America's Body Dysmorphia

"For most people, going blind is their worst nightmare, but for this North Carolina woman it was a dream come true. 

Jewel Shuping, 30, was so desperate to be blind that she poured draining cleaner in her baby blues to wipe out her eyesight — and she couldn’t be happier. 

She suffers from an illness called body integrity identity disorder (BIID) — a disease that causes able-bodied people to strongly desire a disability."

Many people shudder at this, but body integrity identity disorder, aka body dysmorphia, is possibly the most common psychological problem in America today, a disorder that afflicts upwards of 98% of Americans. In this disorder, a person intentionally cripples the proper function of a healthy body organ, either temporarily or permanently.

The woman above suffers from the disorder. Every person who undergoes a sex change operation suffers from the disorder. But they aren't the only ones who do.

Consider: what difference is there between the woman who blinds herself with drain cleaner, or a man who wants to be a dragon, and the woman who has a tubal ligation or the man who has a vasectomy? All of them are intentionally crippling the proper functioning of a healthy body organ. It is not even a difference of degree. The latter two have simply done something that society accepts and encourages, while the former has not yet reached the stage of social acceptance.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, upwards of 98% of Americans have engaged in at least a temporary "blinding" of their reproductive functions at some point in their lives. This is what contraception is and does, it is designed solely to disable or destroy the proper functioning of a healthy organ.

If the woman described above is insane, then essentially all Americans are insane. Indeed, most of the "civilized" world is insane, and the First World countries are driving the rest of the "uncivilized" world insane just as quickly as they can. 

Even a one-eyed man can see the problem.
But how many one-eyed men are left?

UPDATE/SYNOPSIS
Some people seem unable to follow the logic in the article.
Here's a synopsis:
Major premise:  (A) Body dysmorphia causes people
                            (=)    to chemically/surgically impair
                            (B) the function of organs that function perfectly well.
Minor premise:  (C) Contraceptors,
                            (=)    by definition, chemically/surgically impair
                            (B) the function of organs that function perfectly well.
Conclusion:      (C) Contraceptors
                           (=)     suffer from
                           (A) body dysmorphia.
A = B
C = B
Therefore A = C

If you can follow this argument, Aristotle would be proud.
If you can't, I apologize - I can't make it any simpler than this.

And you have no argument against it.
No, really.
You don't. 

How Safe Are America's Mosques?

According to 1998 State Department testimony by Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, “80% of American mosques teach extremism”.

The Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study shows 80% of mosques teach hatred of Jews and Muslims. Muslims who employ a non-Muslim maid or cook "have to hate her for Allah's sake."

The Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study independently showed 80% of mosques preach hatred of Jews and Christians, necessity of sharia law.

The Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2011 issue shows 80% of American mosques teach jihad warfare and Islamic supremacism.

This violent Wahabbism is the creation of Saudi Arabia. "As I previously stated, the Center has not attempted to measure the extent and effect of Saudi publications here. However, as the website of King Fahd states, “the cost of King Fahd’s efforts in this field has been astronomical.” Some, such as Alex Alexiev of the Center for Security Policy who testified before this Committee in 2003, have estimated Saudi spending on the export of extremist ideology globally to measure three to four times what the Soviets spent on external propaganda during the height of the Cold War. As oil revenues rise for the Saudis, this might well increase."

The Wonders of Tautology

Evolutionary theory says that the fittest survive. How do we know which are the fittest? Well, they are the ones that survive.

I am not a fan of evolutionary theory, but at least one attack on the theory is pointless. Some people argue that evolutionary theory is wrong because it is a tautology. Of COURSE it is tautological. All of science is tautological because all science is based on math and all of math is tautological.

Tautology is extremely important - it shows us that things we never suspected were the same ARE, in fact, the same. So, a really complicated equation may turn out to reduce to 1. Who knew? It was a very informative tautology.

The problem with evolution theory is it tends to be uninformative tautology.

BTW, creationism is also useless, just in a different way. I have no no idea how God populated the earth with living things, nor is it central to my salvation that I know these things, so it isn't something I view as a crucial problem to solve.

The primary point of this post is to point out that tautology, per se, is not the problem.
Uninformative tautologies - those are the problems.

Do Books Think?

I don't buy into the AI concerns. When I was taking my computer science degree, I asked one of my profs (a huge AI fan) the following question. Keep in mind that he thought the Turing test was an adequate test for the existence of AI.

"Let's say that I have a book that lists all possible responses to any question or comment that anyone could make. Let us also say that I appended an index to the book that allows me to look up the appropriate response and read it off to my opposite within a few seconds, so that time lag would not factor into the Turing problem.  

Is that book, sitting quietly closed on the desk, is it artificially intelligent?"

He couldn't say yes - it was clearly just a book. But he also didn't want to say no, because that would negate his darling. So, he just said, "I think there's more to it than that." When I asked what that might be, he laughed and said, "Well, I don't know, but something."

Insofar as AI is a database lookup, there is no way it can be artificially or otherwise intelligent. A database is just a large digital e-book. Books, it is commonly agreed, are not examples of artificial intelligence.

You might say it is the program (the procedures) combined with the book, but isn't that the same as just reading a book: procedure (reading) plus database (book)? Even when a computer is able to modify its own programming, it is following a predetermined procedure operating on a pre-existing database (its own programming).

No matter how I think about AI, it just isn't obvious to me how AI is any different from reading a book. Which means every printed book, every written anything, is artificially intelligent. But every printed book is just the product of a real intelligence, a person, in many cases, a dead one. The book can't do anything apart from the procedure of being read.

Does that mean it is the procedure which is artificially intelligent? The act of reading is artificial intelligence in action? I can't wrap my head around how the action itself is intelligence, apart from the actor. Even the ancient Greeks created little robotic machines, in which springs and ropes wound up gears so that the "robot" would move in a specific direction for a bit, then in another specific direction for a bit. Were those robots artificially intelligent? I don't see how. Everything we've done since then is just a glorified Greek robot.

Can we create procedures which will kill us all? We've done that lots of times: just consider the weapons of mass destruction we have created. Is poison gas, along with the procedure for disseminating it, an artificial intelligence? Is a machine gun? By the rules given above, the answer would have to be "YES!". So, in that sense, I suppose artificial intelligence is dangerous.

So, when people tell me I should be concerned about AI, it seems that they are telling me I should be concerned about my fellow man. Yes. Of course. That's not news.

Mizzou: The Free Market At Work

The Mizzou protests continue to capture the attention of the nation. Many people are upset because the adults (and they are adults) who protest against perceived whatever-ism are supposedly acting out in an infantile and irresponsible way. They may be. But they are also imitating the modern American corporation.

Modern American corporations don't like competition. At every possible turn, the corporations create lobby groups that write legislation, propose the legislation to lawmakers and subsequently get their own corporate ideas passed into state or federal law. Corporate lobby groups not only write laws, they subsidize the campaigns of state and federal legislators in order to make sure their laws go on the books. Without fail, the laws written by corporations and passed by their pet legislators favor the corporations that wrote them, these laws create barriers to entry for other businesses that might otherwise compete with the existing corporate structure and/or profits.

Most really successful corporations get themselves government subsidies - free money. They either get direct grants or tax-free zones, written into the law, passed as "earmarks". They restrict their employees speech, fire employees for any infraction of corporate rules, dump whistle-blowers into the street, regulate the market so no possible competition can arise. Many of these activities are backed by the power of the state. The state becomes the corporations' police force,

Corporations convince the government to require businesses to have licenses in order to do business. Most government licensing doesn't protect anyone but the corporations, it is just a barrier to market entry created by market actors who are already making their money and don't want competition, much like an interpretive dance major doesn't want to have to compete for jobs with an electrical engineer.

Think "cosmetology" for instance. Do we really need hair-dressers to have government licenses before they can wash someone's hair for money? Seriously? Actually, the de facto need to get a university degree before you can get hired is just one more artificial barrier to job market entry, it is a union card whose fees are dramatically higher than any previous union ever extracted from its members:

Universities became the new apprenticeships, replacing both the agrarian small-business apprenticeship model and the union card. Whereas the earlier systems placed an apprentice into a job according to biological nepotism, the new system places people according to intellectual nepotism – only those who think the right thoughts will move into positions of power. As a result, university professors have become the gatekeepers to society. The newest political party, the university, fills the empty slots in political, judicial and media positions.

These students are doing with university administration muscle EXACTLY what corporations do with government muscle - require certain credentials before you are allowed to speak/act, and entirely forbidding certain kinds of speech/action. Mizzou students want to regulate what speech products are permitted into the university marketplace in precisely the same way that corporations regulate what products are permitted to enter into the "free" marketplace. Students threaten to stop the flow of money to those administrators who don't go along, just as corporations implicitly and explicitly threaten the flow of money to state legislators who don't go along.

And as for "free speech" in a corporate environment... wait, I can't stop laughing. Please. My stomach hurts. Stop.

Question: How many Americans are completely muzzled inside of their corporate environment?
Answer: All of them.

Why should corporations that are universities be any different than corporations like IBM or Apple? No. Seriously. Why? Universities aren't built around education, they are built around credentialing and preparation for a job. What could be better preparation for the corporate work environment than learning to keep your head down and your mouth shut while your bosses lecture you about thought-crime?

The student activists are regulating speech and action to prevent a competition of ideas in the university marketplace in exactly the same way that corporations already regulate speech and action to prevent a competition of products in the regional/national marketplace.

For universities, ideas are supposed to be their products. Students are treating the university administration in very much the same way that corporations treat the state and federal governments.

Is this good? Well, no, almost certainly not. But, when we really consider the situation, we cannot deny that Mizzou students are really just training to be American "free enterprise" corporate actors, and doing a very good job of it.

MIZZOU's Political Fumblerooski

The Mizzou controversy is fascinating precisely because so much hoaxing is going on with both sides. Sure, the entire controversy is almost certainly contrived: there is no evidence of the swastika, the KKK or the supposed racial slurs. But, on the other hand, there is also no evidence that the slurs being laid on the student activists are entirely fair. They are being called infantilized, irresponsible, unable to be self-reliant, etc.

I can't help but think the people attacking the students are frightened of them for entirely different reasons than the ones they voice. After all, student protests like this have become quite common in the last few years. What makes this one such a sharp stick in everyone's eye?

In a word?
Football.

These student activists made one, simply BRILLIANT, move. They not only got the Mizzou football players on their side, they got the Mizzou football coaches on their side. With that one act, they won their fight, game, set, match (to mix sporting metaphors).

It is, as always, all about the money. As I've pointed out previously, everyone who attends a university is an adult who is taking on a lifetime risk of debtor's prison imposed by the government. All student loans must go through the government, no student loan can ever be discharged except through payment. Even bankruptcy Chapter 11 proceedings won't make them go away. So, students have a certain financial interest in getting the product they want.

And, in order to force the university's hand, Mizzou student activists hit them right in the gonads. They took out the Mizzou football program. To give you a feel for the size of the college football market, ESPN alone will pay $7.3 BILLION (that's "billion" with a "b") for rights to transmit seven college football games a year for the next 12 years. Sports programs, especially football programs, bring enormous revenue to their college campuses, in no small part because the players don't get a dime.

Universities are the pimps, college athletes are the ... talent. Once the protesters threatened the cash drawer, the chancellor and president had to resign. They couldn't very well sit down with the coaches and players to negotiate a response. That would make clear how much was at stake. Indeed, if players and coaches decided to organize across the system, it would threaten the entire college football system.

They couldn't fire the coaches - that destroys Mizzou's income. They couldn't get rid of the players. That would focus attention on the power of the sports team, and the coaches would just bring new players into line with their viewpoint. The only way out was the door, and they both headed for it.

What fascinates me most is that no one on either side is talking about the importance of having snagged the football team to support the movement. It is as if both sides are attempting to pretend the ball is somewhere other than it is, hoping the Mizzou football team's political fumblerooski  is not recognized for the winning play that it actually is.

As I've said before, I am not at all a fan of what the students are advocating. It violates what a college is supposed to be about. But colleges haven't been living their mandates for a long, long time. In that sense, the students are simply making explicit the stupidity that has been implicit at most colleges for many decades. The honesty is, at least, refreshing.

No, I don't endorse their goals. What I do applaud is their brilliant political pressuring efforts. It was a tour de force that few adults have managed to emulate.

College students, take note: as long as you can get the football sub-system at your university on your side, you can force the administration to jump through any hoop you care to name. And you strike fear into the heart of football fans everywhere. They may call you every name in the book, but you will most definitely get what you want in the end. It's either that, or they never watch another college football game as long as they live.

Isn't that an interesting dichotomy?

Are Mizzou Students Right?

Everyone is up in arms about the students at Mizzou. Student demonstrators, along with the college football team (a very lucrative source of funding to any college that hosts football) have conspired to bring down the president and at least two instructors.

What to do?

Well, first recognize that the college can be viewed one of two ways:

1. it is a business selling credentials (not education) as its product
2. it is a department of the federal government, fully funded through government money that is funneled through students who borrow money from the government to attend.

Keep in mind that the money borrowed is a permanent debt. Adults who owe the government educational loan money cannot discharge that debt in bankruptcy nor in any other venue. They have to pay it, either through wage garnishment or deathbed estate garnishment. Unlike any other debt that is incurred, there is no legal way to get out from under it unless the government spontaneously decides to forgive the debt. It is the modern version of the debtor's prison.

So, these adults look at the product the university is delivering and revolt.
Is it legitimate?

Sure it is. Given the two cases above, the adults who are protesting are living out one of two situations.

• If (1) above obtains, then the consumers have a every right to demand changes in the product they are purchasing
• If (2) above obtains, then the citizens have every right to petition for change in the way their government runs. In fact, this particular right is guaranteed by the Constitution.

EITHER WAY, these adults (and they are adults), have the right to behave as they are behaving and the right to get the change they are petitioning for.

Now, you and I don't have to LIKE this (I personally think they aren't acting in their own best interests), but we cannot deny their right to do this.

We can't complain that it is a drain on taxpayers - insofar as it is a loan, this is the one loan that MUST be paid back. We can't complain that they don't have the right to protest. Certainly they do. We can complain that we don't like their choice - but it is THEIR money and THEIR debt, so why wouldn't they have the right to protest the quality of the product they perceive themselves as getting?

Everyone, especially conservatives and libertarians, are acting like the Mizzou students are pampered special little snowflakes. Maybe they are. But aren't we always harping on people to take responsibility for their education? They are.

I personally think the whole thing is based on a hoax, deliberately foisted on them and promulgated by administrators and teachers with an agenda that has nothing to do with the students. Smart administrators and teachers can easily direct loose cannon students for their own ends. But again, if that's what the purchasers of this particular product want to be and do, well? They're the ones on the stick for the educational loans. It is their life to live.

The PC Culture at Mizzou

A lot of people are talking about the politically correct culture at the University of Missouri, a culture which brought down the university's president and chancellor. Conservatives, especially, are engaged in much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the unfairness of it all. But it's actually just the free market at work.

In order to see why this is true, you need to remember two things: (1) universities are not in the business of educating youth, they are in the business of credentialing youth (2) nearly all colleges and universities subsist entirely, or almost entirely, off of federal funds imported into the college by students.

To put it another way, consumers (students) use government money to vote about which college has the superior credentials. Whether they learn anything is completely immaterial. The government employees, also known as administrators and professors, compete to provide the top credentials.

In the current teapot tempest, consumers (students) have decided that they want to change what the credentials stand for. Instead of even pretending to stand for education, consumers now want the credentials to stand for their emotions. College credentials are now meant to stand for how consumers feel about certain aspects of life, not what they know about those aspects of life.

The government subsidizes the consumers who want that transformation. Government employees (college professors) are backing that consumer-based transformation by telling the customer that this particular fad is the best way to go. Since we all back the government actions in the market via our tax dollars, the market responds by changing the purpose of university credentials.

Some individuals (taxpayers) may not like that transformation. Too bad. This is what the marketplace elites want, and they control the process. We made them elites by voting for them, either at the ballot box or by buying their products. So, by voting for them with our wallets and our ballots, we made them our bosses. We made their opinions more influential than our own.

They want the credentialing to change because they don't need educated Americans. Educated help, technical help, can be imported from anywhere in the world. What the marketing elites want is docile, divided Americans. They want Americans who have been intimidated into silence through a process that they can deny they had anything to do with: deniable intimidation.

A divided America assures the elites stay in power. The American marketplace makes more sales with 300 million toaster buyers than it does with Americans who are united, who support each other, and who therefore don't need stacks of commodity items. The more things we buy, the more our wallets continue to buy them power, and our ballots continue to support the people who cut government regulations that assure the elites stay in power.

This is the logical consequence of the capitalist marketplace that Pope Francis warned us about. The Pope doesn't have a problem with profit, per se. He has a problem with the divisiveness that is inherent to pure capitalism. No conservative whose conservatism is based on pure marketplace economics, and nothing else, has a real right to complain.

The Alternative To Resignation

Justice Kennedy has opined that any Christian who disagrees with the SCOTUS ruling on sodomite marriage should resign, just as they did in Hitler's time.

Let us leave aside the fact that the Justice has just favorably compared SCOTUS to Hitler in order to dwell on a fact he may have missed: to whit, Catholics (including the Pope) and Christians in general didn't just resign. They actively tried to assassinate Hitler and his minions. And frequently succeeded.

So, if Justice Kennedy wants America's Christians to emulate the Christians who lived under Hitler's regime, I am sure we can accomplish that. Remarkably, Justice Kennedy certainly appears to be giving his blessing to the endeavor.

Why Your Vote Doesn't Matter

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing.
Those who count the votes decide everything."
—JOSEF STALIN

I am not all that keen on voting anymore. I just don't see much of a point. You may say, "Ah, yes, the two parties are so close to the same thing, that there's not much choice, is there?"

That's not what I mean.

Electronic voting machines are not secure. At all.

So how would someone use these vulnerabilities to change an election?... Note that none of the above steps, with the possible exception of figuring out the WEP password, require any technical expertise.  In fact, they’re pretty much things that the average office worker does on a daily basis.... A high school student could perform undetectable tampering, perhaps without even leaving their bedroom. 

It isn't just that series of machines from the 2000's. There's this story from April, 2015.  

Touchscreen voting machines used in numerous elections between 2002 and 2014 used “abcde” and “admin” as passwords and could easily have been hacked from the parking lot outside the polling place, according to a state report.

or this story from 2012

If we practiced a lot, or even better, if we got someone really good with his hands who practiced a lot for two weeks, we're looking at 15 seconds to 60 seconds go execute these attacks.

As this story shows, as a voter, you can vote, sure, but you will never know who you voted for.  Why? Because as a programmer, I can adjust the voting machine's program so that my choice goes into the database while "your" choice is sent to the screen or printer. This kind of subterfuge is trivially easy. You will never know I stole your vote. 

So, we aren't voting for candidates anymore, and we haven't been voting for them for years. Whoever has the best hackers will win the election. The people lining up at the polls merely provide the necessary cover for each sides' hackers to do their work.

President Obama has quietly recruited top tech talent from the likes of Google and Facebook. Their mission: to reboot how government works.

That's why a story like the one above really says it all. How American government works - that has been rebooted.

UPDATE:

More Voters Than Residents (much less registered voters).

An example of a lousy programmer...

Myers Briggs Bullshit

In English, words that have French origin are considered upperclass and acceptable, while words that are derived from German are considered low-class and less than acceptable.

So, we would rather be a chef (French) than a cook (from the German kuchen, to cook). And hospitals ask us for a feces sample (French) rather than a shit sample (from the German "scheissen").

But, in the case of the Myers-Briggs personality test, those good old Anglo-Saxon words apply. It is pure horseshit or bullshit, depending on which species you prefer.

• Myers-Briggs is the fad that won't die
• It was invented by two housewives and has no scientific basis
• The two housewives had zero scientific training
• It was based on Carl Jung's theories, and Jung was largely a crank 
• Jung believed in astrology, alchemy and the paranormal
• Even Jung admitted his theories were completely untested
• The National Academy of Sciences couldn't validate it
• It ranks right up there with phrenology and astrology in its accuracy.
• It is as nonsensical as hanging garlic to get rid of vampires

It is as stupid as getting energy from crystals, as useless as essential oil aromatherapy, as pointless as a Himalayan salt lamp.

It is the way people with college educations justify mindless superstition.
Make it stop.

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Thoughts on Theocracy

I have recently had several conversations in which someone expressed one of the following opinions, or something similar:

"Well, you don't want a theocracy, do you?"
"This country is not a theocracy."
"You want to impose a theocracy??!?!"

This sentiment is the moral equivalent of "you don't have the right to impose your morality on others," an argument whose silliness I have written about elsewhere:

This "bayonetting our own" line is just a variant of the old pro-abortion argument, "No one has a right to impose their morality on others." Well, what if my morality says I DO have that right? By telling me what to do, aren't you assuming that YOU have the right to force this arbitrary standard on me? If you REALLY felt that way, you would have to remain silent, recognizing that I may not share your sentiments.
So, if the argument is so stupid from a logical standpoint, why would anyone say it? Well, it serves three purposes:

• First, I get a chance to take the moral high ground - when I use the argument, I can pretend that I am serving a higher standard than grubby little you.

• Second, because you have just been "shamed" you will probably shut up. After all, how are you going to fight against these "higher morals" I have just revealed?

• Third, if I use that argument, I don't have to answer any of YOUR grubby little charges. I've attacked YOU, not your position.

It's pure ad hominem attack, and it's sleazy.

Generally speaking, the person who trots out the "You don't want a theocracy, do you?" line is an atheist who wants to imply that you are a sleazy, violent, anti-democratic nutcase. But even if the individual who trots out this line is a mis-guided theist, the argument is easily torn apart.

Question: America is a secular society, right?
Answer: Well, it is supposed to be. And it would be if you nasty little religious people didn't keep shoving your morality down our throats. 

Question: Should laws create the greatest good for the greatest number?
Answer: Of course! That's precisely what theocracy does not do! It only benefits the minority at the expense of the majority!

Question: Do you like all the laws that American society imposes on you? Are you happy with all of them?
Answer: Well, no one is happy with all the laws. That's the price of living in a pluralistic society! 

Question: Indeed it is! Since living under laws you don't like is the price of a pluralistic society - a price you are happy to pay - what difference does it make if you happen to live under a different set of laws you also don't like? From your point of view, it shouldn't make any difference at all. You aren't living under laws you like now, if we changed the law to a theocracy, you would still be living under laws you don't like. So, it's no loss to you. We're still pluralistic. As you point out, no one is happy with all the laws. So, we can have a lot of different groups who don't like the new theocratic laws, and it doesn't change the current situation at all.

Meanwhile, there is a significant subset of Americans who would LOVE to live under a Catholic theocracy. So, in order to implement your rules and do the greatest good for the greatest number, we really should impose a theocracy, as it makes no net negative difference to those who don't like the current law set, and it would make a great positive difference for those who would like to live under a Catholic theocracy.

At this point, they will start huffing about how it makes an enormous difference, but they won't be able to tell you what that difference actually is.

I am now authorized to reveal what the essential difference is. The difference between living under secular law vs. a theocracy is simple: by having everyone live under secular laws they don't like, everyone is forced to tacitly accept the idea that secular laws are superior to all other kinds of law. If we force everyone to live under Catholic (or Islamic or Jewish) laws they don't like, everyone would have to tacitly accept the idea that Catholic (or Islamic or Jewish) law was superior to secular law.

It isn't the "living under laws I don't like/believe in" part that upsets them.
It is being tacitly forced to accept the idea that Catholic law really is the best form of law.

Dealing with Pollsters

When polling companies call me, I always ask to be paid before I answer any questions. If they are going to make money off of my opinions, I want my cut.

They always decline to pay me, I always decline to answer.
Go, thou, and do likewise.

The Atheist's Dilemma

Socrates was not an atheist (far from it), but his dilemma has often been invoked by atheists to "prove" the Christian idea of God is self-contradictory. This is Euthyphro's dilemma:

Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God? 

If the former, then there is something (morality) greater than God, that even God must conform to. If the latter, then God is arbitrary and not reasonable at all. 

The answer requires the acceptance of only two concepts. If, for purposes of argument, we accept two propositions: (1) each being has its own characteristic nature, and (2) God is pure existence, the source of all existence, then there is no dilemma, at least none in Christian theology.

Morality is not the result of God issuing commands.
The moral life is who God is and God does not change.

Now, one may respond that anything which does not change is dead, yet that response cannot explain the fact that, even on the physical plane, we are composed of things that do not change, yet we live.

God is pure Act, pure Being. Morality is the nature of God. To say that we conform ourselves to moral law is to say we are only fully ourselves when we live as the image and likeness of the God in Whose image and likeness we are made.

Socrates' false dilemma comes from the wrong idea that morality is a command.
It isn't.

Morality is Being. Morality is Act. God is pure Act. When God reveals Himself to us, even through the physical revelation that is the physical universe (the heavens are telling the glory of God), our being responds to His self-revelation. Even physical contact with the universe elicits a response from us (we, who are made in His image). We respond with an answering recognition, a desire to live as He lives, to "be ye holy as God is holy." This is the moral compulsion each man experiences. It is not a command from God, it is our own human nature responding to His divine nature - Deep calls to deep across the void. God does not command us to live according to His moral law. Rather, if it can be considered a command at all, we command ourselves to live the moral law, because - when we encounter Him, even if ever so remotely - we innately and inchoately desire to live as He lives.

Socrates and every other philosopher who saw the relationship between God and "His commands" as a dilemma only saw it as such because they didn't understand what Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas did understand. Morality ultimately isn't about command. It is about image and likeness, Persons and personhood, God's Own Divine Nature and its (broken) mirror, our human nature.

Socrates could not understand this because he did not have the tools. The idea of "person" is a Christian idea. The word "person" was stolen by Christians from Greek stage plays and redefined to help people understand the three Persons of the Trinity. Since Socrates did not have the Christian understanding of either "person" or "nature", he could not resolve the problem that he faced. He believed in God, but - without the revelation of Jesus Christ - he didn't know how to answer the dilemma he faced.

More Questions on the Synod

Question:

The synod wasn't assembled by the catholic media that you've been so prone to criticize. It was called by the Pope, and he does what he wants, like you said.

So we have a Pope who has assembled a pointless synod and replaced certain conservatives with liberals. And you blame the "catholic media".

Do you blame the catholic media when the Pope says certain things about homosexuality, and within weeks, Illinois politicians pass a gay marriage law quoting these very same words the pope so careless used?

Answer:

Yes, the synod was called by the Pope. The Pope's job, along with the bishops, is to explain the Faith to the world. That means the bishops need to have an explanation for any nonsense the world spews.

Thus, in order to have answers to nonsense, bishops within the synod must propose nonsense, so that proper responses to nonsense can be discussed. It doesn't matter if the bishops who propose the nonsense actually believe the nonsense they propose. The point of the synod is to adequately respond to the world's nonsense with the Gospel Truth.

So, of course the synod will have discussions about nonsense.
It would be extremely odd if it did not.

The point of the synod, any synod, is never to explain "new" doctrine, for there is no such thing. The only reason synods are called is to explain unchanging doctrine in a way the changing world understands. The whole point of a synod is to discuss the world's nonsense, and try to help the world make sense of it's own nonsense. So, yeah, if the synod didn't have discussions about absolutely ludicrous ideas, it wouldn't be doing what it was called to do.

I blame the "Catholic" media for spreading nonsense about the synod. Catholic media is supposed to understand this process and explain it to us secular Catholics who don't get it. Catholic media is supposed to calm the storms, not invoke them. But, for want of clicks, the "Catholic" media is doing exactly what the world does - twist the synod's work, instill fear that the Church will fail, the sun won't rise tomorrow, Satan will win, yada, yada, yada.

The devil was quoting Scripture long before Pope Francis was a gleam in his father's eye. The devil will continue to quote Scripture long after Pope Francis' body is in the grave. Why are you shocked to see the devil quote Pope Francis quoting Scripture???

If I were a Freemason, I would be doing EXACTLY what the "Catholic" media is doing. I would be stirring up fear and opposition, I would be stoking division and mistrust. Every time you see a website inspiring fear about a papal synod or listen to a sermon expressing concern about Pope Francis, you are looking at a Masonic news item, listening to a Masonic sermon. Is that really how you want to spend your day?

Selling the Vatican's Artwork

This is a common sentiment, voiced by Protestants and atheists for centuries.

It can't be done.

First:

Contrary to reports, the Vatican is not rich. It's annual budget is less than $300 million (Harvard's annual budget is $3.7 billion). It has an endowment of about $1 billion (Harvard has a whopping $30.7 billion endowment).

Second:
Treaty obligations prevent the Vatican from selling any artwork. Article 18 of the 1929 Lateran Concordat with Italy which created the modern Vatican State says:

“The artistic and scientific treasures existing within the Vatican City and the Lateran Palace shall remain open to scholars and visitors, although the Holy See shall be free to regulate the admission of the public thereto”

If it sold its property or artwork (each valued at 1 Euro), it would lose its sovereignty. Italy would be within its rights to take it all back.

Third:
But the above two reasons are silly secular reasons. The real reason the Catholic Church cannot sell the artwork is simple: God is Truth, Goodness and Beauty.

The artwork is a necessary tool to evangelize people to understand God. Asking the Catholic Church to sell the artwork is very much like asking the Catholic Church to burn every copy of Scripture in the world and never mention Jesus Christ again. The request substantially asks the Church to hand over its witness to God to the highest bidder. It requests that the Church henceforth refuse to effectively witness to God.

It cannot be done.

Any person who even entertains the idea of selling of Vatican art, by the very fact that he proposes it, demonstrates that he knows absolutely nothing about the Gospel or the Catholic Faith.

According to even secular sources like The Economist, the Catholic Church is the single largest charitable organization in the world. We are charitable because we know Christ. If we lost the art, it would be harder to know Him, harder to remember our purpose. In charity, the Church must keep her image of God always before Her, and that image is BEAUTY.

The Problem With Caring for the Poor

Ok, here's the major economic problem that no one seems to want to deal with.

1) We want the poor person to have his physical needs properly cared for.
2) We want the worker who produces goods to be properly compensated for his labor.

The two goals are mutually exclusive.

It is easier to properly care for the poor if the cost of goods is low. Thus, those who care for the poor want us to donate things so they can give them away, either for free, or at very low cost, so that the poor can afford to pay whatever the very low cost is.

BUT, someone has to produce those goods. If I buy the product for less, I am paying less. The only way I can justifiably pay less is if the goods are worth less. But if the goods are worth less, then the work of the one who produced them is - by definition - worth less. Indeed, if the goods are given away for free, then the work of the one who produced it is - again, by definition - actually worthless.

We cannot both properly compensate someone for the work they do AND properly care for the poor. Someone is going to get it in the neck.

Automation allows us to drive down the price because the worker is no longer producing anything at all. In fact, he isn't even working. Instead, the producer has purchased a machine, a tool, and the producer's tool is working 24x7, producing goods. Human work is expensive. The goods are inexpensive precisely because there is no human worker involved.

To feed, clothe, and house the poor, I have to remove as much expense from production as I can. Human workers will always be the first aspects of the production cycle to go.

On the downside, insofar as humans have no work, they do not receive a wage, and therefore become part of the mass of the poor. On the bright side, because the goods they need are now extremely inexpensive, we can much more easily feed, clothe and house them.

Machines eat up the low-skill jobs first because those are the cheapest to automate. Seven men can lift a burden, or I can use a machine, a lever, and lift it myself. By using the lever, I have put seven men on the unemployment line. But it is not a sin to use a lever, or any other machine, in order to streamline production and reduce the cost of goods, especially if my goal in reducing the cost of goods is to make it more affordable for the poor.

Sigh....
I don't know how to resolve this problem.
I'm not sure it can be resolved.

Someone is likely to answer "distributism", but that is no answer at all.

The Church hasn't figured out how to handle the problem represented by automation and the proliferation of machines, the proliferation of tools. In all of human history, we've never quite had the problem we now face - a culture so inundated with machines that the need for human labor is actually disappearing even as the human population continues to rise.

Pope Francis is trying to articulate the problem, but it isn't clear that he fully recognizes what is going on. To be fair, it's not clear many people do. Certainly those who oppose Francis or see him as some kind of socialist have no appreciation for the difficulties he is trying to articulate to us. No one knows what to do here. Our biggest problem right now is to clearly articulate the full extent of the problem. Any assistance anyone can give in this direction would be most helpful.

Rubio Gets it Brilliantly Right

This is This Week, George Stephanopoulos interviewing Senator Marco Rubio about Pope Francis (at 6:46 in the video):  

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Rush Limbaugh even suggested he's a Marxist.  Do you agree with that criticism? 

RUBIO:  I'm a Roman Catholic.  For me the pope is the successor of Peter. He's the spiritual head of the church who has authority to speak on matters, doctrinal matters and theological matters, and I follow him a hundred percent on those issues.  Otherwise I wouldn't be a Roman Catholic.  The pope is an individual, an important figure in the world, also has political opinions, and those of course we are free to disagree with.

Perfect.

Why the Pope Is Not A Socialist

All of Pope Francis’ writings revolve around one of the central paradoxes of modernity: How do we (a) elevate the poor out of physical poverty while (b) retaining their dignity? It may not be possible to do both.

Here's the first part of the problem: as many commentators have pointed out, the automation revolution provides physical wealth, but at the cost of jobs. By the late 1800s, the Industrial Revolution had begun to produce so many cheap goods that it allowed the creation or extension of four social innovations: (1) child labor laws, (2) retirement and retirement pensions, (3) commonly available extended education beyond grade school and a (4) five-day, forty hour work week, a work week which our current President is even now trying to reduce to 30 hours. 

Each of these four innovations effectively removed a segment of the workforce from the job competition market. Child labor laws and age 65 retirement removed those segment in the 1880s. The five-day, 40-hour work week was in place by 1930.  After World War II, we removed 30-40% of 18-30 year old adults from the full-time work force by encouraging them to get college degrees. In 2015, ObamaCare’ is trying to redefine the 30-hour work week as “full-time employment.” The machines which allowed world population to explode from 1 billion in 1800 to 7 billion today do not provide jobs at the same rate they provide food, clothing, housing and medical care.

It is easy to see why. Personnel costs are the highest component cost of any product. When personnel costs are removed, product price drops. In fact, removing personnel drops product price so low that it essentially eliminates physical poverty. Even the most impoverished nations in the world today suffer fewer famines and less disease than any previous population in the history of the world. The poorest of our modern poor are, in that sense, now physically wealthier than the wealthiest person alive in 1800.  World population is seven times higher today than it was in 1800: today, we feed, clothe and house seven planet’s worth of people in a style far better than we did one planet’s worth of people in 1800. Unfortunately, in order to accomplish this, in order to get the cost of production this low, we have to automate, we have to use machines as we once used slaves.

In the past, slaves and other low-skilled populations did most manual labor. Computers and other machines have replaced both. We are now, and have long been in, a service level economy that primarily moves information and automates services. By definition, half the population has an IQ below 100. They cannot participate in this economy. There are no jobs for them. 

Here's the second part of the problem: while Christian society has always said each person has dignity because each person is created in the image and likeness of the Persons of God, secular society assigns personal dignity on the basis of what each person can contribute to society. Children, the poor, the sick and the aged have less dignity because they contribute less. As society becomes secularized, as Christian faith fades from the public square, dignity is assigned not on the basis of being, but on the basis of work. But, as we have seen, half the population cannot work and can never be wealthy. That is, with religion gone, half the population has no socially recognized basis for dignity.

So, here is the paradox the Pope puts before us: how do we (a) elevate the poor out of physical poverty while (b) retaining their dignity? He insists the only solution is to give them jobs. Sadly, it isn’t clear we can, for the economic reasons listed above, i.e., increased personnel costs will dramatically increase unit costs thereby plunging the poor back into physical poverty. The relative number of jobs is continuously dropping and has been for over a century. Today, half the population will never possess the skills necessary to work the available jobs. Society doesn’t want Christian values back in the public sphere because Christian values often contradict business corporate values. 

Automation give bread but take jobs, i.e., secular dignity. Secular society will not permit Christian faith to assign dignity to the individual. It prefers to assign dignity on the basis of wealth and employment. The Pope finds this unacceptable. But no one has come up with a method for assigning dignity apart from either the dignity we each have as an image of God or the dignity we are assigned by society for being economically productive.

The Pope asks us to come up with a solution that squares this circle. He insists that, if work is the standard, everyone be given a job. Society refuses, for the reasons given above. We can condemn him as a socialist for pointing the problem out, but that doesn’t solve the problem he presents us. He welcomes discussion on this topic. He is open to recommendations. Does anyone have any?