As the Third Christian Millennium dawns, the Caribbean is at kairos: the nexus of opportunity and risk. In light of the Christocentric fulness theme of Ephesians 4:9 - 24, perspectives and counsel will be offered to support reformation, transformation and blessing towards a truly sustainable future under God.
I find Alex O'Connor et al whaling away at God's necessary existence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6yH0QgwR6Q
My main response:
<< Alex, pardon, but I think the start needs to be, logic of being given our going concern world with certain rational, responsible, significantly free and so morally governed creatures: us. This world is causal-temporal, thermodynamically constrained, where, it can be shown, we cannot have stepwise, year by year, traversed a transfinite past . . . one cannot completely traverse a countable transfinite set stepwise, and this counts for the actual past to now.
Yes, hard beginning, not just, look at the singularity 14 BYA or so. The [quasi-]physical world is inherently contingent, thus causally dependent.
Using possible worlds speak we contemplate logic of existence/being. Some things are impossible of being: a Euclidean plane square circle (as required core characteristics are genuinely contradictory, you cannot just assert that on alleged but failed paradoxes, cf Plantinga's Free Will Defense and the logical problem of evils). Others are possible. We and fires etc are contingent, so causally dependent. But other beings or entities are NECESSARY, fabric to any world. Try to imagine a world without two-ness, or where it begins or may cease. Just the distinction of world w vs neighbour w' already shows the necessity of duality, 2-ness, so 2. Not to mention just to speak words or think.
Already, necessary being of 2-ness brings in law of distinct identity and core math: NZQRCR* etc, hence trans world applicability of Math. That is, the study of the logic of structure and quantity. An extension of logic of being. And these omnipresent eternal entities are without beginning or end, so . . . eternal.
It is in that context, that we recognise necessary being as the other mode of being.
In that light, we need a finitely remote reality root that is a necessary being, one, able to account for a world with rationally free morally governed creatures. If we are not free, we are not free enough to reason credibly, e.g. by computationalist reduction of mind. mind > brain > wetware computer > GIGO.
Now, I do a worldviews level abduction: the best . . . and only . . . serious candidate reality root to fill this bill, is the inherently good, utterly wise creator God, a necessary and maximally great so supreme being. (Surely, you do not suggest that God is a contingent, thus causally dependent being. "Who made God, then?" is a blunder of the first rank.)
This comes back to the ontological argument: we NEED an adequate reality root. In that context, maximally great builds on inherently good and utterly wise. Where, as we should all know, the meaning of divine attributes is that they are compossible; the silly attempted paradoxes of dismissal fail to recognise that say, God must be just and loving justifier of the penitent. Necessary entails uncaused (we need a mode of being beyond cause!) and eternality. Creator implies supreme in power but that is mutually present with goodness and wisdom. Wisdom to maximal degree implies no unwisdom taints it: utterly wise.
And so forth.
I suggest, rethinking is indicated.
One contemplates the extremum of greatness of being, but in a world that requires an adequate reality root. Where, we as thinkers capable of credible thought ourselves must exceed computationalist reduction etc. So, we contemplate and we see, a necessary, maximally great, inherently good, utterly wise creator. God is serious candidate.
But a serious candidate necessary being has another attribute: impossible of being or actual, not merely a ghostly, insubstantial figment of our pipe dreams. There is no good argument that God is impossible of being. Post Plantinga, that is pretty settled. Try an argument _ and show why it and its arguer are coherent __ given GIGO etc. Predictably, fail.
So, logic of being, followed through to the end, strongly points to God. >>
+++++ Pardon a few notes, I refer to Lennox's God's Undertaker and Gunning for God given the vid is a highly allusive, 15 minute outline that presumes a highly aware audience knowledgeable on worldviews issues and difficulties. (No, it is hardly an empty "word salad" as has been snidely, dismissively suggested below. No more so than the compressed summaries of the core case for warranted Christian trust in God in the face of Christ we may read in Acts 17 and 26 are.)
We may safely assume "atheism" here is in the main part of a naturalistic/physicalist, evolutionary materialistic scientism worldview. So the "without faith in God" tendentious argumentative redefinition of atheism -- active denial of the credible reality of God -- hardly stands on its own, and its fallacious selective hyperskepticism and incoherence will readily be apparent.
(After all, it is now ninety years since JBS Haldane, co-founder of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis went on public record:
<<It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.] >>)
So:
a: Evolutionary materialistic scientism [EMS] reduces, mind>brain>computational substrate, but hardly has an an adequate observationally backed warrant for the complex information, organisation and functionality. (Some are moved to say, such functionally specific complexity and associated organisation/information [FSCO/I] already are warrant for a design inference.)
b: Already, as computation is a mechanical-stochastic cause-effect chain, it is inherently not independently rational and so EMS advocates are in a self referential loop undermining their own rationality. Tendencies to project genetic and psychosocial programming to others also suffers from self-referential self-defeat. Karl, what of your own class conditioning, etc.
c: Similarly, the denial of objective moral truth is meant to be an objective truth, but would then be a truth of morality; again, self-defeat. Undeniably, there are objective so knowable moral truths. One who denies the wickedness of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering a young child walking home from school simply exposes himself as monstrous.
d: Extending, EMS has no reality root level IS capable of bridging the IS-OUGHT gap. Thus it is forced to view the moral government of our conflicting thoughts by duties to truth, right reason, prudence (including warrant) etc as in the end a socially convenient delusion. Thus, again ending in self referential incoherence. (By contrast, ethical theism poses the only serious candidate: the inherently good, utterly wise creator God, a necessary and maximally great being. [In case of unfamiliarity with necessary being, try to imagine a distinct possible world without two-ness, i.e. NBs are world-fabric entities inherent to any such world including ours.] If you doubt this, try to pose an adequate alternative that is coherent __, a blank that is hard to fill. And yes the best definition of philosophy is, the department of hard questions. Which immediately discredits the notion that "Science" utterly dominates serious knowledge or inquiry, indeed, Mathematics is an extension of such phil, the study of the logic of structure and quantity. )
e: Likewise, some indeed suggested a world from nothing, failing to recognise nothing means, properly, non-being, which cannot have causal powers. We need a reality root [RR].
f: Such a RR, for a causal-temporal, thermodynamics constrained world, must be finitely remote and NB. Finitely remote, as a putative transfinite past cannot be traversed year by year to now, by the logic of structure of a countable transfinite set, such as say Z. Yes, even through quantum foams bubbling up sub cosmi, there is an inherent finitely remote beginning. Which requires an adequate RR. Where, recall, that includes accounting for moral government and bridging the IS-OUGHT gap in that root.
g: Then, our observed deeply fine tuned cosmos, first cell based life, major body plans and our own brain-body system all exhibit abundant FSCO/I and cry out for adequate causal explanation. Following Newton's rules designed to lock out smuggling in controlling speculative hypotheses by the back door (as EMS is!), there is just one warranted source of FSCO/I, intelligently directed configuration, aka Design.
h: As for where Lennox started, personal, life transforming encounter with God, across time millions of cases, many of which have been pivotal for civilisation, e.g. Wilberforce and Wesley. To invite that all such are delusional, is to open the door to self-discrediting, galloping grand delusion.
i: As for his outline on the warrant for the risen Man of Sorrows [500 eyewitnesses] who reclaims ruined sinners, I suggest we ponder Paul, before his knowledgeable judges, 59 AD:
<<Acts 26: 2 “I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, I am going to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, 3 especially because you are familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews . . . . 6 And now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, 7 to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king! 8 Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? . . . . 24 And as he was saying these things in his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, “Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind.” 25 But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words. 26 For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak boldly. For I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner. 27 King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.” 28 And Agrippa said to Paul, “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?”2 29 And Paul said, “Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am—except for these chains.” >>
From c 30 AD to 59 AD to 2024+, these challenges remain on the table and need to be soberly addressed. GEM/TKI, MNI
PPS: I followed up (and BTW these two comments have now disappeared at YT, it seems part of a wider comments sweep):
Followed up at YT. I saw:
<< @circusserpent9466 4 hours ago So, God made himself from nothing, then made something, and everything originated from nothing. If you believe God as the most powerful and intelligent being came from nothing, then you believe in evolution. >>
<< @gemofthekairosinitiative1894 0 seconds ago @circusserpent9466 No, pardon but you here show today's widespread gap in our understanding of logic of being, ontology; a key sub branch of metaphysics, core philosophy. Where, Mathematics grows from this, as I noted eight hours ago: the study of the logic of structure and quantity (no, at core, Math is not an empirical science like physics).
Here, candidate beings may be possible or impossible of being [think, Euclidean plane square circles]. Possible beings would or do exist in at least one possible world. Contingent beings are causally dependent for origin and continued existence, such as fires, humans and stars; they exist in at least one PW, and do not exist in at least one PW.
Necessary beings are different, they are fabric, framework for any world to exist: try to imagine a distinct possible world without two-ness, impossible (and by that, NZQRCR* etc and the universal power of core Math). Necessary beings do not begin, are not causally dependent, cannot cease from being. They are reality root level entities. Further, a serious candidate NB will either be impossible of being like a square circle in Euclid's plane, or else will be actual.
God is a serious candidate NB, and after Plantinga's free will defence [not, theodicy], there is no serious argument that God is impossible of being. So, no, God does not cause his existence from some prior utter non being. Were there ever once utter non being, such would forever obtain.
As a world is, there is a necessary being world root, and one adequate to ground moral government. Your alternative to God as that root is _, and it is viable because __ . >>
I am moving on, with primary online commentary at KingsChat, as Kairosfocus2; this is now an echo channel (parallel to Telegram), and this is a test as to whether I am subject to further censorship. Obviously, Google is untrustworthy.
Echo no 1 follows:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Moving
on (After Google Censorship)
GEM/TKI in KC, June 5, 2024
Today, June 5th is the eightieth anniversary of the intended
D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, that opened the way – at great
cost – for a fresh birth of freedom in Europe. But, storms
intervened, and had the invasion been postponed to the next suitable
Moon phase, June 19th, it would have been caught in an even worse
storm. However, on advice that there was a window in the weather,
General Dwight Eisenhower launched the invasion on the morrow, June
6th 1944; the date that has gone down in history as a date for what
Lincoln spoke of in his Gettysburg Address as “a new birth of
freedom.”
Something, we need from time to time, never mind the
hazards and bitter costs in blood, tears and treasure. For, lawless,
domineering oligarchy is the natural state of government and the
cultural buttresses of lawful liberty under God ever need
strengthening.
Today, too, some six months since Google censored me on a
false, vague accusation of hate speech [Contrast Governor Festus on
canons of natural justice in Acts 25:16], I am moving on. Not least,
as recently the Anglican Bishop of Barbados sounded the alarm there,
regarding the advance of radical secularism and denial of the
manifest reality of God. A trend that is also strongly evident in
Jamaica and doubtless everywhere across this region, the Caribbean. A
trend that needs to be decisively countered, as evolutionary
materialistic scientism (= modern, lab coat clad Atheism) and fellow
travellers corrode the roots of reason and moral government alike,
breaking down the cultural buttresses of lawful liberty.
But, atheists are intelligent, upright, decent people;
everybody knows that!
Actually, the real course of history since the Jacobins of
1789 in France tells a significantly different story, one we need to
heed. For, an enduring lesson of sound history (bought with blood,
toil, tears and treasure), is that to neglect or distort the lessons
of history dooms us to pay in the same coin over and over and over
again. So, yes, while modern atheists are often intelligent and
morally guided, that is because they reflect the built in rational,
conscience-guided responsible freedom built into us by our Creator,
Lord and Ultimate Judge, not the premises or implications of their
worldview. Hence, the breakdown of credibility.
Let me outline in brief.
1: Scientism tries to reduce serious knowledge to “science,”
but fails to understand that the study of what is well warranted
knowledge is an epistemological question, i.e. philosophy.
2:
Likewise, though there are attempts to relabel it as “formal
science,” Mathematics is actually a different extension from
philosophy, the study of the logic of structure and quantity. (And
yes, Science grew from philosophical roots, Physics used to be
Natural Philosophy, Biology Natural History etc.)
3: So,
no, the Physical, Biological and other sciences do not monopolise
knowledge, or even “serious” knowledge. Philosophy, Mathematics,
History, Theology, Law and Government, Economics, Policy/Politics and
many other disciplines are credible. So is what Thomas Reid and
others highlighted as Common Sense.
4: Indeed, for any
reasonably identifiable domain of study, K, the claim that there is
no objective knowledge in K, ~k, is about and properly belongs to K.
So, ~k, which is obviously intended to be a warranted objective
knowledge claim, contradicts itself. So, freely, ~[~k] = k. Any
domain K has knowable objective truth, starting with this. We may
know little beyond k in K, but that is itself knowledge.
5:
In short, global hyperskepticism and selective hyperskepticism
targetting topics skeptics would marginalise and dismiss, are
shattered. So, too, are associated radical subjectivism, relativism
and emotivism. (And, yes, these and linked considerations are in the
heart of what Google so ill-advisedly censored.)
6: We
may now turn to evolutionary materialism, the doctrine that reality
is the product of blind chance and mechanical necessity driven
evolution, from hydrogen to humans. Cosmological, chemical,
biological (Macro), cultural. All, in a reality comprising ever
evolving matter, energy, spacetime and ultimately blind interactions.
7: The fatal step, here, is the implication that mind
reduces to brain, a wetware electrochemical neural network
computational substrate. For, GIGO.
8: That is, garbage
in, garbage out (blindly). For, no computer is free enough to be
rational, as C S Lewis highlighted nearly seventy years ago (and as
Haldane spelled out ninety years past now). That is, computation is a
blindly mechanical cause-effect chain, depending for success on the
organisation, programming and information fed in by designers. (And,
we are told on bitter experience, that no sufficiently complex
program – much less, hardware – is fully debugged; indeed
debugging one error may cause others.)
9: That is,
further, these atheists have undercut their own rationality.
10:
So, when a Freud points to our potty training, or a Marx to our class
conditioning, or a Skinner to operant conditioning, etc., we simply,
freely retort: what about yours?
11: Likewise, the
IS-OUGHT Gap can only be bridged in the root of reality, and
evolutionary materialistic scientism has in it no IS that can soundly
bridge to ought. So, it too often dresses up in the lab coat,
exploits the prestige of science, and smuggles in some new form of
lawless dominering oligarchy by the back door. (Recent cases in
point, are legion.)
12: Again, instead, we find just one
serious candidate reality root that successfully bridges is and
ought, grounding rational, conscience guarded responsible freedom.
Namely, the inherently good, utterly wise Creator God, a necessary
(so eternal and fabric to any possible world), maximally great (so
supreme) being. One, worthy of fealty and of our rational,
responsible service of doing the good that accords with our evident
nature.
So, we here define a start-point for
counter-culture, warranted analysis and for fresh knowledge pointing
to urgently needed Eph 4:17 – 24 reformation.
Our
onward task, DV. END
. . . and have a key post deleted, WITH NO DETAILS PROVIDED.
I finally found a blogger email* in my gmail junk box, which said that nice generic smear, "hate speech." I am of course invited to self-incriminate by changing my post to conform to whatever claims underlie the anonymous complaint. Which also neatly manages to suppress whatever viewpoints Google does not like. That reeks of poor governance, to me.
__________
* U/D, Dec 3, a "no-reply" email address, but in an attempt to communicate, I replied anyway -- including giving a link to this post; it has not bounced back, so I hope there has been some effect. I thereafter found a button to appeal on the edit page (this was apparently an update), and pressed it, eventually seeing that the edit page indicates an appeal is in process, but of course I don't even know if my reply much less this blog post has been received much less responded to; I wonder if I have had any opportunity to speak for myself in whatever process is going on, for sure I have received no specifics. All of this underscores the opaqueness and lack of two-way communication that has marked this process. I again point to Governor Festus in Ac 25:16, who showed how the Romans understood principles of natural justice and due process, 2000 years ago. The accused should have occasion to face the accuser and answer specific charges tied to sound law. Learning of a judgement, punishment and vague but tainting accusation ["hate speech"**] after the fact with a grossly inadequate appeals process does not measure up to where our civilisation was 2000 years ago. That speaks sad volumes, but it does provide a base for reformation.
** Of course, as a self-aware conscience guided individual I know directly, that I am not acting from hate, spite, revenge, irrational fear etc., and it should be obvious that the page is an exercise in philosophical analysis on matters tied to the core warrant for the Christian Faith, to fatal cracks in the foundations of various worldviews that reject that faith and associated civilisation principles and further analysis on ways forward to reformation, down to laying out first principles of aesthetics using Mona Lisa and bad architecture as key examples.
So, what is the problem?
(Apart from, how, when I was doxxed, smeared and subjected to attempts to rob me of employability by a whole hate-blog, I was told by Google about free speech, how the best thing would be to respond, and only a court order would move Google? Well, NCSTS U2 was -- it is deleted -- a major response. That leads me to doubt that Google's reply was an honest reply then. Yes, double-standards, Google team, free consultancy: fix your governance and customer communication systems before you face a serious lawsuit. Especially, as it has been all but impossible to find any means of communication with complaints and customer service. Of course, I have been at Blogger since 2000 and in general have not been impressed with the Google takeover was it about a decade back.)
In absence of another means of response, here is my first observation regarding alleged hate speech, something that appeared high in the blog post and should have itself triggered pondering by Google's Blogger team:
Now, specifics informed by my knowledge of culture-form, Frankfurt School Neo-Marxism, now usually styled as various critical theories:
1: Truth vs Hate: There is of course a fair comment principle and defamation defence, that principled objection -- even if not true in the end -- is not to be treated as X-phobia, irrational fear and hostility. NCSTS U2 is principled objection, from the ground up, literally, laying out the first self evident duties that guide our behaviour. Where, truth is a further defence against defamation, and for cause I believe that while obviously controversial, my remarks are credibly true also.
2: Acid, vitriolic hyperskepticism as a key challenge today: This is manifest, all around and it is not particularly noted for its genteel conduct, say in the cases of riots against those who dare to try to say the politically incorrect on many campuses. It is also appallingly destructive to the cultural buttresses that sustain a constitutional democracy against its inherent instability. (For history, kindly see how Athens destroyed itself and discredited democracy for 2000 years, through the course of the Peloponnesian War.)
3: Misanthropy and anti-civilisational behaviour of Jacobin-derived radicals: The history of the radical left in our civilisation, since 1789, has shown consistent resort to lawless ideological oligarchy, terror and mass killing. This includes, that the Communists have killed over 100 millions in assorted democides.
4: The National Socialist, German Workers' Party meant the "Socialist": As a child, I was taught the widely held view that there was a mirror-image pair of tyrannies, Communists on the Left, Nazis on the Right. When I became a man, I learned better. Nazism and Fascism were Nietzschean Superman, political messiah ideologies in which some mass victim group sought rescue in the face of allegedly unprecedented crisis, by a revolution implementing a totalitarian state led by a superman, beyond ordinary law. This is an obvious echo of Marxist thought on revolution, but nationalist (or the like, the mass base can use other bases to build identity) rather than internationalist. Marxism, from 1848 on, has always had many sects and heresies. Fascism and Nazism are right of Stalin, but left of anyone else, in a day when the hoped for international uprising of the working class failed to appear. The eschatology failed, new sects arose.
5: The Left vs Right Political Spectrum is dead, and was never a serious model: c 1789, in the Revolutionary-era Assembly in France, the traditionalists sat on the Speaker's favoured right hand and the more and more disreputable to his sinister side. Across C19, the left became Socialist, especially Social Democrats. With the discrediting of Monarchy through that blunder and catastrophe, the Great War -- the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Monarchies collapsed -- there was now no coherent framework for Right or centre, as is manifest today. In U2, I put on the table a more historically anchored spectrum (just crack and read your Bibles), Autocracy > Lawless Oligarchy > Lawful Oligarchy > Constitutional Democracy > The Anarchic, Chaotic State of Nature. I posited that this fits with the Overton Window revisioned as having BATNAS of lawfulness and Government. This is fair comment on the politics of our time, and a warning of what happened when law was effectively redefined as whatever those who control the legal presses choose to issue under robes, ceremonies and colour of law.
6: There is a creation-order, intelligible first law, the natural law: Here, I go back to Cicero in De Legibus and others, going forward to John Finnis' recognition that in effect once one sees the cluster of things the Positivists must engage but arbitrarily deem not law, it is evident that this now dominant school is simply a defective form of natural law theory. We are morally governed creatures, with consciences and principles of justice tied to the classic, love one's neighbour as one loves and cherishes oneself. This of course cuts across many rights claims today and many distortions under colour of law. But, as a descendant of slaves in a region founded on kidnapping into slavery and working to death on plantations, I know that there must be built in laws of justice that ground reformation. That is how slave trading and slavery were finally abolished, having been a universal custom and having been entrenched under colour of law. (And, so, from Mother's Milk on, I have ben aware of issues such as that sound conscience is a law, requiring correction and heart softening to reach soundness and due reformation.)
7: The mass killing of 1.4+ billion of our living posterity in the womb since the early '70's (growing at 1 million per week) is unconscionable violation of the first right, life: Without life, there are no other rights, and we have imbibed a global mass guilt of blood beyond any other holocaust in history. It is anything but hate or oppression to point this out. It is a call to turn back from grave wrong and to seek forgiveness and healing.
8: Exposing a false accusation of genocide as blood libel, is fair comment: Genocide, is geno + cide, a term originally coined to describe mass murder of 6 million Jews intending to erase that so often targetted people. Other yardstick cases include the Ottoman massacre of the Armenians (1.5 millions), the murder of 2 million Cambodians in the killing fields, the Rwandan mass murder in the 1990's. Arguably, Stalin's starving of was it 2 million Ukrainians in the 1930's, is another case as was the German intent to finish the Job during their invasion of Russia. Oddly, the wider mass killing of 100+ millions by the Communists is not a genocide, as there was neither racial targetting nor a cumulative toll likely to wipe out a people, the term democide has been coined for such mass killings. Genocide, then, is a sobering reality with a capital example that still reverberates around the world, it is not to be used lightly or maliciously for cases that do not measure up to the yardstick examples. When therefore I learned of how radical activists for a decade have tossed the rhetorical grenade, "trans genocide," and discovered a 2018 "report" on the Latin America and Caribbean [LAC] Region that irresponsibly accuses my home region of genocide, I called it out for what it is, blood libel that needs to be retracted and apologised for. Yes, we need to be compassionate to those suffering gender dysphoria and provide evidence based genuine help -- such as this expert testimony calls for:
In case you think I exaggerate, here is the report cover page on the LAC region -- not far short of a billion people -- the same cover featured in U2:
Now, protest at actual police brutality, or mob violence is a reasonable thing. (And, I do believe police and prison reforms are in order across this region.)
But, there is a manifest red line at libel, libel of blood. Where are the death camps, killing facilities or killing fields in my region? Nowhere. Where are the graveyards or crematoria or desert death marches with now desiccated hundred year old skeletons or rivers brimming with bloated bodies? Nowhere. Yes, there has been abuse and bullying (which I objected to). Yes, as with other serious psychosocial disorders, there is a higher suicide rate and lower life expectancy, something to be part of our sound, compassionate response. But no, blood libel is never justified.
9: Dan Brown and others were and are out of order and are appropriately called out: I here put up my markup on Dan Brown, who was widely hailed for promoting ill-founded ill-informed assertions, making millions. My markup speaks for itself on doctrine of fair comment:
10: The London Skyline is indeed spoiled through deliberate multimillion pound violation of canons of aesthetics, and we need to restore objectivity about beauty: I didn't even realise at first that I had found London's skyline, but the panorama speaks for itself:
11: It remains the case that for any reasonably defined topic or discipline X (including, Morality, History, Aesthetics, Theology, Philosophy etc.), it is demonstrable that the attempt to deny knowable objective truth refutes itself and is irrational: In short, "my truth/ your truth" fails. This is because, the attempt to deny such objective, warranted, knowable truth, ~k(X) is clearly intended to be objectively true regarding X, is manifestly about X and so is a truth claim belonging to X. The one who asserts ~k(X) therefore inescapably contradicts and refutes himself, which is irrational. This is fair comment, is warranted, is indeed undeniably true. It cannot be defamatory or an act of hate, though it cuts across deeply entrenched worldviews and ideologies. Of course, it also decisively undercuts many fashionable opinions, ideologies, worldviews and policy/cultural agendas in our day.
12: My adaptation of the Seven Mountains of Influence model is justified through sociology and is not extremist thought: I have found this frame of thought useful in helping people understand the relevance of the Christian Faith to all of culture, and note that it is closely connected to sociological analysis of major institutions of society:
13: Nor is it hate speech to point out the following map promoted by radical Islam: I found this map in a radical IslamIST web site on Sept 11, 2001:
14: Similarly, this assessment of two cultural tidal waves impacting the Caribbean, and of our internal weaknesses is fair comment not hate: This, is again, a reasonable, outline analysis
15: It is not hate speech to teach core Christian doctrine, or to point out that at the heart of that faith is the Lordship of Christ, a call to all men to repent from sin (including fashionable sins, cf. Rom 1), or that [cf. "sin"] gospel ethics is integral to the gospel: Indeed, this is freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Religion, and responsible fair comment:
16: It is fair comment to observe that the cosmos, D/RNA and many features of the world of life show observable signs of design: This is not anti-science or attack on principles of scientific progress, it is reasonable, empirically founded comment.
17: And, the like: In absence of specific objection, I am left to guess even as I appeal to those who have set themselves up as judge, jury and censors, limiting my right of reply. (And, couldn't matters have been simply resolved if you pointed to specific phrasing on my part that is inadvertently offensive to reasonable people?)
To all such, I close with the remark made 2,000 years ago by the then newly arrived Roman Governor, Festus, when the Jerusalem Elites asked him to hand over Paul:
Acts 25:. 16 I answered them that it was not the custom of the Romans to give up anyone before the accused met the accusers face to face and had opportunity to make his defense concerning the charge laid against him. [ESV]
In other words, it seems to me that Google is in manifest and gross breach of canons of natural justice and sound governance that were well understood by the Romans, 2000 years ago.
I suggest, the policy and procedures should be reconsidered. END
PS, Dec 3: I ran across a Forbes article on repeat demonetisation of the well known YouTube channel, C&Rsenal which shows that the opaqueness and strange readings of "rules" problem is Google-wide, i.e. it is a corporate-level governance (and likely, ideology) problem:
"Unfortunately there is absolutely no transparency with YouTube," said
Othasis. "We've had a few months of smooth sailing but already some
videos that have been up for years are being de-monetized again. We are
constantly told we broke at least one rule out of a page of them, and
yet when we review the matter we can't find a single point we've
violated."
They also point to problematic appeals processes:
Appealing such decisions is even more laborious.
"Sometimes we manage to appeal to a guy who knows a guy and the
matter just goes away without explanation or clarification," Othasis
added. "It's absolutely not a reliable income source and even in the
best months has not made up even the base cost of production for an
episode."
So, it is no surprise to see similar problems with Blogger (even though there is no monetisation of any of my blogs).
Notice, on fair comment, how the underlying problem is civilisation-level, precisely being one of the key analyses in the now censored blog post. Natural justice, tracing to due, transparent, accountable process, is anchored in our creation order, built-in and branch on which we all sit, intelligible, self-evident first duties and first law. Which, are therefore antecedent to parliaments or corporate boards or legal departments, and are absolutely universal in jurisdiction. Namely, the Ciceronian duties to truth, to right reason, to prudence (including warrant for knowledge claims), to sound conscience, to neighbour and so too, to fairness and justice.
<< Alex, pardon, but I think the start needs to be, logic of being given our going concern world with certain rational, responsible, significantly free and so morally governed creatures: us. This world is causal-temporal, thermodynamically constrained, where, it can be shown, we cannot have stepwise, year by year, traversed a transfinite past . . . one cannot completely traverse a countable transfinite set stepwise, and this counts for the actual past to now.
