Omnipotence and Omniscience

Stefan Molyneux

From an essay entitled, "Against the Gods", by Stefen Molyneux we have the following quote:

...omniscience cannot coexist with omnipotence, since if a god knows what will happen tomorrow, said god will be unable to change it without invalidating its knowledge. If this god retains the power to change what will happen tomorrow, then it cannot know with exact certainty what will happen tomorrow.

What are your thoughts?

Big Words

I have been accused of using too many "big" words more than the total word-count of Marcel Proust's collected works.  That is, of course, an exaggeration.  Still, the number of times I have endured the crassness of being told "you use too many big words," or "why don't you just speak in English," or "would it hurt you to speak a little more simply" has become a source of silent irritation for me.

So now I'm going to write about it.  And I may just use sesquipedalian verbiage to spurn any familiar detractors.

To start, Ayn Rand wrote "words are a lens to focus one's mind."  If that is true, then the larger the lens the greater the focus.  Which really stands to reason since the proper use of a bigger word is not an easily accomplishable feat for the neophytic philologist.  Can I say that my use of larger words has always been clear, and well executed?  Heavens no!  I amassed an admirable storehouse of "big" words at a very young age simply by listening to the adults around me.  I didn't really know how to use those words properly, however, until I was more mature.

That's when I entered highschool.  In highschool, I was practically battered with small-worded accusations by friends and classmates alike for using words outside of their ken.  The same unthinking trend followed me through college and seminary, too. It was really quite demoralizing.

Who of us would arrange the courage in ourselves to accuse an excellent musician of being too quick at trills?  What right-minded individuals would upset themsevles for a gymnast's greater agility and balance?  It would seem to me that having a decent capacity for expression is no greater a crime than being able to run faster than others, or tickle out a frenzy of notes on the ivories with more finesse than the typical church pianist.

Now, I could go ahead and estimate the kind of distorted psychology that prompts such ill-reasoned attempts at censoring another's self-expression, but that would be too much of a meandering speculation for me to feel comfortable with.  Instead, what I've boiled things down to, in my own mind, is a more generous perspective. 

I think it's simply a matter of "jargon."  That is, people have environmentally prescribed jargon-sets that help them navigate their way through assumed common experiences.  And depending on the variety and intensity of those experiences, the amount and use of jargon changes.  But when faced with someone who can work with jargon across varied and diverse fields, communication can become a little intimidating.

So, what about jargon?

Well, everybody speaks it. Some more than others. It's especially rampant amongst chattering intellectuals, the back offices of medical centres, and the austere corridors of academia. But it happens on the street, too, where the “huddled masses” spin their cant in an ever-evolving dance of gritty descriptions and colourful metaphors.

When people speak their jargon on the streets we call it “slang.” When people pour out the lingo in cloistered meeting halls, sipping coffee and polishing their chins, we dignify it by labelling it “terminology.” And it may very well be that. But the only difference between the terminology of the person on the street, and the slang built in to certain fields of study is the environment in which they're used.

Who hasn't had the common experience of meeting-up with a co-worker at the coffee maker and spending the next several minutes listening intently to a subject that seems distant, foreign, even arcane? Who hasn't had the experience of being that person at the coffee maker percolating stories in strange terms while your co-worker squints on, earnestly attempting to relate to what you're saying?

It's something that the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein described very well when he wrote, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922). The words people use give an indication of the personal world of their experiences. A person used to living in the harsh backwoods of the Yukon wilderness may very well seem like a different creature to the savvy urbanite used to a steady diet of posh trends, and fashionable mannerisms. The point remains though: however they choose to talk about their experiences, they bring their worlds to each other by the very words they use.

So to argue by accusation that another uses too many "big" words can (as it did in my case) have the effect not only of diminishing one's own world by sneering at expansion, but demeaning another's world by snidely implying it is 'wrong' or 'difficult' because it is too big.  Having given some thought to this subject, it seems obvious to me that the best course of action when dealing with someone who has a demonstrably wide grasp of the English language (or any language, for that matter), would be to ask for definitions and explanations when fronted with a word one doesn't know.  The residuals may just be that your own world is given greater scope and colour, and that the other's world is appreciated and made more enjoyable.

Not a bad trade-off, really.  Wouldn't you agree?

A Bit of Whimsy

I just had a fast and invigorating experience.  There was nothing to it, really.  I just had a rush of happy energy, got to my feet and began to run about and jump here-and-there with my kids.

Now they're all sitting placidly in front of their paper and pens, drawing happily, and using their uber-creative craniums for all manner of new sword designs.  Well, all except for the eldest and youngest who are satiating their morning with Finding Nemo.

Perhaps it's a beatific rush due to post-traumatic stress.  There's been a lot of stress in the past while.  Maybe it's because I'm eating a lot of awesome foods and my body is having a welcome endorphine spike.  Or maybe--and this is more likely Occam's case--it's because I'm with my family, and I love them, and things just feel great today.

Anyway, I just thought I'd put that out there.  A bit of whimsy, you could say.

Cheers!

Defending Ricky Gervais

Ricky Gervais, comedian extrodinaire.

I haven't written an interactive snark-piece in quite a while.  I suppose I lost my enthusiasm for it and tried my hand at new forms of literary scrutiny.  Tonight I find myself somewhat riled and inspired to lay a curmudgeonly type-lashing to a one Josephine Vivaldo of the Christian Post.

Aside from being exceptionally poorly written, Vivaldo's comatic awareness of her subject material reads as an insult to her own intelligence.  But to spare you from my own nitpicky appraisals of Vivaldo's technical abilities, let's just jump right into the slaughter, shall we?

In her piece, Vivaldo has singled-out Ricky Gervais, a public atheist, brilliant comic, and first-class actor (see: Ghost Town, The Invention of Lying) who, during the Golden Globe Awards, made a playful remark:  "Thank you to God for making me an atheist."

Vivaldo's ignorant little scribble can't even be bothered to quote Gervais properly, let alone take the comedian's jibe in context:

"During the Golden Globe Awards, host and professed atheist Ricky Gervais said, “Thanks to God for making me an atheist,” but in an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, he says he was not mocking Christians."

The conspicuous absence of the personal pronoun "you" in Gervais's joke let's us know that Vivaldo's reporting is lackadaisical at best.  I wouldn't usually take interest in such a triffling detail, but let's face it: Gervais's comment wasn't so long as to make missing words a strong possibility.  But then to cite Gervais's rebuttal to the ridiculous allegation that he was mocking Christians only shows that Vivaldo is pedaling mealy-mouthed tripe fed to her by other jaded, evangelical alarmists.

Half a second of thought would illuminate to Vivaldo and any of her like-minded and equally addled co-conspirators that Gervais was taking a playful poke at the untold scores of actors who, year after year, curry favour with the wider public by tossing out superficial homages to 'God'.  This fact is made startlingly clear when Vivaldo goes on to report that CNN reporter Piers Morgan challenged Gervais with a note on the American Christian population:

Morgan began by pointing out to the British comedian and actor that millions of Americans are in fact Christian and it seemed obvious that he was poking fun at that particular religion. In response Gervais negated the assumption of offending American Christians, especially when he personally doesn’t find it offensive when people say “thank God” all the time.

Notwithstanding the fact that the use of the word 'God' is not exclusive to Christians, it really doesn't help Morgan's case to make such blunders when Gervais openly admits that he doesn't find people's use of the phrase "thank God" in any way offensive.  This highlights a strange irony: the demand for religious tolerance is openly upheld as long as no-one is irreligious.

In North American countries, a Christian can careen headlong into a blowhard speech about evil, gay Teletubbies, or the insidious, creeping poison of condoms; and in doing so, write off a whole culture of people as godless, sinning, reprobates who will never be whole without their particular brand of Christianity, and the God they envision.  But because Ricky Gervais took a harmless poke at a customary exit quip made during celebrity galas ("thank God"), he must be mocking Christians, and should damn-well be dragged through the media's kangaroo court.

Having turned his pedestal upside-down so he can more assuredly stick to it, Morgan pressed the issue further by "rephrasing" his original question:

Morgan continued on by rephrasing his question and Gervais, 49, said “no no, I’m not mocking them, people’s beliefs aren’t my concern at all, I certainly don’t differentiate religions either, I look at all religions the same, unlike religious people I look at all religions equally.”

American Christian Jesus

Gervais's response further emphasizes my point that the amorphous title 'God' is not the exclusive property of Christians, much less "American Christians" (as if their nationality makes their spirituality somehow a purer pedigree).  The fact that Gervais considers all supernatural views as part of a homogenous batter called 'religion' rips the stuffing right out of Morgan's juvenile insistence, and any other puerile attempts at directing Gervais's remark to any specific religion at all.  And good for Gervais for pointing out that segregating between religions is the practice of religions, not the areligious.

Gervais also pointed out that the religious don't have a monopoly on what is 'good', and that,

“Some people say who says what good is but you know what I say ‘I do’ I’m good to people because it’s the way I want to be treated and I don’t believe I’ll be rewarded in heaven, I will be rewarded now.”

Despite the awkward wording of Gervais's remark, he brings up a good point: what is 'good' is not good because certain people, or religions say it is.  What is good is 'good' on its own, and if you practice those things that are evidentially good (e.g., treating people the way you'd like to be treated), then that goodness will be its own reward now.  If you're religious, you may also believe that you'll have some kind of reward for your present goodness when you're in heaven.  But the point remains that by practicing what is evidentially good now, that goodness will be rewarded or enjoyed now, in the present.

Not to be undone too easily, however, Morgan moved on to suggest that atheists, in their dotage, must feel a sense of waste if this life is all they have.

Morgan expressed his sentiment about how “the problem for atheist it must be doom and gloom when you get to like at 70 or 80, to think that’s it, that’s the end of everything, so you must fear death ten times more than Christians”.

Morgan's intensely ignorant segue, notwithstanding, Gervais responded eloquently by noting that there are many different conceptions of 'God' and that, by implication, if the aggregate number of gods in the world has still not reasonably assured people of their present and future states, why should anyone think atheism is on the deficient end of the spectrum?  Says Gervais:

“I can’t help what I believe anymore than you can, it’s up to you what you believe in. This thing about not believing in God, there are 2,780-odd gods, and if you’re a Christian you believe in one of them and you don't believe in all the others.”

Far from being a "dispute" as Vivaldo mislabelled it, the exchange was a simple exchange between two people with contrasting points of view.  Gervais, I think, came out on top of the intelligible end of things.  And as far as I'm concerned, reviewing Gervais as a tasteless air-pounder with a preachment up his sleeve is the kind of moronic ignorance Morgan and Vivaldo should be repenting of.  Gervias was who he is: a comedian with an observation and ironic comment to make, not to Christians in specific, but for the sole purpose of a joke.  Besides, if celebrities can rig galas for the singular focus of "roasting" each other, why should Gervais be harangued for telling a joke when that is what he was specifically employed to do?

Religion and Teapots

Bertrand Russell

It's certainly no secret that people do horrific and absolutely insane things as an expression of devotion to their particular religion.  Christians conjured up regrettable notions of witchcraft and slaughtered thousands, sometimes purely on suspicion and without a shred of evidence.  Muslims have had their historical share of swinging the sword and tossing rocks.  And there seems to be no end to the number of fringe-group religions and eccentric cults enacting wanton violence on others simply because they think they're under some mysterious, divine fiat that only they know about, and that only they can confirm comes from their god/gods.

Whatever the peculiars of the case, one underlying question, in particular, undergirds any helpful criticism of such fanatical religious stupidities: how can the God/gods purported be proven to be in any way real?

One philosopher, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), proposed that, in matters of the supernatural, the person who states there is a divine super-reality (including divine beings) has the responsibility to prove their statement(s) are evidentially true.

Russell used the analogy of a teapot in orbit around the moon:  anyone can say there is a teapot encircling the moon, but the person who states such a thing has the burden of proving that their statement is true by showing the evidence for their claim.  This responsibility for furnishing a positive position or proposition with accomodating evidence has become known as the "burden of proof."

In matters of religion, it is the person who states that God exists who has the burden of proof and give evidence for their claim.  The non-believer is under no such responsibility to give evidence for their non-position.  Or, to put it another way: person X claims God exists and offers evidence to prove their case; person Y makes no claim on the existence of God and therefore has no burden to prove a non-claim.

So where does this leave us?  Well, here is a clever little presentation (2 minutes) that illustrates not only the absurdity of some religious mindsets, but also incites the necessity for proving that the celestial teapot exists but only having the fanaticism of religious teapotists to point to.  Enjoy!

Thank you to Atheist Media Blog for this clever little video.

Turning Primal

Part of this article is extracted from a comment I made to a fellow blogger, SkeptiGirl.  We have been enjoying some small conversation about dietary committments.  And since I have dedicated some of my blogging time to fitness and nutrition, I thought it worthwhile to reproduce part of my contribution to SkeptiGirl's blog here at Saint Cynic.

As some of you might know, I have disowned the standard Western diet, which consists of a good deal of grains, and a long list of corn-derived ingredients infiltrating and polluting almost anything available at the local grocery store.  The Canada Food Guide recently decreased its suggested grains intake to 8 servings a day for 19-30 year olds (in the new food guide, servings are based on age).  But what some of you might not know is that some research suggests grains are, in fact, not good for you at all. At any age.

So discovering that a large part of my diet relied specifically on grains and grain-fed animals, I resolved to alter my eating habits: I turned primal.

What does it mean to "turn primal"?  The answer to this question is part of the contents of my latest exchange with SkeptiGirl, in fact.  Here is what I wrote:.

The Paleo diet does have an underlying philosophy, absolutely. That's, of course, part of its overall value. But in essense, eating paleo is an attempt at maximizing gene expressions by eating more like our primal ancestors. You see, the agricultural revolution is a very recent advent in human history; too recent, as some scientific opinion goes, for the human body to become an effective grain machine. Thus our bodies, in their present evolutionary situation, are not adapted to properly digesting grains and the anti-nutrients they contain.

By going primal/paleo, the focus is to eat in such a manner as best befits the present state of our genetic make-up. Such a dietary shift requires eliminating grains. And for some, it also means giving up dairy.

Another issue is that because people literally are what they eat (on a physiological level), intake of dairy that has been sourced from grain-fed animals means that the dairy being received is made-up of deficient nutrients. As such, that dairy is incompatible with a lot of people's natural bodily expression and results in a good many deliterious results: e.g., insulin disregulation. So, for some people, like myself, I have eliminated dairy and replaced the fats I would usually receive from it with coconut oil. Mid-chain fatty acids do wonders for me, as they do most people.

Now obviously "turning primal" isn't simply about altering eating habits, though that is a large part of it.  It's also not a cultism demanding you chase down your meals and otherwise grow them for the harvest.  Eating and living primal does require though, that an effort is made to alter your current perspectives on nutrition and commercial wisdom.*  Hence the reason for stating in my letter to SkeptiGirl (above) that there is an underlying philosophy to the primal diet: that switching to a primal diet requires a paradigmatic shift in the way we view our evolutionary development, our interactions with nature, and how food effects our genetic make-up and stability.

The other part of "turning primal" deals with movement.  That's right: movement.  With respect to how we use our bodies to accomplish workaday tasks, there is a prescription within primal living that flies in the face of--again--commercial wisdom.  Essentially, we are taught that in order to keep our bodies strong, we have to pile on vast amounts of hours doing cardiovascular activities (e.g., jogging, running, aerobics).  It's not for wrongheaded reasons that a top-level runner like Mark Sisson can re-label the fanaticism surrounding cardiovascular training "chronic cardio," and disparage it as a bad thing.  The upshot (one among many) of "turning primal" is that a person can maintain a strong body with moderate committments to cardiovascular exercise, and a respectable, regular dose of heavy lifting.

The difference, it seems, is that by accepting and trusting our bodies to do their ominivorous tasks, we maximize our physical and mental potentials.  But that difference can really only be made by plucking up the courage to question typical received information about diet and fitness.  If it is true that our present evolutionary make-up is not so far removed from our primal ancestors that a reasonable imitation of their basic living habits will dramatically improve our health, then it behooves us to become a little more primal.  Doesn't it?

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* By "commerical wisdom," I mean the medical platitudes that are pumped into us via mainstream media outlets; e.g., the blanket notion that cholesterol is bad, or that saturated fats are the bane of a healthy diet.  Such clichés do not stand up under closer scrutiny, and there is a bevy of information to sharpen anyone's perspectives if they take the time to read, say, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.

Unjobbing

Does unjobbing lead to freedom?

The talk around my home of late has been almost entirely about how to initiate and sustain one's life without recourse to employment.  This doesn't translate to self-employment, as is commonly suspected.  It does equal-out to a fancy new term I've recently become familiar with: unjobbing.

Essentially, by unjobbing, a person is taking the initiative to motivate their own income through multi-streaming, and a constant evolution of creative efforts as they align with personal values.  Perhaps one day you go out and wash windows, and another day you accept cash to do clean-up at a construction site.  And in the meanwhile, you're plugging away at that article for a local publication while querying an editor for yet another spot in a different press.  It doesn't really matter so long as you're investing your time and effort into things that make a return on your terms, and that keep in step with your values.

The essential difference between unjobbing and self-employment, as I've been able to figure out, is that self-employment is (generally) a single-focus, self-styled business that doesn't necessarily rely on creativity so much as networking and resource savvy, and takes more time from you than it can reasonably give back to you.

This is not to decry self-employment.  Not by any means.  I, personally, would much prefer self-employment to the job I presently do.  On the other hand, I would much prefer living by my wits and creativity.  However, since I'm in a job, and I'm not unjobbing, I'm starting to question my creativity.  As for my wits: they've always been a question.