Logical Challenges to Faith

Posted on May 22, 2009 by ehurst

There are a thousand ways to debate whether faith in Christ is reasonable, but everyone wants to forget: Faith is not reasonable. That is, faith makes demands which are entirely unreasonable. Of course, we are referring to a particular branch of reasoning. The assumption is this reasoning has to conform to Western analytical forms. When viewed from the perspective of human history, this is a minority viewpoint. Citing all the ways in which it is superior to other forms of logical analysis is pretty much circular reasoning, since it relies on itself for deciding what is “superior” or good.

That’s the background for my approach to a challenge handed to Vox Day. I don’t take quite the tack Vox does, but that’s not meant as a criticism. I simply don’t accept the assumptions behind the whole thing; I won’t surrender the field to those who demand answers on their own terms. Sorry, but God is not confined to your Hellenistic cultural bias. Here we go:

1. So-called “biblical ethics” — There is such a thing, but the position taken assumes far too much which I don’t grant. We are not at all required to put up an objective standard, since God Almighty is Himself Truth. Not simply “Truth Personified,” but the very living source of Truth. You may blanch at the idea of truth which is not concrete and unchanging, but that assumes too much, as well. Truth does not exist apart from the Person of God. The biblical position is God remains actively involved in the ethical conduct of those who have His Spirit, and context is everything. What He does and what He decides is justice every time, in all cases, etc. Questions of slavery, etc., are really petty attempts at begging the question.

2. If God is in control, why are there so many dangers in nature? — This is an attempt to use Occam’s Razor to shoot down the claim God orders all Creation. It assumes God cannot hold a purpose contrary to what atheists like. Silly argument. God owns it all, but asserts we have ruined it. By our sinful choice we have demanded evil, and God is granting that.

3. Where was God during Hurricane Katrina? — He was there comforting His people even as He rode the storm ashore. This assumes life itself is a particular good when the Bible clearly states God’s people would much rather be with Him. They wait on His hand to bring them home in His way, His time. Katrina is just more of the judgment of God on sin, and if His people sleep in the path of the storm, they might die with everyone else. Could He not have told them? Sure, but maybe it was their time to come home. He owns it all, and what He does is right, by definition.

4. Cannot God answer prayers to regenerate amputated limbs? — It’s false to assume He does not do so while rejecting claims it has been done. The reason we don’t see it “scientifically verified” today is because no amount of hard proof will accomplish anything in fallen minds. These exercises in debate won’t help atheists believe except where God does a miracle to their minds and helps them see. Belief is a gift from above, and is eminently unreasonable on human terms.

5. If abortion is a sin, why does God cause miscarriages? — Abortion is a sin if you aren’t God. It’s His law for us, and a double standard is not inherently wrong when it concerns Him. He made us; we are accountable to Him, not Him to us. Miscarriages are one more sad result from the Fall.

I am constantly amazed at the childish demands from these “new atheists.” It all has to be their way, and what they don’t accept doesn’t exist. I’m not the least bit discomfited by their unbelief, except I know they are going to spend eternity in Hell, and that’s not at all amusing. “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.”

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The Covenant of Noah

Posted on May 19, 2009 by ehurst

Most Christians aren’t really aware of the various covenants noted in the Bible. Indeed, many aren’t even aware the term “New Testament” means “New Covenant”. A few understand the Law of Moses was a covenant between God and Israel, but aren’t aware of the full implications. It wasn’t just laws for Israel to follow, but a binding agreement which Israel failed repeatedly. Worse, as time wore on, their compliance worsened. What Jesus confronted in His day was a national leadership who didn’t even really understand the Covenant, because they had thrown away their Hebraic culture, trading it for Hellenist intellectual assumptions, which cannot possibly catch the underlying meaning of Moses. Oddly, in their blindness, they still managed to do a pretty good job of understanding the Covenant of Noah, at least superficially.

If you look up the “Seven Noahide Laws” you’ll likely find the Wikipedia entry near the top of your search results. This represents modern Jewish scholarship on the Bible passage near the end of Genesis 8, and into chapter 9. I would suggest their current major mistake is thinking Noah falls under Moses, whereas Jesus and the Apostles said the Covenant of Moses ended at the Cross, but taught Noah was still in force, as evidenced by the results of the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. You’ll probably notice the Apostles didn’t echo all of the Seven Laws because it wasn’t necessary. There were already plenty of laws against murder and theft, and blasphemy was too obvious. However, they did cite three issues because it might be news to Gentile Christians: idolatry, sexual immorality and meat with blood in it (usually strangled).

However, those three do a good job of covering things. I wrote elsewhere:

The first and most obvious requirement is withdrawing completely from pagan idolatry. This is translated variously in English texts of the New Testament, but it was more than just food. Paul makes it clear later it’s not the physical reality but the perception of the watching world. There is one true God, and our loyalty to Him is undivided. Joining in pagan celebrations would compromise the impact of that witness. There were no details listed, but it was left to the conscience of the individual believers in their communities scattered around the world to prayerfully work out in each context what that required.

The issue of sexual purity went back before Noah. We who have seen the thread of revelation know God has consistently condemned sex outside the provision of lifelong commitment to building a family. This is easily tied to the call for civility and social stability, if not the very fundamental threat of compromise in the soul by the flesh. It’s a special case of idolatry deserving special mention. If we have to start arguing about various sexual appetites for something outside the husband-wife pairing, we are already on the wrong ground. God granted only one provision for human sexual appetites, and there is absolutely no fundamental right to sex, much less any particular fallen desires for sex.

Meat with blood is paired with strangling as a single item. This is not a matter of what goes in your mouth, as Jesus noted, but of what comes out of your heart. Blood is a spiritual symbol going back to the Garden of Eden. It symbolizes the gift of life itself, and taking it lightly is the primary symptom of evil. It was the sin of Cain, and of Lamech, and clearly points back to the command we shall love and respect others equally with ourselves. Taking life is very serious business. It is required to keep civilization alive, but remains a heavy burden on government, not a privilege. Those who find it easy to harm others are the greatest danger to all human life. But that’s not enough; a casual disregard of lower forms of life is also dangerous. Noah kept kosher long before it was codified in the Law of Moses, but the Lord said humans could eat anything they found edible. Animals were distinctly lesser beings, but God forbade under Noah anyone eating meat without draining away the blood, because it symbolized our acceptance of this still active Covenant of Noah. Nature itself will rebel against us if we do not obey and adopt the strict respect for life.

I suppose most Christians could accept this much once they are exposed to it. It’s covered pretty nicely when Jesus said the whole Old Testament could be summed up in complete devotion to God and giving others the respect we want for ourselves (Matthew 22:34-40). What they may not grasp is just how poorly we keep that seventh item from the rabbinical list of seven: We do not have a just judicial system. That is, by biblical definition, we have a hideously corrupt government, from top to bottom. Our so called “civil culture” would draw vociferous condemnation of those who understood Noah’s covenant best. We might be able to read the translated words, but the ancient biblical concept of justice is utterly foreign to most people born in the West. Need I remind people: That ancient culture is the one Jesus taught as fundamental to understanding what God requires.

You might well understand the penalties God threatened against Israel under the Covenant of Moses. You’ll also note Moses applied to Israel only. However, you may not realize Moses was a particular instance of Noah. The Law of Moses was a specific application of the Laws of Noah in the case of Israel — that people, that land, that time. Noah is a broader, general covenant still in force today. The various blessing to Israel for obedience, and the various curses for defiance, were all one singular package of promises implied by the Covenant of Noah. Do what Noah says and you can expect nature itself to remain pretty orderly — “season upon season” is the phrase. This is symbolic language telling us God will direct Creation to cooperate with our needs in obtaining reasonable prosperity, health, and security. Those are summed up in the meaning of the word shalom.

So here’s the point: If you and I as individuals follow Christ, we pretty much fulfill Noah, but we need Noah as an example of what it means to follow Christ. On a broader level as nations with governments, our failure to observe the Covenant of Noah guarantees we are doomed. Nature itself will fight against us. Our leaders will not be able to make the right choices. So to the degree there is global warming or global cooling, and to the degree either of them threatens us, it is not simply the mechanics of human pollution, nor the random swings of earth cycles, but the holistic reaction of Creation against our sins. Even the very idiocy of tyranny swallowing the Western nations is the result of our failure to observe Noah.

This stuff is not a secret. It’s been there in plain sight for thousands of years. Our intellectual culture conditions us not to see it, but it’s still possible to figure out the minimum necessities. We have refused. We are in serious trouble.

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Little to Say Anymore

Posted on May 18, 2009 by ehurst

I’ll say WordPress does get my stuff a better exposure, but it’s more difficult to use on older machines. My poor Inspiron 4100 running Etch gets to pumping pretty hard trying to process all the JScript and plug-ins here. I can’t even get Elinks or Lynx to work well, because the folks who designed this site never seem to have heard of plain-text browsers.

At any rate, I really don’t have too much to say on technology any more. I suppose if I get a newer laptop it might justify some posts on what I find running well on it, but computers are just a tool I use for what really matters. This is my hobby blog and my serious work is at Kiln of the Soul over on Blogger.

For those of you who visit here regularly, I felt it might be worthwhile warning you I’m running out of gas on hobbies, at least for a while.

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Fundamental Laws of Humanity

Posted on May 17, 2009 by ehurst

I’ve mentioned here previously God holds the whole human race accountable to some fundamental laws. It has nothing to do with going to Heaven, but a system by which humans can expect to gain a modicum of material prosperity, consistent health and longevity, and a measure of social stability. Obeying these laws will get you those things; flouting those laws will see them reduced. Ignore them long enough and eventually your country-nation-tribe will be destroyed. What makes it difficult is the penalties and blessings don’t appear in the first generation, but may be a little slow in taking effect.

That’s on the broader scale, but you can stake out some good things for youself regardless of your community. First and foremost, you must conceive some measure of belief this stuff actually works. That should be rather obvious. Simply adopt some basic principles.

1. Put yourself neither higher nor lower in priority than those around you. Their needs are your needs. There is enough natural disparity between people; we don’t need to create more. Accept what is, and let people excel, but in the final analysis, it’s not about fairness but about loving your fellow man. Learn to sense and honor the boundaries of others, even if you can’t always observe them. Do what you can and be graceful about it.

2. You ain’t nobody. This is a corollary to the previous point. It merits separate mention because most people have a problem with it. This is not the walk-on-me perversion of self-loathing or any thing sick like that, but a recognition self-esteem is a stupid concern. Self-esteem is the natural by-product of doing what you should rather consistently, but pride kills. Be respectful, and in the long run you’ll get more than your share of it back.

3. Clean up your messes. Do your best to do what’s right; absorb the costs of your errors. Because you aren’t perfect, you will make mistakes. If you are mature enough to regret them, you’ll tend to avoid similar mistakes in the future. No one, when wrong, is so big or so important they can’t apologize to the least. Obviously, you have to make yourself actually mean it. If you don’t hurt when you hurt others, you really need to grow up.

4. Be tolerant. Sure, they did you wrong. And you can tell them, but do it with grace; you can swallow your pride. Don’t sweat small stuff. Some offenses aren’t worth mentioning. Live and let live when you can. Kindness is very powerful, and so are kind people.

5. Force is for serious threats. Nobody will ever be completely satisfied you didn’t use it too soon or too late, but you can develop a sense of minimum necessary force to preserve property, safety and peace. Along with this you need to realize some losses aren’t fixable, and punishment serves no purpose. Recompense by trying to clean up the mess is a justified burden to put on those who threaten the community. The burden is to consider in your mind all the times you’ve seen force used when it worked and when it didn’t, rehearse in your mind how you’ll do it better, and lock it in place. You’ll mess up and regret it, but that’s a lot better than gut reaction, by which you’ll regret a lot more.

6. Walk away. Sometimes you just can’t make it work where you are. Genuine differences are usually something negotiable for the sake of peace, but some things can’t be negotiated. It’s not tucking your tail to run if your departure preserves your sanity and theirs. If you find yourself moving a lot, it’s time for a serious self-inventory. By the same token, beware of those so intensely needy they’ll compromise anything to keep you around for the wrong reason.

7. People can change, but you can’t do it for them. No amount of brilliant study and planning by the wisest minds in the world can create a better society when it depends on controlling people in the sense of making them better. It can’t be done. Mere education of the intellect is not sufficient. People always do things against their better instincts. Change and improvement comes from a deeper desire. Nobody can create that desire for you, nor you for them. You can only encourage it. You’ll always have people around you who just don’t want a better self. Be prepared to deal with them as they are, and always give them reason and room to improve.

The world is full to running over with whining cry-babies. Cultivate the image of a person so mature, no one can really hurt you. This isn’t just good psychology; these are called basic rules of civility. Believe it or not, God actually cares whether you can live up to them. He actively manages this world in favor of people who know how to keep things civil. It won’t get you to Heaven, but it will make things in this life as good as they get.

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Logic versus Logic

Posted on May 16, 2009 by ehurst

So you think you have it all worked out? Maybe you do.

In our Western educational matrix, we are taught Logic. It’s considered a branch of Philosophy, which is mostly looking at the mumblings and grumblings of philosophers in ages past. We make a point of favoring one particular ancient culture over others, by giving preference to fellows like Plato, Socrates and Aristotle.

Based on their teachings, we have built a corpus of academic understanding such that we all assume we are pretty much on the same sheet of music when we discuss things “logically.” We even have Rules of Logic and a list of Logical Fallacies. Good stuff, no? By these rules we can debate others and shoot them down when they unwittingly commit a logical fallacy. There is a standard, and we can go to sleep at night knowing the rules won’t change tomorrow. It might not have any great effect on the world at large, but at least we will know what’s true.

Indeed, this becomes our ground for pointing out when the world has gone astray. And how far astray it has gone, indeed! But in so doing, have we not also gone astray? In adopting the likes of Aristotle and his ideas, we have dismissed the vast majority of human history. We have confused a priori with a posteriori (look `em up). We have assumed some things require no prior experience to understand, when we close our minds to the realization Aristotle and his friends were rejecting other paths in proclaiming their own assumptions were self-evident.

For millennia prior to them, mankind had carried philosophical reasoning and rules of logic which worked just fine in this world. But in order to downplay their possible importance, our Western philosophical matrix labels those things “primitive” to the point of saying those other forms of logic are “illogical.” Nice try. If your Western logic is so wonderful, how come we are still so messed up? You can’t claim they didn’t have it any better;  saying that is projecting modern problems backward upon ancient times, of which we know precious little. The reason we know so little is because we refuse to understand things from their perspective. We even go so far as to assert ancient thinkers were hallucinating — “they musta been taking drugs” — just because they didn’t come up with answers which fit in our logical frame of reference.

Wrong. It may be true of you, that you would have be higher than a kite to say what they said, but you weren’t there, and you surely do not have grounds to judge their different philosophical assumptions. Way back when men first planted crops and built cities, their assumptions about the world were already very ancient. Yeah, there are records of it, but Western logic rejects that data as confused and unreliable. That’s because it doesn’t sound like a Western descriptions of things. It made sense to them, so the problem is with you, not the record. You have to discern that record on the ground where it stands, not from your remote location.

That last sentence reflects the nature of ancient logic. Just a tiny sliver, but it points out how those people thought about things. The ultimate truth cannot possibly be put in human language, so they simply wrote symbolic descriptions. In other words, ancient logic is first and foremost symbolic. Miss that and you have no clue what they said. Call it a lack of arrogance so common to Western culture; the best ancient philosophers knew they could never quite grasp it with their intellect. If they could, it wouldn’t be all that important. Stuff which really matters will always be just outside our grasp. However, if we keep reaching, there’s an assumption we’ll find something useful, something which helps understand what’s around us and act wisely.

Today, we call that “mystical nonsense.” Maybe it is, but the ancients didn’t try to figure out how to blow up the whole world with a single device. It was not because they weren’t smart enough, nor because they weren’t advanced enough. It was because they couldn’t imagine a need for that, knew they weren’t wise enough to handle such a thing. Nor are we.

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When It All Goes Away

Posted on May 15, 2009 by ehurst

I’ve had my ten seconds of fame. It passed almost without my noticing. All that is left here is mumbling to myself, which a couple of other folks tend to read once in awhile. Indeed, I won’t even make any money from it. I don’t have much of a copyright on my stuff. Mostly it amounts to, “Quote as much as you like, but cite my name.” Someday all this will be gone. People won’t remember very many of my words, if any. The computer on which I type them will die, as will the servers which host them. Eventually my name will be forgotten. I harbor no delusions about such things.

Even I won’t remember my own words. I’ve been writing stuff for so long, I can fail to recognize my own material at times. What I remember is what I believe, what I want to say about things. Most of all, I can’t forget what I cannot walk away from, my convictions. They will kill me some day, and that’s as it should be. Otherwise, what holds me is unworthy.

It need not be some SWAT team breaking down the door, nor wounds taken in a rebellion fire fight. Those things are increasingly likely, perhaps approaching even probable, but that’s not the point. Rather, I am utterly certain we are doomed. We have shook our fist in the face of God for so long, we can’t remember not doing it. Lately we’ve gone to sticking our national finger in His eye. He is not amused, and in due time His patience will end

We were never really half so noble nor important as we believed. For example, we’ve been torturing our supposed enemies since the beginning of our nation, and have never stopped. We’ve allowed our government to lie about the motives for just about every war. The last war actually thrust upon us was 1812, and even that may have been avoidable. In all the rest, we got involved in something none of our business. But war is where the money is, and we have always wanted money. We’ve wanted it far more than any of those noble things we’ve been taught to believe about ourselves.

Soon, we will pay the ultimate price. God will destroy this nation. It will be forgotten, just like my name.

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Fundamental Mistake

Posted on May 14, 2009 by ehurst

More of my calling for repentance…

Jesus said we could sum up the whole of written revelation at that time (the Old Testament) with two basic commandments:

1. Love God with all your being. That assertion has a particular flavor not easily caught by Western readers. Jesus is saying God is the ultimate Eastern Potentate, owning all which exists, since He created it. That means He owns you and me. Loyalty is not a matter of simply fulfilling obligations, but comes from a commitment of the whole self to whatever it is God wants. We ask no questions at all regarding His whims, only how He wishes them implemented.

2. Love your neighbor as yourself. Not more than, and certainly not less than, yourself, but a recognition the welfare of others is our welfare. Jesus noted this was the corollary to the first commandment.

Now, of course, we define “love” as the willful exertion of self in seeking the welfare of another. To love others is to love self, and to love self requires loving others. Both are the natural result of loving God, since He has indicated He loves all living beings. It’s not just acting in the interests of others, but committing the will (heart) to a life-long course. A mere warm personal regard is a symptom, but proves nothing by itself. It matters not a whit what you believe or claim about being “born-again” — this is God’s command for all humanity. He said this is the whole matter of justice as God sees it.

It results in a social system often called “civility.” You’ll notice civility as a body of principle contains more about mending broken relationships than it has about avoiding breaks. There is an underlying assumption we humans will fail the high standard, but remain committed. Personal warm regard comes and goes with the vagaries of emotional winds, but that commitment is the point. It is not wholly rational, either. It is a matter of acknowledged duty, with an assumption much of it will never quite make sense. It comes down from above, a partial revelation of God, in terms of what He demands. You don’t get there by constructing your own rational framework, but by accepting what’s given from the very authority which allows you to continue living.

This is all non-negotiable. Our silly notions about fairness and consent of the governed do not apply. God made you and offers one deal. Embrace it or suffer. You aren’t quite on His level of competence, so don’t pretend to question His decisions. Those decisions do have implications. You can seek clarification, but not on the grounds of what makes sense to you. Nor can you inquire by what authority He came to be in charge. If there is a higher court than God’s, it’s none of your concern; you are accountable to His.

The implications have at times been variously formulated and expressed. However, the summary remains a matter of personal commitment of the self. You cannot expect to substitute impersonal and objective performance for that. The fundamental sin of Western Civilization is depersonalizing, dehumanizing the structure of our social institutions. Objectivity is fine for examining the basic structure of matter, and will grant some hints of organic matter, but life itself is beyond such a framework of understanding. The very act of dismissing what cannot be measured and quantified by human intellectual inquiry is a sin. It is the anchor point for the damnation of Western Civilization. The other half of that sin is insisting the human intellect will someday obtain the measure of all things. God is not amused by that. Nobody is telling you to halt scientific inquiry, but to recognize limits.

Those limits include His demand you take humans as seriously as does He. Any thing you construct which serves to dehumanize people is just begging for God’s wrath. You should not imagine He will fail to grant that request. It might not take place on the time scale of any living human, but it most certainly does come as a result. God has revealed all too clearly there are no two people alike. To the fullest extent of your ability, you are obliged to Him to treat every human individually, as a unique expression of His divine image. Bureaucratic regulation is sin, by definition. You are expected to use your individual wisdom to discern when any supplicant or applicant is lying and trying to manipulate your performance, but when providing any good or service, exceptions are the rule — God’s rule. Within the constraints of resources, talent and skill — whatever it is you can’t change in any given situation — you are required give full time and attention to making your efforts fit the unique needs of the individual before you. Dealing with masses as a single whole is simpler, because it reduces your burden. The more people we have to work with at a given moment, the more formalized and structured it has to be. However, we are not permitted to artificially aggregate individuals in how we treat them. God holds us accountable.

It pays to seek with all your abilities to comprehend the implications of God’s command to love. It is the foundation of every promise He ever made for meeting human need. Peace, prosperity, health, security — He concretely promised all these things were available to anyone willing to walk in His commandments. He also warned a failure to try, for any reason, guarantees you’ll see none of those blessings. His Creation — the Universe itself — operates on the basis of those two commandments Jesus explained. It responds directly to living justly by love. That’s the real secret to all things, to matter itself. You can’t hope to measure and quantify love, but without it, this world will never yield its secrets, as it were.

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Celebrating Doom and Gloom

Posted on May 13, 2009 by ehurst

I’ve got to say it: It’s time to repent.

We are in trouble. We have numerous natural disasters already, and many more to come. It’s not for nothing those are called “acts of God.” However, it works better if we understand them as the the promised results of ignoring God. He promised other things for ignoring Him. We have lots of purely evil people in our government. While some of them really are directly and intentionally immoral, that’s not the point. They are evil because the net results of their governing is evil. They pay no attention to God, either. Thus, we now have a global economic crash, a rising police state, several major efforts to provoke widespread racial conflict. Very soon, we will have serious bloodshed in the U.S.

When these things happen, it won’t matter much of the nation, in effect, refuses to acknowledge there is a God. It won’t matter the vast majority of those who do believe in Him have no clue why, what sins are the cause of these things. I really don’t expect to be heard, in that sense. But I have a duty to speak, so no one has an excuse before God.

We sin in supporting the modern nation of Israel. More so, we support her without the least concern over her sins.

We sin in ignoring the ancient design of God for human society. God designed us to live tribally. No one has any business governing you who isn’t related by blood or marriage.

We sin in using credit to buy today things we haven’t earned. Credit as we do it in modern society is inherently evil.

We sin by promoting profligate flouting of God’s ancient provisions for satisfying sexual appetites. Sex is not inherently sinful, but we go about it all wrong.

We sin by spending vast sums of borrowed money to destroy the lives of people who never did us harm. It’s called “war.”

We make it all worse by refusing to correct these things, and by protecting those who lead the way in sin. We protect them because we don’t bother to correct them, not even within the limits of non-violent protest.

The rest of it you can figure out for yourself. We are in deep trouble. I am saddened beyond words for the countless sorrows heading our way. Yet I am celebrating God’s handiwork, because when He acts, He reveals Himself. The best thing to ever happen to anyone in this world is to get a better glimpse of God.

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Questions for Authority

Posted on May 12, 2009 by ehurst

Someone very close to me shares one critical trait: We both question authority. However, we do so in very different ways. This other fellow has been to prison more than once, still engages in things which could bring more prison time if the wrong people notice, and is easily more intellectually developed than I. I ended up working a few years on the opposite side in law enforcement, and only saw the inside of a prison when I went to visit him.

Questioning authority arises from a thousand other questions. Given none of us are God, we tend to make plenty of mistakes in arriving at answers. That some of us happen to hold positions of authority even while we come up with wrong answers means somebody else suffers needlessly. There is enough suffering from honest mistakes, but the very act of rejecting questions almost certainly implies we question our own answers. When I saw how much pain there was from my very human mistakes while wielding authority, it not only compelled me to leave that position, but to question the very necessity of such a position existing. Perhaps the real difference between my friend and I is I know: The deepest scars on my soul are those I caused to others. What began as sorrow from my own suffering is now an even greater sorrow over the suffering of others, because I know what sorrow is.

That has led me to more rejection of authority over the years, not merely questioning it. It’s not about just me, but everyone else. I’m not convinced the suffering resulting from authority is random in every case, and it is certainly seldom necessary. Yes, the world is fallen; the taint of Adam from Eden remains with us today, and nothing we can do on our own will ever break that curse. I’m pretty sure my friend also rejects that notion, too. But for me the question is not ending all suffering, but reducing it. We can’t get perfect, but we can surely get better; on that we agree. The lack of interest in getting better is the primary red flag calling for rejection, and there’s an awful lot of it.

Of all people, I realize there are costs for every benefit. The point of debate is seldom about what is better, but bogging down over the details. We get bogged down because of too many unspoken assumptions. Those assumptions always bring us right back to authority which will not be questioned. It’s always, “Well, everyone knows…” No. Not only does everyone not know it, but it’s probably a lie. The assumptions you won’t discuss are the ones where you are most likely wrong. Granted, if you’ve spent a chunk of your life hashing certain fundamental issues, you probably aren’t eager to go back and justify it every time a two-bit idiot wants to reopen the debate. You don’t have to; you only have to realize your position is not universally accepted, and make allowances. My assumptions about God aren’t universally accepted by a long shot, but I have examined it enough to know I don’t have any choice about them.

Not having a choice about certain things in your mind is associated with the Christian doctrine of “conviction” — there is a Higher Power which has closed the debate. You can question Him if you like, but I’m not in a position to do that. If you assume I’m just being truculent and close-minded, I can easily turn that around and accuse you of having a closed mind on the subject, as well. So I operate under the assumption there is One Authority which made us all and no one has standing to question Him. By His calling and commission, I am called to question just about everything else in this world, and certainly everyone else. The difference here is, I deny having any particular authority to harm you by my closure of that debate. I’m altogether willing to negotiate everything else, and coexist in the real world with your different assumptions.

That’s the best I can do. I lack the power to go any farther. Somewhere along the way, I have to drive down the limiting stakes and say, “This far, and no more.” Funny thing is, the only people who insist on crossing that line are people in authority who care nothing about the sorrows of others. Take for example the nit-picking Linux fan-boys who argue with my choice of Etch. If their approach is, “Let’s talk about this,” they don’t presume any unjust authority. If their approach is simple rejection before they start typing in the comment block, they assume an authority they don’t have. Sure, they can type all the nastiness they like — and I can delete or edit their comments as I see fit. This is, after all, my blog. It’s inside the virtual border I am permitted to draw, my private space from which I am permitted to exclude all and sundry. You can well ask if I know what I’m doing, and offer advice, but your spiteful rejection is a waste of time.

The same authority-bearing attempts to invade are seen increasingly in government officials. It’s the nature of government to stake out an ever-widening circle of ownership, and the people who occupy those offices buy into it, often without thought. Worse, far too many appear to buy into it with malicious delight. They are little different from the jerks who slam me for sticking with Etch, because I dare to question their “authority,” or the authority they presume to accept on behalf of the experts who continue the development of Debian. Those developers surely know what they are doing, but the fan-boys might not understand, and surely too often don’t accept, what I must do.

This is the stuff of revolution and rebellions. With Debian aficionados, I do them no harm, and simply turn aside their attempts to compel my conformity with their program. I won’t upgrade. If my system then suffers from some insecurities or bugs, it won’t affect them at all. Their noise here is a the response to some imaginary insult. With religious leaders, it’s easy enough to ignore my ranting over on my ministry blog as I reject their authority and their orthodoxy. I’m not hurting them in any way, and only those who find themselves somehow insulted by my different views have ever tried to engage me in debate. Just label me a “radical” and get on with your life. Sadly, that doesn’t work with government. If the only consequence was a loss of support and protection, I coud live with that. No, the officials take that as a demand they intervene, presuming to say it’s for my own good.

Government assumes a monopoly on force. If someone else were able to wield some measure of force, it would mean they could claim some authority in governing. That was the point of the 2nd Amendment — giving the governed some option of force to have their say in how government acts. But government rejects any notion of limit to power. Sure, we have all these nice words which presume to limit the power of government to act harmfully, but we all can see where that leads. They simply inject exemptions into the paperwork and act as if those limits don’t exist, except on paper. That’s all it is — paper. It may represent some noble sentiment, but in the end, it’s the threat of force against government agents which limits government. There can be only one motive for reducing the threat to government agents — naked tyranny.

You might say another word for that is “hate.” And that hatred most certainly means to hurt you. When you are in a position to shrug it off, that’s the right course. I don’t see a need to debate the Debian fan-boys. I will gladly clarify my position for the sake of other readers, but I won’t debate things which appeal only to idiots. Let them scream impotently; I’ll generally approve such comments for honesty’s sake. When the representatives of authority are in a position to actually cause you suffering, you’ll need a means to limit that harm, a means to resist. The best resistance denies them the one thing they most want, the one thing without which the whole exercise deflates into parody. We need not list the variations of passive, aggressive, redirection, etc., in responding. You are an authority for those things which you must do, and you should feel free to creatively and intelligently make the punishment you offer them fit their crimes.

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Back to Etch

Posted on May 11, 2009 by ehurst

It seems Lenny’s LXDE is broken enough to be unusable. I also had trouble discerning what sort of junk I could remove with the LXDE when I replaced it with IceWM. It wasn’t what I wanted, wasn’t what I needed to use. Just for fun, I tried AntiX, a branch of MEPIS. It ran okay, but there was some breakage there, too. I was really disappointed at how they had so jazzed up the themes for IceWM, they had completely taken away the vanilla stuff I liked. Though pulling the less rowdy themes from the source package worked, I couldn’t get the video portion of some WMV files to play. Had the codecs, had the support libs, had both Xine and Mplayer, but no video. Gave up.

I returned to Etch. The basic reason is always the same: It works better on my old Inspiron 4100. That’s hard to beat.

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