My two bits.

There are a few days where you experience a mix of pleasure and discomfort. Today was one of those days. It started with a wedding. I’ve been to a fair few weddings over the last decade, and quite frankly I’m over them. The setting is incidental; except that I met a friend who said that my last Facebook post (the day before) was very amusing. The bride, who was one of his FB friends but not of mine, had written that she was nervous but looking forward to the wedding. The very next post was mine; saying that I was working on forty ways to destroy relationships. I had decided to continue working on a manuscript about the misconceptions people have about relationships – the difference between love and being in love, about the idea that looks don’t matter, et cetera – and posted the fact on FB. This juxtaposition of the posts provided the non sequitur that was the joke. True, put like that it doesn’t sound funny.

 

“From faith to reason” – a flying review.

Meandering through a bookshop the other day I noticed one titled “From faith to reason” by a Brian Baker, a former pastor.

Seeing the epistemological error the title implied, I had a brief flick through the book, which gave the author’s reasons for becoming an atheist. These comprised the usual farrago: the existence of suffering, the Bible being contradictory and unreliable, and the story of Jesus being a recapitulation of other saviour myths.

Considering each of these briefly, the first problem I saw was with his method of argument.

 

All I need.

Please, dump more work on me. I can take it. It only gives me more justification to order another MST3K DVD.

 

God, suffering and the suffering God.

Possibly the most common argument against the existence of God, specifically of the Judaeo-Christian God, is the existence of suffering [1]. It’s expressed in this syllogism:

Premise 1 The Bible claims that God is good (loving) and all-powerful.
Premise 2 We suffer, or (more properly) evil exists.
Conclusion Therefore God is either not completely good (loving), or not all-powerful.

Either conclusion denies what the Bible tells us about God. Does this mean the Bible is invalid, so we have to choose between the Bible and the truth; between religion and reason? [2] Not at all; the syllogism is invalid because we assume that any or all of the eight statements below are true:

1. we should be able to comprehend God;
2. unjust suffering is evidence of the non-existence of (the Christian) God;
3. the Bible’s definition of good (loving) is the same as ours;
4. we don’t deserve to suffer;

 

Ordinary people; extraordinary ideas.

Like the semi-colon. Who was the grammar Wunderkind who decided that we needed a way to indicate a pause in a sentence that was shorter than a colon, way shorter than a full stop, longer than a comma? A mark that indicates the apodosis is related to the protasis yet is a complete concept by itself; more closely related than a comma would imply, but not as closely as a colon?

The semi-colon is the siren of grammar. It says, “Wait! This thought isn’t complete: there’s so – much – more.” If it were a colon you would know what was coming: expansion. Explanation. Justification. If it were an em-dash you’d expect something Big. A revelation. A shock. If it were a comma you’d read over it as quickly as possible, trying not to let it affect you. The semi-colon is a tantalus; you can’t guess what’s coming next. It makes you want – need – to read what’s next.

I adore the semi-colon; I really do. It is svelte and esoteric. Used properly, it makes Seuss seem like Cicero.

But that’s not what this post was originally about. Oh well; more of that another time.

 

No news is no news.

Yes, I’ve not posted recently. No, there’s no special reason apart from sloth. Yes, I’m still writing: I have several works on the go at present. Keep tuning in every now and then.

 

What makes a person “good”?

I’ve been sporadically reading a book by Bill Medley titled Religion is for fools, and he mentioned the common fallacy people have that being good means not doing bad; so a person will consider themselves good if they don’t murder or rape or steal. This is to conclude that the positive is true by the absence of the negative. In other cases this may be correct but not in this one.

Medley’s answer is insightful: that we expect people not to do wrong – not committing murder is what we should do anyway; it isn’t worthy of praise. A person could live their entire life not doing anything bad but this wouldn’t make them good. If they obeyed all the laws, they would be neither bad nor good, they would just be doing what was expected of them. A good person would do more: they would serve their community, give to charity, help other people, and try to make a positive lasting impact on society.

By analogy, it’s like saying a car is good because it will get you from A to B without breaking down. So what? That’s what we expect of any car. A bad car may break down; but a good car will not only get you to your destination without breaking down but it will do so economically and in comfort.

 

What is the collective noun for a troupe of trouser ghosts?

Barring the last week, over the past fortnight I’ve had strangely frequent gusts of wind: noisy but not particularly olfactorily offensive. Don’t know why.

It’s been about the same time that two friends of mine have had a similar experience: Fluffy has been breaking off the leash more frequently. None of us can isolate any specific common factor.

Weird. Although I, as much as anyone, enjoy floating an air biscuit, when Boyle’s law causes a marked rise in internal trouser temperature, enough is enough.

 

I saw the sign.

It said, “Sports store: guns and ammunition, fishing tackle, bocce bowls.” Nothing like having a supplier for all the manly pursuits.

 

In the name of God.

In the Bible, a person’s name isn’t just a way of identifying a person: it describes them or refers to an essential aspect of their character; such as with the saying: “X is my middle name” (where X is a word like “danger” or “reliable” or “gregarious”. Below are some of the ways “name” is used in the Bible in a way different to mere identification.

1. God’s name = God’s nature/ character = God

Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:5-7)

This is part of God’s reply to Moses’ request to show him, Moses, God’s glory. God’s name may be seen merely as Yahweh but it is understood to include the extended description in verses 6-7 because of the reference to “the Lord”, which is a repetition of “the Lord” in verse 5. The “name” of the Lord does not just identify God, it indicates His character, which God describes in these verses.