeated a thousand times is no longer considered a lie. And when the patient has, at his fingertips, a thousand times a thousand differing accounts for a single action, a single decision, or a single moral point, even the most blatant lie can been an adequate bludgeon against his reasons. Always keep the patient confused, unsure of who to trust. Keep him away from the only consistent authority there is, namely the Enemy and His abominable Church, and keep him focused on the worldly authorities, whose flaws are depicted and denounced by thousands of disagreeing factions, who are in turn denounced by others, and so on. This vast confusion is a great boon to our cause, but we must be sure to keep the resulting cynicism grounded so that he does not turn to the Enemy as a last recourse.
At the conclusion of this seminar, we expect to notice vast improvements in your reports and a renewed dedication to the work of Our Father Below.
Senior Administrative Assistant,
Screwtape
We are about to launch a new seminar to prepare you or to aid you in dealing with your patients. We believe strongly that too many of our field operatives, and yes that includes some of our finest workers dedicated to Our Father Below, have failed to keep ahead of recent trends in the mortal realm. We have every indication to believe that our past efforts have sparked this monumental surge forward in divisiveness of our Enemy's ranks and the increasing flood of deserters from our Enemy's cause. However, this does not permit us to be lax in our management of our patients--to the contrary!
It is the unfortunate result that our Enemy designed these pitiful bipeds with the capacity of reason. How more providential to our cause if He would have disdained rationality for emotionality, abandoned all necessity of reasoned thought to the dictates of gut feelings! For we all know, being able to see the entirety of our Enemy's Church, the inevitable success our Enemy must attain, and how against reason it is to declare its defeat, much less its nonexistence. As our efforts continue to, temporally, bear fruit in these realms, we must in turn step up our efforts to distract our patients from noticing how unreasonable they are being.
Our seminar will comprise six sessions, and attendance will be mandatory unless our advisory board deems that a patient cannot be left unattended for the duration. Thus, unless the patient displays imminent, but reversible, inclination towards the Enemy's camp, the mandatory requirement will not be waived.
Our first session will deal with the new advances in the biped's notion of love, how it has developed in recent years, and how difficult our battle will be to continue to nurture this notion of love. Remember, we are not opposed to love, only that love for our Enemy that we find so distasteful. Self-love, on the other hand, provides us with no end of entertainment, and it is towards this that we have worked so hard. And it has indeed born fruit in unexpected arenas, and deserves direct attention so we can properly handle its cultivation.
Our second session will stress the recent upsurge in atheism. In some of your reports, I have seen gross complacency when the patient embraces a wholly materialistic view apart from anything supernatural, and this must be curbed. The atheist, while deep in our camp, holds the most untenable position of them all, and we must, I repeat, must be diligent in our efforts to maintain this position. We must keep forward in our efforts all those feelings that would lend credence to this ridiculous notion that our Enemy does not exist, including foremost that the biped's notion of the Enemy must be correct and thus contradictory. We will visit classic arguments, such as "Can the Enemy create a rock He cannot lift?" While this is elementary for most of us, it deserves to be revisited, for it encompasses most of the flawed arguments the bipeds will latch onto.
Our third session will address the topics of suffering and addiction. The bipeds in the developed world have discovered lifestyles that, initially, seem to remove even the slightest discomforts from their lives. Always in the past, our efforts have been directly predominantly at the unfairness of the immense suffering man has had to endure, but in the developed world, we can no longer guide our patients down this course. The ease of their lives and the abundance of their wealth, coupled with that accursed reason bestowed by the Enemy, eventually gives rise to the notion that they can actually help those worse off than themselves. All thoughts in this direction must either be curtailed or monitored carefully. We advise that any charitable thoughts must be redirected back at the patient, so that the patient uses the semblance of charity for personal benefit. However, this is a fine line to walk, and we will discuss how best to approach this.
Our fourth and fifth session will be devoted to those recent medical discoveries that have raised controversial issues across the developed world. We will touch upon the materialistic demotion of man to an expendable resource and review how that ramifies into all areas of the bipeds' society. We must be careful in this area to always keep the patient's focus on the utility of discovery, even at the expense of others. This past century has seen some of the most delightful evils come to pass in the mortal realm because of this misguided notion, and with care, we should be able to cultivate an even greater harvest in the future.
Our last information will cover the dissemination of information. In the modern world, anyone has the ability to make his viewpoint, his findings, his opinions, and even his blatant lies known to thousands if not millions of others. This in turn is a great resource we must tap into. We must always keep in mind that a lie repeated a thousand times is no longer considered a lie. And when the patient has, at his fingertips, a thousand times a thousand differing accounts for a single action, a single decision, or a single moral point, even the most blatant lie can been an adequate bludgeon against his reasons. Always keep the patient confused, unsure of who to trust. Keep him away from the only consistent authority there is, namely the Enemy and His abominable Church, and keep him focused on the worldly authorities, whose flaws are depicted and denounced by thousands of disagreeing factions, who are in turn denounced by others, and so on. This vast confusion is a great boon to our cause, but we must be sure to keep the resulting cynicism grounded so that he does not turn to the Enemy as a last recourse.
At the conclusion of this seminar, we expect to notice vast improvements in your reports and a renewed dedication to the work of Our Father Below.
Senior Administrative Assistant,
Screwtape
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Reasons against contraception
In our world, it seems insane to speak out against contraception, yet I feel I must. For references, I will simply defer to www.pureloveclub.com. It is a Catholic site, but it has a list of references that are fairly useful.
1. Contraceptives don't stop pregnancies
What? Isn't that what contraceptives are for? Yet the answer should be obvious. No contraceptive is 100% effective. They do greatly decrease the chance of pregnancy, true. But consider the following scenario.
A. I have a 50% chance of becoming pregnant if I have unprotected sex. I have sex 0 times, and thus have a 0% chance of becoming pregnant.
B. I have a 1% chance of becoming pregnant if I have protected sex. I have sex once, I have a 1% chance of becoming pregnant. I have sex 10 times, I have about a 10% chance of becoming pregnant. I have sex 50 times, I have a 40% chance of becoming pregnant, and so on.
As the usage of contraceptives (with maybe the exception of the pill for hormonal regulation) almost automatically implies sex, and some sex quite often implies lots of sex, the conclusion is clear. Granted, these statistics don't cover all possibilities, but a nonzero chance of becoming pregnant from having protected sex once eventually because a significant nonzero chance of becoming pregnant when having sex numerous times.
Society proves this point. Since the legalization of contraception, unintended pregnancies skyrocketed. Recent downward trends in teen pregnancies are due entirely to teens abstaining from sex. When looking only at teens that are sexually active, the rates of teen pregnancies have actually increased.
2. Contraceptives don't prevent STDs
The reasoning here is quite similar. While contraceptives like condoms greatly reduce the chance of catching an STD from one sexual encounter, they fail to provide foolproof protection. Enough sexual encounters will raise the probability of catching STDs from unlikely to quite probable.
3. Contraceptives propagate the mentality of using people as objects
Consider the following analogy. Suppose I won't talk to you unless you have blond hair. Or, at the risk of sounding racist, suppose I won't sell you a drink unless you have white skin. It doesn't matter how you get your hair or skin the appropriate color. You could dye your hair or paint your body. Once you do, I'll deal with you. Until then, I won't.
Anyone with an ounce of sense will argue that in the above scenarios, I'm being unreasonable (and racist). And yet no one makes this connection with contraceptives. Here's the underlying principle:
If you have to alter the fundamental nature of a person to make them acceptable, you are treating that person as an object.
Contraceptives essentially state: "I can't accept my/your ability to conceive, so I'm going to change you so that you don't." Pretty straightforward, isn't it?
As for those of you who would object, saying, "But what if I don't mind being (or even want to be) used as an object?" I want you to just take 10 minutes and seriously reflect on that. And consider it in light of other cases of being used as an object (such as the absurd case of a doctor coming around to harvest all your organs while you are still alive and healthy).
4. People can control their urges. Expecting abstinence until marriage (or even lifelong) is reasonable.
Let's carry the objections to this one to their full conclusions. What this is saying is that we can't say no to sex. We have to get it, one way or another. (Sounds like an addiction, right?) So what happens when a man runs out on his endurance, absolutely has to have sex, and an eight-year-old boy walks by? By the reasoning of the objector, the fact that boy was raped is an unfortunate as if he had walked out in front of a semi. It is sad, and the boy was hurt or killed, but no one's to blame. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyone who would object to this conclusion obviously believes we have the ability to control our sexual desires. Thus abstinence is hardly unreasonable.
1. Contraceptives don't stop pregnancies
What? Isn't that what contraceptives are for? Yet the answer should be obvious. No contraceptive is 100% effective. They do greatly decrease the chance of pregnancy, true. But consider the following scenario.
A. I have a 50% chance of becoming pregnant if I have unprotected sex. I have sex 0 times, and thus have a 0% chance of becoming pregnant.
B. I have a 1% chance of becoming pregnant if I have protected sex. I have sex once, I have a 1% chance of becoming pregnant. I have sex 10 times, I have about a 10% chance of becoming pregnant. I have sex 50 times, I have a 40% chance of becoming pregnant, and so on.
As the usage of contraceptives (with maybe the exception of the pill for hormonal regulation) almost automatically implies sex, and some sex quite often implies lots of sex, the conclusion is clear. Granted, these statistics don't cover all possibilities, but a nonzero chance of becoming pregnant from having protected sex once eventually because a significant nonzero chance of becoming pregnant when having sex numerous times.
Society proves this point. Since the legalization of contraception, unintended pregnancies skyrocketed. Recent downward trends in teen pregnancies are due entirely to teens abstaining from sex. When looking only at teens that are sexually active, the rates of teen pregnancies have actually increased.
2. Contraceptives don't prevent STDs
The reasoning here is quite similar. While contraceptives like condoms greatly reduce the chance of catching an STD from one sexual encounter, they fail to provide foolproof protection. Enough sexual encounters will raise the probability of catching STDs from unlikely to quite probable.
3. Contraceptives propagate the mentality of using people as objects
Consider the following analogy. Suppose I won't talk to you unless you have blond hair. Or, at the risk of sounding racist, suppose I won't sell you a drink unless you have white skin. It doesn't matter how you get your hair or skin the appropriate color. You could dye your hair or paint your body. Once you do, I'll deal with you. Until then, I won't.
Anyone with an ounce of sense will argue that in the above scenarios, I'm being unreasonable (and racist). And yet no one makes this connection with contraceptives. Here's the underlying principle:
If you have to alter the fundamental nature of a person to make them acceptable, you are treating that person as an object.
Contraceptives essentially state: "I can't accept my/your ability to conceive, so I'm going to change you so that you don't." Pretty straightforward, isn't it?
As for those of you who would object, saying, "But what if I don't mind being (or even want to be) used as an object?" I want you to just take 10 minutes and seriously reflect on that. And consider it in light of other cases of being used as an object (such as the absurd case of a doctor coming around to harvest all your organs while you are still alive and healthy).
4. People can control their urges. Expecting abstinence until marriage (or even lifelong) is reasonable.
Let's carry the objections to this one to their full conclusions. What this is saying is that we can't say no to sex. We have to get it, one way or another. (Sounds like an addiction, right?) So what happens when a man runs out on his endurance, absolutely has to have sex, and an eight-year-old boy walks by? By the reasoning of the objector, the fact that boy was raped is an unfortunate as if he had walked out in front of a semi. It is sad, and the boy was hurt or killed, but no one's to blame. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyone who would object to this conclusion obviously believes we have the ability to control our sexual desires. Thus abstinence is hardly unreasonable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)