Sequentia (Dies Irae)

Quaerens me, sedisti lassus:

Seeking me, Thou didst sink down wearily,

Redemisti crucem passus:

Thou hast saved me by enduring the cross,

Tantus labor non sit cassus.

such travail must not be in vain.

from http://requiemonline.tripod.com/lyrics/latinlyrics.htm

How profound just three lines...

Thanks Penitens for the quotes on your site that led me to this!

NOTICE OF NEW BLOG

due to the ever increasing lenghth of my philosophical and theological postings, I've decided to create a new blog.
"Ad Satisfactionem Omni Poscenti Vos" at VobisEstSpe.blogspot.com

So for those who want a quick and basic translation of the title of my new Blog:
Ad Satisfactionem Omni Poscenti Vos
"To the satisfaction of all asking you"
And here is a translation of the site name (VobisEstSpe.blogspot.com)
Vobis Est Spe
"To you that of the hope"

Both of which are from 1 Pt 3:15...
ad satisfactionem omni poscenti vos rationem de ea quae in vobis est spe (Latin Vulgate)
"But sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, being ready always to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you." (Douay-Rheims)
"but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope" (NAB, New American Bible)

The purpose of this blog is simple... this is where I will post my philosophical and theological thoughts and musings... though I am learning, and I will fail, I will seek always to find the Orthodox Catholic path in this undertaking...

St. Thomas Aquinas, patron of Scholars, Philosophers, and Theologians, Pray for us!

Gedankenexperiments (thought experiments)

This is a proto-thought, so I don't intend it to be well fleshed out...

It seems that part of the problem that occurs between the Theologian (theist) and the Atheologian (atheist) is due to differing ideas of the utility of Gendankenexperiments...

I maintain that we should work from a system without contradiction. If there is such a thing, there should be no discussion that we presently exist in one (if there is not such a thing, then the premises of logic seem pointless).

In such a case, if we are to discuss the existence of God, would it not be most pertinent to question that hypothesis within the system, and determine if it is consistent in the system? Though one might claim that discussion of hypothetical world systems where God created so-and-so or everyone perfect (such that free will never lead to any choice of evil or the complete lack of any evil), is pertinent to such a discussion, I would say that one can not admit relevance of such a hypothetical, without establishing prior that one can do so without logical contradiction.

If we already have a system we imagine is non-contradictory. then should we not start in that system. Even if we are not fully aware of every aspect of this system, we assume this system is non-contradictory, and thus by basing our information off of this system, we minimize the amount of variability when we are questioning a hypothesis, such as the existence of God.

Starting from intellectual scratch seems prone to contradictions, obvious or implied. As I hold the Atheologian's position on Theodicy has.

This is why I propose that for the clarity, Plantinga's method of showing the impossibility of any world but ours seems promising for future theologians. (A concise and approximate summary of Plantinga's method is: There is a person Bob who makes the free will decision to dance because he's happy right now. Now if we analyze every other "possible world" we find that it is impossible for Bob to NOT dance right now, given that he's happy, has free will and that Bob would dance right now if he is happy. God could make Bob dance, but then Bob would not have free will. If Bob does NOT HAVE free will in this world, where he HAS free will, then this is a contradiction, and this world can not exist. On the other hand, Bob could make the free will decision not to dance, but we have already stated that if he is happy he will dance, and we know that he is happy, so that this possibility is also IMPOSSIBLE, as it creates another contradiction, namely that he decides with his free will NOT TO dance, even though he will decide with his free will TO dance.)

This is by no means a support of Plantinga... I think his idea is heading in the right direction, but I believe his premises are rife with problems... mostly due to his discontinuity with traditional Theology.

lacrimae rerum

Kat and I have ended our relationship...
and though pain I feel,
it must be laid down,
that like Christ it might be crucified,
and my pain resurrected.

Sadness...

I am so horrified by what I just read that my stomach and mouth are ready to vomit... my very soul is sad, my mind is begging for an answer... my heart weeps... only a few times in my life has something other than sickness brought me this close to both tears and vomit.

LEADER EXCLUSIVE: Mother arrested for attempting to intervene in her 14-year old's decision to have abortion

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

By Joyce Morrison, Southern IL News Correspondent

For legal reasons, the names of the family and the 14-year old girl that are the subject of this story have been withheld at this time.

GRANITE CITY - A Sothern Illinois woman was arrested last week (March 17) after trying to intervene on behalf of her 14-year old daughter's effort to have an abortion. The girl was allegedly taken to an abortion clinic by the mother of the man allegedly to have impregnated the 14-year old.

According to the girl's mother, her 14-year old daughter was called off from school in Madison County by a woman posing as the girl's “grandmother.” The woman took the girl from her home only minutes before the girl’s mother returned home from work.

It was later determined that the woman who had posed as the "grandmother" to the school authorities was the mother of the male who had fathered the unborn child the 14-year old girl was carrying. The age of the male has not been released.

When the parents were notified their pregnant daughter was not at school, they suspected she had been taken to the Hope Abortion Clinic in Granite City. The parents and grandfather were the only persons authorized to request school absence for the fourteen year old female.

“My husband and I rushed to the abortion clinic where we saw our daughter’s name on the roster and the time she had checked in,” the mother said. She then went into the clinic and searched a room filled with young women awaiting abortions but did not see her daughter.

She took a seat near the main desk and said, “I was told I could not prove my daughter was there so I began calling her name. A medical tech at the clinic told me , ‘It’s your daughter’s rights, it’s her body. You have no rights.’”

After continuing to call out her daughter’s name and telling her “don’t do it,” authorities were called and the mother was arrested.

The 14-year old told her mother she could hear her but when she asked employees to give her mother a message, they came back to the room and told her that her mother had left.

Angela Michaels, of Small Victories Ministry, was tipped off as to what was happending at the Hope clinic. According to Michaels, she witnessed police placing the mother’s hands behind her back, taking her into custody. As the police were putting the mother in the squad car, she was crying out, “Please, please, help me...my daughter is in there.”

Michaels said, “Exactly one hour later at 10:35 a.m., the 14-year old emerged from the clinic looking disheveled. The 14-year old told us that employees kept her in a quiet room until the procedure was performed and she was told that her mother had left.”

Employees assured this girl on her departure, “No-one will ever know you were here, we’ll bury your records.”

In the meantime, the woman who had taken the girl for the abortion was slipped out the back door of the clinic.

The police in the community in which the family lives allegedly told the girl's mom that they couldn't intervene despite her making a charge that her daughter had been raped (by statute) because the charge was stale--7 weeks after the incident. They did tell the girl's mom that, while she had no right to stop the abortion, she did have a right to go into the clinic and speak to her daughter.

The parents are expected to file charges.

© 2005 IllinoisLeader.com -- all rights reserved

______

What are your thoughts concerning the issues raised in this story? Write a letter to the editor at letters@illinoisleader.com and include your name and town.

Circular reasoning?

A few things I've been pondering about the argument against God in Theodicy...

First it seems the arguments for Theodicy are CIRCULAR!
The underlying assumptions of Theodicy seem to assume NO GOD... which is unfair to the theist, and since as Hume (an atheist) implores we must start on even ground. (Though I think the atheist can only ever get false even ground, as I know the "hypothesis" of God is in fact so true that everything depends upon Him.)

The Theodicy arguments that I've seen so far consider evil as something akin to "pain and suffering". The nature of pain and suffering seems to cause the assumption that there is no God. Pain and suffering are generally considered as opposing Happiness and Comfort, they are not the opposite of God. In fact, it seems that if Pain and Suffering are "Evil" then the argument seems to imply utilitarian assumptions which include the non-existence of God. In the assumption of Happiness and Comfort as Good, it seems intrinsically to place only physical/emotional things into the equation, and denying the possibility of a Spiritual “Good” which includes God. Thus either the atheist is creating a Straw man argument between God and Evil, by devolving the argument into “moral and natural” good versus “moral and natural” evil, or if not, and they state in some way that they assume a God, then they are creating a False Dichotomy between Good and Evil, though this seems a unique False Dichotomy, by instead of failing to including the middle terms, it includes the middle terms at the failure to include the proper opposites or Dichotomy.

It seems that for the Atheist and the Theist to be on the “same ground” one must admit the possibility of God… though this possibility would by necessity be abstract and variable enough to be able to both include and exclude the possibility of God. The seeming best formation of a proper dichotomy would be “Good” and “not-Good” as they are explicitly contradictory and mutually exhaustive. And as a well formed Christian theist would deny the equality of God and evil, the best formulation of the dichotomy does not reduce not-Good to “evil”, but instead to “the privation or deprivation of Good”. This permits the atheist a place for his pain and suffering versus happiness and comfort, as well as permitting the theist a place for his God versus the privation of God, premise.

Theodicy stuff

This is from a daily writting for my class, based off of the problem of evil, specifically as outlined by J.L. Mackie in Evil and Omnipotence
His argument is of the form:
1. God is omnipotent
2. God is wholly good
3. Evil exists
4. Any two of the above leads to a contradiction with the third.
5. Therefore one must deny one of the three.
6. The believer claims all three are true.
7. Therefore, the believer is not logical in these beliefs.

He uses what he calls "quasi-logical rules" to connect good, evil and omnipotence to show that the contradiction in line (4) occurs. They are:
a.) "good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can"
b.) "that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do."
c.)from these two principles, "it follows that a good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely and then the propositions that a good omnipotent thing exists [lines 1 and 2] and the evil exists are incompatible [line 3]"

------------------

I don’t know how coherent this is, and I know it probably needs some editorial work, but I think it clear enough to get my point across.

I deny the premise that "a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can." Evil “is always and only the deprivation of what is Good” (West, Theology of the Body p.63), it is a non-entity; it is the lack of what should exist. In this sense it is nonsensical to say that a good thing always eliminates a no-thing. Perhaps what is meant by Mackie’s phrase is that a good thing must fulfill what lacks in good (or some similar concept). Or perhaps he means that a good thing immediately fulfills what lacks in good. The second of which I would claim nonsensical as well, as God (who in my understanding exists outside of time but still sustaining it) exists at every time via the essence of being “eternally now”. So a thing that lacks good could have been fulfilled previously or in the future and still be considered fulfilled “immediately”.

If by immediate, it is meant in the next human instant in time or some other such thing, then I would say that nothing could ever change or exist. Whereas, perfection is always constant and any change implies imperfection. If an object that is perfectly good exists, and a good thing (e.g., God) would not allow that object to be deprived of good, then God would not allow the object to change, as change implies imperfection, and a change from perfection is a deprivation, i.e., evil. Thus it seems to follow that if God created a perfect world, then it would be unchanging or nonexistent. But there is change and existence; therefore it is not the case that “a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can.”

Similar logic shows that an object can not be perfect if it is not whole, so that the world would have to be homogenous, and one thing; for it to be good. But this is also not the case, so the premise again is not the case (in the specific meanings).

I would suspect that any variation of “a good thing must fulfill what lacks in good” is a non-tenable position, as that would ultimately imply that a perfectly good thing (e.g., God) would make everything perfectly good (e.g., God), but this reaches an infinite regress or the creation of nothing (i.e., only the perfectly good thing exists). And neither of these are the case, such that it seems it is not the case that “a good thing must fulfill what lacks in good”. It seems that there are two primary possible problems with the statement, either a good thing cannot exist, or if it does it has no obligation to fulfill what lacks in good.

And though I take the later view, I don’t know that a defense of it would be succinct enough to write before I fall asleep.

Spring Break?

So I've been on spring break for the last four-five days, and now I'm starting to get back into school mode... I have two large philosophical essays due in the next two months so I've been starting research on one and procrastination on the other... I also have two tests next week... which I'm not terribly concerned over... but I probably should be... tomorrow I plan to start studying for my Buddhism class... and monday (because thats when we get our review sheet) I'll start on my Philosophy of Physics class...

I'm in Des Moines right now with Kat... taking a break from Ames (ISU) and enjoying the peace and quiet... its nice...

School has been good so far... in metaphysics I got two 100's on the same test, something my teacher said he hasn't done in a very long time... in Logic I had a 100, and in Buddhism I had a 93% which was still one of the highest... Philosophy of Physics has yet to have a test so I'm unsure of my standing, though I've done pretty well on the quizes...

Two weeks ago Kat and I went to a weekend conference with Christopher West, discussing the Theology of the Body, nad I really enjoyed that... it was a nice break from the bleak philosophies that I read in class.

Anyhow... off to play games :-D it is spring break after all!