Evolution, Baseball, ShowBoat and Political Correctness

Posted on May 19, 2017 by A Bit Of Orange

Have you ever wondered how BaseBall and the Musical ShowBoat explain why the racist undertones of Political Correctness lead to Obama becoming our “First Black President”? If you have, I would be very surprised. But just for you, I have put my brains to this task and will share with you what I have learned!

Having used science to show that evolution fails entirely on its own merits, I still know that there are people on both sides of the fence (or perched uncomfortably on it) who must wonder why it is that I bother fighting off the great dragon of Darwinism in the first place. Today I intend to show one of the great social evils which results from an acceptance of Darwinism, namely the prevailing racist, White Supremacy which calls itself Political Correctness. I will also show how Obama is “our first black president” because PC Culture is foundationally white-supremacist. But first, I want to talk about Chicago baseball.ShowBoat

Up on the north side we have the baby bears whose games were announced by the only alcoholic sports announcer to ever be impersonated by Will Ferrell- the Chicago Cubs. On the south side we have a team whose stadium has gone through a variety of bad name changes (though here in Chicago we refuse to use any of them), the White Sox- Because Chicago public schools don’t waste their time on things like spelling. Continue reading →

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Buying a Toaster at Walmart (or, WHAT’S IN THE BOX??!)

Posted on May 17, 2017 by A Bit Of Orange

Have you ever had a conversation about what “Atheism” means? I have, thanks to my many fans on social media, and it leads me to this thought experiment about buying a toaster.

I argued long ago that knowledge and belief are two sides of the same Metaphysical Nickel– they CANNOT be separated.

To Believe is to have confidence/faith in the Truthfulness of information one can recall and understand.

To Know is to be able to recall and understand that which is believed to be true.

If you do not choose to accept a proposition as TRUE, you will not say you believe it. Also, if you cannot remember, nor understand it, you cannot honestly say you believe it. On the flip side of the nickel, if you do not believe a proposition to be true, you will not say you KNOW it.

Imagine I come into the room with a nondescript box, taped shut. It’s a little bigger than a bread box. I say, “Do you know what I have in this box?” You say, no, for how could you know?

“Do you believe I have a toaster in this box?” I ask. Again, you say, no, as you have no knowledge about what is in the box.

At this point, I would say you were Agnostic about the box. You don’t KNOW that there ISN’T a toaster in the box, but you don’t know that there IS. You lack a belief in the toaster, only because you can’t honestly say one way or another. You have no intellectual foundation for making that call.

Now, you may decide you don’t like the looks of me and assume I’m a big liar- the kind of liar that would make up a story about having a toaster when he clearly does not have a toaster. If you choose not to believe my story, it’s not an intellectually founded rejection of the existence of the toaster. It’s an emotional response to me. You still would have to admit that there is no REASON why there COULDN’T be a toaster in that box. You just think you have reason not to trust ME. It’s a thin line which is hard to see, but it’s there.

Now imagine you are walking through Walmart, and you see a very similar box, taped shut, and sitting on a shelf. Only, this box has a picture of a toaster on it, and it is labeled, “Toaster.” In this scenario is it not IMPOSSIBLE that there is something else in the box, but now you would say you KNOW what is in the box. The reason is not direct observation- the box is still shut. But it’s still a kind of scientific assurance- every time you open a box from the store which was taped shut until you open it, it contains what the packaging claims it would contain. Once again, you see a box at the store with a clear label, and because of past experience (and other reasonable arguments about truth in advertising) you believe that the box is accurate, and you would say you know what is in the box, even though you have not seen it.

William Lane Craig makes the useful distinction between 100% confident, mathematical certainty, and a proposition which is clearly more probable than its opposite. In this case, you can be far more certain that there IS a toaster than you could be certain that someone put something else in this box at the factory. It’s not impossible, but it is so unlikely that you would not hesitate to buy the box and take it home if you needed a toaster.

Now a third scenario- I show you the box, as above, but this time I open the box and show you. This time you would also say you know that there is a toaster in the box. If I asked you, “Do you believe there is a toaster in the box?” you would, of course, say YES. You can SEE it. Now, whether this equates to 100% confident, mathematical certainty depends on what kind of skeptic you are. There are people out there who will doubt their own existence and REFUSE to admit that it’s possible to prove one’s own existence with 100% certainty. What about “I think, therefore I am?” These people will say, “That only proves that thinking exists, not that there is a self doing the thinking.” At some point, you need to stop trying to convince other people of what they refuse to believe. This guy won’t believe HE exists. Good luck getting him to accept anything else.

Popular YouTube Atheist Thunderfoot had a long conversation with Creation spokesperson Eric Hovind where in he (Thunderfoot) admitted that his atheistic worldview means he could be wrong about EVERYTHING he knows, and the universe, all of reality, might not be real. I’m not sure if he would buy a toaster at Walmart, but his position must give you pause.

Have I proven that Knowing and Believing are two sides of the same Metaphysical Nickel? Consider this, if I show you there is a toaster in the box and ask if you know what is in the box, would you say, “I know there is a toaster in the box because I can see it, but I don’t BELIEVE it.”

Or would you say, “I believe there is a toaster in the box, but I don’t know if there is a toaster in the box.” What sense would that make?

Now, you may say of the box at Walmart, “I believe there is a toaster in this box, but because I have not seen it, I do not KNOW.” If you say you do not KNOW, wouldn’t you really be saying “I believe there is PROBABLY a toaster in the box.”? I propose that we CANNOT separate our belief from our knowledge in order to really mean “I believe FULLY something which I cannot know.” We do say things like this, but if we think about it, what we MEAN  by such statements is just that we consider it far more likely that the expected thing is actual as opposed to the opposite. This is why we buy items at the store without opening them at the store. We KNOW what is in the box- in a sense. It’s also why we love magic tricks or a really good punch line. We KNOW there is no rabbit in the hat, or we KNOW how this story is going to end, but we are delighted to find out that what we knew and believed was wrong.

So how does this relate to the discussion over the way we use the word “Atheism”? My friendly commenter suggested that, by saying he was Agnostic, he had NOT answered the question “do you believe God exists?”. He had said what he did not know, but did not say what he believed. I am suggesting that it is impossible to do one without doing the other. I know God exists, and so I believe God exists. That commenter does not know, and so how can he believe what he does not know? Further, how can he know what he does not know? Specifically, how can he believe God does not exist, or say he KNOWS God does not exist if he admits to being agnostic?

The agnostic says, “I don’t know what’s in the box, so it MAY be a toaster. But I don’t believe it IS a toaster because I don’t KNOW what is in there. I only know that it is not impossible, but that is too little knowledge to have a flip side of belief.”

Or in a sense- I’m not shelling out $25 to Walmart until I look in the box.

For the atheist to be rational- what I call an intellectual atheist, one with reasons for his atheism- he would have to say, “I do not believe there is a toaster in the box because the box is a match box, and it is far too small to fit a toaster inside. It is IMPOSSIBLE for a toaster to be in that box.”

I hope this helps to clarify my position, and again I want to thank all of the Atheists and Agnostics who reached above name calling to actually try to help me understand what they are thinking. When I look at you, I don’t see a toaster, and I hope you do not either.

Now go have a pop tart! You’ve earned it.

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Atheism and the Return of the Metaphysical Nickel

Posted on May 15, 2017 by A Bit Of Orange

To begin with, I want to thank all of the kind self-declared Atheists who have chosen to dialogue with me on the social media. It is because of you guys that I have been able to understand and think about these issues as much as I have. And equally important, you have proven to me that not all self declared atheists are the kind of perplexing nimrods who cuss me out because I ask them to explain themselves when they tell me that plants are NOT alive (or at one point, that “pants are alive, depending on your definition.”). Some of the people on social media worry me in that “He’s off his medication again” kind of way.

The “pants are alive” guy also insisted that toasters can’t NOT believe in God. If I made this stuff up, I wouldn’t believe me either. Continue reading →

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Branyan, Spirituality, and Atheists (art or Arthur?)

Posted on May 1, 2017 by A Bit Of Orange

The Month of Branyan continues with a great post about Atheists trying to abscond with “spirituality.” The article I am responding to is here: http://www.johnbranyan.com/in-the-spirit-of-no-spirits/

The key to it is a quote from famed atheist and “sweaty pervert” cosplay aficionado, SamHarris. In a recent article he said this:

“Spirituality “is a name for all of the deliberate efforts people can make to cut through the illusion of the self, the illusion that there is a thinker in addition to the thoughts, or an ego as it is often called,” Harris, 47, said in a telephone interview. “Self-transcendence is the foundation of what I am calling spirituality.”

A reader of the blog commented thusly: “Art, for example, doesn’t transcend the self?”

John replied with, “Art is not conscious.”

John has stated that Art is not conscious, but To be fair, on atheism, consciousness is an illusion- as Sam Harris stated in that first quote above: “..the illusion of the self, the illusion that there is a thinker in addition to the thoughts..” On atheism neither art NOR the artist are conscious. As I have pointed out in THIS article/THIS video, consistent atheism has no room for a self, conscience thought, or free will, and Sam Harris may sound like an idiot here, but he is being a consistent atheist. Neither art nor Arthur are selves. Neither is a WHO, both are WHATs.

On atheism, a toaster and the human brain differ only in their complexity and chemical make up- but in a godless worldview, how does complexity create self or self awareness? That is like asking how complicated your toaster can get before it DECIDES to make toast. In both cases, it can’t. You can add as many features to your toaster as you want and it will never gain the ability to decide if it is going to toast that pop tart. The lever you push down to get toasting just becomes more complex, but it essentially will always do the same thing.

Push lever= toast pop tart.

Atheism demands one reject free will and a unified self. It’s part of the laundry list of reasons why atheism is unlivable and absurd. When atheists are consistent, they have to reject belief not only in God, but in themselves. Sam Harris is being consistent and rejecting his own free will, ability to think, and self to do the thinking. And for this he gets people to buy his books?

There needs to be a better word for “stupid.”

Here’s where I take atheists to task- if you admit that you can think and make choices,

or-if you can distinguish between actual right and wrong (as opposed to your feelings and personal preferences),

or- if you admit you can choose and make decisions,

or- if you admit you are not a toaster,

then you admit that Atheism is false and God must exist.

They don’t get to steal from the Biblical worldview and attack it at the same time. It’s absurd. If you claim you are thinking person- a “free thinker”-then you have rejected Atheism already. You want to reject the existence of God? OK, but in the same breathe you are professing that you’re a toaster whose DNA has forced their brain to take the form we call “Atheism.” Not only did you not choose to be an atheist, you never could. Your lever got pushed and your brain machine toasted the theism pop-tart until it was burnt. And from there, Sam Harris writes books defending the atheistic world view.

Harris can attempt to persuade me that I can’t think and don’t exist and then ask me to think about becoming an atheist, but I’m not interested in what he has to say. Personally, I’m not going take advice from a toaster.

PS: Thanks for posting this JB. A great invitation to think, as always.

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Jackson Pollok and The Psychology of Arson

Posted on April 28, 2017 by A Bit Of Orange

I was looking at the painting Convergence (by Jackson Pollock in 1952) the other day, and I noticed something which I had not seen before. Now that I have seen it I can’t believe I never noticed it before. Take a look and tell me what you notice. Take in the whole picture.

Now look at the splotch of white in the top left corner and the line of red-orange which circles around it. Can’t you see it? Jackson Pollock made a HORRIBLE error while making this painting! That white splotch curls UP and to the RIGHT just like the white splotch over the center of the image! That is such an obvious error that I am surprised he even allowed this thing to see the light of day. Now, compound that with the flagrant error which I am guessing resulted from that one. The red-orange line above the while splotch ANGLES up and down on either side instead of CURVING like the image demands! I suspect that his second error is the result of his first. He must have seen it and been so AWARE of it that he just couldn’t control his paint!

If I were him, I would have taken the effort to correct these heinous mistakes.

Speaking of correcting mistakes, I have stopped going to my therapist. THAT was a mistake and I can’t believe it took me this long to notice it. See, I was assigned this therapist by court order when I was arrested for various arson related charges last year. I have Pyromania, or maybe Pathological firesetting (My therapist never could make up her mind), both of which are described as psychiatric disorders.

But as I was burning her office to the ground (at night while it was empty of course. I’m not a psycho!) I had a realization. If the human brain simply evolved from random chance processes and natural selection and what not, then how does some nerd in her ivory tower tell me that the way MY brain works is a DISORDER? Maybe I am statistically different than the majority, but then so were the first apes who walked upright! Or the first cavemen who could talk- or make fire! The point is, WHY call something a DISORDER just because it is different than average? The only reason humans exist is because some members of the species- whether those were bacteria several billion years ago or some smarter than average apes a few million years ago- were different than average. Super geniuses are different than average. I don’t see anyone saying Einstein had some kind of high functioning math disorder. He gets praised for HIS difference. Why do I get labeled for mine?

Calling my desire to set fires a disorder seems to be based on the idea that there is a natural order- a plan from which I have strayed. It’s like saying the brain was designed a certain way and mine is broken or malfunctioning. But of course that is ridiculous because there WAS no plan! Evolution is not a designer with a plan. We evolved from worms and fish and monkeys through random mutations! Some mutations made us walk upright and my mutations make me want to see the whole world burn. What ORDER does that violate? What SHOULD or OUGHT did evolution create which MY particular desires violate? The whole thing is silly. These psychiatrists are seeing problems which are not there.

If you ask me, my therapist was letting her Catholic beliefs contaminate her scientific worldview. As a scientist she should know better than to think the human brain was designed to function a particular way. It’s not a car. It’s merely a very complex piece of organic matter which is the result of chance over millions of years, same as lice or tape worms or crabgrass. So I refuse to accept the idea that I have a disorder. My brain does what evolution has created it to do, and that is to love fire. It’s time we stop letting these religious nuts tell us what we can and can’t love.

And I think its time we all admit that Jackson Pollok wasn’t a very good painter. If you think Convergence had a lot of mistakes in it, you should see Number 5 (1948). THAT thing has some disorders.

 

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British Literature and An Elephant on the Couch

Posted on April 26, 2017 by A Bit Of Orange

If you’re like most citizens of the internet you have no doubt seen memes and whatnot attempting to show that belief in God is silly. Here’s an example of what I mean: Many atheists think they have come up with a clever defeater for the creation of the universe by God by asking WHEN God created the universe if Time is a part of the universe. On the surface, this question presents quite a pickle.

If God made time, WHEN did he make it? But if there was no time yet, then there was no WHEN when it could have been made… thus the whole sweater starts to unravel.

Or does it?

To answer this question I shall appeal to a brilliant American Philosopher and two very popular British stories.

JP Moorland is a brilliant philosopher who sums up the Kalaam argument for the existence of God like this:

One- the universe exists 
Two- it was either caused or uncaused
Three- the cause is either personal or impersonal

And then he argues that the universe is caused, and that the cause is personal. I won’t go into all of those details there, but he goes into them here and I highly recommend it: The Kalam Cosmological Argument – JP Moreland, PhD

I bring up Mooreland primarily because it is in this discussion that he explains the relationship of God to his creation.

The personal cause stands in ontological relationship to the creation of the universe- not temporal relationship to the beginning of the universe. In other words, the one owes its existence to the other even if there is no moment when the one caused the other. This sounds like self contradictory gobbledygook, but allow me to explain.

Shakespeare stands in ontological cause to Hamlet. He is the reason Hamlet exists, even though Hamlet was not written in the timeline of the story of Hamlet. If Guildenstern and Rosencrantz were to ask Hamlet when Shakespeare wrote “Hamlet,” there can be no answer. Hamlet cannot say Shakespeare began when Hamlet was born, or a hundred years before, or anything else which would make sense in his own story. Shakespeare did write Hamlet, but not at a point in time inside Hamlet’s universe.

If I step into my Tardis and fly through all of time and space with the Doctor, will we ever find the moment when the first episode of Dr Who was written? To you it was 1962, but to the Doctor himself, it never happened. That story- the story of his origins- happened outside of his own story, and so he can never travel through space and time to see it for himself.

Similarly, God made the universe outside of the time of our own universe, the act of which caused the first moment of our time. God stands in relationship to our universe like an author to a story.

Let me skip 500 years of British literature. Step into the Tardis and hold on for a moment until we land at Hogwarts…

Imagine that Prof. Albus Dumbledore waved his wand and instantly an elephant on a couch appeared in the great hall. POOF! The elephant looks around somewhat perplexed, because he finds himself in a school for wizards, and the children begin to scream because they are children.

The couch has a considerable dent made by the elephant. It exists because the elephant is on the couch. Thus, the dent in the couch owes its existence to the elephant. We would say of this relationship of elephant causing the dent, the elephant stands in ontological causation to the dent- in other words the dent exists because the elephant is causing it.

However, the elephant did not create the dent at any particular time. The elephant did not SIT on the couch, but rather the couch and the elephant were magically created at the same moment. Thus we would say of the relationship between elephant and dent in the couch that the elephant does not stand in temporal causation to the dent. It didn’t create it at some point in time, but rather is causes the dent to be without having caused the dent to come into being at a particular time by sitting.

When did the elephant sit? He didn’t. But the fact that he is sitting is what is causing the dent.

So, when did God create the universe? WHEN did God create TIME? It’s an unanswerable question, but not because the idea of God creating the universe is self contradictory. It’s unanswerable because the author is not inside our story until he writes himself into it. God makes the elephant of our universe at the same moment as the couch of time. This is no problem for God, as he stands outside of our time in what we call Eternity. God can cause time to exist without there being a time when he made the effect.

But for the atheist, when did the Big Bang happen? THAT, my friends, is an unanswerable question because it is literally asking, When did the cause of the universe make time? And this time, there is no Shakespeare outside of the story to write the first line. Where atheists fail to understand the distinction is when they try to think of God as a physical part of this universe which we are claiming also made the universe. They think we mean by God “Prof. Albus Dumbledore,” when we actually mean something more like “JK Rowling.” He’s not just the greatest character in the story- he’s the author.

Both the creation by God and the self-creation via big bang present deep questions of science and philosophy, but of the two, only creation by God is reasonable. And that’s being said by a mad man in a Tardis traveling around inside of British stories.

#JesusLovesYou

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Religion, Science and Shakespeare

Posted on April 24, 2017 by A Bit Of Orange

I was thinking about the alleged fight between science and religion (or as it is presented to me on social media, the fight between Evolution and Christianity) and I realized that we all learned what we need to know about this issue in school. However, it was not in science class as you might expect, but in English class that the answers came. To understand the relationship between science and God, consider Shakespeare.

Shakespeare was the George Lucas of his day. He wrote a lot of popular entertainment (based heavily on pre-existing entertainment) in a wide variety of styles, many of which had people being killed via swordfight.

Let’s consider Halmet. The fountain of knowledge which is Wikipedia says this:

Hamlet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare … between 1599 and 1602. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet. Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brother’s widow.

Just to be clear- William Shakespeare is not IN Hamlet. He wrote it. He is the author of the play. It is because of William’s will and pen that Prince Hamlet lives and moves and has his being. Shakespeare determined Hamlet’s appointed time in history and the boundaries of his story. In one poetic sense, Hamlet is Shakespeare’s offspring. He was made in the image of his author- a man with feelings and passions and a sense of justice.

What does all of this have to do with the conflict between God and science? It helps us define the terms of the conflict, and illuminates the actual matter.

Religion is the study of God- the author of life- the Shakespeare to our Hamlet. Science is the study of Hamlet and the world he inhabits. When Hamlet looks at his castle, or his family, or the horses and trees outside, he is doing science. When he considers the mind of Shakespeare, he is doing religion.

Religion is the study of what we can know about Shakespeare. Science is the study of what we can know about Hamlet. Atheism is when you realize Shakespeare is not one of the characters in Hamlet and therefore decide he didn’t exist.

And that is why there is no conflict between science and God. Without God, there would be no world to examine through science, just as without Shakespeare, there would be no Hamlet. And atheism once again fails the logic test by demanding that there is no Shakespeare, because-it asserts- a long, long story with LOTS of information can write itself. But science and common sense tell us that information, whether Hamlet of our DNA, needs an author. It cannot write itself.

Sorry Atheism, F-. See me after class.

For more from someone much smarter than I- check out CS Lewis on Finding God (Finding Shakespeare)

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The Image of God (Or, How Two Become One)

Posted on April 21, 2017 by A Bit Of Orange

Consider a few verses about God making the human race:

Genesis 1: 27 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Matthew 19:4&5 Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’… and the two will become one flesh’?”

Genesis 5:1 (NIV) “When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.”

The reference to being made in the image of God is always coupled with them being made male and female. I don’t think either was made in the image of God, but rather THEY were made in the image of God. This is why the two are meant to become one- we complete the image together.

Which is the image- the portrait or the profile? A front facing portrait and a side profile of the same person are very different. Think about this- if you were an alien life form from a distant world- say you were a plant- and you were given two pictures of the same person- one front facing and the other the profile- would you even know they were the same species?

One has two eyes, two ears, and a mouth and a nose in the middle of its face. The other has one eye, one ear, and a mouth and a nose on the side of its head.

Both together give a better sense of the real subject. Women are like men the way a portrait and a profile are alike. Neither gives a full impression of what the subject looks like. Together they give more of a full picture than either could alone.  This is why God made men and women very similar, and yet very different. Only together can we complete the picture. This is the foundation for marriage, and the equality of men and women.

#JesusLovesYou

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Does Adam Represent ALL Men? (Or, If Adam were Steve)

Posted on April 19, 2017 by A Bit Of Orange

Some people claim that Adam was a metaphor, because “Adam” just means “Man”. Thus, they argue, the Adam of Genesis isn’t intended to be a man, he is meant to represent all men, otherwise he would have a name like everyone else.

Is this a good critique? Nope.

God could call the first man Adam- or MAN- for the same reason those kids in the movie E.T. could call the alien “E.T.” Because when you have only one of something on the planet you don’t need to specify which one you’re talking about. God didn’t need to give Adam a different name anymore than those kids would’ve been all “We can’t just call him “E.T.”! How are we going to know which extraterrestrial we’re talking about? Let’s call him Steve. Steve is a pretty name…”

Had God called Adam “Steve,” then the human race would have been called “Steves,” or “Stevekind.” You name the collection that follows from the one which fathers them. This is why we have last names. At some point there was a first “Johnson,” who was the son of a man named John. We still do this today. Why would this make Adam mythological when the great-grandfather “John” of the Johnson family was a real man?

The reason we are all called “Mankind” and Adam was called simply “Man,” is because we are distinguishing our species. If he was Steve- we would all be “Stevekind”. Because he was Adam, we are Adamkind. Mankind. So when people try to argue that Genesis isn’t historical because Adam wasn’t Steve, you can know that they’ve failed to be down to earth and are really out of this world, if you catch my meaning.

#JesusLovesYou

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Noah’s Flood Assumes a Round Earth

Posted on April 17, 2017 by A Bit Of Orange

Genesis 7: 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.


The book of Genesis tells us that the flood of Noah’s day covered the entire earth, and the water rose above the highest mountain. Some people try to claim that the Bible teaches that the world is flat, but not only does it never say so, but it says much which disproves this theory. One such example is the flood.

A flood above the highest mountains can’t work on a flat earth. A global flood assumes a ball earth, because only on a globe can the waters continue to rise. If the earth were flat, the water could not rise above the highest mountains. The water would run over the edge of the disk before it could pile up a mile or more.

So this accusation that Genesis teaches a flat earth doesn’t hold any water.

Boom. That’s science, bro.

#JesusLovesYou

For more reasons why the Flood in Genesisis real history, check out our series on the flood.

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