We're thinking a lot lately about plans for Isaac's schooling, and along those lines, I have been wondering how best to foster various intellectual disciplines in him. The process is more complicated, I think, than simply repeating ideas in front of him over and over -- I don't want to get to a point where my words are meaningless background noises to him, but I do think that some of that repetition will be necessary. I think that the first and most necessary item for me to pursue will be cooperative works; he should help me make things, and making things together will provide natural and easy opportunities to teach him (he has to learn to do what I'm doing after all). To this end, I've been trying to engage with him in little lego projects, and to come up with ways for him help me whenever I fix or assemble things around the house -- he's usually eager to help, and I don't want to shut that down by refusing him.

Once he has a habit of working with me, and when he knows the joy of creation, I expect we'll be able to do projects together, and those projects will be the most valuable time for me to instill ideas in him while we work. I've already seen that he has excellent comprehension skills; when I show him how something works, he is eager to listen, and he is able to repeat what I've taught him and even to teach others. For example, my wife showed him once how she changed the batteries in one of his toys; later, when the batteries died, he brought me the toy and showed me where the compartment was, and explained to me that I needed to turn the screw to remove it from the compartment panel before I could access the batteries. I know it doesn't sound like much, but he only just turned 3, and it's a great improvement from where he was last year, and so I believe he's proving to be very intelligent, and he's developing intellectually at a lively pace, and I'm very much needful to pace my interactions with his growth.

We've been presenting Christianity to him regularly (so far it's been in terms like, "let's thank God for ___", and "Jesus wants you to be kind", because try as I might, he doesn't seem to grasp substitutionary atonement yet), and so I think he'll intuitively have correct philosophical and epistemological leanings, but the difficulty is that the solutions to epistemic concerns are so natural and so intuitive that a person who hasn't been forced to think through them won't have any conscious knowledge of them at all. And so when a proper explanation is given alone, it's so obviously true that it's taken for granted and treated as meaningless, but when someone comes along with a poor or misleading explanation, it isn't easy to see why they're wrong. To this end, I intend to integrate epistemic explanations into practical work, especially as he gets a little older and needs to crunch numbers to complete minor electrical or programming projects. I intend to impress upon him the necessity of acknowledging your epistemic roots when deciding how to process observations.

But also, I've been thinking about some of the thinkers who I admire from long past, and how they decided to pass along their legacies (obviously, through books). In particular, I've always admired Augustine for his production of an enchiridion targeted particularly for his son. I think, since my son is quickly approaching school age, it's time for me to begin work on something like this. I just need to organize the topics for it, so that I can prepare the ideas I think are important in a manner which is relatable and easy to digest, even for very young people.

To that end, here I will write out a rough sketch of the things I want to include in such a work, off the top of my head. This isn't a definitive table of contents; I'm just brainstorming here. These are in no particular order:

• Logic and argument
• laws of thought
• boolean algebra
• identifying necessary conclusions
• various logical errors/fallacies; their limits
• identifying emotions and controlling their influence in a discussion
• deduction, induction, inference, prediction
• types of evidence
• categories of knowledge (laws, theories, etc)
• linguistic barriers and how to cut through them (dismantling intentional linguistic barriers, i.e. "language as a weapon")
• practical steps to drill to the root of a disagreement
• mental blocks/hangups
• how they're formed
• identifying them in yourself and others
• how to dismantle them in yourself
• how to gently handle them in others
• knowing when to stop and let someone else be wrong
• Epistemology
• different ways to frame the problem
• the one and the many
• perception vs reality
• rationalism vs empiricism
• materialism vs idealism
• "other minds"
• logic indefensible on its own; references itself
• nature an unreliable teacher
• capacity for error
• measuring error (probabilities, Bayes)
• various secular theories; their successes and failings in particular
• foundationalism, coherentism, infinitism, constructivism, "pragmatism", naturalized epistemology, standpoint epistemology*, relativism, idealism
• the need for God; the importance of the divine Nature
• the trinity
• natural universe a self expression
• logical laws a self expression
• supernatural (closed/open systems)
• limits on supernatural (necessity of doing vs power to do vs capacity to do)
• trustworthiness, faith, ultimacy, etc
• "one truth, many lies"
• God's nature and the abolition of the supernatural
• limits of knowledge
• limits of certainty
• measuring/assessing confidence (empirical: evidence, experiments, predictions, repeatability... rational: valid vs sound, strength of deduction, degree of removal from ultimate, perspicuity, articulation, communicability, defensibility)
• epistemic weights/priorities
• reason for practical expectation of certainty
• how epistemology affects approach to science, math, language, etc.
• Literacy
• importance of communication skills (both listening and telling)
• importance of reading
• recommended books/authors
• value of fiction, poetry and art
• how to approach the study of history
• how to approach the study of philosophy
• tips for how to power through boring but valuable books
• how to filter misinformation online and in books
• informed skepticism vs broad skepticism
• how and when to speed-read
• Hermeneutics
• using the clear to interpret the unclear
• reading a whole book as a single argument
• avoiding prooftexting
• distinguishing between poetry and literal narrative
• identifying precisely what the text does and doesn't say; limiting yourself first to what it does say
• how to do a word study; (practical guidelines; e.g. words don't have to mean the same thing every time they're used, etc..)
• how to handle passages which quote other passages
• managing symbolism
• taking interpretation tips from Biblical authors
• avoiding convoluted theories which demand unnatural interpretations
• avoiding advice from heretics 
• don't waste your time with Rabbinic commentary or LDS D&C
• there's enough good writing out there to occupy all your time, so you'll lose out by spending too much on bad writing
• sometimes it's valuable to read a book you know in advance will be wrong; how to know when that is
• Ethics
• "problem of evil"
• nature of evil
• nature of God
• euthyphro
• necessity of Christianity
• greatest good; its impact in decision making process
• practical decision making
• anxiety and other hidden motive forces
• setting priorities (the highest priority, the greatest good)
• altruism vs expectation of reward
• commitment, following through
• a noble character; abstract topics
• religion
• integrity
• self control/courtesy
• (fruits of the spirit etc)
• hard work/perseverence
• curiosity/inquisitiveness
• respect/honor
• healthy skepticism
• "gray areas"
• masculinity, what it means to be a man
• when to fight
• how to know what hills to die on
• how to view governments in light of the imminent kingdom of God
• the option of taking a government office
• military service
• Topics in Christianity
• the Gospel
• what it means to make your faith "your own"
• having an experiential relationship with God
• grace vs. mercy
• soteriology
• Christology
• theonomy
• eschatology
• prayer & meditation
• forgiving others
• God's knowledge of himself
• infallibility and preservation of scripture
• history of the text, its transmission, etc
• the canon
• translation issues
• the Bible's literary superiority
• how to identify damnable heresy
• examples of tricky false faiths (Mormons, RC, etc)
• other debates of the day
• covenant theology
• spiritual gifts
• predestination
• original sin/federal headship
• what about people who never hear the gospel
• predestination
• age of earth (geology)
• age of solar system (astronomy)
• evolution (biology/archaeology)
• evidence for Biblical events
• evidence for God
• gender
• "victimless" crimes
• multiverse/simulation theories
• why there is something rather than nothing
• etc
• Other miscellaneous topics
• what is "science" and why the word matters
• what is the value of a title -- secular credibility
• the value of education
• repeating what past philosophers have said, regurgitating millennia-old debates, vs contributing to knowledge
• "choosing what to believe"
• purpose and meaning in life
• authority figures (or figures claiming authority); how to view/treat them, and what to expect in return
• being proud of yourself, what/who you are, without being prideful
• masculinity
• femininity (ask your mom; I'm not actually gonna write about this)
• measuring twice, cutting once
• the value of dirt, sweat, and difficult labor
• hard labor a gift from God
• handling stress (Epictetus)
• interpersonal conflict
• pursuing wisdom, knowledge
• being slow to speak
• politics
• government aid and the strings attached
• government protections vs freedom
• the importance of a vote
• local vs national elections
• top-down vs bottom-up change
• social/political trends I've observed; some predictions about the future and what might happen during your lifetime
• how non-Christians see us and talk about us; how to process it
• deciding what you want to do with your life, professionally
• general financial advice

Needless to say this will be a lengthy tome. All these topics are at one time or another touched upon in my blog, but not with much structure. I'm intentionally leaving out a few very practical matters, such as dating advice, because I'd like to have those conversations in person. But I think it will be valuable for me to write all this out, because what if I die and don't get to tell him myself? It's not that I expect him to adopt all my views, but rather that I hope to teach him how to critically process new information. I don't expect anyone except my son to take an interest in this book, because I have no credentials which should make anyone want to take me seriously, and I will consider it a great success, an outstanding joy, if my son does ever take an interest in my ideas and read it. But these topics have proved very valuable to me, and I wish that someone had sat down with me and explained them all before I went to college, so that I would have have fewer regrets as to my behaviors, and would have wasted less time and made less a fool of myself by wandering aimlessly through those endless opinions, fruitless explanations, and sophomoric philosophical dead-spaces.

"I can't be bothered to learn about that."

I've been asked to help moderate a forum where the age of the earth will be debated. This video was posted on the forum, and I listened to it yesterday while working. I want to respond to the video, but not in the forum, because I expect my response to be very long, and I'm not inclined to post a very long argument in that forum at this time.

In short, I disagree with some of his premises concerning falsification and justification or confirmation. I'll explain, but first, here's what I'm listening to while I write today:

Regarding falsification:

I believe that there is only one theory which is in all respects coherent with ultimately verifiable reality, and all other theories are falsifiable by reference to truths which are confirmed in ultimate. If a theory continually changes in order to adapt itself to observations about reality, then it will eventually be conformed entirely to reality and be true, even if that means it finally bears no resemblance to its initial form. So I don't believe that there is any such thing as a false unfalsifiable theory -- only that we might not immediately have the means to falsify a given theory at a given moment. 

This does not mean that I'm willing to accept every theory which isn't as yet falsified, but only that I do not believe that theories can be rejected on the grounds that they are not falsifiable. He seems to acknowledge that unfalsifiable theories are not always invalid when he says, "if you have two theories and one is falsifiable and the other is not, you should probably be leaning toward the more falsifiable theory, other things being equal." However, I only agree with this statement insofar as it is relevant to a scenario where I have two ideas which are in all other things equal, except that one possesses a known means of falsification but the other doesn't, and I must immediately make a decision with irreversible consequences based on adherence to one or the other of those ideas. In the general course of things, if all other things are really equal except that one is falsifiable and the other isn't, then I think it's better to reserve judgement while pursuing (a) the known mode of falsification for the first theory, and (b) the discovery of a mode of falsification for the second. 

Here comes the chorus: "But the existence of God is a plain example of something unfalsifiable!" 

And, strictly on the notion that a "falsifiable thing" is "a thing for which, if it were really false, it could be disproved", I disagree. I don't even agree that it's unfalsifiable prior to our transition to the afterlife. I'm saying, the existence of God is falsifiable (on those terms) in this life, while we're alive. How? Well, step 1 is to develop a coherent epistemological framework which can function apart from God, so that we can then brainstorm a test which makes sense given that framework. And, why should you be curious about the nature of the test in step 2, when you don't even know what tools step 1 affords us to work with? How would you make sense of step 2 without step 1? In the meantime, if all our rational epistemological frameworks do depend on the existence of God, the question about falsifying him by means of a tool which depends on implicit affirmation of his existence puts us into a position where the very endeavor is in conflict with itself. No, step 1 has to be accomplished before proceeding to step 2. 

Regarding justification or confirmation:

He suggest, on the grounds that YEC can survive scrutiny in light of any material evidence, and has not made any material or immediately observable (repeatable) predictions, that YEC is unfalsifiable, and so the strength of confirmation held by YEC is certainly weaker than the strength of confirmation held by ToE. 

First of all, it's not true that YEC can survive scrutiny in light of any material evidence. Any observable example of evolution causing one kind of thing to become another kind of thing would do it (I acknowledge that's a frustrating proposal, since large scale evolution is said to take many lifetimes; nonetheless, it's not an uncommon proposal, and it meets the requested criteria for a mode of material falsification). For example, let's see groups of apes having children which are some kind of proto-men, and proto-men having children who are men. Let's see that line blurred, and nature effectually processing one kind to another, in real time, as opposed to inferring the event from fossils, which evidence, YEC maintains, is equivocal. If ToE is right, then we will someday see it, though it may not be in our lifetime. Likewise, ToE asks for things like (as mentioned in the above video) a rabbit or a bird deposited in some or another layer of sediment; perhaps it exists, perhaps not, and perhaps we won't find it in our lifetime -- the world is a big place, and I don't see how Haldane's rabbit is much better than something like Russel's Teapot -- both can be found, but neither is a repeatable test that we can just perform on a whim, and neither is necessarily going to be found in our lifetime. 

Moreover, if Haldane's rabbit were found, (and for rhetorical purposes I am here about to engage in the kind of uncharitable speculation to which the above video is dedicated), I'm quite confident that ToE advocates would find a way to explain it without abandoning their commitments to ToE, as he does in the video while addressing and rebutting his selection of YEC arguments. Indeed, a major premise in the video, that people who are subject to the kind of self-delusion which he describes must rationalize the means by which dissenters are able to maintain their dissent, is exemplified by the subject matter of the video, which is to identify the means by which YEC people are able to maintain their dissent. I submit for your consideration: if two theories are held by a large number of people, how does it reflect on one of them to suggest that its dissenters depend on thought processes which are best described by comparison to mental illness, and therefore should not be heard in public, as is done in this video from about 44 minutes to the end? 

Here's a proposal: given two conflicting presentations, all other things equal, if one of the presentations makes a major point out of suggesting that the other shouldn't be heard at all, it is precisely this presentation which should be held in lower regard.

But I'm digressing. Back on point:

He suggests that a theory which is able to make clear, precise, unexpected, and true predictions is strongly confirmed. I don't disagree, but I'm not aware of any such predictions made and confirmed by ToE, and I think (as he seems also to indicate) that this is not the only way to strongly confirm a theory. Where he goes wrong, then, is by indicating that YEC is not as strongly confirmed as ToE, only on the grounds that it lacks said predictions. YEC is strongly confirmed on other grounds: namely, it's as strongly confirmed as the Bible, and for the same reasons that the Bible is strongly confirmed. I've spent a lot of time going over arguments for the truth of the Christian faith at length in prior posts on this blog, so I won't do it right here in this post, (these arguments are long and take a lot of time to write out), but I might write out the current status of my argument in another post in the future. In short, the Bible's presentation of YEC is both clearer and more strongly confirmed than ToE, and the means of its confirmation are not the means by which ToE attempts to confirm itself -- it is strongly confirmed by means other than the means presented in the video.

So, I don't think it's a problem for YEC people to say, "it doesn't matter whether the answer to X is Y or Z, either way my theory will remain in tact"; because it isn't the case that YEC people are claiming to have epistemic certainty about the Y or Z of X, bur rather that they're identifying that X is not relevant to the particular mode of confirmation applicable to their theory, and so they are ready to adapt their understanding of X based on findings relevant to Y or Z.

I'm not a materialist or strict empiricist. I believe that epistemic certainty can come from rationalizations abstracted from material evidence, and that said non-empirically-obtained certainty can be strong enough to dictate adherence to a seemingly-less-likely interpretation concerning otherwise equivocal (explainable) material evidence.

Now, all that said...

I do believe that material falsification is a very good means to distinguish truth from falsehood. And so, I see some value to be gained from the practice of using a theory to make empirical predictions, and from inventing hypothetical scenarios by which the theory might be materially falsified. To that end, I've decided to dedicate some mental energy toward imagining ways to materially falsify YEC, and to imagining predictions that YEC might make. I'm frustrated that I'm not an established researcher in that field, and so I don't have all the tools at hand which I would like to have in order to help me come up with an informed prediction or hypothetical means of falsification, but I expect to be learning a lot more about it in the near future, and so I'm going to try and see what I can come up with. After all, what good am I if I don't work to contribute to the things I think are excellent?

"And that, I think, is the more dangerous aspect, really, to Young Earth Creationism. You're not just talking and teaching them ludicrous falsehoods; you're teaching them to think in ways that are twisted and are going to lead them down the garden path."

I don't enjoy the thought that my blog is rather becoming like one of those outlets where people complain about covid and tout conspiracy theories about it.... but this stuff is really remarkable to me and I don't know how to process it. When I don't know how to process something, it goes on my blog. 

The latest covid restrictions just came down the pipes from corporate. Now, vaccinated people don't have to wear masks unless they're (a) in a conference room with unvaccinated people, or (b) within 6 ft of an unvaccinated person. If you are unvaccinated, the new rule is that you have to wear your mask all the time, even if you're alone at your desk. (I will be working with my door closed from now on). You may only take it off if you are in a break room and eating.

We aren't allowed to ask one another about our medical history, so the corporate lawyers have determined that we can get around that rule by instead requiring everyone to display their vaccination status openly, by carrying a red or green badge. If you are vaccinated and you see someone with a red badge, you have to don your mask before coming within 6 ft of them.

Let's not forget that the reason vaccinated people have to mask up before approaching unvaccinated people is that the vaccine doesn't actually give you immunity. You can still catch and spread covid after you get vaccinated. And, the mask protects the people around you from yourself, not the other way around. And, unvaccinated people are (if the msm is right) at higher risk for developing severe symptoms than vaccinated people. So, that is to say, all the stuff in my previous blog about it being irrational to require unvaccinated people to wear masks more often than vaccinated people, is still true

So basically, they're making unvaccinated people into functional pariahs. They have to cover their face at all times, wear an additional mark of their status, and everyone else must don PPE before approaching them.

I'm no psychologist, so I won't speculate about objective psychological consequences that might occur broadly as a consequence of this, but I will say that I'm personally having a hard time with it, and I expect that being the only person wearing a mask all the time, and watching people catch themselves and don their PPE before approaching, or avoid me altogether to avoid the discomfort of a mask, may be a distressing experience for me emotionally. Idk how I'm going to handle it if the policy lasts a long time, or worse, if it extends beyond the workplace.

If I'm to try to frame this in a positive light, I suppose I'd say that this will give me the opportunity to discover any the other unvaccinated people in the factory, so that I can pull them aside and discuss the matter at length, and find out how they're handling it.

"You are sharks, certain; but if you govern the shark in you, why then you would be angels; for all angels are nothing more than sharks well governed."

Quite tired recently. This post is another one I've added-to here and there over the course of several days.

Got a few topics to cover today. I'm gonna talk about Covid again (venting about it here helps me get this out of my system, so I can avoid the topic in normal day-to-day conversations). And then I'm gonna muse a little about some dumb stuff I was thinking about while driving.

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So my company has changed their mask policy (again again). Now it's the case that you must wear a mask only if you're unvaccinated. Let's think about this a little... All this time, I've been told that wearing the mask doesn't prevent you from getting Covid, so much as it prevents you from spreading Covid (by sneezing on other people, etc). More recently, we're being told that vaccinated people still get the virus and transmit it, so (the impression I'm getting, from what I've heard is) the vaccine doesn't actually reduce infection rates, but it just reduces the severity of symptoms in those who get vaccinated. 

So, if vaccinated and unvaccinated people both tend to catch and transmit the virus, and if unvaccinated people are at higher risk for severe symptoms, then it is the unvaccinated people who need to be protected from the vaccinated people, not the other way around. If wearing the mask protects everyone around you, and not yourself, then it is the vaccinated people who should wear the mask, more than the unvaccinated people. This being the case, how should I interpret a requirement that unvaccinated people wear masks? Consider also the studies I showed before, where it was demonstrated that masks actually do not prevent spread of Covid, but cause harm to the wearers. What else can I conclude? It seems to me that the new company policy is less like a measure intended to protect people at large, and more like a measure intended to protect vaccinated people and punish unvaccinated people. 

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This has me thinking back on the history of the vaccine (or at least, my perceptions of the press releases as I saw them).... First, it was being rushed through approvals, and there was concern about it's safety. Then, for a while, it was simultaneously "safe and effective", and also "not approved for use in most countries", and also, "undergoing human trials in Africa", and also, "being charitably given first to those most in need, the Africans". Not long into that, anyone who repeated the concerns which we had at first, about it being untested, were conspiracy theorists touting misinformation -- liars; the science was settled; the vaccine was safe and effective, and ready to be delivered en masse. But then, several of the approved vaccines were found to be causing the deaths of their recipients, and some countries had to cancel their subscriptions to certain vaccine manufacturers, in spite of the fact that the vaccines were yet still safe and effective (I'll never forget listening to the radio broadcast where some foreign minister or delegate explained why his country was going to stop using the vaccines from a certain manufacturer -- that the vaccines were safe and effective, and yet caused a death rate higher than Covid, and so they were going to discontinue use of them, even though they were safe and effective). But then, we found out that the vaccines didn't produce a lasting immunity; the immunity wore off after about a year, but we would be ok forever if we got a booster after 6 months. No wait, immunity wore off after about 8 months. No wait, it wore off after about 6 months, and actually you need two boosters. No wait, it wore off after about 3 months, but we're still only giving you two, maybe three boosters, and those on a 6 month interval. Then it seemed that the vaccines didn't produce any immunity at all, and so didn't conform to the thus-far accepted definition of "vaccine", so the CDC changed the definition of "vaccine" from a treatment which produced immunity to a therapy which produced "protection". Now they think that the vaccine reduces severity of the symptoms of Covid, without reducing its infection rates or transmissibility. Meanwhile, (last I heard) the rate of adverse effects from the vaccine is about 1/10 the rate of long-term adverse effects from Covid.

So we look to Fauci, the hero of his own Netflix documentary in his lifetime; the voice of Science itself! Help us Fauci. Give us some advice. So what does Fauci recommend? Wear multiple masks, and ignore the tortured dogs and the gain-of-function-oh-wait-let's-change-the-definition-of-this-too research; ignore the burning economy, the global mental health crisis, and the adverse effects of treatment which (see the whole "release of lot numbers" debacle) were in large part predictable and avoidable. All the death -- the destruction of families and businesses -- it's all worth it if it saves just one life from coronavirus, and if you say otherwise then you're a cold, heartless, anti-science, misinformed, uneducated, liar.

I've got no reason to believe that the speculations declarations concerning vaccine effectiveness or benefit won't diminish again, as they have consistently done during the short life of this vaccine. And, seeing no clear benefit in it, but very clear possibility of harm, I see no good reason to get it, except that I might suffer political harm in not taking it. Thankfully, my company has recently issued a statement (it is only the "latest") stating there will be no vaccine mandates in the future, but as I said above, unvaccinated people will be required to continue wearing a mask.

Then again... my company flip-flops on Covid policies almost as fast as Science, which, at the rate it changes, either is not science at all, or the laws of physics and nature are so volatile now that experiments are reversing their results every month. Oh wait, there are no experiments. I guess science and the scientific method no longer keep company with one another. Science is philosophy in denial. "We're not philosophizing; our inclinations against this statistical data are empirical reality." 

I suppose I'd better be careful, lest I forget that "the science is settled!" and so lose all credibility.

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Speaking of science and inclination, I have noticed two simultaneous trends in my brief experience here on earth. Maybe this is nothing at all, but it interests me nonetheless to speculate about it:

Secular, empirical, epistemology (here I go generalizing) seems very much concerned with statistical inference. In theory alone, NonChristians don't gain certainty about a feature by seeing it, but rather they gain confidence about the feature by repeatedly testing their eyes against it in order to generate a statistical model. They perceive that there is an unknown or unknowable quantity of unknown or unknowable variables affecting the object of their perceptions (and consequently the truth of their inferences), and so rather than make significant effort to rule out every possible barrier to truth, they simply perform the test over and over and then aggregate the results into sets, sorted by statistical significance, and content themselves with formulating plans of action on the highest probability result.

And now, it would seem, so does popular Science (although, not all science). I recognize that there are still a great many fields performing their work with the most rigorous adherence to the scientific method (making a test in, as much as possible, a closed system, to achieve absolutely predictable results, in effort to disprove your hypothesis). However, I've noticed that most of the time when I see "facts" touted for argument or news reporting, the sources cited are not strictly repeatable scientific experiments, but rather they consist of aggregated data from a great many observations, with various formulas applied to help rule out known sources of error. They're built on an implicit understanding that statistical sets are the best we can do. 

This idea, combined with the understanding that science consists of theories, which change as new data arises, presents the scientists with a scenario where they may generate a high probability cause-effect relationship and then call it "the science" -- which is to say, it's the best information we have, and so it participates in the operating assumptions of the scientific community until further notice. This understanding is summarized with the word "science", and science has such an excellent reputation that it is interchangeably summarized with the word "fact". And so, if an observed effect occurs with high enough probability in a set of observations in an open system where outliers, as well as observations affected by known sources of error, are systematically ignored, it is considered to be the factual effect of a given cause. Worse, however, is that it is presented to the public as though it were the factual effect of a given cause.

Without going into extended detail about the very terminal problems inherent in pretending to have any confidence at all amid an unknown or unknowable quantity of unknown or unknowable variables... I take issue with the above system because it isn't Christian. The Bible teaches us that we may know things with certainty; particularly the things described in scripture, which on the whole are of consequence in real-world expectations concerning all other mathematical, natural, and physical laws.  The scientific method was designed with such epistemic certainty in mind, and it is the expectation of a scientist who employs that method, that all variables are knowable, and that as he eliminates variables in effort to produce a closed system for his experiment, unknown variables will become more apparent, until what variables remain yet unknown are truly inconsequential, and the repeatable result is the only possible result within the boundaries described by the laws which govern this universe.

A Christian who does science (not a "Christian Scientist" I am very loathe to explain: "Christian Science" is the name of a cult nearly as abhorrent as secular science, both being neither tolerably Christian nor tolerably scientific) seeks to find the truth of the matter in finality, and acts on the expectation that it is obtainable -- that a rigorous application of the scientific method is capable of generating actual factual information about the universe. Combine this with the most strict requirement for intellectual integrity, and a Christian should only say that a thing is fact if it is, indeed, fact. So we see, Philosophy and science are interdependent. 

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Speaking of being a follower.. since I moved to CT,  I have had an interesting experience a few times: While driving, I have found myself behind a car who drove agreeably and seemed to make all the same turns as me for a long while (my commute is about 45 minutes). And, I begin feeling emotionally attached to the car in front of me; the driver is a friend, and I take care to maintain comfortable space between them and me, for their sake. After some time of this, I begin to daydream on the road, as is startlingly common for me, though I am generally good at snapping out of it when something is amiss, and, thoughtlessly, I will follow that car into a wrong turn. Sometimes I catch myself quickly, but sometimes I'll follow for several minutes before realizing that I don't recognize my surroundings. The experience is usually rather surreal for me, and as often as not it is remedied by Google Maps, which is no less an example of the topic about which I here soliloquize than the strange car which led me astray in the first place. 

It gets me wondering, what other things am I following without really thinking about it -- on "autopilot", following the leader, or sticking to my tribe, without really paying attention to which way they're going?

The common accusation on this topic comes from religion or political theory, right -- "you blindly follow the Bible", or, "you blindly follow your political camp". But, honestly, I'm so saturated with challenges to self-asses and self-challenge my faith in God, coming both from Christians and atheists alike, that I do it all the time! In fact, I've done it so much, and so repeatedly found that I have no reason whatsoever to abandon God, yet every reason to remain faithful (by God's grace to me, upholding my spirit), I'm honestly tired of it. If there is something blind and unquestioned in my faith, then it is so deep and buried underneath other suppositions that I'm entirely unaware of it.

Those things are precisely the issue -- it does me no good to attack "Christianity" in myself over and over. It's better, rather, I think, to seek out the deep things, everything else, all my underlying suppositions, my buried thoughts, and question every one of them, and then measure the consequences of those contests against the greater structure which leans on the thoughts in question.

"I'm all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky casks, but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship...Yet I don't stop to plug my leak; for who can find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if found, in this life's howling gale?"

Hooooooo what a discouraging week it's been!

I get to listen more than I speak, explain only what I don't want to talk about,  be wrong over and over, be swamped with service calls and get no time for projects, attend wasteful meetings, get confronted about masks, boss says they're writing people up, scandal is ignored by wimps, wife is moody, I'm moody, son is a contrarian, no sleep, endless paperwork... 

(I wrote the above paragraph before the holidays, but it still kinda feels that way)

Happy New Year!

I need to write down some stuff about masks, to clarify my argument and make sure I'm acting in a manner consistent with my principles. Masking seems like a really small thing, but I don't want to knowingly participate in a cultural lie which I think is harmful, and more importantly, masking is representative of a larger problem: the entire world government response to Covid has been destructive -- shutting down businesses, locking people in homes, spreading fear and panic, etc..

(a) I'm not convinced that Covid is harmful enough to warrant this kind of action.

(b) No government has Biblical authority to do the things that our governments are doing in response to Covid (and un-Biblical authority is not authority at all, Romans 13).

So, by wearing the mask, I feel like I'm implicitly supporting the government's response. Other people who see me wearing a mask will assume "he's wearing it to protect himself from covid". They won't assume, "he's wearing it to play along with the government's stupid requirements.". When you follow along with something like that, and you give people the impression that you agree with the commonly stated motive for it, you participate in a culture of conformity with that, which does pressure people around you to agree with that motive and to likewise participate, even if they don't understand the rationale for it. If everyone around you is doing something, you will feel pressure to do likewise, even if you think that they're dumb. If everyone around you is saying that something is true, you will feel pressure to also say it is true, and to doubt yourself if you think it's false. (See Asch conformity experiments.) Basically, participating in a lie pressures other people to believe the lie, and I don't like it.

But then, suppose my employer wants me to wear the mask, as a private business, imposing this on my terms of employment for their own comfort. Strictly speaking, I think private companies should be able to impose whatever requirement they want on their employees, as long as they don't require the employees to sin. So, this is one thing I have to think about: is it sin? I'll talk more about that a little later.

But also, my company is taking a more complex approach to the subject. It's not as simple as "if you want to work here, do this". Initially, I was told that I should wear the mask in order to participate in pressuring union operators (who were in the midst of refusal) to do likewise, for their safety. You see, at my company, we do develop policy for safety. And so, if a behavior is unsafe, we police against the behavior. If lack of a behavior is unsafe, we require the behavior. If we find out that we're wrong, and a behavior which we formerly considered to be safe is unsafe, or v.v., we change our policy to suit safety. Our safety policies are malleable, and intended to fit the facts of the matter. The requirement is not, "you must wear a mask to work here", but, "you must behave safely to work here".

So now, I have to ask myself, does the lack of a mask make me or others unsafe? Let's assume, for a moment, that Covid uniquely warrants an entire workplace safety agenda around preventing it. Do masks help?

Well, to quote my boss's boss, and every other person he was quoting at the time, "the science on this matter is settled". Only, he meant that the science indicates masks are helpful.

The science is in fact quite settled to the contrary. You see, there are generally two categories of tests out there concerning the efficacy of masks (I am generalizing!): there are studies which involve finding a statistical correlation between mask wearing and Covid infection rates, and there are studies mechanically testing the mode of causation by which masks are expected to prevent Covid: filtration. The former might give us some value of confidence on the matter; I'll stop short of saying it's non-scientific to rely on this kind of data. The latter is definitive, and a proper application of the scientific method. 

The CDC, in their presentation affirming masks as a tool to prevent Covid, relies entirely on the former kind of study -- seeking statistical correlations among masked and unmasked groups of people. The problem here is that it's not difficult to find other studies, some with larger sample sizes, saying that there is no such correlation (like this one, or this one, or maybe this one, or the tabulated data on page 4 of this one, or this one . How many of these should I post? Here's another, and another, and another. I could keep going. Here's another and another.). Man, with all these studies out there, it sure would be nice if someone would just do the work for us, and conduct a scoping review of all these articles. Oh wait! Here's a scoping review of 5462 peer reviewed articles. What did the researchers conclude? "The COVID-19 pandemic has led to critical shortages of medical-grade PPE. Alternative forms of facial protection offer inferior protection. More robust evidence is required on different types of medical-grade facial protection. As research on COVID-19 advances, investigators should continue to examine the impact on alternatives of medical-grade facial protection." 

5000 peer reviewed research articles, and still more research is needed. Hmmm...

The amazing thing is, we could skip all that additional work with just one peer reviewed test against the actual mode of effect for masking. Let's just test the filtration efficiency of the mask. Here it is! And, just for fun, here's another one.

So masking doesn't work. Masks are actually incapable of filtering Covid. This isn't just "other research casting doubt on masks". This is the actual mode of protection being debunked in one fell swoop -- the masks can't filter Covid; that's it.

But what about the correlations you saw in the CDC tests? Is there any value to them at all? Well, read the tests. For example, take a closer look at Wang Y’s study on infection rates within families: The infected groups tended to not wear masks, but they also spent more time in close proximity to infected family members, had smaller living spaces per capita, lower hand-hygiene scores, fewer bedrooms per person, lower frequency in room cleaning (both with and without disinfectant), and fewer home-ventilation hours per day. In short, the infected group responded worse in every single metric. It appears that one or more of those other factors might be actually effective, and people who wear masks are also more likely to do something else which is effective.

But don't they help a little bit? Shouldn't we wear them just to be doing something? No. We shouldn't waste time on ineffective solutions, so that we can instead dedicate our resources toward finding effective solutions.

But what about scholarly consensus? Well, have you seen what happens to scientists who speak out against the "consensus"? They get shut down by "fact checkers" who work for media outlets. That means that the scholars aren't allowed to decide what the scholarly consensus is. If we really want to know what scholarly consensus is, then we should stop taking down every single dissenting video and social media post, and let people listen to the researchers. Here's a perfect example: Dr. Robert Malone. Look him up. Here's his credentials (taken from Rogan):

"Dr. Robert Malone is the inventor of the nine original mRNA vaccine patents, which were originally filed in 1989 (including both the idea of mRNA vaccines and the original proof of principle experiments) and RNA transfection. Dr. Malone, has close to 100 peer-reviewed publications which have been cited over 12,000 times. Since January 2020, Dr. Malone has been leading a large team focused on clinical research design, drug development, computer modeling and mechanisms of action of repurposed drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. Dr. Malone is the Medical Director of The Unity Project, a group of 300 organizations across the US standing against mandated COVID vaccines for children. He is also the President of the Global Covid Summit, an organization of over 16,000 doctors and scientists committed to speaking truth to power about COVID pandemic research and treatment."

A censored consensus isn't a consensus.

But I'm not a medical professional. How can I say this with such confidence? The whole reason studies exist is because we don't all have the same credentials. Read the studies yourself. Are they terribly confusing?

OK, but are masks harmful? Yep. They are. here's some more studies on that: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

So, back to the main point: my company wants me to wear masks for safety. But the masks don't make us safe. They make us unsafe. What should I do?

I wrote a nice little essay on the topic (much more formal than what I've written here), and I gave it to "the right people" (my boss, the safety guys, etc), one by one hoping to affect a change. The response I kept getting back was "I agree with you, but it's company policy." Well, the problem is, if they agree with me, then company policy says they should change company policy to promote safety. They said they'd pass the paper up the chain, but I never got any responses, just "I agree with you, but it's company policy". And as I waited, company policy actually began to get more strict -- masks are required in more situations; we have to wear it everywhere on the premises except our desk; even in the big, well ventilated warehouse, where nobody is within 100ft. So, I acted on my own according to company policy: I did the safe thing. I stopped wearing my mask, and in doing so I ceased implicitly pressuring operators to do so as well.

And then my boss's boss started confronting me. He even told me he wasn't sure if he could promote me because I wasn't complying. I told him about the paper; he hadn't seen it and at first was unwilling to read it. After a brief (and surprisingly heated) exchange, he agreed to read my paper. I emailed it to him, and a while later got a response: (paraphrasing) 'I disagree with you because of scholarly consensus. And even if masks are only a little bit effective, we should wear them so that we're doing something to help fight Covid." He also said I don't have to wear the masks they give. I can wear some other kind of mask if I want.

OK, so company policy, then, (communication from the higher ups is my primary source of policy knowledge) is "do the ineffective thing. Not for safety. It doesn't matter that the masks don't filter Covid. It doesn't matter that they cause headaches and rashes. Just do it."

Fine. I can accept that from the company. That's what they want; that's their right.

But there's still the issue of whether I am allowed to harm myself and participate in a culture of pressuring others into self-harm.

I think I can kill a few birds with one stone. My current plan is to find a comfortable mask material (not a surgical mask -- a comfortable one. A breathable mask with relaxed ear-strings). I'll test a few kinds, and then start recommending them to the union operators who I'm supposed to be pressuring. This way, I don't pressure them into self harm. I don't harm myself. I just comply with company policy.

Masking outside of work is another issue. I still need to consider what I'm communicating to everyone else. If I have to wear a mask, I should communicate to others somehow that I am not doing so because of my agreement with the general idea that masks are helpful and that covid is a big deal. Maybe I'll get some masks with a message printed on them. I'll have to think more about it. 

"A milestone"

 Happy thanksgiving. We stayed home this weekend to focus on relaxation.

These days I'm under a lot of pressure from home to succeed at work. I was offered a promotion should I stay in AZ. My transfer to CT came with the understanding that my new boss would have to re-evaluate me for the promotion. My wife really wants me to get that promotion, and my predecessor is said to have desired it for many years without any gains. I'll be honest: if I don't get promoted, then it will be a major blow to the impression I have that I can make a long-term career here and grow in it. Therefore, I have to make the most of these times of relaxation, using them to plan my approach. I have to find the energy to do my best here, so that if I don't get promoted, I will have no negative feelings about the decision my wife and I will have to make, whatever the result.

The work environment in CT, as I mentioned in another post, is very different from phoenix. At first, the differences struck me as an excess of practical inefficiency. Whereas I used to get a few emails per day, most directly relevant to me, thus giving me plenty of time to indulge in HR updates and internal newsletters. I now get about 30-40 emails per day, most of which are sequential messages in threads about my projects, projects which might become mine, or miscellaneous service issues, in most of which only the first and last email are relevant to me (if any) -- crosstalk. About 0.5% of the HR emails and newsletters are actually very important: "time to renew your benefits", "we're implementing a vaccine mandate", etc.. I'm so overwhelmed with emails now that the only way I notice important company bulletins anymore is when they appear as reminders in the daily morning meeting, and that one time they mentioned the vaccine mandate was literally the only time that meeting was useful for me in an immediate sense. For the rest of those meetings, the only value was in the exposure -- I'm hearing recipe names there, and slowly becoming comfortable with them; I'm learning the names of people, and becoming known as a solver of problems. But I don't have time to solve their problems, because they call me too often for things which aren't actual problems; for example, one day (true story) I spent 4 hours walking back and forth between the line and my office for service calls, and each time, the problem was solved  by maintenance or operations either while I was in transit or soon after I arrived. So, their actual problems are deprioritized in favor of expensive projects. I'm also being asked to produce documents quantifying progress on my projects, which takes up time I could be using on the project itself, and honestly strikes me as odd, seeing as my progress is readily quantifiable in terms of the POs which have been cut (which I expect we should have in a database somewhere... right?) and the actual project materials (drawings/code) I've produced. Moreover, the union is a constant source of problems -- not actually because of their rules (I haven't had any problems with union rules, necessarily, as far as I can tell, and everyone told me that would be the source of my problems), but with their attitudes. The unioneers literally ignore me and cuss at me when I approach them for information about an issue; they call me and demand that I come to the line with my laptop to examine their issues, and then hang up on me when I ask them for details like, "what does the alarm on the display say?". Their attitude is totally inexplicable! And, we're in the midst of, what seems like, a plan to perform an endless series of major upgrades to our SCADA/MES system; these updates are performed in a way that prioritizes speed over correctness, because it's impossible with Wonderware to understand the consequences of a given change you make to the server, since they're so deeply in bed with Microsoft and their software is, like Microsoft's, a rat's nest. So every change brings with it an immediate loss of functionality which occasionally takes weeks to figure out. Our goal is to get our software completely up to date, but by the time we get there (give it a couple of years), the next major upgrade will be rolled-out and we'll be pushed to implement that instead; this isn't hyperbole on my part -- we already know what the next major upgrade will be; it was released already, and it's hanging in our periphery; we just say, "we'll install that after we're done with the current changes". I'm put into the middle of this and expected to learn our current Wonderware system -- maybe I could do that if it was my only responsibility. There are people in the company talking about bringing in Ignition instead; they're going about it all wrong, shouting buzzwords and trying to push redundant solutions out to corporate audiences who haven't asked for it. Sometimes my boss asks me, "what can Ignition do that Wonderware can't do", and the answer is, technically, nothing, except that it can do all the same things easier. Well, "easier", if you are willing to learn Python and eliminate the system that you've already dumped 30 years of frantic upgrades and boatloads of currency into, and the America team is willing to do neither.

At first, I thought this was all reckless inefficiency. But now that I've had a day to rest, (even though I have had the opportunity to sleep-in a few times in the past year, this feels like the first in several years; but I'll try to spare you much more of my self-pity), I realize that I'm being treated as a Project Manager, and I haven't been keeping a good attitude about it.

I did the same thing with emails to my project manager. He asked me to keep him apprised of all my projects and to CC him in emails.  Project managers are expected to be content while inundated with large quantities of meaningless information about their projects, picking out the meaningful parts, which makeup a large enough quantity of information as it is -- to sort through technical data and discern meaningful progress. This is the task I have to set my mind to.

The morning meeting serves exactly the purposes I mentioned above; it makes me mutually familiar with the people in the factory. It exposes me to product information, and makes me aware of (mostly inconsequential) problems with production. Most importantly, they talk about things I occasionally miss in emails. Attending the morning meeting is an obligation because my boss says it is, and it's my job to squeeze every last drop of value out of that meeting.

The nuisance calls I get from production are like a reflection in water, refracting and showing me the very same errors, oversights, and incompleteness in our documentation, interface design, and operator work instructions. It is a primary function of mine to analyze these issues and conquer them; to get our documentation up-to-speed.

As far as I can tell, the unioneer's terrible attitude is a function of their feelings about their position (it doesn't matter whether they think it's a superior or inferior position, and the way inferiority complexes work it would be impossible to tell anyway). I have to become one of them -- not by joining the union, but by making myself a member of their class of individuals (I'm not a marxist; give me a break when I use the word "class"). I should involve myself in their work and lighten their burdens, while making my own effort imminently apparent to them. If I can earn their respect and rise above their struggle (I won't bother trying to convince them that it is the struggle common to all mankind), then I can make them useful to me, and drive this factory toward perfection.

Wonderware is the software I'm stuck with. I'm going to take my time on this one. Hopefully there will be some reprieve when the immediately planned server updates local to my factory are complete. While I wait, I'll become competent in what's needed to get by, maintaining a steady increase in competency while I accomplish other goals. And when the moment is right, I'll master it.

God has always been good to me.

"My lot has fallen in pleasant places."

 Today I wanna respond to some statements from TGC concerning religious exemptions to vaccination. But first, I want to thank TGC for referring me to the Ezekiel Declaration, concerning which, while I do agree with TGC that the name is a little dramatic, and that the data concerning lockdowns was off-topic, I flatly disagree with TGC's other remarks on the matter. The Ezekiel Declaration didn't seem confrontational to me at all, and I think TGC's authors might just have been a little triggered. Also, it doesn't need to say anything positive about the vaccine, because we're already inundated by that kind of talk from every other direction, and the suggestion that they have some kind of obligation to garnish their anti-vaccination-mandate comments with praise for the vaccine is more than a little disturbing to me, considering the source.

Mostly I am glad to have encountered the Ezekiel Declaration because it contained a reference to this delicious section from Abram Kuyper's book, "Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto", Chapter 16, II, §203-204. This is from the year 1880.

"And if the government does not wish to stiffen this resistance but cause it to diminish, then as a servant of God it should demonstrate in such critical days that it has a heart. Then it should not, like a violent accomplice of unbelieving science, turn against the nation's religious beliefs that only intensify in times of epidemics. Rather, when God's judgments break out the government ought to share in the spirit of awe that stirs the souls before the majesty of God. Rather than prohibiting prayer services it should itself proclaim a day of prayer. In this way its solemn decisions and actions will underscore the impression that as a government it is powerless to ward off the plague that its visiting the nation and that it knows no better refuge for deliverance than to humble itself before almighty God.

"For this reason alone, compulsory cowpox vaccination should be out of the question. Our physicians may be mistaken and government may never stamp a particular medical opinion as orthodox and therefore binding. Moreover, compulsion can never be justified until the illness manifests itself and may therefore never be prescribed as a preventative. A third reason is that government should keep its hands off our bodies. Fourthly, government must respect conscientious objections. In the fifth place, it is one or the other: either it does not itself believe in the vaccination, or if it does, it will do redundant work by proceeding to protect once more those already safeguarded against an evil that will no longer have a hold on them anyway.

"Vaccination certificates will therefore have to go—and will be gone at least from our free schools. The form of tyranny hidden in these vaccination certificates is just as real a threat to the nation's spiritual resources as a small pox epidemic itself."

Fascinating to see that vaccine passports are not a new idea, and were previously proposed in response to a disease (more harmful than COVID?). Mandatory vaccinations and vaccine passports were rejected back then, in the 1800s, when technology was more than 100 years removed from its current state, and they were basically successful in eradicating cowpox! How silly of us to think that we're now better off restricting our freedoms, more than they did, if (and because!) our ability to fight infectious diseases is so much more potent than theirs was. How absolutely stupid of us.

Here's the music I'm listening to rn:

Now let's get into the objections from the various TGC articles. Here are the articles themselves. I'm just going to paraphrase and list the objections in no particular order, without saying which article they come from, because I'm lazy. You can read these yourself.

• https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-faqs-fetal-cells-covid-19-vaccines-treatments/
• https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/covid-vaccination-and-the-church/
• https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-we-cant-sign-two-evangelical-ministers-respond-to-the-ezekiel-declaration/
• https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/your-vaccine-exemption/

1. Aborted fetal cell lines are used in all kinds of other drugs and medical services. If you're going to reject the vaccine on these grounds, then you also have to reject Tylenol, Claritin, and some anti-aging skin creams.

OK, yeah, this is an easy one. If other drugs (claritin, tylenol, etc) were also developed using unethically sourced immortalized fetal cells, then I'm opposed to it. I don't want to receive those medications or services either, and perhaps I have some homework to do. If I find out about other brands involved in the same practice, I'll stop using them, too.

[eta]After I wrote the above paragraph, I was told by a friend that several companies have the following strategy to handle requests for religious exemption on these grounds: They will show the employee a long list of products (reportedly over a hundred commonly used products, including some popular brand names such as Pepsi and Nestle) and say that these products and brands are all affected by research involving fetal cell lines, and then tell the employee that he must sign a paper promising never to use these products or else he will not get an exemption. 

A Christian hearing about this test might find himself feeling indignant, and yet at face value, might be tempted to say that this is a fair test of the employee's resolve. It seems that if he refuses to sign, then his religious convictions are not stronger than his desire for comfort, and so they are not strong enough to warrant a religious exemption to company policy (and what a demeaning prospect, to once assert a real religious concern and then find yourself doubling back on threat of losing Pepsi products). But a careful thinker will find that the Christian's initial feeling of indignance was entirely warranted; not simply by the insult this test makes to his sincerity, but also because the test itself is poor, unreasonable, threatening, and underhanded, if not outright dishonest. I'll explain.

First, if I am not getting the vaccine, then it is apparent that I hesitated during the time between the release of the vaccine and the popularization of the information concerning aborted fetal lines. If I hesitated, it is because I prefer to do my own research, rather than trust the CDC. If I do not trust the CDC, then why would I trust without question a list of hundreds of common products which are offered to me as a threat to my religious convictions? 

Second,  since some of the line items are companies and brands, and those brands are not always labeled plainly on the product, but sometimes "Nestle" and "Pepsi" can only be found in the small print on the side, it is not always obvious whether an item on the shelf falls into the category that should be avoided. I am sincerely unaware of how many Pepsi products I use on a day-to-day basis. Keep this in mind for the proceeding sections below.

Third, there's a difference between ethically sourced and unethically sourced fetal cells. As far as I know (and I haven't seen the list, but only heard about it), it does not differentiate between the two. Unethically sourced fetal cells come from elective abortions. Ethically sourced fetal tissue would come (for example) from a child who died of natural or unavoidable causes, and whose parents chose to donate the cells for research

Now sure, I would gladly take the list home and study the products, but this kind of research takes a lot of time (especially now that popular search platforms are filtering out websites which present data contrary to the left-wing narrative which is both pro-vaccine and pro-abortion), and so a man can't be expected to discover the means of research and development for over a hundred consumer products in any short period without compromising other responsibilities either inside or outside of work. Will the employer allow this employee a month or more of work-hours in the office to sift through research articles concerning each and every product listed, and become an expert in the role of fetal tissue in their development? Not likely.

So, even if a Christian person conducts research with more than reasonable thoroughness, (considering this is an extremely broad study), and if he signed the paper, and then gets caught by a coworker, unwittingly using a Nestle product which was made with unethically sourced fetal matter, because he didn't read the small print on the side where the "Nestle" label was printed, or he hadn't yet researched that particular product, or he mistakenly understood it to have been produced or researched using ethically sourced fetal tissue, or the product was somehow necessary for his wellbeing and he hadn't yet found an alternative, then what will happen to the signor? Will he be fired and lose his livelihood? Will he be subject to some kind of legal pursuit? Is that document binding even if he quits that job and finds another later? Who is policing this, and why is it any of their business, when this is a matter of religious conscience? Do the drafters of this document expect to gain contractual authority over the consistency of religious observance by their employees?

The paper (as it's been described to me) is overwhelming by design, and as such it presents an unreasonable burden of proof, with no time to discern it. It's a poor metric for resolve, because no person can actually meet its demands. This whole matter of aborted tissue in products has only just recently come into public view, and we haven't had time to figure it all out and draw out distinctions between products (like we have with GMO/Non-GMO etc). Yeah, I intend to switch over entirely to products which were developed without fetal tissue, or only with ethically sourced fetal tissue, but that's gonna take a lot of time, and this test, at this time, is what I'd call underhanded and dishonest.

2. The people who gathered the fetal cells didn't have anything to do with performing the abortion, and did not cooperate (they cooperated materially, not formally) in the abortion process. They're just disinterested parties who took the cells afterward intending to do some good with them. It's like if a doctor were to transplant a kidney from a murder victim into a Christian patient -- we wouldn't have any objection.

Here's the thing: it's not like if a doctor were to transplant a kidney from a murder victim. Because in the case of a murder victim, the murderer is going to get the death penalty, and the doctors all agree that the murderer deserves it. Police are out hunting for the murderer, or he's facing trial. Justice is being done for the victim.

It's more like if a doctor were to transplant a kidney from a murder victim while nobody cared that he was murdered, and everyone thought it was a good thing that he was murdered, even though it was plainly murder and the victim had done nothing either good or bad to deserve it. And more people are being murdered in the same way all day long, even though today's victim's body parts aren't being cannibalized in this way. And, if anyone speaks out saying, "hey that's a murder victim", they get ridiculed, and if anyone goes and tries to stop the murders which are continuing to happen, they get imprisoned by the very same police who should have been stopping the murders in the first place. 

In the case of aborted fetal cells, the attitudes are, "why is this person so upset that that woman exercised her reproductive rights and I landed some good fetal tissue out of it, which I'm using to help people?" Nobody is hunting down the murderer in this case, and we're all either refusing to participate in it, and speaking and acting against it, or we're complicit in it. "I didn't have anything to do with the death of that clump of cells. It wasn't an infant human; it was more like a cancer that had potential to become a human. I just want its kidneys to make my soda taste better". Makes me literally sick to my stomach to think about this. Let's take a moment to be disgusted with ourselves.

(And, concerning the notion that it's ok because they aren't killing more kids for this, expressed during the same argument in this TGC article -- the established cell line means we don't need to murder more people: see my previous blog.)

3. Exemptions based on the Biblical notion of "personal autonomy", ("God affords me a choice concerning what I do with my Sundays" as opposed to "I am forbidden by God to work on Sundays"), are not sufficient grounds to warrant a religious exemption.

People who read my previous blog might remember that I touched on the personal autonomy argument to some degree. You'll notice, however, that my objection wasn't simply that my religion requires me to have a choice in this matter. My objection (as I stated it) was that tyranny has no place in God's law. That's a similar statement, and it's reasonably unclear how this addresses the above issue. Let me expand on it.

God's law is a mixture of positive and negative law (thou shalt, and thou shalt not). Negative law includes a basic list of every kind of crime. The positive law includes: moral rules for what we should do to love our neighbors generally, civil rules defining specific government offices and their functions, and ceremonial rules describing the means by which we maintain our relationship with God. Among the positive laws in scripture, only the civil laws (which define civil offices) warrant any civil penalty. And, the particular group of people tasked with carrying out that penalty consists of "the people" (citizens). 

The rule I'm referring to, generally, is that the people should select individuals to function in government according to the offices found in scripture; and that when those elected officials stop paying attention to God's law, they are no longer acting in accordance with their elected office, and so they should no longer be allowed to retain their title; our fear of them and our recognition of their authority should cease, and we should select new individuals to take their place, who will maintain God's law as described in scripture. This rule is balanced against another command, which is that we should keep the peace, and the qualification that it is sometimes better to endure a little bit of injustice for the sake of conscience. Generally, the Bible teaches us that when we are suffering injustice "for the sake of Christ", (i.e. when we are attacked explicitly "for being Christian", which would make us martyrs), we do better if we endure it. In addition, if our conscience can tolerate a certain injustice, then it is ok for us to tolerate it (e.g. having our earnings stolen from us by taxation on a regular basis).

Well, in this case, if the American Government demands or enforces that I should get a vaccine, then it is not just causing me to endure injustice, but causing me to perform injustice, by doling out a positive law of its own, when it requires that I (a person holding the office of "citizen") act in a way inconsistent with my role, by demanding that I perform an action which violates my conscience: get the injection. This is intolerable to my conscience, and so, as a member of "the people", I am confronted with a responsibility to carry out the civil penalty I mentioned above: my recognition of the authorities perpetrating this injustice should cease, and I should elect new people to take their place. What my position resolves to in practice is this: I would rather work to divide America than submit to a mandatory COVID injection.

Now, I'm not unwilling to change my mind, if I'm given a reasonable argument, which is compelling to me, on the matter. If I encounter a good argument later, then after thinking it through I'll go ahead and get the jab and post here about it. No problem! But no such argument has been offered to me yet, and the situation doesn't seem hopeful. Maybe if the government had taken their time, developed the vaccine with ethically sourced immortalized fetal cells, developed it properly and without rushing trials, and if the government had not tried to force it on everyone in so much of a hurry that the data couldn't be completely and clearly understood, or maybe if the government didn't frequently lie by saying the vaccine was X or Y before they had sufficient data to make those statements (remember how "safe and effective" the AstraZeneca vaccine was before it was actually deployed? The change occurred because the deployment was the test, which is a whole other issue: I'm charged by God to do my best to protect my family, and so as much as it depends on me, I can't allow my young children to participate in this kind of broad public experiment), then this wouldn't be such an issue for me. But the CDC, the WHO, the government, and the vaccine manufacturers messed up, and at the moment I'm unwilling to comply. 

Let me make myself clear: I'm not against all vaccines (I get vaccines sometimes!). I'm not even necessarily against MRNA vaccines (although I want more time and research. I'm gonna wait at least a decade, like until 2029 or later, before I say "the science is settled".). I'm against abortion, and I'm against government overreach.

"

“Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord;
“I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
The words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times.

You, O Lord, will keep them;
you will guard us from this generation forever.
On every side the wicked prowl,
as vileness is exalted among the children of man.

"