/*Commentary from July 2026

The Mormon calling me prideful for not wanting to become a god is still an interesting piece of irony, but I'm less amused by it than I was back then. Nowadays, I'm horrified by it. Back in those days, I laughed and mocked unbelievers; nowadays thinking about what they're doing to themselves (what we're all doing to ourselves) makes me sick with grief. This more "serious" attitude toward the issue briefly flared up once or twice even back then, but it is meditation on God's law which has caused me to realize the seriousness of our situation and the massive gap between our inured state of "comfortable oppression" and a truly freeing law. I remember one time, I was debating two young Mormon men online, and I began to love them, and the realization of their destination overwhelmed me, and I panicked, and my tone shifted from casual debate to a more earnest and urgent gospel presentation. They were put off by it and stopped responding -- which makes perfect sense, because I'm ridiculous.

*/

Feeling much better today than yesterday. I still think I could use a bit more sleep, but I've been able to make solid plans and execute them thoughtfully today.

Also, I've been listening to this song repeatedly lately. Not a fan of the squeaky swing-set they sampled, but the lyrics are awesome, and the baseline actually sounds great in my car speakers. I especially appreciate how they aren't too obvious in their references, so it sounds like a bunch of random stuff put together unless you know the story they're referencing... but if you know what they're talking about then it all comes together. It's got maybe an overly simple hook, as far as music goes, but I think that's perfect for the theme.

Tomorrow is shaping up to be especially busy. I hope I'm able to handle it all. If possible, I want to knock out all of this week's known objectives in one day, so I can focus on catching unexpected stuff and followups for the rest of the week.

I don't have much time to blog tonight, so I want to talk about a conversation I had online with a Mormon recently, because he said something to me that made me laugh out loud while I was reading it. We were talking about whether or not a person could become a god. The conversation followed typical progression: I cited Isaiah chapters 40-50, where God says in like 20 different places, "I am the only God who exists, and there is no other god". He responded saying that "no other god" means "no other god for you". I explained how, semantically, the "for you" clause is important, and the sentence with or without it would have two very different meanings, and then I pointed out that the verses do not have that clause. Here's the thesis from his next response:

"Why kick against the pricks. Do you envy our enternal progression?  Is pride keeping you from the Church. Is pride keeping you from kneeling and asking that one true God if you can become like him?"[sic - pasted]

I've never been so amused and offended at the same time. I explained to him how the Bible gives us knowledge of God and then warns us not to accept "gods you have not known". Then I explained to him that his god is one I don't know, because his god hasn't existed for all eternity, but ascended from being a man to being a god. His god only has power over this planet, and is by no means unique. His god is incapable of generating universes ex nihilo. His god depends on actual procreation with spirit wives to generate children. His god doesn't come down and tabernacle among us and die on our behalf, but rather just lets one of us die on behalf of the rest. My God is actually eternal, having literally all power, having created literally everything and everyone by the word of his mouth, met with us on our level so that we could know him, and gave his own life for me and then brought himself back to life.

I also explained why I'm not jealous for his eternal progression. It's because (as illustrated above) my God is bigger and more powerful than his. My God is not the God of people who seek to do good only for their own gain/ascension; my God is the God of people who seek to do good because they love God and neighbor.

Ahhh... My God is the best.

"Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God"

/*Commentary July 2026

This post is obviously about me being burnt out. There are some hints in here about the kind of stuff that was troubling me -- the finances not adding up, hours and hours on the phone with contractors, warrantee people, insurance, etc., stress on the marriage, lack of sleep, and so on. 

Reflecting on this highlights what might be a personal flaw in me -- that is, when I used to get stressed, I would turtle up. I didn't want to be around anyone. I don't know if I'm the same today or not; I think I like being near my family instead. 

Blogging has always been an effective way for me to blow off steam, and I can see a progression in the post, from total incapacity, to a recognition that I don't want to do the things I usually like to do, and then finally a decision to follow through with doing something I like. I still carry around a pocket notebook.

For all the lack of time and burnout, maybe it's surprising to read me planning to watch Star Trek and drink milk. This post was me planning an evening, after business hours, preparing to sleep on a cot in my office. Winding down with a ritual was very important to me back then; it's a luxury to me now, but if I get stressed enough, even if I am very tired, then I can still (albeit rarely) be found prioritizing some kind of solitary relaxation ritual (e.g. a midnight glass of milk and an episode of Star Trek) over immediate sleep.

*/

I tried to take some time today to process and prepare myself mentally for the time I've just begun to spend alone.

I feel bound up. It's like all the stuff I want and all the stuff I don't want are the same things. I spent the better part of the day frozen; my head feels like it's full of hot pudding. I got a half-hour of sleep here, a half-hour there. I hoped to catch-up today, but I definitely am not caught up on sleep yet. I guess I will need a couple of days before I feel totally prepared to do the work that needs to be done. In the meantime, I'm stuck doing that work in spite of myself.

I managed to get just a few things done today, but doing anything at all right now feels like I'm trying to knit while wearing boxing gloves. I just can't seem to acknowledge any details about what I'm doing; I only seem able to push the result and nothing else.

I think that after I've had some sleep, and spent some time recovering mentally from the emotional whirlwind that was the past two weeks, I guess I'll be able to accomplish anything. I just need a break. Just a few hours to clear my thoughts without being attacked.

I'm hoping that writing this post will help me to progress through this weird mental funk I seem to have stepped into.

Chowon has been trying to pull strings to get me a more comfortable long-term place to stay. I might have to concede to one of these places... but I don't want to, and I can't seem to articulate the reason in a way that satisfies me. I don't want to stay in a house with a married couple. I don't want to sleep on somebody's couch (I'd be more receptive to their floor). I want to be alone.

I feel extremely narrow; I can't seem to step outside of myself. I have some kind of mental tunnel-vision. For example, I've spent several years building a habit to force myself to imagine that the lives of all people around me are just as complex as mine, and normally these days I can do it without much conscious effort, but right now everything around me is a cardboard cutout, and every person lacks identity -- even the people I theoretically know. How can I go to church like this?

My plan for this evening was to pay bills, fold laundry, and watch a show (I'm still working through DS9). I paid the bills, but the numbers were confusing, and I had to add another action item to my list to call them during business hours and ask them to explain it. Speaking of which, I also need to call the people working on my house and get their explanations. I can't bring myself to start my show -- it just doesn't fit my mood, I guess. I can't think of anything that does fit my mood.... except maybe a glass of milk.

I think I'm going to buy a pocket notebook to keep my thoughts and to-do list in, just like when I was in school. TBH Idk why I stopped doing that. Unfortunately, I don't have my own space, so I can't post notes all around me like I did when I was single. For example, I didn't zip up my pants today, and I'm pretty sure I was wearing my shirt backwards -- I used to have a note for that kind of thing on the wall above my computer. Chowon didn't like the notes, but seems to enjoy reminding me of everything herself. I wouldn't mind it if she didn't use it against me when it was convenient for her. Maybe this is a good opportunity to discard that crutch in favor of a better or more self-sufficient habit.

I miss Chowon and the baby, but I'm glad I have this space to regroup.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm really in the mood for a glass of milk. I'm going to go buy milk and a cheap pocket notebook, and then fold laundry and watch my show.

"It seems like you found a better way."

/*

Commentary from July 2026

Confession, guys... I really like Homestuck. IDK about Homestuck 2; Vriska's "Redemption arc" is intentionally cliche? Idk if it's the kind of irony that's funny even while it's unclear whether they're serious or not. I do occasionally catch up on it, though. Like once a year I'll get the bug and go catch all the way up, then lose patience waiting for an update and forget about it.

The identity crisis I described in this post was exacerbated by my situation, but I've always been prone to identity crises. The coping method I describe, where I press on because I don't have time for emotions, is a form of retreat and turtling which is also characteristic of me. Remembering this time makes me feel some shame. I wasn't really doing very well at that time.

*/

I let myself give-in to some nostalgia this morning, watching this video:

It's time to talk a little about the situation we're in. We closed on a nice looking house. The plumbing failed, and the foundation has to be dug up to fix it. It's expensive and it's taking a lot of time. I don't want to get into the details here. This post is just to talk about how we're surviving in the meantime.

We told our pastor that we needed a place to stay for a week, and we lived there for more than a month. Our insurance got us a hotel for two weeks; it's not going to last the full duration of the repairs. I had to fight to get it to last until Chowon flies out of town. I'm sending Chowon and the baby to live with my family while I ride out the house situation. It looks like it might be another month, or maybe more before we have our own place again. I don't want to live in a house with a married couple if I can help it (i.e. my pastor's family) -- I wouldn't want to accidentally find myself alone in the house with somebody else's wife. I trust them and everything, but it's just not gentlemanly. So I asked a friend if I could move in with him, and he said no, because I need a room indefinitely for free, and he said it's not a smart idea for him. That leaves me with just a few options, and they're all fantastic adventures.

The stress has been bad for everyone. I think that Chowon and I have kept our relationship on good terms somehow, but I know that bitterness is looking for a foothold there. We both regularly make mistakes, and the stress has amplified our negativity. She doesn't handle unexpected events as well as I do. She's spent a considerable amount of energy rationalizing about who is to blame for our trouble; I haven't, so I worry that if she turns the blame cannon towards me then I won't have a good response, and I won't have the time I need to untangle things and actually demonstrate how both of us, or someone else, or everyone at once, or at least not just me, equally shares blame. Maybe we can pin all the blame on just one person, but what is there to gain from that kind of thinking? All that just increases everyone's stress without contributing to a solution. I don't like lawsuits; I don't like the law; I don't like insurance; I don't like money; I don't like blame.  Why can't everything be simple? Why don't people act with kindness and integrity?

I think that as long as we stay committed to God, and remember that our relationship can survive in spite of the stress and arguments, things will be ok. I still have my job. We can recover financially. Reconciliation is sometimes a draining process, and I don't know how prepared I am to pursue it in the short term if things get sour; we may need to have some long conversations when all this is over.

I'm sincerely excited for Chowon and the baby's trip to visit my family. It will be a good change of scenery for her; there are plenty of babysitters, my family loves her, and this will hopefully open up some other options for me to find places to stay while I ride out the process. The hard thing on my mind right now is what to do with the house long-term, how long to allow myself to be separated from Chowon, and what to do if I decide it's been too long but the house situation isn't completed yet.

I still have my job, but I don't feel like a provider. Chowon is safe, but I don't feel like a protector. Chowon is going away, so I don't think I'll be functioning as comforter. It's apparent that I didn't lead my family in a beneficial direction. In a sense, I feel like all my functions as husband are removed from me.  All my money: gone. All my work: an expensive lesson. Sometimes I feel my mind going to a troubling place where I'm not intrinsically dissociated from all of my hopes, desires, possessions and faculties. I take a deep breath, preparing to let my emotions out on exhale, but nothing comes out; only hot dry breath. I don't have time to let myself feel it. I'll process all of this when I have peace, if peace ever comes to me while I am in this body.

What is my identity apart from the roles that God has placed me in? How do I describe "who I am" without describing what I have and do? The sound of a name isn't enough to describe what a person is; I'm something other than a sound, but I seem to have forgotten what.

A recurring theme in our conversations during this process has been the story of Jonah.

Jonah and Paul both had shipwrecks (Jonah's ship wasn't wrecked, I guess; he was just thrown overboard during a storm). Jonah's storm came while he was fleeing from God's will. Paul's storm came while he was pursuing God's will. God planned and executed things out so that both of them did their work for God's glory. After the fact, Jonah said "I'm so angry I wish I were dead.", and Paul said, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.".

God sends rain on both, the righteous and the unrighteous. Whether we live or die, we belong to God.

When Jonah was wallowing in his anger, God sent a leafy plant to give him shade, and Jonah was comforted. Then, the very next day, God sent a worm to destroy the plant, and Jonah was miserable again. Wealth and worldly possessions - physical comforts - can be given and taken away in an instant. Our comfort, our joy, and our contentment can't come from our physical circumstances.

What was the secret of your contentment, Paul?

"I can do all this through him who gives me strength."

/*

Commentary from 2026

This unpleasant buying experience marks the beginning of hard times between 2019 and 2021. We owned this house for something like 2 years and only got to live in it for a short time, and insurance didn't cover our alternative living expenses, so we moved from house to house, staying for free where we could, and for some time I snuck into my office at night to sleep there. During that time our finances were basically flatlined. It really felt like a disaster. 

My complaints about the home buying process are largely the same now as before, but my understanding of biblical land laws has been refined a bit. I won't get into it now, because I need to do some more research, and I haven't reached that "topic" in my progress on my book project yet.

When I accidentally unpublished these posts and decided to comment on them before reposting, I didn't make the connection that they span the period of my past housing woes. Just thinking about it makes me stressed. Nonetheless. it may be interesting (or even beneficial for me) to revisit the emotions I was having at that time. 

*/

I've been sitting on this blog for a few weeks. I guess it's fine to post it now. I didn't want to upset the murky waters of unethical business practices that I've been wading through for the past few months. I just want to establish myself in my new house and let the dust settle around me. I'm in it now, so things written below in the present tense were actually written some time ago. In short, our realtor and the seller's realtor collaborated to put us into a position where we had to use a certain lender, and that lender frequently made "mistakes" on our loan estimates, in favor of the lender and realtors. If it weren't for Chowon's tedious attention to detail, we'd be suckers. If I didn't have so many other issues to attend to, I might consider getting a consultation with a lawyer. The rest of the rant is about various superfluous and wasteful details of the buying process.

We're buying a house, and I'm convinced that the real-estate system is broken. To advertise that you wish to sell a house, you put it on MLS. In order to buy a house on MLS, you have to engage with a realtor. Realtors have to pay for certification, "qualifying" them to look at MLS, and when you use them you have to pay them a percentage of the purchase price of your house. The law and MLS seem to have been established by realtors for the sole purpose of perpetuating the realtor profession, by limiting the options of sellers and buyers.

Also, I feel like I'm in a war of attrition with my loan officer (not telling who, but they surely weren't very fair in their way of handling things). My agent, without my consent, had a loan officer from a local lender contact the seller's agent and promise to close the deal quickly if we went with him. So the seller wrote that lender's name into a counter offer. Now, I'm stuck with this lender who never returns my calls, in spite of the grand claims to great customer service that he initially gave us when he was trying to woo us away from Wells Fargo. (We had a nice, responsive, clear-communicating, wonderful loan officer at Wells Fargo). He says he'll match Wells Fargo's interest rate, but when we get the estimate he does it by making us pay for points. Well, the closing cost still isn't that bad, so we're willing to eat the points, but the APR is way higher than Wells Fargo's for lower cost to close. We run the numbers, and the APR we calculate using his figures is way lower than what's on the quote -- what does that mean? Hidden/undisclosed fees! So we tell him we want him to match APR. He says "ok", and then sends us back a loan estimate which has no changes except that it doesn't list the APR, and has no points, but the cost of the points was moved into the "documentation fee". What kind of game is he playing? I don't get it! It's driving me crazy. I can't wait for this process to be over.

The U.S. real estate system is a racket. I hate it. Real estate agents are a non-necessary component in society; they're professional middle-men. They are not motivated for the best interest of either seller or buyer, but simply to make the deal happen so that they can get paid. To that end, they limit communication between buyer and seller by imposing themselves as the only legal channel for communication, they pressure both buyer and seller to limit due diligence and utilize unscrupulous local-lenders. Their added-value is outweighed by their uncheckable pursuit of self-interest. It's so bad, we recently yelled at our agent for telling us (for like the 100th time) that we had to try to submit our BINSR before the last day of our due diligence period in order to make the seller more comfortable, after he went on vacation for 5 days of our due diligence and there was nobody to let us into the house during that time, and every time he did let us into the house he complained about the distance he had to travel to help us. "I live like an hour away from here, guys." The only responsible thing to do is keep working at due diligence for the full ten days! What kind of seller would be uncomfortable with that? It's in black and white on the contract! In truth, the reason we went with this agent was because he lead into the deal with some talk about his experiences at church -- we thought, "he's Christian, he'll act with integrity". Christians, we've got to act in a way that matches Christ's teachings.

And what's the point of Escrow anyway? We have to pay them to let us put our money into an account, so that they can move our money into another account on our behalf. They're professional middle-men; it's a waste, a hindrance, a burden on society. Not only that, but we also have to buy insurance from them, to protect us in case they make a mistake on our title -- a mistake which may very well be in their own favor! We're paying the fox to protect the chickens.

Last gripe in this rant: we're about to start paying property taxes. If we don't pay them, the government takes our land. You know what that means? It means we don't own the land. We're just leasing it from the government. That being the case, why does purchase of land have to be put in public record? That practice is an artifact from a time when land ownership mattered, because a land owner had an immovable vested interest in the country's well-being. Nowadays, land-ownership is a financial tool and nothing more. Property taxes are theft; it's unconstitutional, not to mention un-Biblical.

Here's the system I propose: Evenly redistribute ownership of land permanently to every citizen, and allow those citizens to rent the land out to others (including businesses) at will, for contract periods not exceeding 7 years before renewal, but do not allow any permanent transfer of land-ownership. Permanent sale of land should only be allowed to freely happen inside fixed-sized ("walled") cities, which land was excluded from the redistribution. The ability to permanently sell land inside walled cities guarantees their commercial value, and so the cities can theoretically be placed anywhere at all, regardless of natural-resource availability. Land outside of a walled city is only transferable from that land's permanent owner to his or her spouse, children, or next-of-kin (in that order) by a Last Will and Testament (at time of his/her death). Let's implement that system, and all the other Biblical laws along with it.

"Over production, waiting time, transportation, motion, over processing, inventory, and defects."

/*

Commentary from 2026

Never mind applying 1984 to China. America suits it just fine. By pointing that out is cliche now, I guess. We like being a dystopian hedonistic memeocracy run by pedos and murderers who appease us by pointing at the Bible sometimes. Obviously kicking out immigrants is the solution -- it isn't like history tells us anything about blaming Jews and immigrants for our problems.

The rebuttals I make in this post against poor lay-Christian responses to Torah are even more applicable to highbrow philosophical arguments from smart Christians. In fact, the sequence of complaints and links, ending in "just for that culture", is a neat representation of the beginning stages of development for more sophisticated arguments about antinomian covenant theology and reason, both of which are sharpened by retreating from scripture, and are equipped at the highest level with well rehearsed quips in repudiation of any demands to show chapter and verse.

What a shame.

*/

Working through Brave New World now, but 1984 still serves as good food for thought. I'm going to avoid writing a post where I directly apply the whole book to the Chinese Government, because that would depress me too much. I just want to pick out a few things here and there. This passage stood out to me:

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink."

Orwell's "doublethink", now it seems more popularly called "cognitive dissonance", is relevant to us. In this post, I want to give some real-life examples of such willful contradictions that come to my mind.

I often complain about the way Atheists will assert (thus far, in my experience, without stable grounds) that Christianity defies logic and reason, but then simultaneously say that we can't have justified knowledge in a strict philosophical sense. It's silly.

Academic institutions and liberal activist organizations in the U.S. readily advocate freedom of expression, freedom to share ideas, tolerance, and respect for all ideologies. But when a Christian stands in front of them and suggest that there is only one true religion, they do not respect him; or, for that matter, when anyone with something offensive to say steps up to the podium, it's not tolerated.

Then, of course, the pro-choice movement cares a lot about adult women's bodies, but very little for the bodies of the young women they kill. The Social Justice Warriors are known for breaking laws. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Knowledge without knowledge; reason without reason; respect without respect; tolerance without tolerance; love without love; peace without peace; justice without justice; life without life; choice without choice; empathy without empathy. Everywhere I look, Demos attempts to stabilize himself by transforming into an ouroboros of contradictions.

But I actually didn't want to complain about secularism that much today. Right now, I really want to complain about Christians, who actually seem to be suffering much from the same troubles. Seeing as I've sortof unofficially decided to specialize on just a few issues (theonomy and epistemology), I'm going to focus on Christ's Kingship.

Christians say that Jesus is King, and they sing Psalms which say that God's law is good and that God's Messiah will bring His Law to the land, and they say that God is imminently just, and that God is unchanging, and that God's justice is unchanging, and that God's expressed moral standards are imminent and objectively binding on all men; they say that all scripture is God-breathed, infallible, and profitable, for equipping the man of God for every good work. No Christian will disagree when I say that we should conform our minds to the mind of Christ, rather than re-imagining scripture to manufacture a god more appealing or agreeable to our inclinations. But then they say that wherever the Psalms say "law", they just mean, "the word of God", which advocates a general and unspecific "respect for all men". And when pressed on that spurious, motivated redefinition, they eventually say that God's expressed standard of holiness and righteousness, the Old Testament Law, was unreasonably harsh; they rationalize that the OT Law must not have reflected God's original plans for man because it was impossible for man to perfectly comply; they say that God is very different in the New Testament; they say that the OT law is "all-or-nothing", quipping that if the Old Covenant were still applicable to us, then we shouldn't eat shellfish; they say that the OT statutes don't apply unless they are repeated in the NT; and whenever a law is too hard to explain, it is rationalized away by saying "it was just for that culture and time".

So, basically, God's law is simultaneously the standard for good behavior, and not applicable to considerations about what is or isn't good behavior. We should simultaneously apply Biblical standards to justice, and reject the idea that a direct implementation of God's law is presently just.

The Biblical answer is much more simple than that; the ritual laws have been fulfilled in ways which are plainly written in the text.

We still don't eat unclean food -- Jesus made all foods clean (Mark 7:19, Acts 10:15).
We still have a sacrifice -- Jesus is our sacrifice (Hebrews 10:10)
We still participate in the Passover -- Jesus is our Passover Lamb (1 Cor 5:7)
We still have a temple -- Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19)
We still have a priest -- Jesus is our high priest (Hebrews 4:14-16)
We still don't wear mixed fibers -- we clothe ourselves with Christ's Righteousness (Isaiah 61:10, Eph 4:24)
We are still circumcised -- it's a circumcision of heart (Deut 30:6, Rom 2:25-29)
We still have God's Torah -- it's being written on our hearts in the New Covenant (Exek 11:19, 36:26, Jer 31:33, 32:40, Heb 8:10)

The law is not abolished -- it's fulfilled. (Matthew 5:17)

This stuff isn't difficult. There's no clause in the Mosaic covenant that says, "if you succeed in doing this right once, then you'll never have to do it again", as if Jesus simply obeying the law was enough to remove it from us. Rather, Jesus fulfilled all the law in a more permanent and continuous way, enabling us to be free from the "curse of the law" (Gal 3:13), but still writing its statutes on our hearts so that obedience to the law is the fruit of our renewed spirit (Gal 5:22-23 -- and when you read that, ask yourself, what describes for us the specific behaviors associated with "goodness" as distinct from evil, if not God's law?).

But what about those laws that seem harsh -- like the death penalty for rape; for kidnapping; for selling, purchasing, enslaving, or otherwise possessing kidnapped individuals; for homosexual intercourse; for counter-proselytizing as an apostate; for murder; for child sacrifice; for witchcraft; for false witness to a capital crime; for adultery; for bestiality; or for just being a drunken sluggard who doesn't contribute to society? Are all those crimes really on the same level as one another (capital)?

Well.... Let's be consistent in our beliefs. Are we going to conform our ideas about right and wrong and the severity of these crimes to what God said in His word, or are we going to reinterpret scripture in a way that better fits our own scruples?

Is our goal to conform our minds to the mind of Christ? Is Jesus God? Does morality change? Does justice change? Does God change? Are morality and justice defined by their conformity with God's attributes? Is God perfectly just and moral? We can't have everything we want all at once, unless we conform our own desires to what God has said about Himself.

Finally, some of my nonexistent readers may notice that I put the pageview tracker back onto my blog. It's been gone for several years now, but I don't like the way Google tracks pageviews, so I figure it will be fun to have that back for a cross-reference. It just means my pageview count will have to embarrassingly restart at zero, and the golden-age of Psa 139 is lost to public records forever.

"Shall the thing made say of him who made it, 'he did not make me'? Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it, 'he has no understanding'?"

/*

Commentary from 2026:

I still agree with this sort of coherentist foundationalism, but these days I'm not as interested in epistemic philosophy as I used to be. It's a fun diversion and it's important to dig into it, but I'm disappointed by the way that Christian philosophers build on secular philosophical history all the time. The bottom line, really, is that God has revealed Himself to us, and this revelation was, as to its mode and content, sufficient to resolve the big epistemic question.

Skeptics don't actually exist, but only put up a pretense of skepticism whenever confronted with things they don't like. A God is not on trial, but that which can be known about him is known to all, and so all are without excuse. What remains is not a question of God's existence, nor how we are justified in knowing things, but how we rightly interpret the things we know -- hermeneutics is the ultimate end of Christian epistemology, and the queen of philosophy and science alike.

Empirical inquiry supplies us with referents for biblical words. Biblical words supply us with interpretations of empirical data. The Bible, fitted with external referents, informs the right hermeneutic method for interpreting itself, which in turn supplies accurate explanations of its referents. Those Biblical explanations constrain interpretive liberty in empirical inquiry. So, in every way, our knowledge is built up through God's revelation.

*/

Today I want to offer a categorical description of my philosophy, either to say more with fewer words or to obfuscate the matter. I'm a little bothered by this kind of denomination, because I feel like the words I'm about to use were devised with intent to describe what I believe to be proper methodology for acquiring answers, but they don't describe the answers themselves; whereas I think that the answers are only as correct as the methodology used to obtain them I do not like the way that discussion about philosophical denominations may tempt readers to limit themselves to a protracted study of methodology without ever learning the conclusions drawn thereby.

I suppose that strict, "strong" foundationalism accurately describes the situation we live in, epistemologically, and that the epistemic information comprising (what you might call) our basic "foundational" knowledge, must be indubitable, incorrigible, and infallible. However, I am not convinced that human language necessarily supports articulating the specific information contained in our basic knowledge at this time. Granting that we do have the information required to justify knowledge, I am convinced that some information about the mechanism by which we obtain and/or utilize that basic knowledge can be gained by applying a combination of strict deduction and empiricism, with a view to the universal coherence of all true information (where "coherence" means that an idea contradicts neither itself nor any other information known to be true). That same methodology, combining deduction and empiricism, I believe, is the method by which we can trace out relationships between our conclusions and our basic knowledge. That said, I'm not convinced that a detailed awareness of the contents of our basic knowledge is necessary for an epistemological system to be complete and fool-proof; only an acknowledgement that, whatever the contents are, they satisfy the basic conditions for epistemology and intelligibility.

That's not to say we shouldn't attempt to learn the contents of basic knowledge. I just think that there are more important parts of the system which should be fortified with stable articulation first, and I don't know if I will have enough time in my life to complete the project.

I think that it's common in modern society to simultaneously advocate empiricism while refusing to practice it, undermining the contents of whatever foundational knowledge we have (because the whole purpose of the foundational knowledge is to support our empirical abilities). Furthermore, it can be well-argued that this deluded rejection of empiricism is practiced by literally every person who propones an explanation for reality, because epistemological theories are naturally impossible to test. So it is unproductive to argue that a theory lacks empirical basis, or that a theory lacks consistency with interpretations of empirical data which depend on alternative theories. Therefore, an epistemological theory distinguishes itself only by being well-developed and coherent. The more thoroughly developed it is, the more complex it is, the greater its likelihood of being incoherent; thus a well-developed theory which does not sacrifice coherence is a good theory and may as well be held true by its advocates until demonstrated otherwise, or until a more well-developed while coherent theory is made known to them. I believe that incoherence is the distinguishing feature of falsehood, and there is only one set of information rightly called "true", so there is only one possible fully-developed and coherent theory.

Some people attempt to circumvent this by refusing to develop their theories; a theory which is underdeveloped can be simple and internally consistent, and so it may be difficult to demonstrate its failure to resolve the epistemological problem without first developing the theory. I recently had a discussion with one such person, who actually told me that justifying his ideas was unnecessary for him, "because I'm not a foundationalist" -- but then he didn't name any epistemological theory which he could actually advocate; he simply said "the answer is probably a combination of all theories", which was an effective refusal to develop his ideas. I might post more details of that conversation in a later blog, because he was a fascinating example of certain intellectual roadblocks, for which I am needful of constant reminders to avoid, and in which I am regularly fearful that I might also partake.

"The [...] forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been over-fulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than 145 millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small."

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Commentary from repost 7/8/2026.

This post was from 6/25/2019, and it has aged very well. If I undertook to find contemporary links for the 1984 list, I would do it more easily, and find "enlightened" (or at least popular) people not only tolerating and defending these things, but celebrating them. 

But today I'm short on time, which is good because I don't think I have very much to add. I like this post, and I'm basically in agreement with it. Only, at the time when I wrote this I was probably feeling a mixture of awe and amazement at Christianity's neglect for God's law in the face of issues for which it is so clearly relevant. Nowadays I think about this stuff, and it just makes me feel sad, because we're going that way and I'm not sure there's anything to be done about it.

*/

Listening to 1984 while I work these days, and I couldn't help but notice a list of qualities he issues to characterize a government which is treading toward dystopian authoritarianism. Here's the quote:

"And in the general hardening of outlook that set in round about 1930, practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years—imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages, and the deportation of whole populations—not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive."

The argument here is that those things started happening in society, but society was hardened to it so they didn't think it was all that bad. In fact, they celebrated it as if it were enlightened. Where, in fact, those things were characteristic of a society deteriorating into some kind of dystopian nightmare.

Let's break down that list, for fun:

imprisonment without trial

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remand_(detention)

the use of war prisoners as slaves

• https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/07/us/terrorists-in-us-prisons.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States

public executions

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment

torture to extract confessions

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_and_the_United_States#Defining_%22torture%22
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

the use of hostages

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban_Five

deportation of whole populations

• https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1140791400658870274

So, what's my point?

Both the republican and democratic parties in the United States are going in the same direction. The left simultaneously advocates socialism and rejects the practices advocated by members of the right, while those same practices were historically performed by socialists!

Americans are presented with a false dichotomy every 4 years, and we eat it up. How many times during the last election was I told by my friends, "If you vote 3rd party, you're supporting Hillary!"

What do we do? To whom do we turn? Who's right? What system of government should I advocate? Well, Psalm 19 makes this an easy decision for Christians.

"The law of the Lord is perfect,
    refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
    making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right,
    giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are radiant,
    giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is pure,
    enduring forever.
The decrees of the Lord are firm,
    and all of them are righteous.
They are more precious than gold,
    than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
    than honey from the honeycomb.
By them your servant is warned;
    in keeping them there is great reward."

When it says, "law", you know what the Hebrew word was in that passage? It was "Torah" (i.e. Gen through Deut). This is a passage from the Old Testament. That means, yes, the Psalmist is saying that Leviticus refreshes the soul and gives joy to the heart; Numbers is sweeter than honey, making wise the simple; Deuteronomy gives light to the eyes and warns God's servants, in keeping the law of God is great reward.

"Dirty Water."