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.
2mo 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.
3mo ago
When someone does something brave in service to what is right, it is understandable that others may call him a role model. As for your points, they are not addressing the question at hand which is "what are some positive conservative role models for boys?" For a conservative the fact that Mike Pence commits himself to virtue in the sexual sphere, believes consistently in the sanctity of human life, and is pro coal are positives, not negatives. They would be good reasons for Mike Pence to not be a progressive role model, but are no obstacle to being a conservative role model.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo 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.
3mo ago
How broad is too broad to be considered "elite"? If you told me that 10% of a population were elites, that doesn't sound too weird to me.
Let me run a quick sanity check. Hmm, 30 seconds of Googling is telling me that in Medieval Europe the nobility were around 1-3% of the population (except in Castille where it was around 10% at certain times, but that seems to be an outlier). So perhaps 9% is too broad.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
It's a fair cop. I'll do better.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
It's peaked, in as much as they can't get any more liberal and have nowhere to go but down.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
That is true. I remember walking from the Seattle Science Center to the waterfront around 2012 or so, and there were some stretches that were deserted. And pretty creepy, with the towering office buildings and no people in sight.
No homeless people either though.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
I don't know what it would be cope for. I agree completely that local politics can make things much worse or much better, but it is still the fact that the 9th Circuit has tied the hands of any polity that wants to do something about the problem.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
New York has 5 times as many homeless people as Washington: even if weather is harsher in NYC, they still have an enormous population of homeless and manage them better than any city in the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction. 39% of the total number of homeless people in America live in the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction, despite those states making up only 19% of the United States by population.
I don't deny that local politics can make the situation much better or much worse despite the 9th Circuit: but it is clear to me that the 9th Circuit has had a powerful effect on making the problem worse.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo 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.
3mo 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.
3mo ago
I have lived in King County for the vast majority of my life. I have never lived in Seattle. I can vote for King County Council, and King County Executive, and for State Senator and Representatives, and Governor. And for my entire voting life, and for considerable time before that, every single person in every single one of those positions has been a Democrat.
Perhaps Dino Rossi was our last chance for salvation.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
To be clear, I don’t think that every single person will inevitably believe that god doesn’t exist. I do think, however, that there is sufficient atheism, and scientific thinking and knowledge in our society that significantly many people cannot be convinced to believe or to feign belief.
The stats indicate that the future of the United States has less organized religion, but most people are still likely to believe in the supernatural. Atheists are still only 3% of the population, and in the ever growing category of "Nones" 66% currently claim to believe in a god, 37% believe in Heaven, and 27% believe in Hell. Heck, 23% of the people who explictitly identified as atheists believed in "some kind of higher power." Under Pew's current projections if the historical trends continue then in 2070 Christians will still outnumber Nones 46% to 41%. I see no reason to believe that a majority of those nones will be atheists.
All this to say that while organized religion in the United States is on the decline, atheism will still be a strongly minority position.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
I'm praying the Supreme Court will strike Martin down. If they don't, I see no solution to the problem.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
This is not purely self imposed: there's a reason it's the West Coast cities, and that's because they have to comply with the whims of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2018 the 9th Circuit ruled that enforcing anti-camping ordinances (better known as "rounding up all the bums") was cruel and unusual punishment, unless the city provided some kind of shelter that the homeless could go to. Since then lower courts have expanded the ruling considerably in a wide variety of ways that chalk up to making the homeless unpoliceable. In 2022 the 9th Circuit doubled down, ruling that the homeless can participate in class action lawsuits against cities that impose criminal or civil penalties on homeless.
Have the pro-homeless NGOs made hay out of this situation? Yes. Is there more Seattle and the rest of the west coast could do? Sure. But even in conservative Anchorage, Alaska (where it gets down to -20 F on the coldest winter nights) has a serious homeless problem, and that problem is named the 9th Circuit.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo 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.
3mo 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.
5mo ago
Markets have proven to be very robust decentralized systems for allocating resources: if it is true that growth was higher before central banks started recession proofing, then there's an argument to be made that natural volatility is more optimal then our current level of volatility.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo 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.
5mo ago
That doesn't logically follow at all: that's like saying that if poison can be used as a weapon, then the antidote to poison is also a form of poison.
If someone uses their speech to overwhelm someone else's speech (for instance, if someone is giving a lecture and someone else starts screaming on a megaphone so that you can't hear them) then they're engaged is censorship. Their speech itself is not censorship, but the form they are presenting it in is censoring others.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo ago
Skookum: a Chinook jargon word meaning something like "strong", "big", "brave", or "monsterous". See "Skookum House", slang for jail.
Is he from the Pacific Northwest? That's the main place the world would be used in conversation, though the word did get somewhat popularized through the selling of "Skookum Dolls" : these were dolls of Indian characters that sold fairly widely in the first half of the 20th century. They stopped making them in the 60s.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo ago
The devil.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo ago
Silencing others is not speech, it's censorship.
I always highly recommend Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse.
If the size is too daunting, you can dip your toe in with Chesterton's Lepanto. If you like Lepanto, you'll like Ballad of the White Horse.
As with all good poetry, reading it aloud is a must.
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