I've been having the most wonderful conversation with an atheist on YouTube! He's very intelligent, and patient, and willing to converse. It's refreshing to have this kind of dialogue with someone who disagrees with me. I feel sharpened by it.

If the conversation comes to a close in the near future, then I might just copy and paste the whole thing here (with my conversation partner's permission). I will have so much to write about!

I am tempted to go through and rewrite several of my posts, to include the new thoughts I'm having, but I want to remind my reader that this blog is a tool I use to clarify my thoughts and opinions, so my past posts are not always a good reflection of my current thoughts (sometimes very much so). As a rule, I do not go back and change old posts after they've left the front-page. Only on very rare occasions do I modify the post which is one or two posts behind the front.

Thanks, God, for blessing me with this way -- it's been a long time since I've had a good challenging conversation like this. The results of the conversation, God, belong to you.

OH! ETA: I don't know if I mentioned this on my blog or not. Me and Chowon have been engaged for over a year, and we hope to get married quickly when she gets her Visa. Also, my sister just had a baby girl, Eloise, and my brother is going to have his third child (his first son), soon. Exciting times!

"If all the world's a stage, then it's not mine."

I wrote this poem today. My usual poetry site is down for the count atm, so I'm posting it here. I might want to change it later.... but I wanted to get it out, because it's what's on my mind right now.

The verbage might seem a bit premature. Chowon is neither my wife, nor pregnant, but she is teaching me what the Bible means when it compares God's love for the church to a man's love for his wife. By loving me and accepting my love, she is teaching me what it means for God to love us. The poem takes a bit from my understanding of a God-centered relationship. I imagined myself married when I wrote it.


We are so small
but when I look at you
I see beauty supreme

You have taught me the meaning
of the love of my Father
You are my only wife

Lift up your head
so that the world
can spit on your face

I hear them tell me
that evangelism is wrong
but infanticide is a right

Forgiveness
is available for everyone
and so is murder

If I didn't know better
if I didn't have a creator
I would not value life

Lord God in Heaven
Against you only
have we sinned

Teach us righteousness
Give me boldness
Keep my way straight


The poem has four parts (2 stanzas each). The first part briefly describes my love for Chowon, (the "beauty" mentioned in the first stanza is intended to be more than skin-deep), and the way it teaches me about God. The second part contrasts love with the *absurd* and dark ends whereto people go when they lack a moral foundation, putting our small island of beauty into the context of an ugly world. The third part is intended to convey my hopeless feeling when I hear about people throwing away the lives of their children. The fifth stanza points out the difference between God's governance and man's governance. God offers love to everyone from all walks of life, and America offers abortions (death symbolically and literally) to everyone from all walks of life. The fourth part is a prayer, intended to bring the theme back into focus; The 7th stanza is from Psalm 51:4. Our prayers for guidance are a reflection of our commitment to God, and are like sweet affirmations in the ear of our beloved savior, who is husband to the church.

"We try to live forgiven, but they won't let us forget the bodies we're still in; the bodies that we still war against."

OK, so I've been thinking more about my previous post, and the list before it.

Here is my latest issue with my list of arguments:
I said, "Why does the Logos have to have been active?" and then said, "because if he weren't active, he wouldn't be able to reveal himself in any way except for the way that the rock reveals itself".

I stand by that, but I think it's not enough, because I already granted that the Logos is revealed to everyone in a way that supersedes our ability to observe it.

I'm not changing the reason, I'm adding to it:
The Logos must have actively revealed itself to us, because if it was passively revealed to us, then it would be indistinguishable from a value, and values are, by definition, subjective. Many people have differing values which are incompatible and yet completely well-intentioned. For example: Pro Choice vs. Pro Life.

So, having said that, I'm going to digress into talking about Pro Choice: I will acknowledge that not all Pro Choicers are well intentioned, but I'm convinced that at least some of them are -- the ones who haven't thought very carefully about it. I might sound prideful saying that, but so did John when he accused Herod of sin. It's not prideful to point out that someone is in sin.

If someone is in sin, but they are well-intentioned, then it means they don't understand what they are doing. If they understood the implications of their sin, then they would stop sinning, repent, and do right.

Here's the thing. There are some cases where either the mom dies or the baby dies. I am not in a position to decide who should live in that case -- I don't know the answer. But Pro Choice applies not just to extreme cases like that. In fact, the vast majority of abortions are done by people who simply don't want the baby or don't think they are financially able to support it.

So how do you respond to people who can't financially support the baby? By telling them to put it up for adoption. The problem with that is, foster care and orphanages suck. CPS does not always make the right decisions, and, in fact, I've heard of several cases where they didn't make the right decision.

So how do you fix the orphanages? Tell the church to start doing it's job!
Over and over and over the Bible tells us to help and protect the orphan, the fatherless, and the widow. And yet, there are more churches in Colorado than there are orphans! What are those churches doing?! I think that churches should band together to start nonprofit orphanages, where kids are raised, loved, and taught the truths of scripture.

How did the church grow initially? Rome didn't have abortion clinics, so they threw their babies outside the city limits. Christians went out and got those babies and cared for them. One or two generations later, the church was a powerful army of rejects, devoted to caring for those less fortunate.

They were persecuted and torched by nonbelievers for refusing to ascribe deity to humans, and then they were blamed for being warmongers.

What happened that made the church so impotent in America?

I don't know for sure, but as I've been looking into this, I think it has to do with the book: The Late Great Planet Earth. This book, apparently, describes a scenario where, as the earth becomes more evil, the world comes closer to ending. i.e., "the worse the world is, the better it is for Christians". This idea is fully realized when Christians turn a blind eye to evil going on all around them. For example, simply allowing babies to get murdered by the thousands every day.

"Well, what can I do about it?" America is now a place where religion is not allowed to have a bearing on the law. This means that even if (especially if) the majority of Americans are Christian, morality is relative to each individual's desires. This is now taught in school (evolution and not creation). So we can start by not indoctrinating our kids to believe things that defy common sense (such as that we are atoms floating in a purposeless universe, and our senses are more than likely unreliable, so there can never be certainty of anything you know).

Once we've got that down: have more kids. After that: teach your kids that morality matters, and is universal. And when they say "why does it matter?" give them a reason. If you're an atheist, you won't be able to say anything but "I don't want to be harmed, and I am right because my feelings tell me so, so don't harm me even if your feelings tell you otherwise." Their argument is completely subjective, and has no way to say that the psychopath is wrong for doing what he thinks is fine.

While we're teaching our kids morality, we should be boldly having discussions with people about their worldview. Help others to understand that morality is important, and that there are reasons why it is important.

Speaking of important, I'm gonna call Chowon and remind her that I love her.

"I can't know anything, except that you're wrong."

So today I'm having yogurt with honey for dinner. I feel like Caesar -- wealthy, Greek, and slightly malnourished.

Caesar probably ate balanced meals. I'll look it up later.

Interesting thing about that, though. At first I didn't like the texture of honey and yogurt together, because the honey would harden and not mix with the yogurt. Then I thought, "why don't I like this?" and I came up with the idea to try "just deciding to like it", and now I like it. I wonder how many of my likes and dislikes can be changed so easily.

I'm not sure how to feel about the above train of thought, though. Am I so fickle? Maybe worse, am I so spoiled? Is the root of this issue that I have not managed to know myself?

On the way home from work today, I was listening to music on my phone, and I heard a song I wasn't in the mood for, but I listened to it anyway so that I could consider the feeling of being subjected to sounds I don't want. The problem was that as soon as I came to terms with the decision to listen anyway, I lost the feeling of distaste, and the experiment was a flop. Or maybe not -- I suppose I learned something from it.

So to follow up on my post from January 11, 2014: I have been frequently considering the points I laid out on December 20. I stand by every point I made, but I think that a few of them deserve clarification. I'll start with the most codependent point with which I took issue, and then work backwards to the more foundational one.

I said that the Logos should have a reason for everything it does, therefore "want", therefore "desire", therefore "person". At a glance, this seems like a pretty weak argument. That's why I posted on Jan 11 saying that I might rethink the point. Here's the thing: in order to understand this point, you have to simultaneously consider the previous points.

Namely, the Logos should have actively revealed itself. Active implies decision making. Decision making with purpose is the same as acting on desire, isn't it? Therefore, "person".

But everything has a reason for everything it does. A dropped rock has a reason for falling. It's active decision making that gives a thing person. So, why does the Logos have to be active? Because if it is not active, then it cannot have revealed itself in any different way than a rock reveals itself, and we rely on our physical senses to accidentally observe it. It doesn't fit the rest of the points if it isn't active.

Now, as what may seem at first to be an exercise in futility, I think I should attempt to point out the meaning of "person", because every worldview has a different definition of what constitutes a person. If we are state machines, then we have no more person than a rock, which responds to its environment by falling when there is nothing under it.  We respond to our environment in more complex, but ultimately equivalent fashion.

To a Christian, person has a certain intrinsic, almost esoteric value. Christians explain it by saying "well, we're made in the image of God", but if you're trying to be "neutral" (which is impossible), then that value defines us as more than reactionary elements in the universe; as active elements with potential for truly random interaction with the world around them -- potential to for the intangible substance of our thoughts to break the laws of causality which constrain the physical brain they dwell in. (Perhaps via the influence of something supernatural, like God or our spirit.)

To an atheist, that is impossible, which is why the atheist cannot and should not pretend that his worldview supports intrinsic value in the happiness or well being of humans. That is, for an atheist to live in a way consistent with his worldview, the atheist should not pretend that he or anyone else "should" have morals. In the Atheist worldview we are just complicated rocks, and our children smash less complicated rocks with pleasure. Since our brains are defined by the laws of causality, our "thoughts" don't exist as anything more than impulse responses to our environment -- energy moving from higher density to lower density.

Which is right? Well, for an atheist, it doesn't matter what's right. It leads me to another way to justify the existence of God (or the Logos, if you would prefer me to continue under pretense at this point). Since, I suppose, value exists, so must also God exist. If you presuppose that anything has value, or that anything "should" be any way, then it is necessary that an ultimate justification exists to support your claim.

"rock"

This song is on my mind right now

Mama Cass -- what a babe.

Right now my job has me up a tree. I have some really good excuses for the problems I've experienced, but my only option is taking responsibility despite them... which is frustrating and humbling, but not insurmountable.

People have, my entire life, accused me of having my head in the clouds. I think it would be ok for me to be that way as long as I didn't have to interact with customers. I suppose I have to learn some social skills. Right now my primary means of relating to people is to dig for the foundation of their worldview and try to let them do most of the talking.

I feel like even if I understand something well, it is just the part of it which I understand least that the customer is interested in. Maybe it's because the project is unfinished.

I have learned quite a bit from this job. I learned to never let other people in my code without strict supervision followed by immediate reorganizing; I learned to never let the customer try to calibrate a piece of equipment, even if he has the manual next to him (because if he messes it up, I get blamed); I learned never to leave even one commented-out part of the code unfinished in order to go work on another part; I learned that I should not trust even experienced people to work on my project without me unless they have had plenty of time for me to bring them up to speed; and maybe most of all, I learned that I should not take vacations within 2 months of a project closing.

I also noticed some areas where I need to learn more. As mentioned above, I need to work on my social skills. Specifically, I need to get used to not letting on that I don't know how to fix something. I really struggle with this, but the fact is: when a problem initially occurs, you don't know how to fix it until you figure out how to fix it. If you did, the problem wouldn't have happened or at least it wouldn't have been a problem. I've gotta learn how prioritize issues. At the beginning of the project, there were tons of issues, and I tried to tackle multiple of them at once. I also need to learn how to handle new tasks issued by the customer. The customer asks for "small things", and says, "that should be easy to put in the code, right?", and either he's wrong, or he's asked for too many "small" and "easy things". Those cases need to be change-orders, so that my hours are justified. I need to learn how to tell the difference between an easy thing and a hard thing, and I need to learn how to give non-answers to customers who ask me to do things, so that I can go to my PM first.

I've already got my next task assigned to me. It's gotta go better than this one did.

"And if you can't handle that..."

Ok. I've developed those points from my previous post a bit more since I posted them, but I feel like they still have the same basic arguments in each place. On my own, I noticed some things about these arguments that I think might need a bit of improvement. I'm working through it in my head, and I'll post more about it when I have decided that it surely needs to change, and when I have articulated that change.

I recently heard someone say that internet debates are fruitless. I can understand why they would say that, but I think I'm going to get into the world of internet debating anyway. Angry YouTube comments, here I come!

"Beyond any words, any songs, any prayer that is whispered, in this world, and the next world, and the next world, and the next world."

This post wraps up the series.

In case you're jumping into my blog for the first time here, I'm working on a sort of "series", where I have attempted to throw away my presuppositions as much as is possible for me, and I have attempted to rebuild a framework wherein I can live and approach life with a certain measure of confidence (just enough to justify me in living and acting at all). That is to say, my goal ended up clarifying itself down to this:  "to only allow myself one presupposition -- knowledge is possible". If knowledge is not possible, then I cannot build a presupposition, or any supposition for that matter.

The following are the dates of the posts which comprise this series:
May 18, 2014
June 2, 2014
June 4, 2014
June 10, 2014
June 11, 2014
November 15, 2014
December 20, 2014

On June 10, I hit a dead-end, which I spent a lot of time thinking about and attempting to recover from. A few times I thought I had an answer, but I didn't want to put it down until I had something I could be sure of. I, in my pride, clumsily attempted to recover from it in my post on June 11, but really I wasn't sure how to proceed.  Here I confess that pride to my few readers and apologize for putting up a false confidence.

Now, I can boldly and confidently deliver an answer to you, because I have found the answer. Instead of asserting a point of view, I have attempted to deduce a set of requirements which must be met by any point of view, and then attempted to build a viable point of view with them as a foundation.

So, last time I wrote here, I think I established a need for a Logos. The idea was, "Either there's a Logos, or we can't be sure of anything we know"; and by consequence, "If we can't be sure of anything we know, then we don't know anything. Nothing is certain. There is no truth." That is, within the framework established by my previous posts, we have this Logos. The Logos exists, but we haven't established our ability to know anything yet, necessarily. At the end of my last post, we're similar to agnostic.

At this point, when I say "truth" and "Logos", I am referring to the truth that we've been searching for in all the past posts in the series. Therefore, in the posts following this one, I might make statements that seem circular, such as when answering the question, "How do we know that the Logos exists?", my answer will encompass the lengthy explanations I've already given, so that I don't have to repeat it all. The answer might be: "The Logos exists because the truth exists, and the truth exists because the Logos exists.". This statement seems fallaciously circular if you haven't read my previous posts.

OK OK Here we go -- the meat of the post starts here:

I want to see what we can discover about this Logos simply by deduction (based on the presupposition that "knowledge is possible", or "knowledge of truth is possible"), and by fitting it into the framework that we've established is necessary for the existence of truth and reliability of observation. So, remember: The reason a Logos is necessary is because without it we can't have absolute truth; and nothing can be known. That means that by taking on this endeavor, we've already established that we are not accepting religions wherein there is no Logos, or the Logos is potentially unknowable, such as Atheism, Agnosticism, Buddhism and Gnosticism.

We know that the Logos must be internally consistent, or else it is not a good foundation on which to build truth, and it does not fulfill the purpose for which we've established it is necessary for Logos to exist. That rules out every religion wherein a deity has either lied or been inconsistent; this includes most of the religions established in Europe and Asia, including the Roman and Greek gods.

The Logos must govern everything, and be consistent with everything. If it doesn't govern and consist with everything, then that thing which is not governed by it is unknowable, and we do not know what is governed and what is not governed by it, so it does not fulfill the requirements of the purpose for which we've established that it is needed. This rules out all religions wherein the deity is impotent, including Hindu, Norse, and Sumerian gods.

We know that the Logos must be observable, but it can't be the physical world and universe, nor can it be completely described as a part of the physical world and universe. We have to be able to observe it because otherwise we don't know that it exists; it can't be the physical world because the physical world is the thing that limits us and establishes a need for a Logos. That rules out a large chunk of the "New Age" religions, including all of those which depend on humanism.

The Logos must have revealed itself to everyone, or else we don't know if it has revealed itself to us or not. The Logos must have revealed itself to us in a way that supersedes our ability to observe its revelation; because otherwise we are again ultimately relying on our ability to observe, and therefore the Logos has not revealed anything to us at all, and we cannot rely on it. This means that everyone equally knows about this Logos, and nobody has an excuse to not know it.

The Logos must have actively revealed itself to us -- not passively. Or else we do not know when a thing we have discovered is the Logos, and when it is not the Logos. This means that the Logos has a will, and therefore has intentions. This rules out every religion wherein the Logos does not have a will of its own, including naturalism, much of the remaining "New Age" religions, Wicca, and most branches of "witchcraft".

The will and self-imposed purpose of the Logos must be self-consistent. This means that there is only one will, or at least that if there are multiple wills then they are all 100% subservient to the one will, and therefore there is only one Logos. This rules out polytheism, including tritheism, but not necessarily trinitarianism.

The revelations of the Logos must be consistent with one another, and it can never have lied to us. It also can never have changed its mind without fulfilling the requirements of its previous intention. Furthermore, the immaterial revelations of the Logos must be available to everyone, in all history, unceasingly. That rules out Mormonism, Jehova's Witnesses, and any branch of Christianity wherein there was a "prophet" whose prophesy was false or disagreed with another prophet's prophesy, or wherein there is supposed to have been an apostasy, or else there's ultimately no way for us to know that we are not still apostate, because for many centuries people have experienced the influence and revelations of a Logos in their lives.

The Logos must have a reason for everything it does. If the Logos ever acts without reason, then its revelations are inconsistent. Since we've established that it must have revealed itself, then that means that it must have had a reason for revealing itself. That means that the Logos "wanted", for some reason, to be revealed to us, which means that it desires to be known by us. Since the Logos has desires, it means that it has a character. The above requirements collectively rule out an "impersonal God".

Since the Logos must have revealed itself, for the reasons above, it is very likely that at least one of the major religions has it right. However, if more than one of the major religions has it right, then they must be so consistent with one another that it is extremely unlikely that two such religions exist.


The above list is not "complete" or "comprehensive". It is, I think, the logical conclusion to a world where we presuppose that knowledge is possible. Without the above, there can be no science. Unless all of the above requirements are met, we have no foundation for our knowledge, and therefore can not be confident in knowing anything, and therefore we have no absolute truth, and therefore as far as we are concerned there is no truth, and can we know nothing.

Is there any religion which meets the above requirements? I am only aware of one.

"Let me put you on hold for just a quick second."