You Cannot Argue with This in a Safe Space

From time to time we get quite vocal folks 'telling' us what we should think and say. I have to tell them in return that the Tavern is not a 'Safe Space' and people here are apt to say what is on their mind. Hey, I just listen and pull the pints. And clean the bar tops and table. And hook the barrels up. And mop the floor of the Crypt.

But I do get to hear some almost funny arguments and retorts.

Here was one reported by a chap on the Table near the window that the Life-loving folks usually like to sit. Matt Walsh was in the chair. They are forever going on about abortion. I know, it gets to be a bore what with all the crushingly oblivious points that the Pro-Choice ladies (and the bad boys) dish out. But answer them we must. And Matt did.

He had been accosted by a very certain woman. Rachel by name.  Possibly a nice lady. Who knows. She was almost insistent that he would be 'afraid' by her points and at a complete loss for words.

He wasn't.

But let's hear from Matt....

I’m terrified of this indisputable pro-choice argument

I took the bait.

I couldn’t help but open an email with the subject line: “You’re afraid of this pro-choice argument”

Afraid? I’m afraid of a lot of things. Actually, five things: spiders, asteroids, ghosts, head lice, and malaria. But arguments? Especially pro-abortion arguments? Definitely not on the list.

 https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/i-am-afraid-of-this-indisputable-pro-choice-argument

I might be frustrated by them; annoyed, angered, even disturbed, but afraid? I don’t think so.

I know those too ! 

Here’s Rachel, trying to strike fear into my heart:

Dear Matt, ever since I first read your blog I knew you were a cowardly fake. It wasn’t until I started reading some of your anti-choice articles that my suspicions were truly confirmed. You spend a lot of time picking the low hanging fruit. You attack the weakest abortion rights arguments while ignoring the glaring weaknesses in your own position.

If you had the guts or the brains you’d try to respond to the most important abortion rights argument… bodily autonomy or bodily integrity. This means that we have the final jurisdiction over our own bodies. Nobody can claim a right to our body that goes above our own right. 

Nobody can use our bodies without consent.

This is possibly the most trotted out, feminist point. Dim of course, but only if you actually think about it. To those who do not think, it is plausible to the point of overwhelming anything one might say. Nevertheless, despite the absolute certainty of those that trot it out, they have to back it up with personal  insults.

We cannot be forced to donate organs or blood to someone else. A fetus must survive on a woman’s body so the woman has a right to withdrawal her consent and her body at any time.

This is the pro-choice argument that no anti-choice fanatic… especially one as stubborn and simpleminded as you… could ever possibly dispute. If you still don’t understand, try to imagine this hypothetical…

Could not 'ever possibly dispute', eh?  Certain about that, Rachel?

Imagine that you wake up one morning in a hospital bed. In the bed next to you is a famous singer. He is unconscious and all of these tubes are connected from him to you. A doctor comes in and explains that the singer became sick and you are the only person with the right blood type to match his. They need you to remain hooked up to him until he recovers… they tell you it should only take nine months. Until then, he needs to use all of your organs… your kidneys, liver, lungs, everything… just to survive. If you unplug yourself, he will die. So do you think you are obligated to stay plugged in? Does he have a right to live off of you like this? Should you be FORCED to stay connected to him?

That’s what situation the pregnant woman is in. 

Pregnant women are attached to singers?  

Instead of harping on all of these irrelevant issues, I wish you’d be brave enough to address it from this angle. It is immoral to require a woman to sustain a fetus and it is moral for a woman to make a decision with her body based on what is right for her. 

How can you argue against this?

But I guess your blog is more about preaching to the choir than actually being intelligent and bold in your writing. What a shame.

-Rachel

I would love to have had Rachel come in to the Tavern and say all of that to me. But with all the scurrying around fetching and carrying I doubt I could have marshalled the arguments as well as Matt did. I would have offered her a large tankard of Grace though to help Matt's medicine go down. 

Matt continued, marshalling the arguments that I was too busy for.

Here’s my answer:

Dear Rachel,

You’re right. You win. I have no response. I can’t think of any reason why you’re wrong about any of the points you raised.

Well, I can’t think of any reason — except for, like, ten reasons. So I’ll start with five reasons why that hypothetical is flawed, and move on to five additional reasons why your overall argument is flawed.

Here we go:

1. Your analogy is flawed because it presupposes that the relationship between mother and child is no more significant, and carries with it no more responsibility, than the relationship between a person and some random stranger in a hospital bed.

This is absurd. If we’re trying to make this hypothetical as close to pregnancy as possible, shouldn’t the sick singer (or violinist, according to the original iteration of this hypothetical) at least be your child? 

Your argument doesn’t work because the fact that your child is your child, and not some strange adult from across town, is precisely the point. Hidden cleverly in this hypothetical is the insinuation that one cannot agree that an unborn child has a right to his mother’s body, without agreeing that anyone in the entire world, in any context, for any reason, at any point, for any period of time, has a right to a woman’s body.

Nice try, Rachel.

But no cigar.

Just because a mother is expected to be a mother doesn’t mean she’s also expected to be a slave, a prostitute, and a forced organ donor to talented musical artists. Indeed, the extent of our responsibility to a person hinges in many ways on our relationship to them. You would, I assume, agree that you have a responsibility to your born children, wouldn’t you? And your responsibility to them extends far beyond your responsibility to your neighbor, or your plumber, or your trash collector, doesn’t it? The relationship matters. 

Your hypothetical fails because it pretends that relationships are irrelevant.

2. Your analogy is flawed because it leaves out an important detail: how did the singer become ill in the first place?

Aside from cases of rape, a child is only conceived because two people intentionally committed a particular act which has, literally billions of times, resulted in the conception of a human life.

This singer came down with a terrible sickness. You might feel pity for him, but you didn’t cause him to be sick. You didn’t put him in this state. You had absolutely nothing to do with it. The same cannot be said when a child is conceived.

3. Your analogy is flawed because, when framed properly, it doesn’t strengthen your moral position — it defeats it.

I was surprised that she claimed a 'moral' argument at all. Just where do these people get their 'moral' understanding from? 

The hypothetical should be this: your own child becomes very sick because of something you did. 

He needs a blood transfusion and you are the only match. 

Would you refuse to give him your blood because it infringes on your bodily autonomy? Could this be morally justified? 

You put your kid in the hospital and now you will choose to watch him die because he ‘doesn’t have a right to your blood.’ 

THIS scenario would be the closest to abortion. And, if you are consistent in your affinity for ‘bodily autonomy,’ you could not criticize parents who’d rather let their child die than be inconvenienced by a blood transfusion.

4. But, no matter how you frame the hypothetical, it is still flawed because it ignores one crucial thing: natural order.

An unborn child is exactly where he is supposed to be. 

He couldn’t possibly be anywhere else. 

This is the fundamental difference between two people hooked up to machines on a hospital bed, and a ‘fetus’ connected to his mother insider her womb. The former represents unnatural and extraordinary measures, while the latter represents something natural and ordinary. The unborn child is where Nature (or God, as I call Him) intends it to be.

The unborn child is not, in any scientific or medical sense, an intruder or a parasite. These words have meanings, and unborn babies do not fit the bill. They are where they are supposed to be. They are where they belong. A fish belongs in water, just as an unborn child belongs in his mother’s womb.

5. Beyond all of these points, the analogy is flawed because abortion is not the same as ‘unplugging’ a person from medical equipment.

It might be quite sanitary and pleasant to refer to abortion as a woman ‘withdrawing support’ from her child, but the procedure goes beyond this. During a ‘termination,’ the baby is actively killed. It is crushed, dismembered, poisoned, or torn apart. It is killed. It is actively, actually, purposefully, intentionally killed.

In fact, even in the original hypothetical — where you’re hooked up to a singer in a hospital bed — while it would be acceptable to unplug yourself, it would NOT be morally or legally permissible to shoot the poor guy in the head. 

A person’s physical reliance on you does not give you the moral (or legal, usually) right to murder them. 

‘Withdrawing support’ is precisely what an abortion isn’t. If it was, then the baby would be delivered and left to die in the corner of the room. Of course, this is how some abortionists conduct business, but it’s illegal. If they’re caught, they go to jail.

6. But the bodily autonomy argument is flawed in ways that go beyond that utterly fallacious and misleading hypothetical. 

It’s flawed because nobody is crazy enough to consistently apply it to pregnant women.

Hmmmm. Many ARE crazy enough.

According to bodily autonomy, a mother could not be judged harshly for smoking, drinking, doing coke, and going skydiving (hopefully not all in the same day) while 6 months pregnant. If you really believe that a woman’s body is autonomous — that she has absolute jurisdiction over it — then you must defend a mother who does things that could seriously harm her unborn child, even if she hasn’t chosen to abort it. This is not a slippery slope argument; this is a reasonable and inevitable application of your principle.

7. The bodily autonomy argument is flawed because it requires you to support abortion at every stage of development.

I’m throwing this in here because most pro-aborts will not (vocally) defend abortion at 8 or 9 months. But — if bodily autonomy is your claim — you must. 

Is a woman’s body less autonomous when she’s been pregnant for 35 weeks? 

There is no way around it: bodily autonomy means that it is moral to kill a fully formed baby, at seven months, or eight months, or nine months.

8. The bodily autonomy argument is flawed because you can’t limit it to pregnant women.

You say that our bodies cannot be ‘used’ without our ‘consent.’ Why should this apply only to pregnancy and organ donations? 

Children, at any age, create profound demands on their parents’ bodies. Whether it’s waking up in the middle of the night for the crying baby, working long hours to pay for their food and clothing, carrying them around when they cannot walk, staying home when you’d like to go out, going out (to bring them to the doctor, or school, or soccer practice) when you’d like to stay in, etc, etc, etc, and so forth. 

An argument for absolute bodily autonomy means that it can’t be illegal, or considered immoral, for a parent to decline to do any of these things, so long as their decision was made in the name of bodily autonomy.

9. The bodily autonomy argument is flawed because it necessarily justifies [other] things [Such as] like public masturbation.

If I can ‘do what I want with my body,’ then it becomes very difficult to launch a salient moral or legal attack against a man who chooses to sit in a playground in front of children and pleasure his own body. [Or a woman do that either].

10. Finally, the bodily autonomy argument is flawed because   

our bodies are not autonomous.

I’m often accused of oversimplifying, but I’ve never oversimplified to the extent of you bodily autonomy proponents. Once we’ve considered every complexity and nuance, we can rightly say that our bodies are autonomous in some ways, and in some circumstances, but not in others.  

We cannot say that they are absolutely autonomous, and I find it hard to believe that anyone truly thinks that.

Any claim or responsibility placed on me, automatically includes a claim and responsibility on my body. Everything I do involves my body. I am my body. CS Lewis would say that I am my soul and I have a body. I agree with him, but for our purposes in this discussion, leaving souls and spirits aside, we are our bodies. 

Whether we are expected to pay taxes or drive the speed limit or provide a safe and sanitary home for our children, we are using our bodies to meet these expectations. We experience and participate in life with our bodies. Absolute bodily autonomy is inexorably linked with personal autonomy. If my body is autonomous, my person must be autonomous, and if my person is autonomous, then my very existence is autonomous, and if my very existence is autonomous, then it is simply unacceptable and (by your logic) immoral for anyone to expect me to do anything for anyone at any point for any reason.

If you concede that we ought to be expected or even required to do certain things, then you are placing limits on our bodily autonomy. 

If you place limits on our bodily autonomy, then you are admitting that limits can be placed on our bodily autonomy. If you are admitting that limits can be placed on our bodily autonomy, then you must consider whether abortion falls within or outside of those limits. 

And here’s the rub: if you contend that abortion falls within the limits on bodily autonomy, you must justify that belief beyond simply reasserting our right to bodily autonomy.

Personally, I think that abortion goes well beyond the limits on bodily autonomy, for all of the reasons I’ve previously stipulated.

There’s your answer, Rachel.

But, except for the ten reasons why you’re wrong, you’re right on the money.

And, except for the ten answers I’ve provided, I have no answers for you.

I guess you win.

Thanks for writing.

Matt engages, with a bit of tongue in cheek, in the sort of consideration of what an idea is and where it leads: its consequences.

Pro-choice people do not.

They stand there because they LOVE you. Yes, you, Mum-to-be.

What matters to them is the Mantra of Self.

No-one else can be considered.

No 'logic' can be considered.

You know, as a barman, a Tavern Keeper and counsellor to the inebriates - especially those on the road away from the Perdition they have been used to - I sometimes have to explain things in words of one syllable. Over and over. many different words. Again and again. Until the light goes on in their eyes.

Why do I bother? Why do we have to bother to explain things to the certain and the insistent  and the damned rude people, as Matt does for Rachel?

Because we Love them 

Pax

Those Fundamental Questions, developed a bit.

It is a truth that few understand: things are far deeper than they seem. The last session in the Tavern left a lot of folk thirsty: it is what happens when very significant issues arise that the media and entertainment world, the political and bogus world tends to avoid. Not for Hillary's Village a town cryer, unless she (equality you see) has a bogus victimhood to cry out about.

But seekers of the Way and the Truth and the Light on the hill drink up my Supplier's fare and occasionally are rewarded by a man of deep thought stepping through the door and shouting the Bouncer a pint. (Always a good idea).

Such was the case today which has left many of us thinking deep whilst drinking deep.

It was Bill Carroll a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, and a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion of the University of Oxford. Quite a title, eh. He, like many of us, actually reads books !! He came in to tell us of one he read lately.

You will recal that we had been talking of Scientists and smashing particles and such. And Atheists.  Not scientists smashing atheists, you understand; the atheists we spoke of were simply certain with denial where scientists are certain with method.  But is the method right? Often they sit at the same table denying the obvious. Many scientists, following their profession which has been built over several centuries of  a 'mechanistic' paradigm, have busily worked in a very confined space.

The Omega. And where's the Alpha?

But Bill opened the windows for them, a bit. Not that I as a simple Tavern Keeper saw much new through it. But they might, if they take a look.  You might too.

Science, Philosophy, and God

An understanding of the transcendence of creation forms the essential foundation of natural science. 

But does that understanding require revelation?

Understanding what natural entities are—and how they are the kinds of things that they are—is a central goal of all scientific endeavor. It is an endeavor that cannot be undertaken without at least an implicit theology and philosophy. 

 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/01/15597/

We might distinguish the natural sciences from philosophy and theology, but it is a mistake to see them as extrinsic to one another, each existing in its own neat epistemological and ontological compartment. Although at first it might seem counter-intuitive, the proper autonomy of these areas of inquiry depends upon their interdependence.

Such, at least, is the general claim that informs Michael Hanby’s No God, No Science? Theology, Cosmology, and Biology. 

Hanby’s analysis is wide-ranging, erudite, and sophisticated; his is a challenging and important book.

OK, so he had our attention, and I wondered just where he was going with this. I pulled a pint for him, and one for m'self. 

For Hanby, “science is constitutively and inexorably related to metaphysics and theology;” the latter are “internal to science even as they are distinct from it.” 

The key to understanding this constitutive relationship is the doctrine of creation, and Hanby argues that we 

need “to retrieve the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo from the distortions imposed upon it by the totalizing claims of positivist science and especially by that most theological of sciences, evolutionary biology.” 

Hanby claims that the appropriate autonomy of the natural sciences and metaphysics is “theologically grounded” in science’s very own “creaturely constitution.”

As with many if not most academics, he does challenge us all with odd phrases and terms, but.... bear with him a while. He continued.... 

The Notion of Creation

Distorted notions of God as Creator, that is, as extrinsic cause of things and events in the world, are behind the view that we must choose between divine agency in the world and the kinds of causes that the natural sciences disclose. 

Ah, yes. I cannot say that many Christians do not also become confused by this. We do not have to choose any such thing, as wise Doctors of the Church have pointed out before.

Too often, God has been seen as a finite object among other finite objects, albeit one who is juxtaposed to the world: a cause among causes, a thing simply vastly greater in degree from all other things. 

God becomes a master craftsman and the created order his artifact. God so conceived is one who “imposes his design upon passive subjects.” It is this conception of creation that Darwinism claims to supplant.

For Hanby, this theological “extrinsicism” fails to capture the truth of God’s transcendence, a transcendence so radical that God as Creator is the immanent source of the very existence of all that is. 

Ugghh. That 'radical' word. He is trying too hard !! 

I have to put my hand up to 'defend' science just a bit here. There is a lot to be said for discovering the 'whats' and 'hows' of nature, even extending our apprehension of nature to its furthest limits. The edge of the Universe even. But apprehension itself is only a first step. There is comprehension and understanding to follow. It is here where science loses its remit when based upon a reductionist and mechanist modus. There is a danger of too much 'reading the menu' and not enough having an enjoyment of a fine meal. 

Some fundamentalist Christians should pay heed to that lesson too.

The doctrine of creation, properly understood, is not an alternate cosmological theory of the temporal origins of the universe, nor a rival to scientific explanations of change (e.g., natural selection). Creation is not “a process of bringing forth the animate from the inanimate or one species from another.” 

Rather, it discloses the ontological structure of the world and is the necessary precondition for the world and for science itself.

The claim that Hanby defends in considerable detail—historically, philosophically, and theologically—is this:

the doctrine of creation is essential to an understanding of the universe that is both comprehensive and nonreductive; and that the scientific and Darwinian revolutions, for all their stunning success in increasing our knowledge of the universe, ......

...have left us with a universe so reduced and fractured that it threatens to undermine the rationality and intelligibility of their own achievement.

The error, according to Hanby, is seeing the relationship between God and the world in extrinsic terms rather than seeing God’s abiding presence as cause of existence immanent in the world.

Now, I am no Theologian, but this is something that even a soul like mine can 'know' as surely as I know the heartbeat in my chest that I barely take any notice of. 

As a result of embracing an extrinsic notion of God as creator, the modern world “evacuates creatures of the unity, intelligibility, and interiority inherent in our elementary experience of them.” 

To see nature simply as the product of a divine craftsman is to reduce nature to an artifact and to find the intelligibility of nature exclusively in terms of “extrinsic relations” governing the interaction of parts.

Darwin, according to Hanby, inherited a mechanistic ontology and an “extrinsicist” theology (God as a finite object within the order of being) that has shaped the continuing debate about evolution and creation. 

By golly, I think he's got it ! 

The debate, however, often reveals a false dilemma rooted in defective notions of God, creation, and causality. A vision of God as an artisan/designer was evident in the natural theology of William Paley, which Darwin rejected. It’s also evident in contemporary “intelligent design” theories. Paley understood creation as a kind of manufacturing; he did not see the Creator as the interior source of the creature’s very existence but as an extrinsic cause who imposes order and design on the world. The world is a “cluster of contrivances” and God is the master contriver.

With such a view, it is hardly surprising that we are in the deep intellectual doo-doo in which we find ourselves wallowing. Well, Hillary's Villagers and the scientific 'community', anyway.

The Unity and Interiority of Living Beings

There is a related failure to understand that living beings are true unities, each of which possesses an irreducible interiority that is not possible for artifacts or machines. 

Here we have a key feature of a reductionist view of the world that claims to explain all things exhaustively in terms of their material constituents.

And insists on smashing them to smaller and smaller bits at enormous cost to the taxpayer ! An Enormity of some magnitude. 

Hanby argues that the failure of modern biology to speak intelligibly of what an organism is {even a baby !} follows from the prior commitment to mechanism that has its roots in a defective understanding of what it means for God to create. Accordingly, Hanby identifies a program for achieving a better grasp of what the world truly is:

We must restore to the things of the world the unity and the interior depth of being that was taken away from them in the modern conflation of nature and art, being and history, truth and utility, and knowledge and power. 

We must dispose with the natural theology and mechanistic ontology commenced in the seventeenth-century and brought to fulfillment by Darwin and his disciples, a theology and metaphysics which continue to deform the meaning of the doctrine of creation and the stakes in its confrontation with the totalizing claims of evolutionary biology. 

We must distinguish the act of creation—that gratuitous gift of being that calls forth its own recipient—from a process of immanent manufacture, and we must distinguish the doctrine of creation from any mechanical explanation seeking to account for the ‘how’ of the world. To do this, we must begin by setting aside that finite and idolatrous God simultaneously affirmed and denied by Darwinian biology and approach, at long last, the Creator God.

Hanby argues that the mistaken metaphysics and theology implicit in Darwinian biology are the sources of considerable confusion in what the biological sciences tell us about the world.

Recognizing the distinction between an organism and an artifact—a recognition that, according to Hanby, requires a correct understanding of what it means for God to be the Creator—leads us to see how activities such as metabolism, respiration, reproduction, and self-movement properly belong to living things precisely as living. An organism is, in this sense, both the cause and effect of itself. 

Organisms maintain themselves in being, whereas artifacts engage in none of these activities because their parts are essentially external to each other and their unity is not intrinsic to them. 

The significance of this way of distinguishing between organism and artifact is clear:

Whereas the unity of an organism ontologically precedes its development, so that its development is the development of an organism such as an embryo or an oak tree, the unity of an artifact resides primarily in the mind of its maker and ..

only comes about in the thing itself as the end result of a process of manufacture.

The conflation of created nature with artifact eliminates the organism as the subject of its own being and action. The organism is considered only “an accidental aggregation of parts which are the parts of no real whole.”

Hence a 'foetus' isn't 'really' a human being until it comes off (out of) the production line (the mother). Such a madness is the inevitable outcome of the mechanistic thinking we wallow in. 


Now, by this point and a lot of pint-pulling for the listening customers, we were wondering when he was going to question 'revelation', as he had previously said. He did at last get around to it.

Faith, Reason, and the Revelation of Transcendence

Throughout his analysis of what it means for God to create, Hanby incorporates important insights from Hans Urs von Balthasar and David Schindler.

Yes, yes, get on with it, and don't forget Thomas Aquinas ! 

To see the distinction between God and nature as being “operative in every conception of nature” is in one sense correct, since all of nature is the result of God's creative act. A complete view of nature requires this recognition, which ultimately involves an appeal to doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.

Hanby does not grant to metaphysics the ability to reach the conclusion that all that is depends upon the agency of a transcendent source of existence. For him, the doctrine of creation out-of-nothing can only be a revealed theological insight, even if it appropriates metaphysical language.

Following the lead of scholars such as Étienne Gilson, Hanby thinks that, without Christian revelation, Greek philosophy was not and is not able to understand that there must be a transcendent cause of the existence of things.

At issue here are complex historical, philosophical, and theological topics concerning the relationship between reason and faith, including questions about the proper autonomy of various modes of inquiry. 

As we have seen, Hanby argues against a separation of these modes of inquiry (including the separation of theology and metaphysics from the natural sciences), and he thinks that the distinctions he draws maintain a kind of autonomy for each. 

For Thomas Aquinas, however, reason alone, in the discipline of metaphysics, can come to a recognition that the world is created. 

Let's hear it for St Tom!  Pints all round.

Faith, based on divine revelation, deepens this understanding of creation. Hanby, I think, would take issue with the phrase “reason alone,” since he would think that, following Thomas, I have granted too great a distinction between reason and faith.

Hanby calls for a profound rethinking of the explicit and implicit assumptions of much of modern thought. 

He thinks we must “retrieve the doctrine of God from the idolatrous natural theology presupposed by modern science in its founding gesture and exemplified, above all, by Darwinian biology.” This rethinking will also lead to retrieving “the world from the endemic reductionism of a pervasive mechanistic ontology. 

Retrieving creation, then, means retrieving the ontological question suppressed by positivist science and its reduction of being from act to brute facticity.” 

This is all true, but, as Thomas Aquinas can help us to see, retrieving the ontological question of cause of existence does not initially require an appeal to revealed theological claims about the Trinity and the Incarnation. There is a philosophical sense of God’s creative act that does not involve appeals to a theology that sees creation in terms of the dynamics of a triune God—no matter how correct such theology may be.

Whew. Truth snatched from the jaw-words of confusion ! 

Let us drink and think.

Reason and Grace !

Pax

Fundamental Questions

The pursuit of Fundamental Questions has engaged Philosophers, Theologians and latterly Scientists since man started to think. Although were you to ask some of my customers there is precious little evidence of thinking to mark most human beings. We do seem to get distracted and carried away with nonsenses.

CERN science reverence to pagan gods.

The first two sorts of chap  (and it has usually been chaps) for most of history have been unpaid or at least not a drain on the taxpayer. The same cannot be said for scientists. They wrench vast amounts of money from the pockets of taxpayers be they wage earners, merchants, manufacturers or tradesmen, all of which show something for their efforts.

Yes its big alright but does it do toast?

But we are assured that they seek the answers to Fundamental Questions, with much the same claim to sincerity and accuracy as feminists to Equality.

But I wonder about their way of questioning and whether they ask the right ones.

I have not ever heard a Physicist or a Cosmologist ask "Whom does the Grail Serve" for instance.

The physics supremos, of whom we count the thousands upon thousands in their lairs, love to break stuff in search of their Grail. They smash matter down to its smallest bits and then smash those bits, searching amid the rubble for the elusive answers to Life, the Universe and, well the Theory of Everything that is left intact. At huge cost.

But maybe they are about to get around to the proper Grail issue, late, like the young Parzival. God is on their agenda. Just.

Which Gummunt says "NO" to a scientist? It is a rarity to have anyone completely deny the action of Dihydrogen Monoxide on Iron, although the less scientific will call it 'rust' rather than Tri-ferric Tetroxide as any decent chemist would. And the study of rust may actually have a practical purpose.

The Theologian has had rather less good fortune or funding and philosphers rarely have any agreement even amongst themselves. Not for either are Billion on Billions of bucks spent nor underground temples built.

Whizz them particles around, chaps, Smash 'em to bits. 
The God particle is bound to be in there somewhere.

God?

A scientist mentioning God?

When they have all the toys in the world to play with and distract their minds? 

The Atheists will be up in arms. Well, most. They argue, vociferously that there is no God, with far more vehemence than any rebel scientist denying the existence of water.

Atheists are counting on the Physicists and the Cosmologists to prove that there is no God. And they are being severely let down. 

It is not a good time to be an Atheist.

Jonathon Van Maren was saying just last night about 'secularists' / atheists and theologians, especially the day-to-day Christian chap such as I, not being able to talk to one another anymore.

Secularists claim to have placed their faith in “reason,” when in reality this is simply another way of saying that they have placed their faith in themselves. They will only believe in what they can understand. 

 https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/atheists-arent-even-trying-any-more...and-why-thats-terrifying

The problem is that the Religion of Reason is a circular feedback loop: Reason cannot in and of itself prove that reason is rational. 

One must have faith that it is. 

The secularist must believe that his brain, supposedly created by chance and programmed over millions of years of natural selection to react instinctively in certain ways, is capable of independent thought. 

A rather ludicrous notion, when you think about it.

He was saying vis a vis wider issues....

Simply put, secularists cannot understand why Christians act the way that they do, because their perception of reality is fundamentally different. For the secularist, there is only the physical. Things are what they are. 

For the Christian, the metaphysical is as real as the physical, and these realms interact on every level.

The theoretical physicist, David Bohm would agree with this, but heck, even his peers dissuaded him from speaking up about it. 

A miracle may strike a Christian with awe, but the Christian possesses a worldview that allows him to understand what a miracle is—the Creator intervening directly in the created order in a visible way. A secularist insists that the miracle could not have happened, pointing out that the natural order does not function that way—in essence, accusing a miracle of being…a miracle.

As I said to one university student in debate: 

“Any god that can fit within the confines of your skull is a god too small for anyone to worship.” 

He was offended by this statement—a true secularist. As Chesterton wrote: “The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” 

It’s important for us to realize that secularists and Christians don’t just believe different things, but see everything differently. In the secularist world, there is no Heaven, no Hell, no angels, no devils, no world unseen—or at least, no world that could not be seen.

Adding to that, of course, this means there is no soul, no good, and no evil. 

This is a fact that no secularist truly wants to confront: I remember my psychology professor calling off our seminar a half hour early after I asked her repeatedly to give me one philosophically coherent reason that rape was wrong in a world that slouched into existence by accident. Besides a few feeble appeals to subjective “social contracts” and the like, she could not. 

For there to be any objective moral law, there has to be a Lawgiver.

The chasm between the world as Christians see it and the world as secularists see it is deep, dark, and wide. That is why the presently raging culture wars so often seem as if the two sides are simply yelling into the abyss—because these battles mean very different things to the opposing armies.

Mind you, cracks are appearing in the certainty of the firmament.   Bob Flanagan piped up......

STEPHEN HAWKING ADMITS INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS ‘HIGHLY PROBABLE’

The English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, surprised the scientific community last week (last year now) when he announced during a speech at the University of Cambridge that he believed that “some form of intelligence” was actually behind the creation of the Universe.

Presenting himself before students at the University of Cambridge, the world-famous scientist declared that his years of research on the creation of the cosmos have led him to isolate a strange scientific factor which he says is in many ways contrary to the universal laws of physics.

This strange phenomenon which he names the God factor, would be at the origin of the creation process and would have played a great role in determining the actual form of the Universe.

 http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/stephen-hawkins-admits-intelligent-design-is-highly-probable/

I rather think God will be amused and perhaps a little delighted. It took a while for the Prodigal Son to get tired of wasting his talents, after all. 

Stephen has a long way to go but heck he has cracked tough theoretical nuts before, and changed his mind too.

The world renown scientist admits the near death experience of his brother, who was clinically dead for 43 minutes after a heart attack last october, radically changed his view on the nature of human consciousness and the Universe as a whole.

“My brother has always been a role model for me. His rational, cunning and no non-sense mind has shaped my personality into the person I am today and has led me into the study of the fascinating world of physics. But since his accident last October, he has come back a changed man” he recalled.

“He has told me of the existence of a sentient being, of another world we mortals are unaware of, he has told me of God” he told the crowd, visibly surprised at such affirmations.

“Modern science relies on the perception that consciousness lies within the human brain, but what my brother experienced during his clinical death, I cannot explain. Does consciousness lie outside of the human body? Is the human brain just a receptor, capable of receiving the “consciousness wave” as AM/FM radios receive radio waves? These are questions modern science has not yet answered and could redefine our view of the Universe and modern physics completely” he acknowledged.

The change in the 'level' of the questions bodes well. 

Who knows, he or his following professional colleagues may yet formulate the right questions and receive a surprising answer.

It ain't going to be 42.  

And the right answer will not smash but heal.

I shall pour Stephen a drink next time he drops by. Jonathon and Bob are still happily working on theirs.

Pax.

Knights and Single Mothers

There is a great deal one can say about single mothers, especially one's raising boys. Much of what we see and hear does not bode well nor yet make for a sound civil society.

I know a single mother raising a boy. She lives near the Tavern but does not come in. I was watching her the other day remonstrating, over-emotionally as usual with him. It was just short of abuse and the little chap (an occasionally stroppy lad) was responding with a tantrum.

She has no idea how a boy thinks. Or feels.

How could she?

We learn as we go and draw on our own disremembered experience. She was never a boy.

He has no idea how to think and feel either. 

I fear a disaster in the making in a decade.

But is it inevitable?  Will his 'nature' come from his ground? Can a destiny unfold? 

Is there a 'Plan' that we come into this world with?  

Is there a Task?

I have a young Knight-Friend. He is in my history. A pure Knight, some would say a fool.  

Young Parzival was raised by a single mum.

He cured my wound.

Let us not so easily write-off boys nor condemn their mums. 

We must know their story.

(Be)Comes a Knight, Sorely

A Goodly woman of Noble line

Heart’s Sorrow for remembered time.

In the forest deep a home to tend,

A child to love, to keep, to bend.

She loves.

There was a time.....

She loves

A Father, Husband, the Noblest of Men

Keeping silence ‘neath the oak, stone sheet

Far away, in Honoured sleep.

His means to end, a broad two hand

Open as mind, giving in kind.

By his code, abroad revered,

The cost to heart on his soil feared.

He loved.

He loved, too, that child, his mother’s world,

He knew naught else, deep in her wylde,

Her fear, her pain, her heart-swayed mind,

He grew in sense, his heart too pined.

Sinews baked in dapple'sun field

Ax to the wood built muscled arm

His toil at plough’s blade dawn through noon

Her-service tools presage his doom.

He hears his father’s echo sound

In hooves and steel and freedom's ground

Into the soil of her compound.

The Boy, untutored in the masculine, WILL ride forth.
What disasters will be in his wake and revealed at his Wake?

She weeps again.   

Again. Heart’s Sorrow.

Man now, she could not keep and bend

Nor save from his born-to end.

Pressed  ‘pon him as her parting tie,

Her silken slip. beneath his polished steel

To soak his sweat and hold her cry

Close to his heart.

She loved her Men. Heart’s Sorrow.

He follows hooves to the  Kingdom's Hall

The tests, the Quests, the blood, the fall.

The Golden Boy who is us all.

From boy to King, to sleep tomorrow,

A circle binding her Heart’s Sorrow.

The stars wheel in the sky.

Hiding him away and filling him with 'women's rules' worked only while she could bend him.

It took years to straighten his back. 

It is not our past that matters, although it can hold us back. Our Future is ahead, and THAT Matters.

She was a Knight's Lady, Herzeloyde. Heart's Sorrow.

Ask the Fundemental Question: Whom does the Grail, Serve?

Pax.