Listening to this while I blog tonight:

On my phone again so excuse the typos.

Since my last post, two wonderful things have happened!

A Christian theonomist agreed to work on my categorization project with me! I had all but given up on completing that within the next 10 years, after my first excursion which made it through Genesis and most of the way through Exodus was lost to the sands of internet mutability.  I had changed my strategy to just a slow Bible study and some note taking, but now that I have help,  there is hope that we can actually do it! I'll post the url for the project here later when it's a little more sturdy.

The other thing that happened was: an atheist made an argument against my epistemology which I had not before thought through carefully! He took a brand new approach! The idea that the ultimate reference is something we can't have received naturally depends on it being reducible in content and form,  but irreducible in necessity,  so that there are many parts but no part can be missing,  because nature as a source would have to develop the ultimate reference in our minds incrementally. Now,  I already know that there are many distinguishable features of the ultimate reference which can be idealized as distinct points of information,  but that does not necessitate that the physical substance in our minds which contains that reference is divisible or alterable while maintaining a mind capable of thought (rational or irrational). I do think it's a stretch to suppose that nature provided us with information pertaining to its own trustworthiness, and that the info is physically unalterable in our brains, but with a carefully adjusted definition for trustworthiness, and a careful tip toeing through our ignorance about the way the mind actually structures its information, it is not something I can rule out...yet.

So now I have some clear direction for my thoughts,  and (I'm legit gonna cry thinking about it) another person who wants to understand and apply God's Law!!!!! I've  actually been in touch with that guy for a while now,  but I didn't mention him because I didn't trust my cards. The past 2 years have been brutal.

Isaac and Chowon have managed to shine through the muck in a lot of ways. They give me much pleasure, and continuously remind me of my need for God. It's everything else that seems to harm us.  Could there be good fortune for me outside my son's healthy growth? My good fortune is to vicariously experience the good fortune of my neighbors.

Now it appears that I have received something to call a good fortune of my own.

"I am just trying to be neutral."

Blogging on my phone today,  so excuse the typos please. A few days ago my excellent wife solved for me a philosophical/religious problem which has haunted me for a few years now. I think I blogged about the problem once before, but it's such a simple problem that I haven't been able to really develop it, so I haven't posted much about it here.

Here's the issue: how can I know that my religion is true when I haven't carefully examined all the alternatives? I haven't really paid super close attention to the evidence and argument in favor of Islam, for example (mostly because I haven't yet heard a good rebuttal to the arguments against Islam).  There are  plenty of religions out there. What if I'm wrong? But yet, Christianity is infinitely deep.  People spend their whole lives mining treasure out of the Bible and they barely scratch the surface. In fact, the argument for the Christian God finds its completion deep in an understanding of the attributes of God! All the best and most influential arguments for God have come from an extended study of just a small subset of those attributes -- the ontological argument and TAG for example show the superiority of Christianity over against atheism,  the judicial argument over against Islam, the consistency argument against Mormonism, the trinitarian argument against JW, Tertulian's feasibility argument against the Roman pantheon, the rationality arguments against the gods of Hinduism, etc etc etc.  I haven't fully understood the scope of Christianity's justification, because I haven't fully understood Christianity's God.

I can't say I really know my own religion,  so how can I adequately compare it with any other?

Well, I presented this to my wife, and she effortlessly produced an answer, similar to Pascal's wager of all things.

She said I don't need to learn about any other religion,  because Christianity teaches good works,  and every other religion says you are saved by good works.

Most other religions even have a caveat so that nonbelievers can be saved if they're good enough behaviorally. But only Christianity excludes everyone,  no exceptions,  on the grounds of their lack of belief in Christ.  So, by pursuing deeper knowledge of God,  and thereby firming up my convictions about Jesus,  I find myself saved in the best religion --  but even if I'm wrong, I'm basically eligible for salvation in every other major religion too.

Anyway, I don't want to go too far with saying how much i was relieved by this. I know better than to hedge my bets by putting any faith in something outside Christ, but if I'm totally honest here, the thought takes a bit of a burden off of me. Anyway I'd rather specialize and be excellent in one field of knowledge than study everything and be mediocre in all of it. I'd hate to be wrong,  but it doesn't appear that I'm wrong; it each day increasingly appears that I'm right. Now I can say that in every sense of the phrase, and against all others,  "following Jesus is the only sure way to be saved".

"You're the best atheist."

These days I busy myself scratching glyphs into the cave wall beside me. These passages have meaning, but only to me, because they’re in a language of my own. Thoughts which threaten to gain mass if anyone else comes to know them boil out of the skin on my palms; I smear the grease of them on my face, while trying to wipe off an incriminating expression. I’m not sure if I can be made clean from these thoughts. I’m Winston Smith, scrawling thought crimes on a notepad in the corner of my room. What have I done!

I’m in limbo. I’m not radical enough to accomplish anything, but I’m too radical to be taken seriously. I’m the crazy conspiracy theorist who everyone dismisses, only I have no conspiracy theories — only a love for God’s law. I wish someone would show me that I’m wrong!

This month I spent way too much time in online forums searching for likeminded people. I’m especially involved with religious debate forums: 

In one forum the admins threatened to ban me if I advocated OT law. The reason I didn’t get banned was because the other members asked him not to ban me — they said I was being respectful about it and my opinion should be tolerated. You see, the admin was homosexual (I don't advocate *just anyone* executing the penalties described in the OT; I advocate *elected judges* conducting trials which can lead to convictions and subsequent execution of said penalties).

In another forum a Christian admin anathematized me and then silenced me because I interjected in a conversation he was having with an atheist — the Atheist objected to a law about apostasy, and then advocated freedom of religion, and also brought up evolution. The Christian’s response was to dismiss the OT laws as irrelevant to modern Christians, and then basically say Genesis was a poem. I said you can’t just throw out verses that make you uncomfortable, he asked what I meant, I said I’m a YEC Theonomist, and he said I shouldn’t have the Christian role in the forum.

Then, later, in another forum, a Christian said he was ashamed of YEC Christians, a bunch of other Christians agreed with him and compared me unfavorably with flat-earthers, and the evolution topic got removed from that forum altogether (or maybe I just can’t see it anymore). First of all, there's a significant difference in methodology between YEC and flat-earth; YEC may think secular scientists are mistaken, and YEC seeks to define agreeable standards for interpretation of material evidence in order to reconcile secular science to itself, but flat-earthers say that secular scientists are intentionally lying to cover up the truth and eradicate Christianity. Second of all, I really don't understand the hermeneutic basis for harmonizing Genesis with an old-earth/evolution. In the best case, I can see a gap between Gen 1:1 and 1:3, but the rest of the creation narrative still plainly occupies the space of 6 days, and the genealogy from Adam to Noah isn't offered in a way very different from all the other genealogies in the Bible so that we should interpret it as a poem. No, it's not just that I don't understand it, but rather I don't think it's possible to apply it consistently to the whole Bible at once.

I don’t belong anywhere. I don’t agree with anyone. I’m a lone Christian ideologue, and for all of it, I dislike myself more than any of my critics! I can’t simply reject something which so plainly evinces itself to me. My conscience prevents me from relaxing my standards of validation. I spend a lot of time sitting and wishing I could see any way around the conclusions I keep coming to; if only someone would explain to me how evolution is "proved", as everyone tells me it is! If it is, then where is the proof? All I see is interpretations of evidence; and interpretations of evidence are an excellent grounds for believing a thing, but the interpretations coming from the other (non-evolution) side appear just as plausible to me. Nobody owns this evidence! The only reason I'm YEC is because, seeing two models with approximately equal merit (and it takes great effort to find informed YEC interpretations of the various evidence, but they do exist), my prior commitment to the Bible won out. I have reasons outside of the creation/evolution argument for believing the Bible, and so without a really winning argument for either side in the evolution debate, the Bible tips the scales for me.

When we talk about evolution, atheists tell me that my epistemological standards are too weak. But when we talk about laws of logic and epistemological warrant for any deduction about the external universe, or interpretation of evidence in general, atheists tell me my epistemological standards are too high. So, I'm too rigorous in my methods for interpreting evidence, but my interpretations are the product of a method which lacks rigor? Maybe my standards are just the wrong shape?

Well it would be nice if I could find even one person with a well-developed epistemology, capable of demonstrating a clear failure in my own system and the corresponding success of their system. But there is none. Everyone is on defense when TAG and its positive component walk onto the field, and there are no counter arguments which even address the system at all. Is it because there is no counter to be made? Or because everyone who might care to counter it is too lazy to study it well enough to find its flaw, and everyone informed enough to find a flaw is too disinterested to counter?

And Theonomy has the same trouble. The only Theonomists I'm aware of are trying to legislate justice within the established democratic system... well, isn't "justice" defined as that which conforms to the Law of God? And isn't "injustice" defined as that which deviates from God's Law? Well, God's law was laid out once, and it says, 'you shall not add or remove anything from this law' (Deut 4:2, also 12:32). So the legislative process itself deviates from God's Law, and is therefore unjust! So then, should we use unjust means to establish justice? If one sin is not more or less sinful than another sin, because "when you have broken the law in one place, you are guilty of all of it:", then what differentiates us from those who try to establish peace by means of injustice? Is it only that we name God with our voice, while reaching toward the U.S. constitution for its standards of justice with our hands? But when I make that kind of argument with them, I get this response: "I agree with you, but that's not feasible. It's unlikely that any plan to establish such a system would work. You're too idealistic." As if establishing states wasn't a thing which constantly happened throughout all of history; as if the borders on our current world-maps are set in stone. But heck, I'm not even trying to secede! I would be quite happy if I could just have a theonomic community! Maybe 10 or 20 people who live in community with one another according to God's law, and set up a local micro-government to actuate and vet-out justice internally, and face their community outward to convert neighbors and gain territory, until we can take a city and remodel its government to match the Biblical model. I'm not saying we stop paying taxes to the U.S.. Give to George Washington what is George Washington's. I'm saying we start living as if we actually are citizens of the government where we say that we have our true citizenship -- the government where Jesus is King -- because it's not as if that government didn't issue a clear set of written civil statutes.

Apologia isn’t radical enough for me, but they're the most radical around as far as I can see. I’d be ok with attending there in order to have conversations with them and hopefully get rebuked and mellow out my ideas -- that is, if I could attend and maintain peace in my house. Only, I can't make a good argument to push my wife to stay at that church, because I fundamentally agree with her about the specific shortcomings of their methodology, and she is more passionate about avoiding those specific problems than I am. I miss that community. My current church keeps handing out gospel milk; I’m worried I would get in trouble there if I started reading Psalm 119 out loud (and don’t even think about Psalm 2). I want a steak! More than that, I want to have a cookout with some close friends.

My son is adorable, and I am constantly exhausted. I wish I could just sit and play with Isaac in my own way, without fear of criticism. When I interact with him, I'm not constantly engaged with him; his attention span doesn't support that, and my energy level doesn't enable me to be a part of every "next thing" he distracts himself with. But after a little while, he always comes back around to me, and in the meantime I'm content to sit and daydream, watching him or reading my book, waiting for him to want me to join in with whatever toy he's operating. My wife is amazing with the baby, and is able to exert significantly more energy and focus in a normal day playing with him, but she is also constantly worried about everything (I mean everything). I hope that these experiences with the house and covid19 and all this other stuff serve to teach us how to relax and content ourselves in the midst of trials which are out of our control.

I need to sleep more.

“It means fortune teller”