Listening a lot to Domi and JD Beck these days:

I recently realized that I, all the time, catch myself saying "God give me peace"; whether mumbling it absent mindedly to myself, or praying it consciously whenever I feel unrest. All the time I'm longing for the great peace of God's presence, and I do believe that God can give us a peace which surpasses all understanding, and which comes from having a mind sanctified and conformed to the mind of Christ, totally committed and self-entrusted to God. However, it seemed to me that I'd made that peace a sort of idol, and pursued it instead of the source of it. To correct the situation, I've made a point recently of, every time I catch myself praying or longing for that peace, to instead pray for God to be glorified in my life. I believe that this shift in mindset will be beneficial for me -- not that I expect to achieve peace by means of this prayer, but that I will teach myself to pursue the better thing in all circumstances. God's glory is our ultimate purpose, and whatever is going on, whatever I feel, it seems to me that the pursuit of that end is always right.

Truthfully, I'm not sure how to develop a personal friendship with God. He doesn't "talk back", and it isn't like I can go hang out with Him at the arcade. I doubt He'd be interested in playing fortnite with me even given the opportunity, and I'm quite certain I'd lose every game of chess against him (or any other board game for that matter, Proverbs 16:33). But I do know that work builds relationships. In fact, lots of marriage advice outlets recommend working on something with your spouse -- whether that's the gym, or some chores you can do at the same time together; working together builds affection. So, it seems to me that evangelism will prove to be both spiritually and emotionally rewarding in that sense.

I began the work of transliterating my steno notebook with Isaac's enchiridion in it today. As it stands, it's just a bunch of odds and ends about practical hermeneutics that I jotted down randomly during company meetings, but I've run out of personal rules on the topic to articulate, and so I want to put them down, organize them, and apply some scholarship to fill in the gaps before I proceed to the other topics on the agenda. It's extremely slow going, but I'm motivated to proceed apace.

I have had hallucination episodes more times this year than last year. It's been a long time (months? years?) since I last sat down for an extended period of meditation, and I've recently noticed that I can't go very deep into myself without getting mixed up. I perceive that I've been putting up walls around parts of myself and shutting down certain minor faculties, but I think that I need to open myself up again in order to properly acknowledge my wife's emotions and keep up with her growth in a way that's helpful and encouraging. She's making a lot of personal progress lately, and I'm struggling to adapt. I seem to have developed a reactionary and defensive pattern of thinking which is counterproductive.

Marital love is wonderful, and God really picks out the perfect people to complement one another in marriage. Chowon's weaknesses are as if they were hand-picked to grate against my own weaknesses, (and v.v.), and together we are forced to pursue God for sanctification. It's awesome and frightening and difficult and wonderful and sorrowful and joyous and precious; it's all the great things about life, packed into one relationship! 

I also found my old steno notebook with all the poetry in it, and was horrified. I don't know if I copied all the poems from it into my blog, but I threw it away anyway. I don't think I have the guts to work through that. Anyway, it had a bunch of mistakes in it (backwards "p"s, unnecessary extensions, and misuses of sounds like connecting "ee-n-g" instead of using the single character for "ing"), so transliterating that would be terribly arduous.

I want to spend more time in this blog, too... but every moment I spend doing something for myself is a moment that I could have spent doing something more important. I feel like I'm taking food off my child's plate with every keystroke here. The Theonomy forum has been a major outlet for me recently, but even that freaks me out -- if it weren't for the perceived social obligation I have to that forum (my moderatorship there) I might not have done anything at all for myself during the past several months, (except to play an odd phone game while waiting for my card to register in the apartment complex's community laundry machines, or to lose touch and escape in every odd moment at home). Realizing this, I have decided to make more time for myself on the family schedule. I just.... don't know what that will look like yet. In any case, I've made time to write this blog, so this is the first of my intentional mental-hygiene steps for the immediate future.

"Everyone capitulates"

I finished the first five books in the Barsoom series on Librivox over the past several weeks during my drive to work. It was very entertaining, but now I'm having dreams about complicated Martian political scenarios, and it's off-putting, so I don't think I'll be listening to any more of Mr. Burroughs' work for a while (they only had the first five books completed anyway). I was going to hear the Moon Maid next, but I think I need a break. On the way to work this morning I picked up where I left off in the Bondage of the Will and found it to be engaging and relaxing.

I just listened to this video a few days ago...

One of the early questions prompts Dr. Penrose to describe Godel's theorem in a way which I thought was validating. It was that the understanding (or belief) that the formulas or rules of reason do produce true results, is itself unprovable by means of those rules. That's a pretty fine summary of what I wrote in my argument for God long ago, and it's an important point, relevant to my whole epistemic system.

Obviously that's just a tiny segment of the video; hardly worth mentioning below an embed of the whole thing.

Speaking of epistemic systems, however, I think I'm becoming more inclined toward the conclusion that the demarcation problem, "what is or isn't science", is wholely a semantic issue, and worthless to pursue. If I continue to lean this way, I shall soon adopt the following definition and philosophy of science: science is a method, not a set of information. There's no such thing as a scientific hypothesis except those for which scientific tests are constructed; there's no such thing as a scientific test except those which are direct, repeatable, and contemporary applications of the scientific method; there's no such thing as a scientific theory except those which should better, for uniformity and clarity's sake, be called scientific hypotheses. Calling evolution, "scientific", is like calling the Covid shot a "vaccine"; it co-opts the good reputation of vaccines, which was gained by actual vaccines creating immunity to, and eradicating diseases, while not actually creating immunity to any disease, and actually requiring us to change the whole definition of vaccine to accommodate it. 

And then, what is the value of a thing being called "scientific"? Only that someone has written down a means to repeatably test and confirm the information, which is to say that it can be confirmed empirically by a known procedure. Since I maintain that empirical observation is only one of many methods for arriving at true information (or of gaining epistemic confidence about a thing), my limiting science this way has no bearing on the hereby "unscientific" body of otherwise reasonably true data which most people do call "science". So, the question is, why do I stubbornly resist adopting a more common or popular definition for "science", for the sake of convention? It's because I hate the practice of fighting over what is and isn't science, and I think that the popular definition of science is so vague that it makes the demarcation problem impossible to grasp at. By adopting an unpopular, less generally useful, but nonetheless more clear and conversationally practical, definition for "science", I hope to force conversations into a place where the discussion about what "is" and "isn't" science becomes plainly a problem of semantics-only, so that hopefully we can agree to stop wasting time arguing about what is "science" (as if there were some magic truth-making power in the designation), and instead argue only about what is "true". I suspect that by doing this, I will cause some to simply dismiss me as one who knows nothing about what science really "is" or "should be", and I suppose that I don't want to talk with those people about science anyway, because they treat science like it's an entity on its own, a boogey man of sorts, whose name has power to delineate ideas with and without epistemic certainty, and I don't have any reason to agree with them about that. There are definitely scientific theories with more epistemic certainty than other scientific theories, and they vary so much that some of them are said to "have been legitimately scientific until they were disproved", meaning that science is allowed to asymptotically approach zero certainty while retaining its name.

In other news, this has actually been an outrageously crazy two weeks. Whereas two weeks ago we said we didn't want to move at all, this week we've visited at least seven apartments on different days, all on short notice. We've now picked out the place with the most unresponsive and difficult landlord, but we're committed enough to push them like fools in text messages and drive the place into our hands. All the while, I've had a bout with food poisoning, and both Chowon and I have had some pretty severe cold symptoms. I honestly thought mine were just related to the food poisoning and seasonal allergies, (and so I kept going to work), until Chowon seemed to catch it, too. I've joked with a few of my friends that I'm going to work sick, but I didn't know that I am actually sick. In any case, I'm feeling much better now, except for my lingering cough (I generally retain lingering coughs for several weeks after any sickness).

I've been all-business with my son lately, and I think it's bad for him. I'm under a lot of stress, though, and it really feels like I don't have the capacity to be fun like I should be. I want to wrestle and fight with him -- to toughen him up and build his confidence. (He's always telling me, "Dad, I want to wrestle and fight with you".) But I just haven't been doing it. Aaaaagh, I'm terrible. I really hate it. I'll pray, "God give me energy please.", but then I worry I'll just use the energy to pack my house, because that's what I have to do next! Can I make time for Isaac? God please help me do it.

God, give me energy please!

It's raining outside. I started typing this at about 10pm, and now it's about 11pm. I've been typing in the dark, with the porch light on, so I could see the raindrops hit the window while I type. Isaac and Chowon are asleep upstairs. The world is such a wonderful place.

Every time I post one of these videos, I see all my uploads listed, and I'm terribly embarrassed by all of them -- I hate the pictures I chose for the songs I mashed up. I hate all my speaking videos. Oooooh I hate it all so much. I keep it all up, though, because I feel like I wouldn't be true to myself if I deleted the old things that embarrass me, even if they're heretical and wrong; they're reflections of the ignoramus who I really was when I posted them. God is so good to me. I'm still an ignoramus, but God sustains me and gives me new life every day. God is good, and I'm happy to be on God's good earth.

"In America, you don't usually take responsibility by saying 'I'm sorry', right?"

 OK, I'm officially putting a ban on mask-complaining in my blog. Not gonna complain about it anymore (unless the rules at my work change in some new and more crazy way). I've purchased a breathable mask and I'm figuring out ways to fold it so that it gives me some fresh air and doesn't mess up the shape of my beard, while still hanging in front of my face-holes, so I think nobody will complain. (I might just cut the bottom half of the mask off later...). More, I'm not really concerned about giving a bad message to operators about how I feel on the matter, because I've got a big red badge hanging from my person all the time, which says that my company requires me to wear the mask. Nobody is gonna be confused about my position. I found out that some other people in my workplace, worse off than me, are not even allowed to remove their masks while sitting at their desk, because they're in a cube-farm; I'll still, for both our sakes, be working on a way to help them out, and I might update if any big breakthroughs occur on the stupid-policy front. 

Also, I recently read someone else's blog who complains in an even more melodramatic way than me. It was no comfort to me, but rather made me entirely more self-conscious about the kind of complaining I do here. I enjoy being a little melodramatic sometimes, because I enjoy a mild bit of prose, and prose is sometimes at its best when dramatic and hyperbolic. 

Speaking of prose, I've been letting myself wax a little more poetic in conversation with my wife recently, and she seems to really enjoy it. I suppose if I did it all the time, she wouldn't like it, but recently she's seemed to like it, and I am actually really glad that someone enjoys my prose.

...

TBH I don't have anything particular on my mind that I want to blog about this time.... I guess I'm just here to ramble because I'm stressed today.

Recently, someone I like has told me that my philosophy of science is "patchy, incomplete, and stultifying". I didn't engage in a thorough discussion to get them to explain the point to me, because, while I do want an explanation, my brain is tired these days, and I don't want the extended debate. So, in the short term, what I'm going to do is try to elucidate my philosophy of science for myself.

As usual for any given criticism, I guess, there are two possible ways for me to interpret the criticism:(a) they understand my philosophy of science, and so make a  warranted criticism; (b) they don't understand my philosophy of science, and so make an unwarranted criticism.

I'm not convinced of (a), because I don't think I've really explained my philosophy of science fully to them, and I also think that our usages of the word, "science" are so different that we quite talk past one another when attempting to compare systems.

However, I also agree with the criticism. I said that I want to try to elucidate my philosophy of science, because I do believe that my philosophy of science is incomplete and requires development. If I were to simply assert my understanding of empirical epistemics as I currently hold it, I would stultify myself.

But there's one major hurdle involved with the term "philosophy of science", which I so dislike that I'm tempted to abandon usage of the word "science" altogether, and demand that it is not used in future discussion with me about empirical epistemic warrants. That is, I seem often to hear people make a big deal about the notion that a particular view is or isn't science, when the designation actually would not change anything about the so-far-stated epistemic grounds for the view. It's as if calling an idea "science" gives it extra epistemic warrant, regardless of what actually prompted the idea, and calling something "not science" or "pseudoscience" is a great insult to the thing. This would make sense if all scientific ideas shared equal epistemic warrant, but they don't, and in fact, as far as I can tell, there exist within the set of things undisputedly called "science" several areas where pools of nominally scientific ideas exist with the expectation that all but one of them will eventually fail. So, the designation, "scientific", really only seems to denote that an idea has sufficient empirical weight to be worthy of critical attention -- this bar seems to me much lower than the way most people treat the word, "science", and I'm not sure that this bar is even high enough to make the term "science" useful in a debate about any given idea. If the idea were not scientific on these terms, then it seems the debate is a waste of time for the negative.

I know that the issue is more complicated than what I've presented above. I've recently read a few articles, and listened to a few lectures, from (afaict) reputable secular resources on what makes a theory "scientific". I'll here proceed to comment on the presentation by Forbes, because it seems concise enough. Here's my summary (including paraphrases and additional notes, per my understanding) of the list:

Forbes says a scientific idea is/has...

• Plausible (Consistent with other things we know to be true)
• Unique (Why is this on the list? If it's the same as another idea, then it is the other idea, and the other idea and this one should be evaluated together on all of the other terms.)
• Power (The idea not only describes something which can coexist in a consistent manner with what we know to be true, but it causes or explains some of the things which we observe.)
• Simplicity (The idea isn't too Rube-Goldberg to be more plausible than other simpler ideas. I don't think this is a realistic epistemic criteria, except inasmuch as several simultaneous unrelated specific causes are generally less likely than a single specific cause happening without the others, or than several related simultaneous specific causes. What I'm saying is that I think this is subjective and should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis; I don't think it's worth its own bullet point, unless we want to change the bullet to "probable" instead of "simple", but then I think that plausibility occurs on a gradient which includes assessments of probability, making "simplicity/probability" a redundant criterion at best.)
• Testability (or falsifiability, by means of a test which can potentially be executed with existing technologies. This one I agree with, on a somewhat qualified understanding of the clause, "can be potentially executed with existing technologies")

A scientific idea graduates to being a "framework", when its consequences have been worked out to the extent that several conceivable tests can be conducted to falsify it. A scientific framework graduates to being a "theory" when several such tests have been performed and it has withstood them unfalsified.

I think my ideas about testability and falsifiability might make the average science enjoyers uncomfortable -- less so, perhaps, if they took the time to understand the aim of my Feb 16, 2022 post, but even after that -- they might argue that I've broadened the scope of falsifiability outside the boundaries of practical usefulness, but I don't agree, because I think that the qualifier "executed with existing technologies" ignores several valid avenues for falsification, e.g. a rational proof. (To boot, I don't think that the criteria of falsifiability, without my qualifiers, is applied consistently to the established scientific theories.) And I don't think that rationalizations should be given lower epistemic warrant simply by virtue of their being abstracted from empirical observation, so if we limit "science" to empirical matters, then I don't believe that the designator, ("science"), has any bearing at all on the actual epistemic warrant associated with an idea, except where ideas which involve zero rationalization are concerned (of which there are none). So, when I read someone calling an idea (X) "non-scientific" because its potential for immediate empirical falsification is lower than the popular scientific threshold, with intent to devalue the epistemic warrant for X, I can't help but think they're ignoring the bulk of available faculties by which epistemic warrant can be garnered, and they're simultaneously invalidating all of science, because science ultimately has its roots in rational calculations which are needed to justify the potential for empirical assessments before empirical observation can even be conducted.

But the issue which appears to come up most often with respect to my philosophy of science is not that it lacks conformity with the requirement for falsification, power, plausibility, &c.. It's more like I reject the epistemic weights assigned to certain kinds of (so called) empirical tests. In particular, what keeps coming up is my disagreement with the notion that we can view a piece of evidence, devise an explanation for what processes caused that evidence to become its current condition, and then treat the evidence itself as the result of a past unobserved experiment consisting of the processes thus explained (i.e. my take on much of the OE and evolutionary evidence). 

Now, I allow for inferences concerning unobserved or unobservable objects/processes where tests can be performed to (indirectly) demonstrate the existence of said objects/processes. However, given two explanations for how a piece of evidence can acquire some property, (e.g. a rock charring black by smoke or heat from two possible sources), all other things being basically the same, I don't think that we can say that the evidence suggests one or the other of them. And, given only one available explanation (X) for a given phenomena, we still cannot say that the evidence is making a positive assertion for X, but only that the evidence positively asserts the phenomena itself, or else, supposing another source of information (P) asserts, "it wasn't X", or generally contradicts X by its own properties; if the information from P has sufficiently greater epistemic warrant than the explanation X, then I believe it is ok to say, "I don't know what the explanation is, but I am confident that it wasn't X".

So, briefly applying this to the discussion which I believe prompted this criticism.... The other said that the fossil record (in particular the arrangement of complexities in the geological layers) entails or asserts evolution. I am no expert, but I am willing to grant that a progression can be seen in the complexity of organisms in the layers of earth, or even that said progression involves particular qualities being gained and lost in an orderly fashion from bottom to top. I do not believe that the evidence makes any assertions about the reason for this progression, its cause or origins, but only that the fossils are thus and thus. I am not aware of any observable or repeatable tests actually performed to demonstrate the evolutionary hypothesis concerning the fossils as they are, (evolution from kind to kind, I mean), and I'm under the impression that such a demonstration would take longer than my lifetime. The other party said that the evidence can be seen as a series of unobserved past tests confirming the hypothesis -- without meaning to be uncharitable (I don't mean to attack my interlocutor, since I admitted at the beginning of this post that we haven't worked out an understanding of one another's ideas at length), I am not sure how this isn't question-begging. 

I simply don't see the epistemic warrant for the evolutionary hypothesis; maybe one could say it's because I'm uninformed about the evidence, but I literally have the evidence shoved in my face from all angles all the time -- assertions concerning the age of the earth and the evidence for those assertions are on TV, at the zoo, at the aquarium, in every movie, in books, on YouTube, in my discussions with people online, in debates that I watch on the topic, in articles in science magazines or journals, in lectures (I do actively search out lectures on the topic to help myself better understand the opposing position), I get it from Christians and atheists alike, and I haven't seen anything warranting the degree of confidence espoused by the advocates of this position. It seems like everyone just assumes the idea and builds on it, saying that every stone placed on that foundation is additional support for the foundation itself. I feel like there has been a lot of opportunity to show me the evidence, and I'm genuinely seeking it out, but it's just not there. I'd suggest me getting a PhD on the topic so that I could become informed and gain the epistemic certainty that those around me have, but those who so strongly espouse evolution are not PhDs themselves -- where did they get all this certainty?

What I do have available to me, however, is a source with such high epistemic warrant that it easily overrules all of the above hypotheses or explanations of the evidence resulting in evolution with common origin -- a P who asserts, "it wasn't X" -- and that is the Bible. I recognize that there are several allegorical options for interpretation of the Genesis, but it seems to me that these require very unnatural readings of the text, and their weirdness evidences their dependence on motivated reasoning. I really don't see a way around it. People say, "chiasm evidences allegory", but there's chiasm in the whole Bible -- the Mosaic sacrifices to the Messianic sacrifice -- and nobody serious argues for an allegorical Moses and an allegorical Jesus. People say, "if you accept YEC then you must also accept a literal dome over the earth", but the Bible elsewhere rather plainly contradicts a literal dome over the earth (by describing the firmament/heavens in terms which don't permit firmness), whereas it doesn't do that to a historical Adam, so, just based on usage and references from other places in scripture, if we allow that the whole of scripture has a single-author with unanimous intent, there's a clear categorical difference in the way that the single word "firmament" should be interpreted over against the entire first 9 chapters of Genesis.

"But I live out in the Styx so I have to worry about coyotes."

 Listening to Mr. Hopkins today while I write and work; he really knows how to brighten things up.

Today someone at work asked me if I'm ok. I said, yeah, in an upbeat enough way, I think, and they asked again, "are you sure?". I took a step back, expecting some sarcasm about a piece of broken equipment, and said, "is something wrong?", and they diffused the conversation with a comment about how things often break in this factory. It made me wonder if my negative feelings have become apparent externally.

Really though, this mask thing is getting me down. My head keeps circling on the issue, trying to adopt a charitable answer to the question, "Why would my company leadership, after so long justifying their position on masks by deference to the CDC, now ignore the CDC's position in favor of maintaining these kinds of restrictions -- rules which cause discomfort and draw an outward and unprofitable distinction in cleanness between employees?" And, I find myself often frustrated by how the current policy explicitly declares about itself that it does not reveal anyone's medical information, making it only a very thinly veiled policy of actually revealing everyone's medical information. I try to imagine that they're legitimately concerned about people's safety -- as the safety manager told me, "we are responsible to produce a safe working environment, and if someone unvaccinated were unmasked, it would be an unsafe environment". But neither the CDC nor OSHA hold that position, and so the determination about what is an "unsafe environment" comes not from the research itself (which I presented before), nor from the organizations responsible for publicizing the research itself and suggesting policy (the CDC and OSHA). It is a purely subjective and unsupported ruling on what makes people safe or unsafe. This means that there is someone in the higher-ups who is more worried about COVID than "the science" itself. Given the information we have about COVID, I really have a hard time grasping how someone can rationally maintain that kind of fear, and an even less reasonable thought seems to roll around in my mind -- that the policy of covering the faces of unvaccinated people, and making them wear a badge indicating it, is to shame unvaccinated individuals into vaccinating themselves. 

Which is more charitable, to suppose that the company leadership is irrational or that they are ruthless?

The above question, which finds itself at the front of my mind daily, whenever I don the uncomfortable veil, is drawing me toward a place where I may decide that, while I like my boss and most of my coworkers, I don't like my company. And, to prevent my accessing that place, (I prefer to like my workplace), I have been trying to think of an effective means of protest -- something that will make my point without causing any trouble. I haven't thought of anything yet, but that's where my mind is these days. 

But when I'm not thinking of that, the instructive work I'm making for my son has been often in my thoughts. I think I've figured out how I can organize it without putting too much priority on empiricism, nor neglecting the ease-of-access which empiricism offers. I'll start the manual by explaining good hermeneutics, and I'll make literature and epistemics into subchapters within the hermeneutic discussion. In fact, hermeneutics will be the primary thrust of the whole manual, and all other topics will be extensions and applications of the hermeneutic approach -- I think this is fitting and natural, since scripture itself says that it is effective for instruction, to equip the man of God for every good work. And so, it seems that hermeneutics, (which are really just basic, common-sense linguistic tools, and applications of scripture to itself), form the first conscious basis for all other inquiry, including inquiry into the question of how that hermeneutic itself is justified. And so, hermeneutics must produce epistemics, and epistemics must produce hermeneutics. The matter can be worked in either direction, but God has not instructed us to develop epistemics on our own in order to reach toward scripture, by a rout other than direct reference to scripture; no, the approach most consistent with my position, and most obedient to God's word, and most deferential to God's own preeminence and glory, is to go first to the scripture, and from it learn how we are enabled by God to trust our senses enough to know that the answers we've obtained from scripture are true in absolute. And so, step 1 is hermeneutics, which requires only the faculty which God affords singularly to humans -- that is, the complexity of our ability to communicate. The ability to read isn't a prerequisite for hermeneutics, but "how can they believe if they have not heard?" -- reading is just another way to hear. So hermeneutics doesn't depend on literacy, but literacy is very beneficial because it enables us to "hear" from a host of voiceless sources, and lends itself to the same epistemic answers concerning trust for our senses &c..

"You'll have a home with me, just as long as there is a day."

A lot going on right now.

We gave our dog to my sister and her family, who in a few days will tell me if they want to keep him or give him back. There aren't any apartments near my work that allow dogs, and he'll have a better life at her house anyway. He'll have more space to run, and Ray's personality is ideal for maximizing his training potential -- a thing I regret not doing. The dog is very well behaved and relatively well trained, and generally very smart and eager to please anyway. I am confident they'll keep him.

I got the promotion I've been working for. I am glad for it, and proud of the title, but I guess it's like having a birthday -- I don't feel any different, and I suppose, for some reason, I thought I would. I think it's a consequence of all the hype and pressure that's been on me related to this promotion. Anyway, I'm glad to have it behind me.

The mask mandates have been lifted by the CDC, but not at my company. So now, my company can't use the excuse that they're sticking to CDC guidelines anymore -- it was never about the CDC to begin with. Now, they say that there is some potential liability if they remove the mask mandates and someone gets sick. I would be surprised if that were true, as I suspect it's more that corporate doesn't want to flip flop so quickly on such a controversial policy as the red badges, when they had to argue so often to get them implemented. People with a red badge still have to wear masks, and I'm one of a very small minority around the office who do so (I'm led to believe the proportion is greater elsewhere, and that many who wear green badges were openly opposed to the policy as well). Nonetheless, as I predicted before, I feel sometimes like a leper. The irony of the matter is not lost on me -- I was most vocally opposed to the masks, and now at my many unproductive meetings I am the only one hiding my face. It makes the meetings all the more loathsome to me.

To cope with the meetings, therefore, I'm bringing a pocket notebook to them hereafter, where I'll be practicing my shorthand. It's a way for me to not pay any attention to what's going on around me, while seeming to be making diligent notes. And, with any luck, I'll become a quick stenographer in no time.

I've noticed that my general tiredness, coupled with these frequent unpleasantries, is affecting my disposition in general. I've been a little more grouchy in my interactions on the forum and at home, and less able to comprehend complex arguments. I dislike that. I hope that my awareness of it will enable me to counteract it.

In the evolution forum, I noticed that I get anxious while debating the topic. I'm consciously trying to be open minded to the possibility that I'm anxious because deep down I know I'm wrong, but I can't shake the thought that the real reason is: whenever anyone tries to summarize anything about evolution, the pro-evolution participants accuse them of being uninformed because their summary wasn't complete or precise enough. And, when the correction comes in, it isn't so much an actual correction as it is a demand that language be used which denotes a factual relationship between the evidence and the Darwinian conclusions. So, it's impossible to have a detached conversation about the evidence, where we examine, "what could it mean?" because all descriptions of the evidence must promote evolution. For example, rather than saying "a differences are seen in the fossil record through layers of earth", we must say, "a progression is seen in the fossil record through time". And, rather than saying, "dinosaurs became chickens", we must undergo some kind of more lengthy or precise explanation of the many years during which intermediate species lived and died between the end of the dinosaur and the advent of the chicken (or whatever). These trifles extend the discussion and endlessly distract from whatever point the YEC person might be trying to make. And, if we persistently abstain from describing the fossil record as containing such a progression, or if we persistently summarize the years of evolutionary progress for the sake of time, we are called intellectually dishonest. Moreover, the YEC position is explicitly described as being intellectually catastrophic prior to any discussion about it. 

What am I to do? It appears to me that here, like everywhere else, there is a bent standard for literary precision and intellectual openness. I worry that this forum is not so different from others on the same topic, except that it's run by Christians. I think the only way to survive in it will be to forcibly engage in some really excruciating conversations about epistemic methods, and if arguing with atheists has taught me anything, it's that conversations contrasting basic epistemic assumptions are long and terrible.

I've been working on Isaac's enchiridion here and there as I get time. The hardest part is organizing the information I want to present. Right now, I'm thinking I will start by laying out some basic principles of communication (argument and literature), then hermeneutics (which depends on argument and literature), and then show how those hermeneutic rules can be used to interpret scripture to build a foundation for knowledge at length, all without mentioning any counterpoints or debated topics. Major questions in my mind include whether I can explain all that without contrasting the information against mistakes by digressing into a debated topic, and whether it's best to just go ahead and start with epistemics, and then build knowledge from the ground up, leading subsequently into communication and showing the sort of circular relationship between all of this and hermeneutics by way of "building the house from the ground up". Does the structure and organization of the book implicitly communicate a hierarchy of knowledge, and so would I be accidentally prioritizing empiricism if I teach from the conscious and observable to the subconscious and rational, rather than the other way around?

In any case, at the end of the section on epistemics, I'll summarize all the prior sections with several points in the form of a "toolbox". Then I'll get into all of the various debate topics which (I perceive) have been argued and resolved over and over for the past 6000 years, and explain how these epistemic tools make them readily answerable, in hopes that he'll not be like many others in history, who for lack of knowledge waste their years rehashing the same tired debates. I'll give a basic overview of the material so that he'll have enough to build on without needing to go and read all of Kant and Hume, in hopes that he won't be like someone who thinks himself smart only on account of his ability to regurgitate theories of long-dead people, but rather that he'll build on those theories himself -- a contributor to knowledge, rather than just a perpetuator of knowledge. And finally, I'll apply the same tools to many practical day-to-day issues, in hopes that he'll see how a right knowledge of God and a Christian epistemology is relevant to every decision, and every area of life, even the areas which we compute without explicitly mentioning God, including mathematics and every area of science.

"Yes, unfortunately we all have to pay them"

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."