Word Play, Part 1

Introduction

While I research the Laws of Information and avoid plagiarism, I've taken up a new series to inject in between my other posts. The intention of this series is to see how words are used and what they really mean.


Let's look at homophobia, a word slung around like a tetherball hit by an ogre. What does homophobia mean? According to Merriam-Webster, it means irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals. It doesn't take a sociologist to see that it's not how the word is used today.

A real-life example

By simply saying "If civil unions are equivalent to marriage, why should gays get married?" I would most likely be accused of being a homophobe.This is despite a legitimate question. If there's no "agenda" to undermine marriage, why not make civil unions equivalent in benefit? After all "marriage" could remain religious while "civil unions" would be the legal version, the government side.

I digress; I could continue that idea into an entire post of its own. The point is, there's no fear there. Two people getting married doesn't make me scared. Gay people don't scare me. I feel no threat by them. especially if the more vocal and political organizations are truly outliers. There's nothing in my reactions that points to fear.

There's no discrimination either. Even legitimate questions like the one above are ""homophobic." To quote from The Princess Bride's Inigo Montoya, "I do not think that word means what you think it means." The irony is that by discriminating between civil unions and marriage, I've taken care of all common arguments against same-sex coupling, in legal terms. To add one last layer of irony, if there is no "gay agenda," then it's truly ironic that no one has said this sooner. It would expedite the whole process of getting SSM (or SSCU, in my wording) legalized in all 50 states. Fascinating, right? For anyone thinking I've "betrayed my faith," I'll leave my personal reasoning to another post; this is simply a legalistic view.

What about an aversion? Personally, I have none. Let's take my question from the third paragraph again. An honest question is not an aversion. The vocal minorities in all cases need a thicker skin.

Conclusion

I realize that not everyone is like me. Many vocal people of many camps are rude, aggressive, even violent in their verbalization, especially with the shield of anonymity that the internet provides. Let's call those people for what they are, so long as they aren't passionate and simply need a breather (though this may be beyond the baseline wisdom needed to converse on the internet).

Such a person would simply be rude, nasty, angry, maybe even hateful. It all depends on the person. But please, stop beating the dead horse that is homophobia. It hasn't been used properly, it's no better than the person one would use it, and it's unnecessary. Dropping this word would be a start to seeing who is really hateful, after the easy mudslinging dies down.

On Donald Sterling

Let's get this straight: Mr. Sterling is a scumbag. He's a lecherous adulterer, the poster boy of dirty, rich old men. To defend his actions, especially after his racist remarks, would be social suicide.

Right?

I have redacted this post because of the information that conveniently surfaced after Sterling was forced to sell his then-team. Apparently, he asked to have his conversations recorded. There was also the housing thingy.

Since Sterling was part of an organization, he had to play by their rules. In day to day life, one might call what happened to him the work of thought police. It contrasts a state of being with a state of doing.

Sterling couldn't actually keep "colored people" from attending his games. His state of being is racist. His state of doing wasn't much of anything. Still a scumbag, true. My point is that the moment we move from demonizing actions to demonizing thoughts, we land in 1984 territory. A racist who does nothing sucks, but don't lock him up for it. He wants to do something about it? Then hit him with the book. That's all I'm asking.

Love is Love?

Some of my friends on Facebook have posted a picture. You might be familiar with it: on top is a gay couple and it looks like they're getting married; on the bottom is an incredibly malnourished child. It calls anyone against same sex marriage failures if they have a problem with SSM when instead they could be helping starving children.

In logic, this is what we call a false dilemma. I could support starving children (indeed, Freerice is a way I can donate at least a bit despite my low income) and oppose SSM. Someone else might support both, and another might support neither. This is why the dilemma is false.

That said, this reminded me of an oft-quoted phrase, "love is love." At the risk of sounding sarcastic, congratulations,  you just used the reflexive property of equality. My point is that this little phrase means nothing. Say it if you like, I'm not the thought police. It's simply that it has no bearing in an argument.

Need I remind everyone that we don't legislate based on love, let alone act out of love all the time? While my friends want to tell me to accept their version of love and the legislation what it entails, I have no actual rebuttal because there's no argument in the first place. I don't have an issue with people with other worldviews than mine. The issue I have is when an argument becomes about one's viewpoint of love and anyone who disagrees is a bigot. Thanks for sowing seeds of discord, by the way, if you've done such a thing.

Post what you want, but be consistent and don't manipulate children to further your viewpoint that would be exactly the same simply by the cop-out "love is love."

Arguments for God: Part 2

Disclaimer: Before I even continue with my arguments and proofs, there is something that must be made absolutely clear. There can be no question of it. There is a massive difference between acknowledging God or even that He might exist, and actually following Him and putting yourself in the service of Christ. Without reception of the Holy Spirit, there is no change. This is why so-called Christians, yes, even if Hitler said he was, are not indicative of actual Followers of Christ. And such a change must be out of sincerity, the true reconciliation that you know what the Truth is and how to correct your fallen condition. As such, these proofs are not fool-proof. No matter how air-tight my cases, they will not suddenly make someone hard of heart into a believer as suddenly if they had been exposed to a frosty wind. Let us continue.

This second argument starts where the first left off. From my first argument we see that is logically necessary for a Creating Force. This proof used to be much longer being a list of deductions from non-Christian faiths. However, I have condensed it and changed partially to a proof by induction.

Premise 1: The Force must exist outside of creation, otherwise it presents a paradox.
Premise 2: The Force must be able to create the universe as we know it (logically, orderly, etc).

Point 1: The Force must be self-sufficient and uncreated. Thus we can discount the following:

Aboriginal "Dreamtime" and other "guiding ancestor" types can be discounted because it does not speak of creation's ultimate beginnings. The Force, Baiame, is not sufficient to create and rather teaches man through the use of ancestors.

Taoist use of yin and yang, because they are created (as are other things)  are without logical explanation. The elements that would form the universe already existed without explanation.

Hinduism fails because it describes the universe as eternal or an illusion. Since we have already seen that the universe cannot be eternal, it must be an illusion. If the universe is an illusion, then it cannot be eternal but only appear to be eternal. Thus, the universe cannot be eternal or an illusion.

Islam fails due to logical inconsistencies in the Quran See here for examples. Thus the Force, Allah, is either mistaken in his book or is not logical.

Other religions, particularly polytheist ones, rely on various deities that exist within creation and cannot account for each other. There is no order, even among those with the power, let alone the paradox of existing in creation. This is essentially the same as  the guiding ancestor type.

Point 2: By previous result, we know that the universe requires a creator. By previous result, we have deduced the potential list. By induction, we see that God, in Christianity, fits the requirements. He exists outside of creation, He has the capacity to create(unlike other deities) and He is orderly thus creating the universe in a certain way with certain laws for its function.

Conclusion:  This proof and the first show that God is able to, by definition, be the Creator. However, just because He does, doesn't suddenly mean people will change their hearts. This logic only serves to show that the conclusion is logical. In other words, this is a tool for those at a certain point in their journey.  Please do not use this or my other posts as a beating stick.

An Issue with Jesus' Parables?

Today a fellow named Tom Short and his ministry came by Purdue and basically did a Q&A on Christianity. During this time of five or six hours, one of the observers brought up a point. He stated that Jesus' parables were just redactions of Greek myth. Or perhaps of mythology in general, his phrasing was vague. This made me think for a moment: What's the point?

Indeed, what does that accusation accomplish? As someone who's dabbled in logic and is becoming a teacher, I don't see how this claim doesn't seem to harm Christ's message or Christianity as a whole. First remember the cultural context. By being culturally sensitive and using familiar stories, Christ made His work more relatable. This is a simple tool used in teaching; we take something students are familiar with and frame the new material within it.

Logically, this neither confirms nor denies Christ's existence, His work, or the Bible. You know, as someone who was an intellectual and not a true believer for awhile, I almost didn't include this. But then it hit me: in many cases, a complaint like this is exactly what it sounds like, a nitpick.

There are legitimate skeptical questions. How do we know the Bible is accurate? Where does it come from? Is it historically accurate? Sometimes it doesn't even take a Christian to see when a skeptic has a legitimate question or simply a  complaint, as I've shown above.

Moral Relativism

This is a short thought I had last night. Moral relativism, politically, boils down to the majority. Short of regressing to tribalism, this means that there will always be a minority (or more) in disagreement over legislation. The only thing stopping an infinite loop is how the Supreme Court system works, for better or worse. So long as moral relativism is used for "freedom," its supporters will always have the usual crowd of "bigots," "haters," and so on to contend with. Perhaps relativists would be best served reviewing why they want things a certain way. In my interactions in life, it has always boiled down to personal want. Regardless if this is the majority position or not, I wonder when humankind will realize that they've been acting out of physical want their entire existence, ignoring the soul?

The Big Question

Introduction

While taking lunch today, I was reminded of an oft-cited explanation by evolutionists about evolution. It usually goes something like "What you learn in the textbooks isn't evolution/the whole story/what actually goes on," or "Researchers know what it is, even if you don't." There are other variations. This is almost nearly in response to, when used seriously, the question "How did DNA, proteins, and such get more and more complex, as in length, number of pairs, etc?"

The question is within the Theory of Evolution itself. I aim to use ToE only in its own terms to show why such claims fall flat, namely that which I posed above. The answer I usually get is "Copying errors mutate into beneficial things to pass on." This seems a decent explanation at first. Let's ignore copying rate and mutation rate for a moment. Even if this idea is true, let alone demonstrable, there's a huge issue. This series of copy and mutate must happen enough over a course of billions of years to what we see today. Let me explain further.

The Example

Say we have some primitive form of life, whatever the in-thing is now for ToE to work off of after assuming first life. Let's say it gets these copying and mutation errors that end up making it something more advanced. The job is not yet finished! If this lifeform dies, the same series, or at least same sort of series of events must happen to the same kind of primitive lifeform there or elsewhere in a beneficial way. This is to say nothing of how multiple sexes formed or how those different sexes must then survive and pass on enough mutations.This then must repeat, going up Evolution's Tree of Life, which brings me to another point.

The Division

In the ToE, there are two thought camps: one that Evolution is progressive, working towards a goal; the other says it's simply random and we're here. Both fail logically. The latter shows by my example above that the explanation is already ad hoc. We're here, so this sort of thing must have happened numerous times. If Evolution is Progressive, this embodies it with certain qualities of intelligence, a sort of transcendence if you will. Evolution can no more work actively towards a goal any more than Democracy. Those things themselves are labels for a process; they describe, but do not guide how those things act. True, both are things done actively, but they do not work as themselves; they are not autonomous. Humans vote to make a democracy happen by electing officials. Evolution adapts organisms for an immediate need. Neither has some crystal ball revealing why those things are being done in terms of the future. (In the case of democracy, humans rationalize their vote, thus guiding it; Evolution has no such backing).

Conclusion

This is the part where I ask "How is it really supposed to work?" What are people like me missing? Even within its own system, Evolution begs the question "How did we get here?" This isn't some knockout punch. If anything, it reveals that ToE and Creationism are both philosophies and have no place in the classroom. But that's a whole other kettle of fish.

On the Prop 8 Lawyer and "Evolving Views"

Introduction

Attorney Charles Cooper was the one to argue Prop 8 all the way to the Supreme Court. As it stands now, he says his views are changing. This post aims to use this man and his views to make a contrast between oft-confused points while not slamming him or his views.

Why is this News?

First and foremost, his views changing comes from his step-daughter being a lesbian and her future marriage. That is his business and I don't even know what his worldview is. However, the issue in a Christian sense is the difference between loving someone and endorsing what they do. I no more tell a gay to continue in his ways anymore than I endorse the personal use of pornography, or something nonsexual like stealing. On the flip side, we Christians are called to be loving, not discounting anyone since we all have fallen short of the glory of God. Love your neighbor as yourself: your gay neighbor, your neighbor from a broken household, your wealthy neighbor, and the list continues.

The second important point is about standing one's ground. The people closest to use affect us the most. Sadly, many change their morality due to this. I get that people don't want to shake or shatter their family by not being fully supportive. Indeed, it takes a sense of maturity for both people involved to resolve the difference between who they are, how they act, and what morality surrounds them. Again, I cannot stress enough that love /= changing one's morals or approving of something that breaks your worldview.

Closing

By now there are dozens of posts on this matter. Posts making parallels, posts without a loving tone, posts that are about recontextualizing the Bible. I'd like to address that last part. "Evolving," in this case, entails that you are improving in some capacity. If this means you adopt a more loving attitude and actually show it, great! I advise caution on the other hand. If "evolving" means moving past God's Word and what it commands, then quite simply you are no longer following God's commands. In fact, such an "evolution" tends to be humanistic, focusing on the people as opposed to the morality involved or even love. It isn't necessarily a slippery slope, but it is still a breaking of a whole that should remain as it is. "You can't have your cake and eat it too."

TL;DR Version: Love thy neighbor, regardless. Christ didn't use modifiers to describe this. Love /= changing one's morals. "Evolving" views must makes sense in the context of one's worldview.