FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
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User ID: 1739
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
While the consensus is that God knows the future with 100% accuracy, there is not Christian theological consensus on predestination, election, or free will.
In the Evangelical tradition I grew up in the position I heard the most was that the Bible commands us to choose certain things, which means choice is possible. And that the Bible says God knows all things, including the future. Like most Evangelical theology, how to square that circle is left as an exercise for the reader.
The Calvinists, quite famously, believe God chooses who will be righteous and who will be damned from jump. We have no ability to choose salvation or damnation. Many Calvinists believe that we do have free will, but our choices are based on our desires and characters and God choose to give us particular desires and characters that will constrain the choices we have available.
The Catholic church teaches that we have the free will to either accept or reject the grace of God, and that when God predestined the course of history he left room for us to make decisions. He knows what decision we'll freely make in advance, of course.
C.S. Lewis described the intersection of our choices and God's predestination this way in Mere Christianity:
If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.
…
Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how can I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again, the difficulty comes from thinking that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference being that He can see ahead and we cannot. Well, if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday. He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way — because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.
It's possible that those on the left value being skinny and attractive more than those on the right do. The urban left is more likely to be interested in casual sex with strangers, and more likely to be going from relationship to relationship as opposed to settling down with someone. Also more likely to get divorced and try to find a new partner. With that environment in mind, it is advantageous to maintain your attractiveness so you can continue to attract mates.
In contrast, the further to the right you go the more likely you are to have a culture valuing finding someone to settle down with and start a family. Once you've bagged a mate and said your vows, staying physically attractive is much less important for your day to day happiness. What's more, on the right you're more likely to have broad family and local networks to fill your social needs: people who don't need to find you attractive to be in your life. For the urban left, I can imagine you have to build your social network more from fostering relationships with new people rather than leaning on your family and the people who have known you since you were a kid.
All that is speculative, of course. What I can confirm is that in right wing cultural spaces if someone is fat they'll usually say something like "I love to eat, that's why I'm fat!" or "I know being fat ain't healthy, but eating food is what makes life worth living." It comes from a place of personal responsibility, including the personal responsibility to accept the consequences of your actions and the trade-offs you have made.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
C. S. Lewis wrote about the relation of Christianity to the liberal idea of political equality in a few places. This passage is from his essay "Membership":
I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.
That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple, to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen Filmer would be right, and patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that “all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of Father and Husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin) but because Fathers and Husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interfered with because it is constantly abused.
...
By treating human persons (in judicious defiance of the observed facts) as if they were all the same kind of thing, we avoid innumerable evils. But it is not on this that we were made to live. It is idle to say that men are of equal value. If value is taken in a worldly sense ― if we mean that all men are equally useful or beautiful or good or entertaining ― then it is nonsense. If it means that all are of equal value as immortal souls then I think it conceals a dangerous error. The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value He perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St. Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is Love. It may be that He loves all equally ― He certainly loved all to the death ― and I am not certain what the expression means. If there is equality it is in His love, not in us.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
Ads are how the Youtubers I like to watch make their money. They're already giving me the content for free, least I can do is deal with ads.
Which is the moral gloss I put on top of the fact that I dislike fiddling with things so much that I can't be bothered to spend five minutes to figure out what adblockers are legit and set them up.
Over at ACX item 38 in "Links for June" was a breakdown of reviews on Goodreads by genre and sex. The original link is broken, but here is the chart.
"Sequential art>Manga" is pretty far on the female side of the chart. It matches my experience: the only kind of comics my wife reads are manga, and she reads them daily. Unlike western comics there are a lot of manga that are aimed at a female audience: heck, based on what my wife keeps reading there seems to be an endless amount of manga that are just isekais where the protagonist is reincarnated as the villain of a visual novel! There's a lot of content for ladies in the world of manga.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
13d ago
I was wondering why my avatar was suddenly an anemic 12 year old boy! Did not expect to find the explanation for that here at The Motte.
There's definitely a non-binary bent to it. I got three options of faces, one of them is boyish and the other two are feminine. I thought maybe trying a slightly bulkier body style would make me look less like a tween, but while my body bulked my head remained the same size, making me a microcephalic.
I don't think I've ever played a game before where I actively hate seeing my avatar's face.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
22d ago
It's about Natural Law. The problem is, moderns confuse the natural in "Natural Law" with natural as in "what happens naturally, what happens in nature, anything that happens that nobody tried to make happen on purpose" and that's the wrong kind of "natural".
In Natural Law, there is such a thing as a human, and such a thing as a male or female human, and these things have certain characteristics. For instance, humans have two legs. Even though some humans are born with only one leg, it remains the fact that the "natural" human has two legs. There is something wrong with a human who is born with only one leg, because humans are "naturally" supposed to have two legs.
By the same token, humans are "naturally" male or female. If you're born with bits that don't match either, then something is wrong with you: that's why we call it a congenital "defect" or "abnormality", we're comparing the condition to "natural" males and females and noting that it does not match. This kind of thing happens sometimes, just like you get humans born with only one leg. So if you surgically intervene to correct the abnormality, you are doing much the same thing as a doctor who removes a tumor (humans are not supposed to have tumors in them) or who performs plastic surgery to repair the skin of a burn victim (humans are not supposed to have their skin all melted off). You are correcting a disease, returning them to as "natural" a condition as possible by medical science.
In contrast, lets look at a male to female sex change operation. The genitals are surgically removed, and a kind of pseudo vagina is made. This is taking a physically healthy and "natural" male and turning it into a defective and unnatural male: a male with no penis, no testicles, and a hole where a hole shouldn't be. What's more, it removes some of his "natural" capabilities, such as being able to sire children. From a Natural Law perspective a sex change operation like this is completely analogous to cutting off someone's arm or leg or nose: you're maiming them, turning them from "natural" humans into unnatural and defective humans. Under Natural Law it may be acceptable sometimes to maim a human in the pursuit of a greater good: for example, amputating a limb that is badly infected before the infection can kill the patient. In that case the amputation is still an evil, but it is an evil that is allowed because it is in the aim of preventing a worse evil, death (a dead human is about as far from a "natural" human as you can get). This shouldn't be confused with consequentialism, because Catholics are not consequentialists: they call it the "principle of double effect". The doctor's goal is to save the patient's life, not to maim the patient. If the doctor could save the patient's life without amputating his arm, then the doctor would do that. This is different than if a BIID individual came to a doctor asking for the doctor to amputate his limb: in that case the whole purpose of the procedure is to maim the patient, there is no scenario in which the doctor would not amputate the arm if he could, since amputating the arm is the whole point.
(You could argue the actual point is to cure the individuals BIID symptoms, and if the doctor could cure the BIID without amputating then he would. That might be permissible under Natural Law, but it leads us naturally to the question of whether there is a non maiming way to cure BIID or not. If there is then the principle of double effect doesn't apply).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
The thing that I took away from SMTM that seems most important is that something weird is going on, and it's getting worse despite our best attempts to fix it. People are getting fatter and fatter, and as a society we've been putting more and more resources into not getting fat. This does seem mysterious, and I do think something more is going on then just "food is cheap and corporations make food taste great".
Until someone figures out what that thing is definitively, though, the best I can do is employ willpower to try not to get any fatter than I am now.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I can see an argument for saying that the obese are people with a chronic disease tautologically: arguably being obese is a disease, and it's certainly not an acute condition (nobody gets obese overnight, and nobody stops being obese overnight). Of course if you take that perspective then I'm not sure how you can square it with "fat pride." Nobody goes around being proud of having multiple sclerosis, or saying that goiters are beautiful. And the fact that it is a chronic disease does not absolve someone of responsibility for acquiring that condition: cirrhosis of the liver is another chronic disease that is almost always the result of personal choices.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
The "I know this will cost me my political future, but I'm not going to subvert the Constitution" Mike Pence.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9mo ago
I concur. I used to go there regularly, but I dropped off some time after 2016 because it went from somewhat left to extremely left. That's also when Leah Libresco stopped writing for them.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9d ago
My intuition is that people should not be allowed to turn public spaces into de facto designated areas, only de jure ones. And keeping people out of areas they have a right to be in because you disagree with their politics, or don't like the way they look, is harassment if anything is.
If we're concerned about confrontations then the protests themselves should be discouraged, because that's how confrontations begin.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
If I was them I would be them and not me. I cannot think of a meaningful sense in which you could say "If you were them".
I'm sympathetic to the idea that environmental or genetic factors may make it more or less difficult to not make choices that will give you a chronic disease. That would change the level of responsibility, but unless someone held a gun to your head you've still got some responsibility.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
8mo 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.
10mo ago
The whole thing about martyrs is that they demonstrated their ultimate belief by maintaining it in the face of the most serious oppression and sanctions which tends to make it quite obvious that they were acting on a true belief that held serious meaning to them. We don't see many martyrs for Christianity these days.
We don't see them in the West much because it's rare for people to kill Christians qua Christians these days. Not that it never happens, but it's rare. In other places, such as several Muslim majority countries or anti-religious authoritarian countries like China and North Korea martyrs are still quite common.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
That's an excellent question, and one I'm not fit to answer. All I can tell you is a potted history of Natural Law. Aristotle and Plato are considered some of the first writers to expound on Natural Law, and the Romans (particularly Cicero) expanded on their ideas, particularly as they apply to society. Natural Law got refined further through the Middle Ages and beyond, particularly by Aquinas. A lot of Enlightenment thought was explicitly based in in Natural Law. I'd skim the Wikipedia article on it for more details. Beyond that, you'd have to ask a philosopher.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
My understanding is that from a psychological perspective we don't have techniques for removing, instilling, or modifying sexual desires. Last I checked the primary treatment for paraphilic disorders is aversion therapy, which doesn't work great. Exodus International was a non-profit attempting to provide conversion therapy for homosexuals since the 70s, and in 2012 they shut their doors and their final president put out a statement saying that conversion therapy doesn't work.
We really don't have a good understanding of why people have paraphilias of all types, much less how to change them.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
If it is actually true, on a practical level, that your property has a higher gold density than any other "gold mine on earth" then you should be able to negotiate a lease deal that is very lucrative for you. Actually trying to extract and market the minerals yourself without experience sounds like a great way to go bankrupt. In my limited understanding when it comes to mining in the United States finding good deposits is not the hard part. The hard part is getting it out without the EPA fining you into oblivion.
Look at Pebble Mine, as a for-instance. Second largest copper deposit in the world, and by far the largest deposit that hasn't been mined. If fully extracted would come out to "56.9 billion pounds of copper, 70.6 million troy ounces of gold, 3.4 billion pounds of molybdenum and 344 million ounces of silver." A multinational trust of mining conglomerates came together to attempt to develop it. They've been working since 2010 to get all the approvals and permits they need, and they still haven't got them. They've sunk tens of millions into feasibility studies, permit applications, and ongoing litigation with the EPA and US Army Corps of Engineers. 12 years of haggling, and it's still unsure if any mine will ever be approved.
Now, admittedly, Pebble mine is enormous and sits in the middle of prime salmon watershed. I'm not saying mining your deposit would be as difficult. However, it will likely take millions of dollars and years of work just to get the permits needed to start mining. You do not need that headache. You do not need that risk. Investigate leasing it out first, get some offers, and then consider whether you want to go it alone.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
I don't have much advice to give, but it occurred to me today that it might be worth sharing something that I can say has definitely improved my life: Gracious Attribution.
I learned about it from one of my professors years ago, and its been helpful to my mental well being and the general project of improving my character. I received Gracious Attribution from an explicitly Christian perspective but I think it would be useful to anyone who shares a similar goal in this particular arena.
As a Christian one thing I am called upon to do is forgive my enemies. This is very difficult to do, but Jesus repeats it enough times that it's hard to wiggle out of it. In multiple places he says "judge not lest ye be judged" or "by the measure you measure others, you too will be measured" or "blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy" or "he who is angry with his brother is in danger of judgement" or "forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us", or the whole dang parable about the ungrateful servant. The message is clear: if you do not show mercy and forgiveness to others, then God will not show mercy and forgiveness to you. And vice versa.
To that end my wise professor taught us one day about Gracious Attribution. "Suppose," he said, "you are driving along one day and somebody cuts you off. If you are anything like myself you are likely to be furious. My first instinct is to consider them a self-centered fool with no consideration for anyone but themselves, jumping into traffic however they please. This might be true. However, in the moment, I do not actually have any solid information on why they cut me off. It could be because they're an inconsiderate fool. But it could also be because they are a young and inexperienced driver who is trying to learn and made a beginners mistake. It could be a man whose wife in the backseat has gone into labor and is trying desperately to get to the hospital. It could be an old woman who has difficulty seeing and lacks any family or friends to drive her from place to place. It could be someone who just got off a double shift and hasn't slept in 20 hours. It could be someone who desperately needs to get to a bathroom! All of these are plausible possibilities and I don't have the information needed to rule them out or narrow them down."
"Given that I don't know why they cut me off, and given that I am obligated as a Christian to forgive others, then it is best if I choose the explanation that makes them easiest to forgive."
That's Gracious Attribution in a nutshell. In situations where I feel wronged yet lack the information needed to determine why this person wronged me I should attribute their actions to the explanation that is easiest to forgive. I suppose it is an extension of the Principal of Charity, but applied practically to everyday life.
One important note is that it does need to be a plausible attribution. It would be foolish if someone walked up to me, cursed me out at high volume, and then spat in my face to then choose to believe that they're actually sleepwalking or something. The point isn't to choose to be a fool; rather it is to recognize that for many situations where we get angry and judgmental towards others (especially strangers) we don't actually have enough information to conclude why they did it. In those cases Gracious Attribution would have us choose to act on the belief that makes them easiest to forgive.
Practically this is a useful concept to internalize and attempt to live out. When I get cut off in traffic, naturally I get mad. Left to my own devices I would yell, honk my horn, and fume to no effect. But if in my anger I remember Gracious Attribution it does two things for me. First, it distracts my mind with a puzzle: what possible (and plausible) attributions could I assign to this behavior that I could forgive? This helps calm me down, similar to counting backwards from ten. Second, once I have found a Gracious Attribution it makes it so much easier to let go of my anger and hatred. I can literally forgive and forget, moving on with my life. My day doesn't get spoiled.
I was thinking of this the other day because my wife got quite vocally upset when a coworker parked in a way that encroached on her normal parking spot. What struck me was not that my wife was upset, but that when I tried attributing the bad parking to something more forgivable ("Maybe she was running really late today") my wife insisted that no, her coworker had done it on purpose to keep people from parking next to her. Now maybe my wife was right; however, I knew that she didn't have any real evidence to back that up. It is natural when we are wronged to want to paint the wrongdoer as a villain, and the more villainous the better. The problem is that painting them as a villain does not help us get over our anger, and it can inspire conflict and hatred with people we don't actually need to hate*.
I would recommend attempting Gracious Attribution for a period of time and seeing if it improves your life.
*As a Christian I believe we don't need to hate anyone, but I think even people who (quite reasonably) believe some are worthy of our hatred would probably prefer not to start a blood feud over a parking spot.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
It's not just this one ruling, but this ruling is tying the hands of anyone who tries to fix the problem: letting those who prefer not to fix it free reign to make things worse.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
8mo ago
Definitely circles. As a lifelong Christian I have met exactly one person who called themselves a Christian but didn't believe in the resurrection, and I've met a lot of Christians. Even that guy changed his mind about it and is now an Anglican priest (I'm pretty sure he changed his mind, but being an Anglican priest doesn't exactly prove anything in that regard).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
I agree: I've seen too many video of angry American drivers getting out of their cars to cuss out protestors blocking the way, often taking their signs and destroying them and otherwise escalating the situation, that I imagine most protestors will be hesitant to embrace a style of protest where you cannot run away.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
20d ago
You cite as evidence an SS document saying no gas chamber was ever built, I cite as evidence a US Army investigative report from 1945 that not only says "yup, there's gas chambers here, we saw them ourselves" but includes photographic evidence. Not based on the testimony of "hundred of Jews" but based on the testimony of American soldiers of the Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment, Seventh Army, who were sent to the camp to investigate and report back. They have photos of the crematoria, the gas chamber buildings, and a detailed physical description of the gas chambers themselves.
I don't see how a single SS documents saying that no gas chamber was built at Dachau beats a comprehensive US report, with photographs, saying that there was a gas chamber there.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
22d 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.
You would be wrong to doubt it. Over 1.5 million died in the gulags, and over a twenty year period citizens were regularly snatched out of their beds, taken to the basement of the Lubyanka, and shot in the back of the head. At least 700,000 Russians were executed between 1936-1938 during Stalin's Great Purge.
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