FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
No bio...
User ID: 1739
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
Thanks for that context. It really clarifies the Catholic Church's stance on this matter.
I agree wholeheartedly with the Jesuit's "middle knowledge" and it's neat to see an argument that seems to be a direct precursor to Leibniz's "best of all possible worlds" theodicy.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
Yes, true: however, I think the ruling must be having a strong effect because you are not seeing the same street people crises in very left wing cities outside of the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction. The East Coast doesn't have this problem, even though they have quite a few activist DAs.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9mo ago
Like most people I had desires and aspirations as a child that I no longer have as an adult. I no longer care to eat hard candies or chew bubblegum, I prefer a prime rib steak to a pop tart, and I have no plans to be the first astronaut on Mars. With maturity comes the inevitable putting away of childish things.
Recently, however, I discovered there was one ridiculous, childish desire that deep down I still very much want.
I love Reese's peanut butter cups. When I was 8 or so I imagined that when I was an adult and had money I would buy so many peanut butter cups that you could fill bathtub with them, and eat them all. When I was 11 or so I realized that would be impractical, and imagined instead sitting in an airchair with boxes of Reese's cups stacked high enough to reach them without bending down, and eating as many as physically possible.
Friends, this dream still appeals to me greatly. I didn't realize how appealing it still was until last Christmas, when (after a several months of strict dieting) I allowed myself to cut loose for the holiday. My wife always buys me Reese's to put in my stocking each year, and this year had a big bag of Reese's minis. I ate the entire bag, 1,300 calories worth, within an hour.
And all I could think was that I wanted more.
I'm not planning on making my childhood dream a reality: but this knowledge weighs heavy on me. Each time I'm at Costco I find myself calculating the price of 5 or six cases of cups. Someday, perhaps all too soon, my willpower may fail me.
Which, honestly, wouldn't be so bad. I'd probably get sick, throw up, and if I'm lucky my brain will associate Reese's with nausea and I won't have to worry about this ever again. Worst case scenario, I think the maximum amount of weight you can gain in a day is fixed, (maybe two pounds?) so at least the damage would be limited.
All this preamble to say: do you have any childish dreams that deep down (or maybe not so deep) you'd still like to make a reality?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2d ago
The space is above the map. Open up Google maps and plop yourself down to street view just about any residential area of San Francisco: the buildings are three stories tall at the highest with the vast majority being two stories. Plenty of space if you go vertical.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
24d ago
It's unlikely, but theoretically possible. It would be less crazy than the stuff that happened in 2020.
...a university putting out a statement that causes a chain reaction that leads to the President of the United States and a majority of Congress to change their position on providing military aid to Israel?
What happened in 2020 that was crazier than that?
I don't see a world where the US decides to stop providing military aid to Israel within the next decade, let alone in time to have an effect on the current conflict. Even if literally all the universities put out statements saying that they should! In my experience a university statement on a hot button political issue has never come close to anything like that kind of impact.
I didn't get past the second choice. Amila, 100%. There was a time where I debated to myself what kind of superpower would be the best to have. That was before I became a parent. No debate, it's magical healing, by a long shot. Everything else can be fixed, except people.
If I had such a power I'd spend the rest of my life traveling from hospital to hospital, healing everyone there. I'd let people know in advance, so they could bring their sick and crippled. I'd start a nonprofit organization to support my work and auction off the right to be the first three people healed by me at any of my stops to the highest bidder in order to fund it.
I would never retire.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I mean, yes and no.
I don't think my choices are determined in that I could not have chosen differently, but I will inevitably make one choice. And the choice I make will pretty much be the result of my character, my history, my circumstances, and divine intervention. If I'm set a problem that I agonize over, where I am not sure which way to go, that I waffle back on forth on, I'm still going to end up choosing something and not choosing every other possible thing. And while I would hold that it was still possible for me to choose something else, once I choose it's chosen and that's that. If you could somehow meaningfully "run the simulation again" with all the factors influencing my decision remain the same, I'm going to make the same decision. If I don't have any new information to work with, I'm going to come to the same conclusion.
I suppose one way to put it is that I"m fine with my actions being determined by my history, character, and circumstances because those are all things that make up who I am and any choice determined by who I am is my free will choice. If the choice is determined by something else (the blind movement of atoms, lets say, or a divine plan that determines my actions regardless of my history, character, or circumstances) then I don't see it as free will.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
Faith healing would only be easy to prove if it wasn't a miracle: as in, if it was a natural process that repeats itself given the necessary conditions. But nobody claims it's that: the claim is that God directly intervenes. Think about what would happen if you tried to test it: you watch as a faith healer prays to God to heal someone. If nothing happens the faith healer can always say that God chose not to heal her: and if she gets better, the skeptic can always say that she would have gotten better anyway! There are countless testimonies of miraculous healing out there. Even journal articles backed by medical evidence: but the skeptic can always say that something else must have caused it.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
You don't get to decide what speech is or is not appropriate! That's the whole point! If you don't like it, put up your own poster: but what is or is not allowed to be said in the public square is not based on your opinions. That's the whole point of the 1st Amendment.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9mo ago
If it's normal homeostasis, it means matching your appetite to your activity.
I can understand controlling what you eat, but how does one control appetite? It seems that taking medications like this is a real way to match appetite to activity, so I'm not sure what the objection is.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
13d ago
Being out of order is what makes it funny. If the punchline was "the gas light gate keep girl boss" then it would be mildly funny, but rotating the word pairs so that they're exactly one off, and all in the same direction, makes it hilarious. Like "man door hand hook car door"
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I disagree. While you have to take the potential biases or other points of unreliability into account when dealing with eyewitness testimony, they are still more reliable for a historian than most other forms of evidence. All evidence has to be interpreted properly, whether it's eyewitness testimony or a pile of bones in the desert. Bones, for instance, can tell us many useful things: some of the injuries this human may have undergone, and whether they had a chance to heal or not, carbon dating information on provenance, gender, level of bone health, etc. If the historical question you are trying to answer is "How did Richard III die" then access to his bones may be very helpful indeed. But if the question is "What wars did Richard III wage, and against who, and why?" then written accounts will tell you far more, and far more reliably, then digging up bones will.
Eisenhower does actually mention a holocaust in crusade in europe. Specifically a "Bomber's Holocaust", carried out by the allies against the germans. But nothing about a mass extermination of jews, only that when released from the work camps they and all the other prisoners were starving from lack of food, largely because German logistics had collapsed.
In a press conference Eisenhower gave in 1945 he said the following: "When I found the first camp like that I think I was never so angry in my life. The bestiality displayed there was not merely piled up bodies of people that had starved to death, but to follow out the road and see where they tried to evacuate them so they could still work, you could see where they sprawled on the road. You could go to their burial pits and see horrors that really I wouldn't even want to begin to describe. I think people ought to know about such things...It is something we have been trying desperately to find out, whether or not the German population as a whole knew about that. I can’t say. It does appear, from all the evidence we can find, that they were isolated areas and this one piece of evidence that the mayor being shown the thing and going home and hanging himself would indicate he didn’t know about it. On the other hand, what makes the story so thin with me is when we find these very high ranking Nazis denying knowledge of it. If they didn’t, they deliberately closed their eyes, that is all. As far as I’m concerned these people are just as guilty as anybody else – those high ranking Nazis – but I think it would be impossible to say, however, the German nation knew it as a whole. But a lot of them know it, because I told them to go out and give them a decent burial. We made a film an hour long and we have made many Germans look at it, and it is not pretty."
In a military cable to General Patton in 1945, Eisenhower wrote the following: "We continue to uncover German concentration camps for political prisoners in which conditions of indescribable horror prevail…I have visited one of these myself and I assure you that whatever has been printed on them to date has been understatement. If you would see any advantage in asking about a dozen leaders of congress and a dozen prominent editors to make a short visit to this theater in a couple of C-54s, I will arrange to have them conducted to one of these places where the evidence of bestiality and cruelty is so overpowering as to leave no doubt in their minds about the normal practices of the Germans in these camps.
And, of course, in his autobiography Crusade in Europe Eisenhower wrote the following (page 446):
"The same day I saw my first horror camp. It was near the town of Gotha. I have never felt able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency. Up to that time I had known about it only generally or through secondary sources. I am certain, however, that I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock.
"I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that “the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda”. Some members of the visiting party were unable to go through the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to Patton’s headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt."
In the same book, on page 480, he wrote the following while discussing displaced persons (DPs) after the war:
"Of all these DPs the Jews were in the most deplorable condition. For years they had been beaten, starved, and tortured. Even food, clothes, and decent treatment could not immediately enable them to shake off their hopelessness and apathy. They huddled together — they seemingly derived a feeling of safety out of crowding together in a single room —and there passively awaited whatever might befall. To secure for them adequate shelter, to establish a system of food distribution and medical service, to say nothing of providing decent sanitary facilities, heat, and light was a most difficult task. They were, in many instances, no longer capable of helping themselves; everything had to be done for them."
And again on page 481:
"Of all the distressing memories that will for ever live with American veterans of the war in Europe, none will be sharper or more enduring than those of the DPs and of the horror camps established by the Nazis."
As you can see, in his autobiography he does not blame the deplorable condition of the Jews in the camps as being the result of a breakdown of logistics but on "Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency" and as the result of years of being "beaten, starved, and tortured" in "horror camps".
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I don't think you do lose the concept of disease. You can reclaim it straight from the etymology. Dis-Ease. A disease is when the things you are trying to do are harder than they need to be, physically, emotionally, or existentially.
That definition of disease would lead to some very unintuitive results. For example, if I want to remove a 1,000 pound stone from my backyard but find I am not physically strong enough to do so, does that mean I have a disease? The thing I'm trying to do is certainly harder than I'd like it to be. How do you define how hard something needs to be, so that it makes sense to call not being strong enough to life up a glass of water a disease, but not being strong enough to lift an elephant isn't? The only route I can see to defining how hard something needs to be is to have in your mind an idea of a normal human, and an idea of how hard things would be for that human. Since I have an idea on how strong a "natural" male should be, I can make a judgement that the man who can't life a 1,000 pound stone unaided is normal and healthy, while the grown man who can't lift a glass of water has something wrong with them: a disease.
In the case of benign tumors that aren't causing an inconvenience, we don't typically call them a disease.
Do we? I would consider benign tumors a disease, just not a threatening one. The International Classification of Disease manual, version 10 (ICD-10) is the handbook used by medical providers to identify diseases (it's in the name). ICD-10 code D21.9 is "benign neoplasm", ie a benign tumor.
It is true that typically doctors do not recommend removing benign tumors, but that's not because they're not a disease: it's because the cure would likely cause more harm than the disease would.
I get that some people don't call aging or mortality or ignorance diseases. But my in-group does.
Christians would agree, death is not natural to man. "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he 'has put everything under his feet.'"
My issue is that the things that I think are the divine and sacred nature of human beings, are things that they call Sin.
Which things exactly? Just self-modification, or is there something else? Pride? Lust? Envy?
And the things that they call the divine and sacred nature of human beings, are often the things I call skill issues that the divine wishes to see us overcome.
Which things? Love? Joy? Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self control? Or is it just the human's being sacred thing?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
Jesuits would deny the principle of sufficient reason? That's remarkable to me. I don't know much about Jesuit theology, but I would have thought...I mean, our choices are not ontologically simple enough to be brute facts.
The connection I saw was to the idea that God can see all possible outcomes, and His providence moves events in such a way that the choices He can predict we will make work towards His greater plan while preserving free will. That seems to fit well with Leibniz's thought, especially from this section of his Monadology:
Now as there are an infinity of possible universes in the ideas of God, and but one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for the choice of God which determines him to select one rather than another.
And this reason is to be found only in the fitness or in the degree of perfection which these worlds possess, each possible thing having the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection which it involves
It seems to me that the Dominican's primary objection is that God structuring the universe around our choices puts God subservient to man's decisions, in a sense. Which I don't really agree with, but I can understand the objection.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I'll first note that your comment seems to reinforce my point; the idea that staying fit and attractive helps people stay married goes hand in hand with the idea that your partner becoming less attractive is reasonable grounds for divorce. That's much more of a left wing than right wing perspective on marriage. But you're right! We should find some actual data and check.
Pew found that when it comes to the statement "Couples who are unhappy tend to stay in bad marriages too long" 69% of Democrats agreed compared to 41% of Republicans. That divide gets wider the further to the right or left you go: for Republicans that described themselves as "conservative" (as opposed to "moderate" or "liberal") only 35% agreed, compared to 76% Democrats who described themselves as "liberal".
Of course that's just stated attitudes, what about actual divorce rates? A study from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia found that for people who had ever been married at all 41% of Republicans had been divorced compared to 47% of Democrats. They also found that 57% of Republicans are currently married, compared to 40% of Democrats.
Another study found that the divorce rate was higher in red states than blue states, but they also noted that the marriage rate was much higher in red states than blue states which may account for it. A smaller percentage of divorces among a larger number a marriages may mean that Republicans divorce more per capita, but divorce less as a proportion of all married individuals.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
This is a fully general argument in favor of greater economic volatility. If you believe that, you shouldn't just be arguing for a gold standard - you should be arguing for the government to artificially create recessions.
That would be the same mistake but in the opposite direction. The argument isn't in favor of economic volatility for volatility's sake, it's in favor of natural volatility. Creating volatility artificially would be as foolish as breaking windows for the purpose of generating demand for glass.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
Why would you say that someone with a contemporary scientific worldview would find it harder to believe in the virgin birth than Joseph did? What have we learned since then that makes it harder to believe? Surely knowing the mechanics of fertilization and early human development doesn't change the fact that people in those days knew just as well as we do that you don't get pregnant without a father involved.
In both cases believing in a miraculous birth is believing in supernatural intervention, violating the natural order. It should be just as easy or difficult to believe in any age. What have we learned since then that would change that?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
10mo ago
Might have been better off going West instead of East. Eastern religions seem to float people down the stream of this particular blackpill, while the various forms of Christianity attempt to row against that current. Say what you will about Christianity, but it is very insistent that the self is real, and that our choices matter immensely (Calvinism aside).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
10mo ago
Even if your current protein intake is sufficient, there really isn't harm in getting more protein, and there could be a lot of benefit. So I would try to up protein rather than increase carbs.
If upping protein isn't an option because it's too satiating and you just can't get enough calories that way, then I would suggest increasing fat. It gets you more calories for your efforts, and it seems to be less harmful than carbs in general.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
If we had the technological capability to turn a man into a "natural" woman with all the parts and capabilities of a "natural" woman, then it would lead to an interesting Natural Law question. Arguably it would not be against Natural Law, but may still be against Catholic doctrine: the whole "creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created” bit. But from a Natural Law perspective, it may well be licit.
Though there is the question of how you would know that someone is "naturally" a woman despite having a healthy male body. It may seem more likely that their abnormality is not having the wrong body, but having an abnormality of the mind. Imagine we had the technology to perfectly change someone's sex, and also had the technology to cure their GID (as in, they won't feel like they're in the wrong body anymore). From a Natural Law perspective, curing the GID seems to be the superior treatment. After all, humans are not "naturally" supposed to believe they are in the wrong bodies and suffer depression and anxiety and the rest around that belief.
In any case, what is certainly not licit under Natural Law is to take a natural human and lop off bits of it to make an unnatural human, unless the alternative is even more unnatural.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
|| Good works. I have people in my life with diseases that aren’t really curable, just treatable. So I’d cure them, then I’d break the taboo to lose my powers so that my family can remember my existence again.
All these options seem terrible, but that’s the least so. ||
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I'm not sure that my view is incompatible with libertarian free will? I believe a summarized definition of libertarian free will is that an agent is able to take more than one possible course. And I agree with that! I think we are able to make multiple choices. I also know that we only ever make one choice: from the perspective of someone looking back from the end of time, all the choices have been made and cannot be changed. And of course the choices we make are informed solely by our character, history, and circumstances (how could they be informed by anything else?). But I don't think the fact that we will make one choice, means we were not able to make another choice, just that we chose not to make those choices.
Honestly, any discussion of free will that goes too deep inevitably makes my head start to spin. I wouldn't consider myself a compatibilist, but then again I never really understood the compatibilist position so it's possible I am one and don't know it.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
The "I know this will cost me my political future, but I'm not going to subvert the Constitution" Mike Pence.
The trouble is, if you abandon natural law concepts you lose a lot of important philosophical tools. For instance, the concept of disease. If we have no conception of a "natural" human, of what a human is supposed to be like, then we the concept of disease is meaningless. You have tumors? That's fine, there is no immutable concept of human that your body must align with, you're just as "healthy" as anyone else. No legs? Nothing wrong with that, humans have no static nature, being born with no legs is just an example of the diversity of the human form. Depressed, or blind, or deaf? That's a valid way to be, there's nothing wrong with you and anyone who tries to "cure" you is forcing you to conform to an outdated philosophical concept.
Without some idea of what a human is, "healthy" or "unhealthy" are meaningless categories imposed by the powerful on the powerless for their own ends. But it seems pretty clear to me that there is a way that humans are supposed to be. We can argue about how fine the resolution is on that idea, but it seems to exist. It seems that humans really are "supposed" to have two legs, and two eyes, and to be able to reason, and to have one heart with four atria that pumps blood through the body, and to be capable of reproduction, etc, etc. There does seem to be a constant that we can compare all humans to, and which can inform us of real facts (such as, this human has a disease because their liver is not working the way a human liver is "supposed" to work).
Natural Law wouldn't be opposed to giving someone whose legs are missing prosthetics (even cool robot prosthetics) because that restores some of the function they are "naturally" supposed to have. And you could make a Natural Law argument towards even replacing healthy legs with superior super robot legs: it is the nature of humans to have legs, and to run, and jump, and lift with them, and these robot legs let you do all those natural capabilities more perfectly. I don't know if everyone who believes in Natural Law would buy that (especially if the legs in question are spider legs), but you can definitely make a real argument in that direction. You're basically making that Natural Law argument when you say "Humanity has never been about limiting potential".
Your problem with the Catholic Church is more specific than against Natural Law generally. The problem isn't that the Catholic Church has a certain aesthetic, it's that they have certain beliefs about the nature of the universe: namely that human nature is the purposeful design of an omniscient and omnibenevolent God, and that human nature is in a meaningful sense an image of God, which makes human nature (and human life) sacred. You can do things to non-sacred objects that you can't do to sacred ones (see, for instance, how difficult it is to renovate a historically protected building. You can't just replace bits of it with whatever you want). So yes, I don't think Catholicism is likely to make concessions for robot spider legs, unless they're only for people who don't have legs.
More options
Context Copy link