Home Run, Surber!
And Two More Recommended Reads
Don Surber has an excellent post up today on the culture war front:
This should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone. Liberaltarianism is all about anything goes. That’s why they concentrate on getting laws changed by judges rather than allowing normal people to vote on the things that matter most in their lives. It’s about ideology over real life. That was the whole point of Roe and everything that flowed from it, and Surber quotes none other than John Roberts very much to that effect:
A Washington Post story today showed liberals lied about polygamy. They are pushing it.
In June 2015, five liberals on the Supreme Court commanded that homosexual marriage be the law of the land -- both the will of the people and the Constitution be damned.
In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts asked, “Just who do you think we are?”
He also said, “It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples. It is instead about whether, in our democratic republic, that decision should rest with the people acting through their elected representatives, or with five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes under the law.”
The same argument can and should be made about abortion. Let the states decide because America is a collection of 50 states and not a nation divided into 50 compartments.
After the court usurped the authority of all 50 state legislatures and Congress to legalize homosexual marriage, opponents said this will lead to the legalization of bestiality, incest and polygamy.
The press clucked its collective tongue at us.
Note that Surber writes that “liberals” did this to us. But do follow the link and read the rest. He goes on to cite libertarians defending polygamy—quite logically if you accept the premises of their demented ideology. This is a perfect example of why I take every opportunity to oppose liberaltarianism.
And speaking of philosophical matters, American Thinker carried an excellent article the other day about the philosophical basis for science—whether scientists know it or not:
Everyone needs to recharge their philosophical battery occasionally, and reading this article is a good way to do it. Here’s the basic idea—but please note that the author is saying that these two assumptions are assumptions only in the sense that scientists are under no compulsion to prove them. What the author terms assumptions are, in fact, direct insights obtainable by every human intelligence:
Contrary to what many believe, science is not just a set of facts. Rather, science is a method to discover truths about nature. As a methodology, science assumes two underlying truths.
Assumption 1: There is an order to the universe.
The whole purpose of science is to discover the order of the universe, so science cannot even get off the ground unless that order is affirmed.
More properly, the purpose of science is not to discover the order of the universe—we are all already aware of that order—but to explain how that order works.
The problem for the materialist is that if the world is purely material, then there is no logical account of universal, rational laws, but rather, all of nature is a result of random, unguided, patternless forces. There are no rules to the game the universe plays, and any attempt at trying to discover a rule is like trying to predict the winning lottery numbers.
A universe with no rules except the ones we make up? That would be a Liberaltarian universe, right?
However, this doesn't seem to be the way the world operates. …
For the universe to have a rational structure, it must be designed by a rational Mind. … As sociologist Rodney Stark writes, "Christianity depicts God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being, and the universe as his personal creation. The natural world is thus understood to have a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting (indeed, inviting) human comprehension." ...
Assumption 2: Humans have the cognitive ability to discern the order of the universe.
Scientific endeavors would be useless if we didn't believe two things: that the universe has order and that we, as humans, are capable of discerning that order.
If we assume a materialistic worldview, our mental activities are simply the result of unguided forces and evolved brain function. Thoughts are reduced to neurons firing in the brain. Francis Crick, famous for discovering the double-helix structure of DNA, says, "Your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." ...
Would you want “experts” like Crick running our society? That’s about what we’ve had for the past two years—follow the science or, maybe, follow the mad scientists! Scientists don’t get paid to be philosophers, which may be why so many of them seem to be so ignorant about the basic philosophical principles that undergird the scientific project.
… Johannes Kepler, famous for discovering the three laws of planetary motion, sums it up nicely: "God, who founded everything in the world according to the norm of quantity (mathematics), also has endowed man with a mind which can comprehend these norms. ... God wanted us to perceive these laws when he created us in His image in order that we may take part in his own thoughts." The same God who created the universe also created our minds, so our mental capacities reflect the structure of the universe he made. By virtue of being made in the image of God, we are equipped and enabled to discover the beautiful design of the universe he created.
What happens to a society that forgets these truths? Look around you.
Finally, and on a different note, a nice article by Pepe Escobar:
Death by a thousand cuts: where is the west’s Ukraine strategy?
Wars are not won with tactics and narratives – they require a Grand Strategy. Russia has a master plan behind its Ukraine military operations, but does the west have one?
See what you think.
The entire paragraph beginning with "...Johannes Kepler" you quote is wonderful. I'm saving it, along with your equally wonderful two-sentence comment that follows, for future reference.
Crick turned me off on science. I read his sordid book years ago, and saw that it was all a race for fame. He couldn't even resist denigrating the one colleague to whom he owed so much, who ruined her health gathering the images on which he based his conclusions. Now that we are blessed with a government that sticks its nose into every aspect of our lives I cheerfully allow them to make these monumental decisions on the universe, life and human relations while I blissfully ignore them. I do pay taxes and avoid getting in trouble with the law, but my private life is private, and is to a great extent dictated by a morality that pre-existed our regime and will continue after.