Although They Claimed To Be Rational, They Became Irrational

C.S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man of the man who has never been able to conceive of the Atlantic as anything more than so many million tons of cold salt water as he quiped about the person who interprets his world strictly from a material perspective. Any feelings of awe that might be experienced by a man standing next to such a vast body of water are simply explained away by that man as nothing more than electrical currents shooting around in the brain. His feelings are then meaningless, just as is his existence.

God has granted man with this ability to reason, but man has taken that ability and applied it in ways that are… well, unreasonable. It would seem that as man’s knowledge about his world increases, so does his willingness to believe that his world is all there is. Using his increased knowledge as a springboard he attempts to make a leap from his increased knowledge about his physical world to determining how man ought to be, but in so doing he falls into the chasm of the irrational, for it does not follow that merely because man learns how his world works, that he also knows why his world works-or why it exists either for that matter-for his conclusions about what he ought to do or be are based, not on what he has learned, but instead on the mere fact that he has learned. It is not reasonable to conclude that "survival of the fittest" would in any way suggest that we ought to “save and protect the weak". It is irrational to be shocked and appalled when, after mandating that “survival of the fittest”, be taught exclusively to the next generation in our educational institutions as the only rationally acceptable bases for our existence, when that generation conducts itself as if it is true.

The irrationality of man's attempted leap can also be seen in what we are told ought to be legislated, educated, and sacrificed in our lives. From seemingly every cultural institution and corner we are flooded with an ever increasing array of causes that involve everything from feeding the poor to saving the planet.  These causes are begging for our participation and the realignment of our society. Never is an explanation as to why we ought to devote and sacrifice our lives to these causes given beyond the end for which the causes exist. All of these irrational causes seem to have one thing in common. They seem to be herding humanity toward some ultimately irrational utopian vision; the hope, one might suppose, being that those utopian ends will one day finally be achieved for some future generation before the sun burns out.

But then the sun burns out.

Yet we are told that belief in the existence of a creator is irrational. But by denying the existence of a creator, we have also denied any rational bases upon which to conclude that man ought to do anything at all except eat, drink and be merry through any means available or necessary during his short time of ultimately meaningless consciousness, for these are the very things his evolved mind tells him to do; and the grave is his reward weather he does them or not. It would only seem rational therefore for the rational mind to say, why not? For this reason, it should be no surprise that man’s “causes” ultimately begin to look and feel more and more like the religions that are so despised for being irrational.

This may also explain the abysmal success rate for many such causes as well, for staying true to the materialism that animates the causes; success is judged solely by material. Success is seen then as the spiritually-impoverished wealthy successfully mandating that material wealth be taken by force from other spiritually-impoverished wealthy for the purposes of divvying the booty for the exaltation and enrichment of the takers and pittances for the spiritually and materially impoverished. Never mind the long term ramifications of lost dignity, destroyed families, drug abuse, illiteracy, suicides, fatherlessness, hopelessness, lawlessness, and dilapidated and deteriorating inner cities where the recipients of this kind of guilt-assuaging materialistic pittances are retained. That such maladies are the result of spiritual problems that ever more material cannot alleviate is lost on those who are themselves spiritually-impoverished. The rational mind might would want to stop and consider the results of the materialist’s crusade, but then again, that would be a rational thing to do.

So round and round the irrational vortex society spirals in its irrational denial that man is the handy work of his creator God. And with its denial that it is reasonable and rational to think that there is more to life than our small minds can grasp, so goes the denial of our only hope, a hope that can ultimately compel the hearts and minds of men to real and true greatness and goodness, the hope that we were all created for a purpose, and that there is way more to life than mere material gratification can fulfill.

Interesting Brown/Coakley Perspective, a must see

On Conspiracies

I was speaking with a friend who believes there are elaborate conspiracies involving banks and shadow governments and such.  These powerful conspirators have been on a multi-generational track from well before our own time, so we're to believe.  In another conversation I was told that the conspirators have now developed mind-control techniques.  Well that certainly helps get past a lot of questions concerning the obvious whys and hows of their supposed ability to pull off their incredible plans. But it raises more questions, like how do you, the conspiracy theorist, know you're own mind is not controlled? Anyway...

Like the liberal who always directs our attention to a future Utopia, a re-entry into Eden as it were, the conspiracy theorist always fixes his eyes on the future when the great culmination of some centuries old scheme, complete with the starting and ending of wars, economic failures, and now terrorist activities, achieve their end.  The internet provides fertile ground for these cockamamie schemes to take root, grow and then flourish.

A meaningful coherent conversation with those who believe these things is almost impossible once the topic "conspiracies" comes up. Just watch the Video, they say. There's only one problem. I have been so subjected to propaganda for so long I have developed somewhat of a resilience to it I think. The videos look like someone is desperately grasping at straws, and filling in all kinds of blanks, to come to the conclusions they do. They see what they want to see, and then disregard the rest, explaining it away with answers like "thought control".

There has been one You Tube video out for some time called "Small Change", or something like that.  It supposedly shows how 9/11 was an "inside job".  But in reality, it only shows how most any conspiracy can be made to sound plausible if the right things are focused on or ignored.  It leaves the viewer with lots of questions, but they always have an answer... always.

The outing of the hoax of global warming is a wonderful example as to why I don't believe in these elaborate multi-generational conspiracies. Someone, you see, always spills their guts. But if I were a conspiracy theorist, I would simply respond that the conspirators intended for the outing to happen, for nothing happens that the conspirators don't intend to happen, and nothing doesn't happen that they intend to happen.  If this sounds like an attribute of God, then it shouldn't surprise you that "conspiracy" theories appear to function much like religions.

As for me, I do believe in a multi-generational conspiracy in the heavenly realms. I believe that there is an enemy of our souls who is orchestrating the un-renewed minds of men to carry out his elaborate plans. I believe that there is no neutral ground,  Everyone serves one side or the other in this demonic conspiracy.   There are no third, or neutral sides. And I believe that current events attest so well to the fact that "the prince of the power of the air"¹ is controlling things that many are buying into a fleshy shadow of his existence.

Just so all who come by here know where I stand.
__________________

Note 1.   Eph 2:1-3
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
NASU

When Reality Parodies Comedy

Below is a clip from the 1979 Steve Martin movie The Jerk. Martin's response to a serial killer trying to kill him in this clip has for years come to mind as I have digested elitist and the media's responses to some of the problems we have encountered.

To set it up, Martin's character believed that a person was a nobody until his name was in the phone book. When he finally got a phone, the killer, who picked his victims randomly from the phone book, picked Martin's name and was trying to kill him.

Martin's response to what was happening was classic. After several misses, he concluded that the killer hated the cans and advised everyone to "stay away from the cans!". His response is eerily reminiscent of the elitist media type's responses to terrorism in particular, and almost all problems in general. But regardless, I am almost daily reminded of this little clip as I watch elites tell us why things happened and what our responses should be.

More Dishonesty

As the old saying goes, figures lie and liars figure. And so it is with the deficit neutral promise of health care reform.

The deficit neutral promise is a gimmick of looking ten years down a road in which the funds are confiscated for the entire ten and are only given away for the last five; kind of like taking into account only the the running start and the first five miles of an attempt to climb an infinitely high and increasingly steep mountain. A less dishonest look at the bill would consider dole vs. confiscation within a time period in which both are occurring simultaneously, but I guess that's a little much to ask.

One example of the use of dishonest accounting gimmicks can be seen in the myth of Clinton's surplus. Here are the actual numbers from the Obama administration's Treasury Dept. web site showing increasing debt for the entire eight years of Clinton. How can this be? Well, it can be if one closes one eye while journaling about government ledgers to make the journalist's man look better to the willingly duped plebeian.

This is accomplished by taking into account only one of the two ledgers in congress. One shows the money borrowed from our trans-pacific friends and the nation's citizens. The other shows the money the government borrows from itself out of its surplus receipts from the SSI "trust" fund. The link above shows this as debt because it is in fact debt; but more of a Bernie Madoff style debt which similarly allows for the dishonest claim of a "Clinton Surplus".

In a similar tactic, this congress will be passing a huge tax increase for promised free hand-outs that will not come due for two election cycles. During this time, if the tax increases don't damage the economy to the point that a sufficient gain is not seen, the government and its media accomplices might well be able to tout a Clinton/Madoff style "surplus" for a couple of election cycles.

Someone told me during my engagement to my wife to keep both eyes open, then after our marriage to close one. With this in mind it looks as if the media has married the Democrat party. So the real question now is will the democrat party and its husband the media be able to pull off a similar dishonest deception with enough of the politically unsavvy?