A Month Later

It's been a month since my last post. Billy wrote an intriguing note last night, and I just had to comment. However, I suspected that my comment would end up too wordy for the comment box, and also I was thinking about some additional stuff on top of that. So apparently Bill will no longer be attending Wednesday evening church because of some issues regarding relationships.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=33623620288

WELL HERE'S WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT!

First off, the notion that "love" the feeling doesn't exist is stupid. Call it infatuation, physical attraction, hormones, whatever, supposedly it doesn't exist. I contend this idea strongly. First, we as humans exist on two planes: physical and spiritual. I argue that love the action and love the feeling both have parts in each of these planes. To say that love the feeling doesn't exist is to say that that part of the human mind which "controls" it is strictly operated by chemical and biological processes; this notion is absurd. There is a distinct spiritual aspect that humans have that allow us to experience things beyond mere physical realities. Attachment to another person in the form of "romantic" love clearly does exist, as do feelings of attachment to a person that don't take the form of romance. Take so-called brotherly love, for instance. This is not merely an action of loving a person; it is accompanied by a feeling of closeness. This can't be explained by hormones or physical attraction or infatuation, so what is it, then? I submit that it is a spiritual connection between the two people, and likewise that "romantic" love carries a similar connection, albeit with different ultimate implications.

I say this because of our existence in the first place. God would not have created us just to be able to love us by action. That God wants relationships with all people indicates this. We know that relationships don't consist of merely "loving" each other. We engage in very many interactions with others that don't involve loving them at all (in the action sense). Since we are made in the image of God, I find it fair to assume that God too takes more from relationships with us than simply the action of love. Of course, this is probably theological (as well as semantic) gray area, so I don't know how much further I can go.

Secondly, I would agree with the "Bogus Contentment Theory" analysis. According to this theory, a person is not ready for a relationship with another person unless they are completely content with Christ alone. That is a) idealistic and b) impossible. Flawed human nature makes complete, utter reliance on Christ impossible. Converse to faith is doubt, and you can't have one without the other. One cannot, as a human, be perfectly faithful, or perfectly content, in Christ. It's simply not possible.

More importantly, though, is whether, even if possible, that claim is legitimate. Lest we forget, it was before the introduction of sin to humanity that Adam looked for a mate. In other words, Adam was not fully content with what he had, what God had given him; he could not find a mate suitable for him. God did not mark this as a sin; instead, he created a mate for Adam. Tying back in to the first issue, Adam wanted an earthly spiritual mate, and God, rather than faulting Adam for this, gave it to him, because it was what he needed.

But anyway, I'm not much of a theologian, I suppose, so that's about all I have to say on the matter. In other news, I went to see Juno again, because it's all the rage these days (and has been since about November). I don't quite know why I went, or why I spent the money to see it, but I'm rather glad I did. The first time I watched it, I thought it was just stupid (or, at least that's what I thought I thought anyway), and basically just didn't like it. I will admit my initial analysis of the film was not correct; in fact, Rainn Wilson's cameo was God-awful, and the movie wasn't really that stupid. It made sense, and it held my attention. However, I maintain that J.K. Simmons was, for the vastly most part, the only funny part of the movie. But what else did I pick up on during my second viewing, the intrigued reader asks?

Well, for starters, I objected from the beginning to a movie about teen pregnancy. I had this in mind when I first watched it, but I did try to view it objectively anyway. Unfortunately, in analyzing a movie, it is inherently difficult to put aside the main premise in order to find merit in that movie. I tried. Of course, most of the things I found fault with ultimately tied back into the main premise in some important way. I despised Juno's character. She was a rude, disrespectful know-it-all. I believe I heard her described as "wise" somewhere, but I got the very opposite impression. She blamed other people for her problems and acted as though her pregnancy was some unjust burden thrust upon her, completing ignoring the fact that it was the consequence of her own actions. It's fairly common knowledge that when you have sex sometimes you get pregnant. She occasionally pulled out a good vocabulary word to make her seem (frequently unrealistically) older, or "more mature" than she really was, but I saw that as nothing more than an immature character backed up by a screenwriter. It didn't help that her parents were portrayed as fairly dimwitted, making her look brilliant in contrast. Her endearing qualities served to drown out the negative ones (I certainly overlooked them the first time through), but that's the trick to subliminal messaging: it's subliminal. I didn't like the language she used when addressing adults, and I was especially annoyed at the scene where she insulted her step-mother for wanting a dog. In general, I think I would describe her as a twit. Everyone else, though, sees a hero. It's such a common theme these days that it's appalling.

Aside from that, there were a couple of scenes where the acting was atrocious, such as Juno's phone conversation at the beginning where she first informed her friend that she was pregnant. The delivery of the lines was totally transparent. There was also the portrayal of the pro-life girl outside the abortion clinic as being dumb. And the divorce. And the sketchy relationship between Mark (Jennifer Garner's character's husband) and Juno. And to top it all off, there was the happy ending that made everyone forget about all of it. Even I, while sitting there, was thinking "Wow...this is actually a good ending," before I remembered all of the other crap that came before it, making it more or less unwarranted. And anyway, Jennifer Garner's character ended up without a husband, so I don't even see how it was that happy to begin with. Actually, just kidding. To top it all off, for real, was the crappy soundtrack. Seriously, it was probably the worst compilation of lame indie music I've ever heard. The song during the opening credits was okay, I suppose, because it rather reminded me of Kids Songs for some reason. Admittedly, I am biased against indie music. I am of the mind that the reason indie music is indie, as opposed to being mainstream, is because it isn't very good. People who argue otherwise say that bands with major labels are sell-outs. I say that's a bollocks non-conformist conformist argument. But I don't want to get sidetracked. My main point is that I found Juno, like a lot of other recent movies, laden with subliminal messaging, masquerading as a heartwarming (or similar adjective) movie with a nice, happy ending to make everyone feel good. It seems like a lot of people fell for it, too. They're boiling the frog degree by degree (if you catch my drift).

I suppose that's all for now, friends. I had wanted to write something about this cultural diversity business, about which Dinesh D'Souza wrote an article (about Christopher Columbus) and Michael Savage discusses fairly frequently, but I'm getting tired and this post is already like three days in the making. In other words, you'll have to wait for the next epic installment, because I only have so much time if I am to post even remotely regularly. Blasted deadlines. Maybe if Billy would stop bugging me...

A Monday Morning Rant

Hopefully this doesn't actually turn into an actual rant. Last night I was ranting about a variety of topics (namely the "energy crisis" and alternative fuels, and what I want to do with the rest of my life), and in general having difficulty coping with the fact that by the time two years is up, I will have to have set myself on a path that will basically determine the rest of my life. My current areas of attention have nothing whatsoever to do with something so large-scale as the rest of my life; rather, I focus on things like Guitar Hero and Pokemon. Perhaps this is my undoing, but I still would rather wallow in the simplicity of life as it was in high school, where I could basically goof off with impunity. That is, as long as I got the dishes done after dinner. On the whole, I must say, ever since I got my driver's license, life just hasn't quite been the same. I haven't quite decided whether or not I like it better, because back in the day I lived for the thrill of wearing a trench coat to school every day.

This morning, however, I woke up to Spongebob on television, and I could tell right then that today was going to be a good day. Of course, I still had a Psychopharmacology and Behavioral Toxicology test about to rear it's hideous (truly, truly, the word "ugly" does not justice here), but I prolonged worrying for another 30 minutes by resetting my alarm and going back to sleep.

Just a side note on my alarm clock: I love it. It has this wonderful button labelled "nap," which is, for lack of better description, basically the super hero version of a snooze button. My clock also has a snooze button, but it has a thick coating of dust from several months' worth of disuse. The nap button on my clock allows me to set an amount of time between ten minutes and two hours, after which the alarm will ring again. Thus, it is a much more flexible snooze function, a sort of (to elaborate on my earlier metaphor) a Mr. Fantastic of snooze buttons. It is this nap function that allowed me to sleep for another 30 undisturbed minutes, whereas a normal snooze button would likely have awoken me two extra times (at roughly ten minute intervals).

I awoke again after my 30 minute post-sleep nap to Dora the Explorer. It is at this point that I turned my television off, because I find it difficult to tolerate her and her cousin Diego. There's this one "song," in particular, that induces a Primeape-like frenzy in me (if you've seen the episode of Pokemon where Ash captures a Primeape (and I believe that's the episode where he also captures a donut in his PokeBall and dejectedly says "A donut Pokemon..."), then you might know what I'm talking about) in Go, Diego, Go! when this blasted camera comes on screen and repeats "Say click! Take a pic!" until any viewer's brain will turn into absolute mush. This is the only time, I think, that I would concede that television does in fact "rot the brain," as they say. It's quite a brain-rotting experience, possibly similar to death.

Anyway, I took a shower and got myself ready for the day, which was a very enthralling experience, as you can possibly imagine if you've ever taken a shower. There's nothing like hot water inexplicably raining from the shower head in order than I may cleanse myself. Well, I suppose it's not really inexplicable. I just don't really like to think about it. I would prefer to just assume that it must be magic at work. I enjoyed a delicious breakfast consisting of a cinnamon bun and two glasses (actually, plastics) of Sierra Mist, whilst attempting to finish preparing myself for that beastly Psychopharm test.

Hold the phone. I just realized that I'm telling my life story. It's boring. Who wants to hear this garbage? I'm not going to go back and erase it, of course, but I figure most people have their own lives of drudgery to deal with, so why bother also reading about mine? So, switching gears...

A couple nights ago I had a brief discussion with my fellow rationally-minded brother about women. Women are basically the world's largest topic for confusion; I don't even think they understand themselves, or each other. God would understand women, of course, which solidifies in my mind that He's God, because no one else can possibly understand women. You see, we were discussing the issue of pointy-toed shoes. A lot of women wear this type of shoe, and none of us can conceive of just why. According to them, they look good or something.

But here's scientific fact regarding pointy shoes: they make feet look longer and disproportionate, and ultimately lead to a very awkward-looking girl. Plus, they give the impression that said girl has pointy feet. Pointy feet! What an absurd concept. Furthermore, if there is one thing that girls do, it is complain that their shoes hurt their feet. Perhaps pointy shoes don't hurt, although if this is the case it's highly counterintuitive, unless the wearer's feet are naturally shaped like the shoe. I don't think I've met anyone like that. I can come to one conclusion from this: girls dress only to impress themselves. I find this highly puzzling for a few reasons. For one thing, I don't find the importance of dressing to impress anyone. I find it pretentious. I like to wear clothing for utility and comfortability. Although I must admit, tuxedos are ridiculously comfortable, and also impressive at the same time. But even that's just my own opinion. For the otherr thing though, if you are going to dress to impress anyone, why would it be yourself? What's there to prove?

I figured out part of my problem. I expect women to behave in a way that makes sense. I assume that women are "ideal" (this is part of modeling of systems and engineering); to give some explanation, if one were to assume a spring was ideal, one would assume that spring had no mass and no friction, only springiness. This is to say that I assume women behave ideally, but the problem is that they don't. Unlike springs, where mass and friction can be reasonably neglected and accounted for later, women act so grossly un-ideal (if that's even a word) that it is a poor choice to assume an ideal woman. In fact, I don't think there can be a such thing as an ideal woman, because "ideal" would mean that they only have the property of woman-ness, which is so clearly impossible to understand that it doesn't make any rational sense to think of it as being ideal.

I don't know where further I can go with this. In closing, "You might as well just strap knives to the end of your shoes." --William D. Monthie III

But of course, a woman wouldn't do that, because then it would serve a purpose: you could kill zombies with a swift kick to the head.

Do I like discipline?

One word I'm really sick of seeing tossed around is "maturity." I contend that half of the people who use this in their everyday vocabulary not only don't know what it really means, but also aren't mature themselves. It seems to me that "maturity" is the adult (and pretentious adolescent) trend, or perhaps set of trends, analogous to being "cool" in middle school. It's what everyone strives to be, even though they don't realize they're all just making idiots out of themselves. The way I see it, it's more about insecurity than anything else.

I'm secure where I am. I love to buy toys, goof off, watch children's television, and otherwise just enjoy the things I naturally enjoy. I don't think this makes me immature in any way. I'm in no rush to "grow up;" I doubt I ever will. What's the big deal? I don't want to have to put on a straight face all the time. I don't want to read only "literature." And I don't want to only find humor in things that are sexual in nature (or even find humor in it at all; but that's a whole other topic). What I want is for people to get over themselves and their pompous idea of what it means to be mature. If you ask me, real maturity is wisdom, and that's not something you get by putting on airs.

Earlier today I really wanted to watch Heroes. I can't watch it though. Why? Because the stupid writers went on strike. What the heck were they striking for? Better wages? What pretentious idiots. Are they so lofty as to think they are the only ones capable of writing television shows? If I were in charge, I would have fired the whole lot of them, just like Reagan canned the air traffic controllers. I'm sure everyone is praising these losers, but I'm not. They messed up my television shows. I won't get to watch 24 until next January. I haven't seen a new episode of The Office in months, and there are only a few left in the season now, even when it does come back on. Heroes won't be back until the fall, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles ended after only nine episodes. I don't even know if they will continue making that show. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing the writers accomplished was making my life worse. I would gladly accept a job writing a TV show for whatever wages I would be payed. I would consider that to be an awesome career. But these ungrateful prats aren't content with what they have; they have to get more, and inconvenience me (and countless others) in the process.

This one time (a couple weeks ago) I had this Dawn of the Dead based dream about a zombie apocalypse occuring at BARH. Zombies were all over the place, tearing down the doors and just making trouble. Being level-headed like I am, and knowing how to defeat them, I headed in the direction of my car in the parking lot to get some guns and shoot the wretched creatures. Let me pause right here and say this was not a nightmare, not in the least. It was more like a first-person action movie. Basically, it was boss as crap. Okay, so my progress out of doors from the A-wing side of the building was impeded by zombies, who were swarming outside the main entrance to the building. I decided I would have to go through C-wing to get out. As I passed through the lounge, I saw the C-wing club preparing their arsenal of Nerf guns to stave off the attack. I said to them, "You know, Nerf guns don't do anything to zombies. They're just going to bounce off." The wouldn't listen to me. I grabbed a nearby crowbar, and with Mike Battista following behind me, headed for the C-D-wing bridge. It was very long and dream-distorted (in fact, in real life there's no reason I ever would have gone there on my way out), and there were a few zombies there, which I soundly defeated using my makeshift Gordon Freeman-esque weapon. Finally we got to a room in C-wing, where we proceeded to remove the screen from the window. Mike Battista informed me that this particular room must have been August's room from the previous year, as they frequently removed the screens during their residence (this has no actual basis in reality; August lives in the same room this year as he did last year, it is not the one in question, and as far as I know he has never removed the screen from the window). At this point Tir entered the dream, bringing with her a few zombies, which we proceeded to kill off. We tied the sheets together from the bed to form a makeshift rope and climbed out the window. It was at this point that I realized, when she turned into a zombie, that in the midst of the fight Tir had been wounded and infected by a zombie. Naturally I said we needed to shoot her, but then she turned back into a person again, not having been fully infected (in actuality, it doesn't work like this; one need be bitten by a zombie to become infected, and once so, they are irredeemable). Finally, we got to my car, which turned out to actually be a van, and I pulled out a duffel bag full of guns. We took up arms and shot a few of the zombies, and that was when the dream ended. I can only speculate as to the fate of the C-wing club and their ill-effective Nerf weaponry, but I certainly hope they came to their senses and escaped with their lives.

There's this kid Ben, who is nine years old, and is absolutely the most disgustingly good Guitar Hero player I have ever seen. The conclusion I have drawn is that he is actually that kid from The Twilight Zone who wishes people to the corn field and turns that guy into a really creepy jack-in-the-box (from the episode "It's a Good Life," which positively freaked me out when I was younger). That kid had control over basically everything in live, including the television, so it is no leap to surmise that this child would have the same control over Guitar Hero, and is thus the same exact person. I simply cannot comprehend the dexterity with which he commands that fake plastic guitar. It's absurd.

That basically concludes what I have to say for the night. Hopefully this short exercise in remedial blogging will lead to a flood of new ideas and insights which I can transpose into electronic form for the pleasure and edification of my fans and readers. My blogging usually follows a sinusoidal pattern; it goes way up, and then down again, and then flares up, and...you get the idea. At least, if you know what "sinusoidal" means. Since I've become an RPI student, I've barely even given the word a passing thought, so common is it. Oh, life at a nerd school. Anyway, this concludes my text broadcast. Godspeed, and goodnight.

Some light reading material

Recently I got into a debate regarding evolution. Being a poor impromptu debater, I didn't get a change to establish my position or even make any kind of effective rebuttals, but I did immediately start researching so that I could at least mentally formulate my own position in terms that would make sense to any other person. What better way to compose all this, I thought, than in the form of a blog, which I have neglected for three months now?

I'll start out by making my first claim, which is that evolution is an atheistic construct and is in fact driven by the idea that there is no God. Evolution is an idea that seeks to explain the existence of life on Earth, and by association the entire universe itself, in the absence of a god, and in fact can only work in such absense. Of course, in order to find a congruence between science and religion, the idea of "theistic evolution" was created. I will discuss the merits of this idea at a later time, but for now I will say that it is a compromise between true belief in God and atheistic science. And, as Revelation 3:15-16 says, "(15) I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. (16) So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth." Of course, I daresay it does me little good to quote the Bible if people already don't accept the complete truth of it. Again, that's something I will get to later. For now, based on my claim that evolution is entirely dependent on the non-existence of God, I will here establish that God must exist.

Having had time to review the following video and analyze its contents, I will now use its discussion as a basis for my argument. The video can be found here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0khsot_hNWs&mode=related&search=

I have also created a transcript of the video, because Mr. Powell does speak very quickly and it can be hard to absorb everything he says. Otherwise, you can skip the smaller text section and continue on. So:

25 years ago I was a committed atheist, but as I tried to reconcile that world view with my experience and rationality, I came to see that atheism could not possibly be true and in fact is a question-begging fallacy. If reason is to have any force at all it cannot bet a set of conventions or culturally agreed upon rules of thought, because they would simply be arbitrary and therefore could not be imperative. There could be no laws of logic. And if reason was simply a platonic form, a "piece of furniture of the universe," then it could not impose its rules onto thinking beings. Only a person exercising their will, a powerful person, could do such a thing. For reason to be intelligible, it must find its source in a transcendent, personal, perfectly-ordered, non-contingent being who has revealed himself to us. If reason cannot be accounted for by a source outside of itself, then you end up trying to ground reason by using reason, and that is a logical fallacy, begging the question.

In addition, notions such as right, wrong, good, bad etc. have no real meaning or oughtness if they are conventions or societal norms. They too must find their source in a transcendent, personal, non-contingent, Omni benevolent being, and again the same is true regarding universals. Without a God in which all ideas are grounded, all we can speak of are particulars, individual things that bear no relation to one another despite the appearance to the contrary. And with only particulars, there can be no language or communication whatsoever, since language is predicated on the existence of universals, on categories.

One of the most common claims of the blasphemy challenge videos so far is the examination of how the world is, and that it shows there is no God. To do this, however, is to use inductive reasoning. Induction looks at the particulars and extrapolates that this is how the world is without exception. The problem with using induction is that in an atheistic world view it is fallacious. Just because something is true in a given instance does not prove it is that way in every instance. for an atheist to make a claim of how the universe is would require exhaustive knowledge of the universe in all its stages of development, and no one can claim such a thing and be taken seriously. For induction to work requires that nature is uniform and that there are patterns of causation, but that uniformity must be accounted for in some way. And again, that way can only be in a cause outside of the universe that is acting in it by establishing the laws that govern these patterns and provide uniformity.

Finally, there is the problem of the atheistic mind. If there is no soul, then the mind is simply a property of the brain. No brain, no mind. If this is true, then we're just physical entities, flesh machines, and if this is true, then we are entirely determined by chemical and biological processes, meaning there is no such thing as free will, and therefore no one can be truly held responsible for anything they do. After all, we would just be doing what we're programmed to do, such as believing in God or being an atheist. That would mean there would be nothing wrong with rape, murder, theft, lying, etc. and of course there could be no such thing as wrong in the first place. In the end, every tool an atheist uses can only be accounted for by the God of the Bible, a transcendent, non-contingent, personal being who imposes his image on us so that we can use our minds to make free moral choices, think rationally, employ induction, and use language. As a Christian I challenge all atheists to stop borrowing all their tools from the God of the bible and make your case without using logic, universals, induction, morality, or your minds. When you can do that, I’ll take your claims seriously. Until then, every protest you make only proves what you're trying to deny. I’m Doug Powell, and I am proud to fail the blasphemy challenge.

Now, I've never been an atheist and as such have never felt the necessity to reconcile my world view, but I find Mr. Powell makes some intriguing points. His arguments and examination are fairly brief, but after careful thought I have concluded that every point he makes is legitimate, and beyond that can be expanded to a point beyond doubt.

First, Mr. Powell makes his argument about reason. After considering the existence of reason in the absence of God, I came to some conclusions. First, if reason were to be a "piece of furniture of the universe," it would be as all other laws of the universe are, such as gravity; that is, unyielding. In the event that reason were capable of imposing itself upon us, it would necessarily impose itself in every circumstance, without exception. In other words, we as humans would never have unreasonable thoughts or make irrational choices. We would behave as computers do: incapable of deviating from or arguing with programming. And of course, even if this weren't the case, then we would still have the problem of reason being the arbitrary construct of society. And, since any one human cannot impose his will upon any other human, or society upon any one human, such societal constructs would be absolutely meaningless. Looking back at computers again, we humans are incapable of creating computers that do anything other than follow the laws of logic. We cannot impose our personalities, our images if you will, upon computers. In short, we can't create life from non-life (this idea also extends far beyond the realm of computers, but even so humans have yet to create a living organism where life did not already previously exist). All this means that, simply based on our observations of how we behave and what we are capable of accomplishing, a person must create reason, impose it, and allow it to be disregarded. That person must be powerful in order to impose the laws, perfect in order to make them flawless and non-arbitrary, and beyond humanity in order not to be subject to those laws (otherwise they would not be laws, such person would not be powerful enough to impose them on others, and they would be arbitrary). And of course, as Mr. Powell states, reason cannot be used to justify itself, as this is (within the very confines of reason itself) a logical fallacy. So should we discard the logical fallacy of reason's self justification, we have abolished a part of reason and thus made every other part meaningless. Otherwise, we can only admit that reason's existence is based on some external will, and as discussed this could only be possible through God.

Of course, it has been argued that God's imposition of reason upon us is itself arbitrary. This arguments fails to take into account, though, that arbitrariness is simply a lack of reason, which is a result of reason itself. God, not being subject to reason, is also incapable of being arbitrary, since His every act would automatically be in accordance with his own established laws of reason. One specific argument gave the following example:

Don't touch that!
Don't touch that! You'll burn yourself!
Which one is arbitrary and which one is reasoned?

Answer: they are both reasoned, and they are both arbitrary. The explanation of a reasoned statement need not be given for a statement to be reasonable. On the other hand, the imperative statements indicate that one person is trying to impose their reasoned conclusions upon another person, and this is arbitrary. So, this is clearly a silly example of a silly notion.

Next, let us take a gander at universals and particulars. Mr. Powell briefly mentions (in context with his reason argument) right and wrong. What exactly are "right" and "wrong?" Well, in an atheistic world, they are once again arbitrary constructs attempting to impose the will of an individual or individuals upon any one or any group of other individuals; or more concisely, nothing. By this view, right and wrong are simply derivations of reason, which (not to beat a dead horse) is meaningless in this instance. God is therefore necessary for right and wrong to have substance. Right and wrong are not only under the umbrella of reason, but also universals, determined by God, which can then also be confirmed by derivation from reason, also determined by God. Hence, right and wrong are in accordance with reason. But again, right and wrong are also universals. That is, certain actions, thoughts, etc. that are considered right have the property of "rightness," and things considered wrong have "wrongness." In fact, all universals must necessarily stem from God. Mr. Powell mentions this, but doesn't elaborate very much. I, however, have taken this heavily into account, and have made the same conclusion.

What are universals? A universal is something that can exist in multiple places at any given time. How can this be, if no matter can occupy two places at one time, or if two pieces of matter cannot occupy the same space at one time? That would seem to be a quandary, except that universals are not physical entities, but rather the observed properties of particulars, which are themselves the physical entities. Interestingly, because universals are observed properties, they must stem from reason. Without reason, how can a human observe two different particulars and note the similarities between them? The notion that two particulars share common properties is a conclusion based on observation, and a conclusion is...a function of reason!

Well, this doesn't take into account the possibility (however absurd it may be) that universals in fact do not exist. Conveniently, in the absence of universals the above arguments make no sense. However, universals must exist. If they did not, we would have a collection of particulars with similar (and often even exactly similar) traits that, despite their remarkable resemblance to other particulars, are completely different entities. Well, this notion is easily shot down. In the case of no universals, what is a human? What is reason itself, if every thought would be a particular with no relation to any other thought? Even simpler still, if we have a collection of particulars, each one is different from the other. However, if we select one of those particulars, which is completely unique, we could correctly say that every other particular in existence has the property of being completely different from our selected particular. Thus, we have a universal.

So universals must exist. All universals must come from God, because all universals can only be acknowledged through reason. Because God is responsible for universals, without God there could be no universals, and since we can logically conclude that this is impossible, the only answer must be the existence of God.

Naturally, language must come into play as well. Language, communication, and even any kind of concrete thought can only exist if there are universals on which to base it. Anisthenes said to Plato, "I can see the horse, Plato, but not the horseness." In communicating to Plato that he observed a horse, he employed a universal. Otherwise, he would have had to say something like "I can see the thing" rather than "I can see the horse." In fact, that universals are necessary for language and communication is demonstrated by different language. A person speaking English cannot understand a person speaking French because different universals govern sentence structure, pronunciation, and vocabulary in these two languages. However, because of universals, common observable properties, an English speaker can learn French and vice versa, and they will be able to understand each other, because universals govern the analogies between words and grammatical structures in the different languages (for instance, "frog" and "grenouille" are the same concept, hence they share a cognitive universal). And since we can conclude that universals cannot exist without God, we can conclude that there would also be no ability to communicate. If I pointed to a tree (which would be a nameless particular), any other person would not understand the tree as being a tree, and could never have my understanding of the tree aside from their own perception. Even nonverbal communication or mutual understanding would be impossible, because every particular would be different, and subject to the interpretation of each person.

Mr. Powell next argues the point of inductive reasoning, which itself is a sub-branch of reason. In an atheistic universe, as Mr. Powell says, there would be no uniformity and no "cause" for anything (ultimately, the universe itself would either have to be an uncaused phenomenon, such as in the Big Bang model, or simply always present). As such, existence would be entirely random, and even the governing laws of the universe themselves would be subject to random change. Therefore, it would be impossible based on the observation of a snapshot of the universe to determine exactly "how" it is. Science itself would fall apart, as even testable experimental results would be uncertain unless God, from outside of the universe, dictated the laws that would operate within and govern that universe.

Humans have a property which no other animal has, and which is scientifically immeasurable: a soul. To deny the existence of a soul would be to say that our personalities, our conscience, our ability to reject reason and act irrationally, and every other thought we think or action we perform is determined entirely by chemical and/or reactions, deficiencies, or necessities. This makes us nothing more than computers (albeit complexly programmed ones) that have no personal control over what we do, and thus have no real free will. Even supposed conscious choices would simply be learned responses to prior experience. We would be driven by our own bodies and brains, having no true identity to set us apart from other humans. Most importantly, we would have no responsibility for our own actions, as they would result from our programming. There would be know right and wrong (such concepts would be beyond comprehension), and no ability to imaginatively create a God to explain the world, because there would be no reason for us to be programmed to do so and no experience that would ever cause us to "learn" about God. In short, our souls are the result of the imprint of God upon us, which give us all the abilities that set us apart from every other organism.

So I have determined for myself, through thorough analysis, thought, and conclusion-making that God must exist, and must have exactly the properties He claims to possess: perfection, omnipotence, and governance over the universe, as well as an infinite, unceasing, and incorruptible interest in human beings (that is, love or "omni-benevolence"). The next further step I will take (not tonight) will be to use that as a basis to determine the merit of the Bible, and then establish the scientific accuracy of the Bible.

I'll just leave this off with Romans 1:18-32, which is incredible considering the society in which we presently live:

(18)For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
(19)because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
(20)For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
(21)For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.(22)Professing to be wise, they became fools,
(23)and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
(24)Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
(25)For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
(26)For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,
(27)and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
(28)And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,
(29)being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips,
(30)slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
(31)without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;
(32)and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Sound familiar?

"I Am Richard"

So a couple of minutes ago I said to myself, "Self, you haven't written a blog in two months and a week." Two months and a week! What, WHAT could I possibly have been doing for the past two months and a week, you ask. I'll tell you!

For starters, I've been trying to play guitar. I suppose I've experienced some degree of success, as I can now play a whole bunch of assorted chords that alone sound like nothing but a bunch of noise. However, I NOW HAVE AN AMP! What does that mean, you ask. First off, stop asking so many God-blasted questions. What this means is that now I can play a whole bunch of assorted chords that alone sound like nothing but a bunch of noise, at a greatly heightened volume! It's ferociously exciting, I tell you, ferocious. I just almost spilt milk all over my keyboard, but thanks to my cat-like reflexes I managed to catch the cup before my clutzy fingers sent it careening to a horizontal position, where it would then deposit its contents in a most inconvenient place.

Speaking of cats, I hate them. Cats are egotistical, stuck-up, and suffer from intense megalomania. That is to say, for some absurd, absurd reason, they think they're better than everyone else, including we the dominant species of planet Earth, humans. Today I saw a cat lurking suspiciously in my driveway, so I took off at a full sprint towards it, sending it bounding for its life across the street. I hope I never see that cat again, and if I do I'm going to chase it the freak away. Cats are such jerks.

I hate stock away messages. For crying out loud, it's completely retarded to put up "I am away from my computer right now." Duh. That's why it's called an away message. Of course, in the modern instant messaging world, people are rarely away when they put up an away message. I practice this method of "screening" instant messages (although no one ever messages me anyway, even if I'm not away). Some people take it a [retarded] step further and choose to never go idle, so that it is completely impossible to tell when they are or are not at their computers. I can't imagine the purpose for this, and yet some people do it anyway. Then again, most people do a ton of stupid things that I can't understand for the life of me. I suppose I'll just have to accept my own superiority.

I can't believe I have to go back to school in less than a month. I don't know what I'm going to do once I get there (except, of course, for school-y things that people do while at school). Fortunately, I won't be home for most of the year. Whatever.

I don't know why I decided to start writing this blog. It's a total waste of everyone's time. I sure hope that some more exciting stuff starts happening to me that I can recount in an overdramatic fashion, for your entertainment. I love drama.

The End

What is Love?

I just washed my hair four times because it was so disgusting.

Anyway, that's beside the point, except to provide a backdrop for my philosophical self-inquiries. I do my best thinking in the shower, and probably my second best while washing dishes. I spent a collective five hours or so reading through roughly 2,500 PostSecrets over the past two days, curious as to what all these people had to say that was so deep and dark. Alot of them were overdramatic, a few dealt with suicidal thoughts, strange fantasies, weird habits, vengeful "I just slept with your boy-/girlfriend" notes, and the like, but the overwhelming majority had to do with love. I can't begin to estimate the number of times I saw something like "I still love him/her," or "He/she is my best friend and I'm in love, but we will never work," or some variation. So I got to pondering, what exactly do they mean by "love?" Well, my ultimate conclusion was that this word is a sort of misnomer, although I do suspect that some of them were genuine, if slightly campy or "emo."

"You know," I said to myself, "I bet people who say things like 'I love pizza' are more accurately expressing true love than people who say with alarming frequency to each other 'I love you.'"

"That's funny," I answered, "and quite true. I mean, no matter how many times you get sick from eating too much pizza, you will never stop liking it, right?"

And that's funny, because I suddenly realized that people who casually say they love anything, be it music, food, television, sports, or whatever, are probably telling the truth. For instance, one week ago today I was supposed to see My Chemical Romance play at the Glens Falls Civic Center. This is the first music I think I've ever really liked, and I daresay I've said I love it frequently enough. Alas, three members of the band were stricken with salmonella a few days prior, and as a result about six shows were cancelled, mine included. This naturally made me quite upset; more upset than I think most people realize, and more upset than I would have thought myself. For the next day or so I refused to listen to "The Black Parade" (and actually I'm quite thankful for this, because I discovered how truly awesome Muse is in the process) for no real reason. I thought I would only be upset further by listening, so I didn't. Then, all of the sudden, I had an intense longing to hear "Famous Last Words." I dialed it up, and amazingly it was the same awesome music it had always been. There was no bitter taste. No matter what, even after having been crushed by this very music, I was still able to listen, appreciate, and love it as much as before. So I asked myself again, what then is love?

"Well," I ruminated, "most people, when they hear the word 'love,' probably think of hearts and kisses and romantic Valentines type stuff, right?"

"Indeed," I agreed. "From what I understand, most people think of love as this sort of feeling that you get when you are around that 'special someone,' a supposed soul mate."

And here is where the tricky part of the discussion began. Perhaps people are too caught up in the romantic to realize the realistic. What's the difference between loving pizza and loving a person? As it turns out, loving pizza is just as shallow as the pop culture version of loving another human being. If pizza didn't taste good, would so many people still like it? Oddly enough, human beings have an added level of attraction that seems to be at the same time the key to and the bane of true love. Unlike pizzas, humans have personalities and souls, all individual. Through this, rather than by taste (well, maybe some people actually like the way other people taste; I wouldn't know), humans connect to each other. And yet, while a pizza is perfectly content to be consumed by a human and has no desires of its own, every person is innately selfish, greedy, and lustful. Naturally this makes it impossible for one to love a person the same way they love a pizza, because the pizza will satisfy their desires unconditionally. Thus, it seems there must also be an added facet to this higher dimension of love. Because every person wants the best for themself, no one can possibly get exactly what they want all the time.

"Well now, you've struck upon an interesting point," I said.

"Indeed.There is no personal sacrifice involved in loving a pizza," I concluded.

And then I thought of Jesus, who said to love our enemies. Whether you take him as God, a prophet, or just an inspired teacher, this brings up an interesting point. Obviously it's rather silly to think of romantic attachment to our enemies. Clearly that's not what was intended by that directive. Rather, this deals with the part of love that is conscious choice. We don't have to like our enemies, but we should be forgiving, kind, patient, and thoughtful of their humanity. No one is perfect. No one is exactly like us, which is just a recipe for conflict, especially given the huge number of people on the planet.

"Hmmmmm..." I made an onomatopoeic sound indicative of deep thought. "So unlike our mindless love for pizza, love for another human must also include some decision on our part, beyond a simple attraction."

"Precisely." I think I had finally hit on something important.

Then I imagined a pizza with a personality and wondered just how much that pizza might want to be eaten. Now, if I were a conscious pizza, I probably wouldn't enjoy the thought of my own consumption very much. No, I certainly wouldn't want to be eaten, but what if the person who wanted to eat me was starving to death? What then? Would I be willing to give myself up for that person's betterment?

"Aha!" I exclaimed.

"And yet," I pondered, "people are still not comparable to pizzas, not even living pizzas, because we don't eat each other. Well, maybe cannibals do, but I mean in general we don't."

Nevertheless, I think by this point I had realized where this discussion was going. Pizzas, it is clear, love the people who eat them unconditionally. How do people love each other though? Well naturally, it seems that if one person loves another person, they would do everything in their power to make that person happy, wouldn't they? In general, I suspect that people who are romantically attached to each other automatically have this sort of desire initially. I suspect further that the emotions we are capable of realizing exist solely for the facilitation of that ultimate decision to really love another person. I also hit upon another interesting idea: it must be easier to love someone from whom we have nothing to really gain, especially in a physical sense. Maybe the romantic aspect of a relationship makes actual bonding more difficult. Maybe people who are just friends, no strings attached, simply connected by common interests values, actually experience the strongest form of love. On that same token, though, wouldn't two people who are romantically attached that are capable of achieving that sort of connection have an even more powerful love between them?

"You know," I said," your shower wasn't actually this long."

"Yes, I'm aware of that." I replied. "I only came up with the basic framework. All of this is kind of building on my pondrances whilst under the streaming water. It must have something to do with water, these strange epiphanies that I have."

Despite all my deep thinking, I don't suppose I've really come to a good conclusion. Despite my best efforts, I can't put a definition to love. Still, I have decided that people who place their lives in the hands of a feeling in hopes of a fairy tale life are on a collision course for disaster. It's said that the person you should marry should be your best friend. I think this is probably true. Obviously not everyone is going to end up marrying someone they've known their entire life and are literally "best friends" (in the traditional sense) with. That just means that we have to put forth the effort to become best friends with those we are involved with romantically. I can only conclude that a physical relationship is detrimental to those who have not established a true friendship. That of course opens up a whole new can of worms (what is friendship, exactly?), but I shan't get into that one now.

"So what we're saying is that there are certain necessary aspects of true love," I summarized the whole thought process.

"Exactly," I affirmed."There's a choice involved in developing a real relationship with another human being. We have not only to share an attraction and common interests, but we have to share values like trust, faithfulness, honesty, and a desire to serve each other. These sorts of things are all willing admissions. We trust each other, despite our many reasons not to. We remain faithful to each other, despite potential desires that cause us to stray. We open up to each other so that we have a mutual understanding. We work to make each other's lives better, even if we have to make personal sacrifices."

"That's pretty profound," I thought aloud. "I can't believe I came up with all of this in the shower. Well, at least the general idea, anyway."

So when I went back to thinking about these PostSecrets, I wondered how many of them actually dealt with true love. I don't intend to pass judgment on anyone, but I concluded that in the cases of the "I still love him/her" postcards, there is a good chance these people focused on the romantics and failed to achieve true love. The feelings that they may still have are merely those some emotional attachments. Obviously this isn't universally true; any number of circumstances could lead to unrequited love like this. In general, I think people try too hard to apply fairy tale magic to real life, and end up with a skewed idea of love that only makes things worse. Maybe some people make it work. I don't know. As for me, I fully intend to achieve true love, not just the Hollywood version, but the kind that will last a lifetime. I don't ever want to be the guy posting "I still love her" on PostSecret.

"Alas," I said, "little league is calling your name."

"I know," I said, "as is food and clothing, since I still haven't gotten fully dressed after my shower."

"Well I don't know about you, but I'm gonna get right on that," I ended the absurd conversation with myself finally.

FROM THE ASHES!

I feel sort of like a phoenix, writing a blog post after a lengthy period of dormancy. Back in the glory days of high school, when exciting things happened to me on a daily basis, I found it a whole heck of a lot easier to write about lots of stuff fairly regularly. These days I live in a state of constant boringdom (not to be confused with boredom), where nothing out of the ordinary happens to me. I pretty much live and sleep most of the time. That reminds me of the new Blogger, which requires a Google ID to login. This kind of caught me off guard a while ago, though at the time I did have a Google account (calvinocious@gmail.com, if you spam me I will track you down and force feed you marshmallows until you throw up), but even so I had an atrocious time actually logging in because of passwords and things like that. I have to say that the benefits of the new Blogger, such as "Labels for this post," vastly outweigh the pseudo-inconvenience of having to login with my stinking Google account. Google is like the evil internet empire. It's a dang good search engine, though. I admire Google, while at the same time sort of feeling like I want to stage a huge revolution against the tyranny and oppression that it lays so heavily upon us all. The trouble is, I don't know how to stage this sort of revolution.

In other news, the greatest and most mighty rock band on the face of life, My Chemical Romance, was defeated by food poisoning last week. This meant that they cancelled a bunch of shows, mine included. Spell checker is telling me "cancelled" is spelled improperly, and I'm telling you that spell checker is retarded, because that's a perfectly acceptable way to spell the word. It can also be spelled "canceled," but I don't like that spelling. I think it looks stupid, and I'm very liberal in my use of the letter L, so I always opt for that extra instance in the word "cancelled." Spell checker can suck an ole buck. Anyway, my show got cancelled, so I now have to wait for it to be rescheduled. In my opinion, to prevent this type of situation from happening in the future, they should probably just not eat while on tour.

I think I would like to take a trip to Six Flags over the summer. Technically, the Great Escape [and Splashwater Kingdom] (the latter only included as part of a clever "two parks in one" scam; despite what they say, it's still one park, it just happens to have water rides) is a Six Flags park, but I'm not talking about this park when I say Six Flags, because I've been there a bunch of times and it still isn't called Six Flags, so it doesn't count. It's been far too long since I've visited an "amusement park" (I think 9th grade was the last time, when my amusement-park-visiting career ended with a bang and lots of pyrotechnics), so I think fixing that is in order, since I don't really have anything else planned for the summer. I think perhaps I may be suffering from some kind of advanced roller coaster withdrawal or something, which might explain my recent weirdness. The funny thing is, I never used to like roller coasters, but then all of the sudden I did like them. Weird, huh? It was like I woke up one morning and turned into a roller coaster person. Anyone who doesn't like roller coasters is a weenie. Clever manipulation of gravity makes for some interesting experiences. Heck, now that I think about it, I haven't been on a real vacation in three years, since that time Woodard came camping with us and we were basically obnoxious for a week, half-heartedly chasing this attractive girl from the site right next to ours. We never actually found out said girl's name, but instead dubbed her "Cookie" because of a shirt she wore that said the same thing on the back. Those were the days.

I saw Spider-Man 3 on Friday, the very day it opened. I have mixed feelings about it. I ultimately concluded that it was a good movie, but not a good Spider-Man movie. Venom was basically wasted (no more so than Doc Ock I suppose, who should not have been killed off), the Sandman wasn't actually a villain so much as a desperate, petty criminal victimized by his circumstances who turned himself around in the end and became a non-villain. The Harry/Spider-Man tag team at the end was so completely unrealistic and clearly just one of those feel-good moments that artsy people love so much in movies, just like the part in the first movie where hordes of New Yorkers suddenly started chucking things at the Green Goblin from atop the bridge. Despite that, it was still a cool team-up; just completely out of character. All in all, I think artsy people doing super hero movies is a bad idea, because they get caught up in all these silly things like romance, inner struggle, and blurring the lines between super heroes and villains with this "well, we all do bad things from time to time, so it's not about beating the bad guy, it's about forgiving them and learning lessons about ourselves" junk. Super hero movies are about action, basic good vs. evil stories set in slightly unusual but generally realistic worlds that exist purely for entertainment. That's why Spider-Man needs to face the Sinister Six in the next movie, without having to deal with Mary Jane, college, Aunt May, lack of money, Ursula the Awkward and Mr. Dinkovich, Harry being a pain in the butt about his dead father, or any of that. There are plenty of action movies that simply exist as action movies. Why can't super hero movies be like this? At the end of the day, Spider-Man 3 failed as a super hero movie, but was pretty successful as an all-around general movie. It was well made and everything, it just missed the point.

We are now up to 20 home runs at Colonie Little League. I'm rather appalled by this high number, though more appalled at some of the names who have hit them. There are ten year olds hitting home runs. This just shouldn't happen. Pitching is a thing of the past, sadly. All-Stars is gonna be a total bummer this year.

Oh yeah, I went to see Relient K last night at Northern Lights, and also ended up seeing Sherwood and Mae (because they played first). Analysis: it was a good show, but the music was so loud I couldn't hear it. Next time I think I'll find a spot much much farther from the stage. However, I do seriously need to go to another show, because I noticed that live music, even live music that I don't necessarily care for, is really energizing and exciting.

Well, since I'm a pirate, I have lots of pirate related things to do right now, including maybe some pseudo-studying for my IEA final exam tomorrow morn at 8 o'clock in the morn. That's an absurd hour for a final exam, but once I'm done with it, I'll be done with it. That's all I have to say about that. I'm gonna miss the SGS once summer starts. It's a magical place.

The End