Dr. Anthony Levatino is a former abortionist, and he explains the differing medical procedures in stopping a human life. More info can be found here.
Month: February 2016
“All Lives Matter” Is Now A Slur (Per Wingbat)
(Via Gateway Pundit) Marissa Jenae Johnson from Seattle is reportedly a Black Lives Matter co-founder. Marissa likes to rant about her victimhood as a black American and how The Man makes life here intolerable. In this interview with FOX News Marissa says “all lives matter” is a slur.
(Breitbart) Marissa Jenae Johnson: “What it’s gonna take to dismantle white supremacy is white folks actually gotta give up something,” she said. “You have to actually sacrifice yourself. You have to be willing to give up the things that you currently benefit from.”
- Interpretation ~ Gimme yo shit!
Not Enough Minorities In Hollywood?
A great short clip via Michael Medved and his usual factual tenor. In the video (audio) I show a headline of a Brent Bozell column. Here is the link to it:
For more clear thinking like this from Michael Medved… I invite you to visit: http://www.michaelmedved.com/
Religion of Peace ~ The People of Shambala
Reason and Logic are Transcendent (A Debate and Sylogism)
Video description:
J. Warner Wallace describes the Transcendental Argument (TAG) and it being one of the many pieces in the quiver of our cumulative case. For more, see his posts on the matter:
See also Got Questions: What is the transcendental argument for the existence of God?
And CARM’s, The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God
^ ^ ^ Updated file above ^ ^ ^
From a debate many years ago
Can I point something out to you that will take us momentarily from this conversation, but explain why you are assuming my worldview in this conversation? I hope you can pick up what I am about to lay down.
First though, I wish to point out that the Lord’s Resistance Army (a person with a “tag,” like truck drivers on CB radios) is acting in opposition to Jesus’ teachings (you cannot say their actions are morally wrong because you equate moral actions to either society or yourself. If 51% of the world body said such actions were moral, then magically the 49% who think otherwise would themselves become immoral for believing differently). But not in opposition to naturalism’s teachings and assumptions.
However, in making your distinction, and I quote you:
- Their belief in Christianity stands in stark contradiction to your own.
You are assuming the Law of Non-Contradiction and the Law of Excluded Middle in your above statement. This has consequences for you, even though you may not realize it.
In our unfolding conversation here, I am sure we can agree that you are using logic and reason in your argument, as I pointed out. You are expecting me to be able to delineate between false and correct arguments and come to a conclusion based on delineating between truth and untruth, false argument and true argument, by the Laws of Logic by using reason, correct? Otherwise you are a masochist, a person who argues for arguments sake.
So by engaging me in conversation you are asking me to give you some reasons or evidences by which you may observe and examine so that you might come to the conclusion as to the truthfulness of my claims or the falsity of my claims. But the moment that you ask me to give you some evidence that you might prove something…. you have assumed my worldview. You’ve done that because you are assuming that my mind is wired exactly like your mind is wired and are assuming that all men reason logically. But my worldview is the only worldview that gives an answer to why men reason logically.
So the question is this: are the laws of logic binding to us, all men. We all observe gravity, so we experience the Law of Gravity. We can never reach out and touch or experience the Law of gravity with our senses, we can only experience the effect of the Law. Likewise, Logic is not a physical function, yet we experience it. The laws of logic are non-tangible, they can’t be seen, they can’t be touched, yet they are binding on all men (you proved this point when you used logic by assuming the Law of non-Contradiction and the Law of Excluded Middle, and expected me to be bound by them as well as understand them). Can you touch, taste, or see the Law of Non-Contradiction? Where do these laws of logic/rationality come from?
Naturalism is a world view that requires all existing entities to be physical entities or reducible to entities in the physical world. Thus naturalism cannot account for rationality because it cannot give the right kind of causes (The Law of Causality, “cause and effect”) necessary for rational thought. In theism we are taught that these rational causes explain the reasons why one holds some beliefs. That bold part is very important. Let me explain.
To see the above point clearly, consider the following claims:
(1) All Ps are Qs.
(2) X is a P.
(3) X is a Q.
When one understands the claims in (1) and (2), then one understands that (3) must follow from the other premises. In order for one to grasp why (3) follows from (1) and (2), one needs more than natural, physical laws of cause-and-effect. To draw the right conclusion, one needs the ground and consequent (C. S. Lewis) type of reasoning. But it is precisely this kind of reasoning that seems unavailable to the naturalist worldview.
Rationality requires rational causes; this is a problem for naturalism. A naturalist could explain someone’s belief entirely in terms of behaviorist psychology (e.g., certain factors caused this person to hold this belief), for example, but it cannot analyze the rational causes that support someone’s belief. For someone to do that, they would need something beyond physical causes. In fact, naturalism describes all beliefs in terms of physical, natural causes, which in turn, has no room for mental causes. C.S. Lewis closes a chapter in his book Miracles with this conclusion:
Reason is given before Nature and on reason our concept of Nature depends. Our acts of inference are prior to our picture of Nature almost as the telephone is prior to the friend’s voice we hear by it. When we try to fit these acts into the picture of nature we fail. The item which we put into that picture and label “Reason” always turns out to be somehow different from the reason we ourselves are enjoying and exercising as we put it in. . . . . . But the imagined thinking which we put into the picture depends – because our whole idea of Nature depends – on thinking we are actually doing, not vice versa. This is the prime reality, on which the attribution of reality to anything else rests. If it won’t fit into Nature, we can’t help it. We will certainly not, on that account, give it up. If we do, we should be giving up Nature too.
Even though the above is somewhat long, trying to get such a hard subject across requires space. The below is not required reading and you may forego it, but it may explain what I couldn’t (for the other Christians here in this board watching this discussion, you may want to save this article and learn its premises, as they are powerful refutations of the naturalist point of view). I will post an example of this in action in a hypothetical found in a really intelligently argued article found at Leader U called, Methodological Naturalism?:
First, then, some examples that suggest that science is not religiously neutral.3 I begin with Herbert Simon’s article, “A Mechanism for Social Selection and Successful Altruism.”4 This article is concerned with the problem of altruism: Why, asks Simon, do people like Mother Teresa do the things that they do? Why do they devote their time and energy and indeed their entire lives to the welfare of other people? Of course it isn’t only the great saints of the world that display this impulse; most of us do so to one degree or another.
How, says Simon, can we account for this kind of behavior? The rational way to behave, he says, is to act or try to act in such a way as to increase one’s personal fitness; i.e., to act so as to increase the probability that one’s genes will be widely disseminated in the next and subsequent generation, thus doing well in the evolutionary derby.5 A paradigm of rational behavior, so conceived, was reported in the South Bend Tribune of December 21, l991 (dateline Alexandria (Va.)). “Cecil B. Jacobson, an infertility specialist, was accused of using his own sperm to impregnate his patients; he may have fathered as many as 75 children, a prosecutor said Friday.” Unlike Jacobson, however, such people as Mother Teresa and Thomas Aquinas cheerfully ignore the short- or long-term fate of their genes. What is the explanation of this behavior?
The answer, says Simon, is two mechanisms: “docility” and “bounded rationality”:
Docile persons tend to learn and believe what they perceive others in the society want them to learn and believe. Thus the content of what is learned will not be fully screened for its contribution to personal fitness (p. 1666).
Because of bounded rationality, the docile individual will often be unable to distinguish socially prescribed behavior that contributes to fitness from altruistic behavior [i. e., socially prescribed behavior that does not contribute to fitness–AP]. In fact, docility will reduce the inclination to evaluate independently the contributions of behavior to fitness. …. By virtue of bounded rationality, the docile person cannot acquire the personally advantageous learning that provides the increment, d, of fitness without acquiring also the altruistic behaviors that cost the decrement, c. (p. 1667).
The idea is that a Mother Teresa or a Thomas Aquinas displays bounded rationality; they are unable to distinguish socially prescribed behavior that contributes to fitness from altruistic behavior (socially prescribed behavior which does not). As a result, they fail to acquire the personally advantageous learning that provides that increment d of fitness without, sadly enough, suffering that decrement c exacted by altruistic behavior. They acquiesce unthinkingly in what society tells them is the right way to behave; and they aren’t quite up to making their own independent evaluation of the likely bearing of such behavior on the fate of their genes. If they did make such an independent evaluation (and were rational enough to avoid silly mistakes) they would presumably see that this sort of behavior does not contribute to personal fitness, drop it like a hot potato, and get right to work on their expected number of progeny.
No Christian could accept this account as even a beginning of a viable explanation of the altruistic behavior of the Mother Teresas of this world. From a Christian perspective, this doesn’t even miss the mark; it isn’t close enough to be a miss. Behaving as Mother Teresa does is not a display of bounded rationality–as if, if she thought through the matter with greater clarity and penetration, she would cease this kind of behavior and instead turn her attention to her expected number of progeny. Her behavior displays a Christ-like spirit; she is reflecting in her limited human way the magnificent splendor of Christ’s sacrificial action in the Atonement. (No doubt she is also laying up treasure in heaven). Indeed, is there anything a human being can do that is more rational than what she does? From a Christian perspective, the idea that her behavior is irrational (and so irrational that it needs to be explained in terms of such mechanisms as unusual docility and limited rationality!) is hard to take seriously. For from that perspective, behavior of the sort engaged in by Mother Teresa is anything but a manifestation of ‘limited rationality’. On the contrary: her behavior is vastly more rational than that of someone who, like Cecil Jacobson, devotes his best efforts to seeing to it that his genes are represented in excelsis in the next and subsequent generations.
Simon suggests or assumes that the rational course for a human being to follow is to try to increase her fitness. Rationality, however, is a deeply normative notion; the rational course is the right course, the one to be recommended, the one you ought to pursue. Simon, therefore, seems to be making a normative claim, or perhaps a normative assumption; it is a vital and intrinsic part of what he means to put forward. If so, however, can it really be part of science? Science is supposed to be non-evaluative, non-normative, non-prescriptive: it is supposed to give us facts, not values. Can this claim that the rational course is to pursue fitness then be part of science, of a scientific explanation, or a scientific enterprise?
But perhaps there is a reply. What, exactly, does Simon mean here by such terms as ‘rational’ and ‘rationality’? At least two things; for when he says that the rational course, for a human being, is to try to increase her fitness, he isn’t using the term in the same way as when he says Mother Teresa and people like her suffer from bounded rationality. The latter means simply that people like this aren’t quite up to snuff when it comes to intelligence, perspicacity, and the like; they are at least slightly defective with respect to acuteness. It is because of the lack of acuity that they fail to see that the socially prescribed behavior in question is really in conflict with their own best interests or the achievement of their own goals. This limited rationality is a matter of running a quart low, of playing with less than a full deck, of being such that the elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floor.
When he says that the rational course for a human being is to strive to promote fitness, he presumably means something different by the term ‘rational’, namely, that a properly functioning human being, one not subject to malfunction (one that isn’t insane, or retarded, or reacting to undue stress, or in the grip of some other malfunction or dysfunctional state) will as a matter of fact have certain goals, try to attain certain conditions, aim to bring about certain states of affairs. Presumably survival would be one of these goals; but another one, says Simon, is promoting or maximizing fitness.
And there are two things to say about this claim. In the first place, we might ask what the evidence is that, as a matter of fact, properly functioning human beings do indeed all or nearly all display this goal. It isn’t easy to see precisely how to answer this question. One suspects that a study done by way of the usual polling and questionnaire techniques wouldn’t yield this result; most of the properly functioning people I know, anyway, wouldn’t give as one of their main goals that of increasing their fitness. (Perhaps you will retort that this is because most of the people I know are past childbearing age, so that directly increasing their genetic representation in the next generations is no longer a live option. Of course they could do their best to see that they have a lot of grandchildren–judiciously distributed bribes, perhaps, or arranging circumstances so that their daughters will become pregnant, or encouraging their younger relatives to drop out of school and have children). But obviously there is always another option: we can say that the goals or aims in question aren’t conscious, are not available to conscious inspection. They are rather to be determined by behavior. It is your behavior that reveals and demonstrates your goals, no matter what you say (and, indeed, no matter what you think).
Well, perhaps so. It would still remain to be shown or argued that properly functioning human persons do as a matter of fact display in their behavior this goal of increasing their fitness–where, of course, we couldn’t sensibly take their displaying this goal as a criterion of normality or proper function. As a matter of fact, Simon doesn’t proceed in this way; his procedure, with respect to this question, is a priori rather than a posteriori. He doesn’t tell us what it is that leads him to think that properly functioning human beings will have this goal, but one suspects his answer would be that human beings acquire this goal somehow by virtue of our evolutionary history. I suspect he thinks it would follow from any proper evolutionary account of human beings (and for many other species as well) that they have maximizing fitness as a goal. How exactly this story would go is perhaps not entirely clear; but for the moment we can ignore the difficulties.
The second thing to say about this claim is that the same question arises with respect to it: isn’t the idea of proper function itself a normative notion? There is a connected circle of notions here: proper function, health, normality (in the normative, not the descriptive sense) dysfunction, damage, design (a properly functioning lung is working the way lungs are designed to work), purpose, and the like. Perhaps none of these notions can be analyzed in terms of notions outside the charmed circle (so that this circle would resemble that involving the notions of necessity, possibility, entailment, possible worlds, and so on). And aren’t these notions normative? Indeed, there is a use of ‘ought’ to go with them. When the starter button is pressed, the engine ought to turn over–i.e., if the relevant parts are functioning properly, the engine will turn over when the starter button is pressed. When you suffer a smallish laceration, a scab ought to form over the wound; that is, if the relevant parts of your body are functioning properly, a scab will form over the wound. A six-month-old baby ought to be able to raise its head and kick its feet simultaneously; that is, a healthy, normal (in the normative, not the statistical sense) six-month-old baby can do these things. Must we not concede, therefore, that this notion of proper function is itself a normative notion, so that if Simon uses ‘rationality’ in a way explicable only in terms of proper function, then what he says is indeed normative and thus not properly a part of science?
Perhaps; but if the employment of the notion of normality or proper function is sufficient to disqualify a discourse from the title of science, then a lot more than Simon’s account of altruism will turn out not to be science. Consider functional generalizations–the sorts of generalizations to be found in biological and psychological descriptions of the way in which human beings or other organic creatures work. As John Pollock points out, such generalizations seem to involve an implicit presupposition:
when we formulate similar generalizations about machines, the generalizations we formulate are really about how machines work when they work properly; or when they are not broken. Similarly it seems that generalizations about organisms should be understood as being about the way they work when they are ‘working normally.’6
Here ‘working normally’ and ‘not being broken’ mean something like ‘subject to no dysfunction’ or ‘working properly’ or ‘not malfunctioning’. Functional generalizations about organisms, therefore, say how they work when they are functioning properly. But of course biological and social science is full of functional generalizations. Thus, if Simon is appealing to the notion of proper function in his idea of rationality, he may be appealing to a kind of normativity; but that kind of normativity is widely found in science. Or, at any rate, it is widely found in what is called science. Some will maintain that the notion of proper function doesn’t belong in science unless it can be explained, somehow, in other terms–finally, perhaps, in terms of the regularities studied in physics and chemistry. We need not enter that disputatious territory here; it is sufficient to note that if Simon is appealing to the notion of proper function, then what he does appeal to is in fact to be found over the length and breadth of the social and biological sciences. Therefore, we should not deny the title ‘science’ to what Simon does unless we are prepared to raise the same strictures with respect to most of the rest of what we think of as social and biological science. And even if we do say that Simonian science isn’t really science, nothing substantive changes; my point will then be, not that religious considerations bear on science properly so-called, but rather that they bear on what is in fact called science, which is a very important, indeed, dominant part of our intellectual and cultural life.
I shall therefore assume that Simonian science is science. So in Simon’s account of altruism we have an example of a scientific theory that is clearly not neutral with respect to Christian commitment; indeed, it is inconsistent with it. Simon’s theory also illustrates another and quite different way in which religious considerations are relevant to science; they bear on what we take it needs explanation. From Simon’s perspective, it is altruism that needs explanation; from a Christian or theistic perspective, on the other hand, it is only to be expected that humans beings would sometimes act altruistically. Perhaps what needs explanation is the way in which human beings savage and destroy each other.
This is an attempt to demonstrate the existence of God using logical absolutes. The oversimplified argument, which is expanded in outline form below, goes as follows:
Logical absolutes exist. Logical absolutes are conceptual by nature, are not dependent on space, time, physical properties, or human nature. They are not the product of the physical universe (space, time, matter), because if the physical universe were to disappear, logical absolutes would still be true. Logical Absolutes are not the product of human minds, because human minds are different, not absolute. But, since logical absolutes are always true everywhere, and not dependent upon human minds, it must be an absolute transcendent mind that is authoring them. This mind is called God.
Law of Identity (LID)
- Something is what it is, and isn’t what it is not. Something that exists has a specific nature.
- For example, a cloud is a cloud, not a rock. A fish is a fish, not a car.
Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC)
- Something cannot be both true and false at the same time in the same sense.
- For example, to say that the cloud is not a cloud would be a contradiction since it would violate the first law. The cloud cannot be what it is and not what it is at the same time.
Law of Excluded Middle (LEM)
- A statement is either true or false, without a middle ground.
- “I am alive” is either true or false. “You are pregnant” is either true or false.
- Note one: “This statement is false” is not a valid statement (not logically true) since it is self-refuting and is dealt with by the Law of Non-contradiction. Therefore, it does not fall under the LEM category since it is a self-contradiction.
- Note two: If we were to ignore note one, then there is a possible paradox here. The sentence “this statement is false” does not fit this Law since if it is true, then it is false. Paradoxes occur only when we have absolutes. Nevertheless, the LEM is valid except for the paradoxical statement cited.
- Note three: If we again ignore note one and admit a paradox, then we must acknowledge that paradoxes exist only within the realm of absolutes.
Logical absolutes are truth statements such as:
- That which exists has attributes and a nature.
- A cloud exists and has the attributes of whiteness, vapor, etc. It has the nature of water and air.
- A rock is hard, heavy, and is composed of its rock material (granite, marble, sediment, etc.).
- Something cannot be itself and not itself at the same time.
- It cannot be true to state that a rock is not a rock.
- Something cannot bring itself into existence.
- In order for something to bring itself into existence, it has to have attributes in order to perform an action. But if it has attributes, then it already has existence. If something does not exist, it has no attributes and can perform no actions. Therefore, something cannot bring itself into existence.
- Truth is not self-contradictory.
- It could not be true that you are reading this and not reading this at the same time in the same sense. It is either true or false that you are reading this.
- Therefore, Logical Absolutes are absolutely true. They are not subjectively true; that is, they are not sometimes true and sometimes false, depending on preference or situation. Otherwise, they would not be absolute.
Logical Absolutes form the basis of rational discourse.
- If the Logical Absolutes are not absolute, then truth cannot be known.
- If the Logical Absolutes are not absolute, then no rational discourse can occur.
- For example, I could say that a square is a circle (violating the law of identity), or that I am and am not alive in the same sense at the same time (violating the law of non-contradiction).
- But no one would expect to have a rational conversation with someone who spoke in contradictory statements.
- If Logical Absolutes are not always true, then it might be true that something can contradict itself, which would make truth unknowable and rational discourse impossible. But, saying that something can contradict itself can’t be true.
- But since we know things are true (I exist, you are reading this), then we can conclude that logical statements are true. Otherwise, we would not be able to rationally discuss or know truth.
- If they are not the basis of rational discourse, then we cannot know truth or error since the laws that govern rationality are not absolute. This would allow people to speak irrationally, i.e., blue sleeps faster than Wednesday.
Logical Absolutes are transcendent.
- Logical Absolutes are not dependent on space.
- They do not stop being true dependent on location. If we travel a million light years in a direction, logical absolutes are still true.
- Logical Absolutes are not dependent on time.
- They do not stop being true dependent on time. If we travel a billion years in the future or past, logical absolutes are still true.
- Logical Absolutes are not dependent on people. That is, they are not the product of human thinking.
- People’s minds are different. What one person considers to be absolute may not be what another considers to be absolute. People often contradict each other. Therefore, Logical Absolutes cannot be the product of human, contradictory minds.
- If Logical Absolutes were the product of human minds, they would cease to exist if people ceased to exist, which would mean they would be dependent on human minds. But this cannot be so per the previous point.
Logical Absolutes are not dependent on the material world.
- Logical Absolutes are not found in atoms, motion, heat, under rocks, etc.
- Logical Absolutes cannot be photographed, frozen, weighed, or measured.
- Logical Absolutes are not the product of the physical universe, since that would mean they were contingent on atoms, motion, heat, etc., and that their nature was dependent on physical existence.
- If their nature were dependent upon physical existence, they would cease to exist when the physical universe ceases to exist.
- If they were properties of the universe then they could be measured the same way heat, motion, mass, etc., are measured. Since they cannot be measured, they are not properties of the universe.
- But, if the universe did not exist, logical absolutes are still true.
- For example, if the universe did not exist, it would still be true that something cannot bring itself into existence. The condition of the universe does not effect the truth that “Something cannot bring itself into existence.”
- For example, if the universe did not exist, it would still be true that something cannot be itself and not itself at the same time.
- Therefore, Logical Absolutes are not dependent on the material world.
Logical Absolutes are conceptual by nature.
- Logic is a process of the mind. Logical absolutes provide the framework for logical thought processes. Therefore, Logical Absolutes are conceptual by nature.
- Expanded: Logical absolutes are either conceptual by nature or they are not.
- If they are conceptual by nature, then they are not dependent upon the physical universe for their existence.
- If they are conceptual by nature, then they depend on mind for their existence.
- If they are non-conceptual by nature, then:
- What is their nature?
- If it is denied that Logical Absolutes are either conceptual or not conceptual, then there must be a 3rd (or 4th…) option. But this is impossible because “conceptual or not conceptual” is an antonymic pair (pair of opposites). There are no other possible options. Either Logical Absolutes are conceptual by nature or they are not.
- If they are conceptual by nature, then they are not dependent upon the physical universe for their existence.
Thoughts reflect the mind
- A person’s thoughts reflect what he or she is.
- Absolutely perfect thoughts reflect an absolutely perfect mind.
- Since the Logical Absolutes are transcendent, absolute, are perfectly consistent, and are independent of the universe, then they reflect a transcendent, absolute, perfect, and independent mind.
- We call this transcendent, absolute, perfect, and independent mind God.
Objections Answered
- Logical Absolutes are the result of natural existence.
- In what sense are they the result of natural existence? How do conceptual absolutes form as a result of the existence of matter?
- If they are a part of natural existence (the universe) then they would cease to exist if the universe ceased.
- This has not been proven to be true.
- It implies that logic is a property of physical matter, but this is addressed in point 5 above.
- Logical Absolutes simply exist.
- This is begging the question and does not provide an explanation for their existence. Simply saying they exist is not an answer.
- Logical Absolutes are axioms
- An axiom is a truth that is self evident. To say that Logical Absolutes are axioms is to beg the question and does not account for them.
- Logical Absolutes are conventions.
- A convention, in this context, is an agreed upon principle. But since people differ on what is and is not true, then logical absolutes cannot be the product of human minds, and therefore are not human conventions; that is, of human agreements.
- This would mean that logical absolutes were invented upon an agreement by a sufficient number of people. But this would mean that logical absolutes are a product of human minds, which cannot be the case since human minds differ and are often contradictory. Furthermore, the nature of logical absolutes is that they transcend space and time (not dependent on space and time for their validity) and are absolute (they don’t change) by nature. Therefore, they could not be the product of human minds which are finite and not absolute.
- This would mean that if people later disagreed on what was a Logical Absolute, then the absolutes would change based on “vote”.
- Logical Absolutes are eternal.
- What is meant by stating they are eternal?
- If a person says that logical absolutes have always existed, then how is it they could exist without a mind (if the person denies the existence of an absolute and transcendent mind)? After all, logic is a process of the mind.
- Logical Absolutes are uncaused.
- Since the nature of logic is conceptual, and logical absolutes form the framework of this conceptual process known as logic, it would be logical to conclude that the only way logical absolutes could be uncaused is if there was an uncaused and absolute mind authoring them.
- Logical Absolutes are self-authenticating.
- This means that logical absolutes validate themselves. While this is true, it does not explain their existence.
- It is begging the question. It just says they are because they are.
- Logical Absolutes are like rules of chess, which are not absolute and transcendent.
- The rules of chess are human inventions since Chess is a game invented by people. In fact, the rules of chess have changed over the years, but logical absolutes have not. So, comparing the rules of chess to logical absolutes is invalid.
- There are different kinds of logic.
- Saying there are different kinds of logic does not explain the existence of logical absolutes.
- In different systems of logic, there must be undergirding, foundational principles upon which those systems are based. How are those foundational principles accounted for? The same issue applies to them as it does to Logical Absolutes in classical logic.
- “Logical absolutes need no transcendental existence: saying ‘they would be true even if matter didn’t exist’ is irrelevant, because we’re concerned with their existence, not their logical validity. Saying ‘the idea of a car would still exist even if matter didn’t exist’ doesn’t imply that your car is transcendental (reductio ad absurdum).”
- Why do logical absolutes need no transcendental existence? Simply saying they don’t need a transcendental existence doesn’t make it so nor does it account for their existence. “Need” deals with desire and wants, which are irrelevant to the discussion of the nature of logical absolutes.
- Also, why is it irrelevant to say they would be true even if matter didn’t exist? On the contrary, it is precisely relevant to the discussion since we’re dealing with the nature of logical absolutes which are conceptual realities, not physical ones.
- The illustration that a car would still exist if matter did not exist is illogical. By definition, a car is made of matter and if matter did not exist, a car could not logically exist. By contrast, logical absolutes are not made of matter. The objection is invalid.
- “Logical abstractions do not have existence independent of our minds. They are constructs in our minds (i.e. brains), and we use them to carry out computations via neural networks, silicon networks, etc., suggested by the fact that logic – like language – is learned, not inbuilt (ball’s in your court to demonstrate an independent existence, or problem with this).” (…continued in next objection…)
- How do you know that logical abstractions do not have existence independent of our minds? Saying so doesn’t make it so. This is precisely one of the points about the nature of logical absolutes; namely, that they are a process of the mind, but are not dependent upon human bodies because human minds contradict each other and are also self-contradictory. This would preclude our minds from being the authors of what is logically absolute. Furthermore, if they are constructions of our minds, then all I have to do is claim victory in any argument because that is how I construct my logical abstractions. But, of course, you wouldn’t accept this as being valid. Therefore, this demonstrates that your assertion is incorrect.
- How can an atheist logically claim that one chemical state in the brain which leads to another state necessitates proper logical inference? It seems quite unlikely and without proof of some sort, saying that Logical Absolutes are abstractions of (human) minds doesn’t account for them.
- (continued from previous objection…) “Logical absolutes are absolute, not because of some special quality, but because we judge them using logic. Therefore, their absoluteness doesn’t arise from any special ontological quality (category error on your part).”
- You are begging the question. You use logic to demonstrate that logical absolutes are absolute. You are not giving a rational reason for their existence. Instead, you assume their existence and argue accordingly.
- Furthermore, when you presuppose the validity of logical absolutes to demonstrate they are absolute, you contradict your statement in your previous objection about them being constructs of human minds. They cannot be constructs of human minds, because human minds contradict each other and themselves where Logical Absolutes do not.
- Where is the category mistake? The nature of logical absolutes is that they are conceptual. This is something I have brought out before so that their categories do not get mixed. The nature of logical absolutes is exactly relevant to the question.
- (continued from previous objection…) “Logical absolutes can be accurately described as conventions in communication. The fact that they are widely employed does not imply anything transcendental, anymore than the wide employment of the word “lolly” as something small and yummy implies that the word “lolly” is transcendental (non sequitor).”
- Saying that they are “widely employed does not imply anything transcendental” is inaccurate. Something that is transcendental, as in logical absolutes, would naturally be widely employed because they are valid and transcendent; otherwise, they wouldn’t be universally used. You have recognized that they are widely used, but they are because they are transcendent. They do not become transcendent because they are widely used.
- This still does not account for the existence of logical absolutes.
- (continued from previous objection…) “Logical processes are clearly carried out by material constructs, usually neural or electrical. They do this without any known “input” or “guidance” from anything transcendental, which makes you wonder why anything transcendental is needed in the equation at all (reality check).”
- You haven’t defined “material construct” or what you mean by neural or electrical (constructs). If you mean a computer or something of that kind, this doesn’t help you because humans designed them using logic. If you mean that they are the process of the human brain, you still haven’t solved the problem of their existence; since the implication would be that if our minds do not exist, logical absolutes would not exist either. But this would mean that logical absolutes were not absolute, but dependent upon human minds. Again, the problem would be that human minds are different and contradict each other. Therefore, logical absolutes, which are not contradictory, cannot be the product of minds that are contradictory.
- As stated above how does one establish that one chemical state in the brain which leads to another state necessitates proper logical inference? Asserting it doesn’t make it so and concluding that chemical reactions lead to logical inferences has not yet been established to be true, or even that it could be at all.
- You don’t have to know the input or understand the guidance from anything transcendental for the transcendentals to be true.
- “Logic is one of those characteristics that any healthy human ‘has.’ It’s not free to vary from one person to the next for the same kind of reason that ‘number of eyes’ is a value that doesn’t vary between healthy humans.”
- Saying that logic is something that everyone “has” does not explain its existence. Essentially, this is begging the question, stating that something exists because it exists.
- The analogy of “eyes” is a category mistake. Eyes are organs. Different organisms have different kinds of eyes and different numbers of eyes. Logic is consistent and independent of biological structures.
- Logic is the result of the semantics of the language which we have chosen: a statement is a theorem of logic if and only if it is valid in all conceivable worlds. If the language is trivalent (true/indetermined/false), tertium non datur is invalid. Uniformity of the universe can be rationally expected in a non-theistic universe. If there is no one around with the transcendental power to change it, why should the behavior of the universe tomorrow differ from its behavior today?
- “Semantics of the language.” Semantics deals with the study of the meaning of words, their development, changes in meaning, and the interpretation of words, etc. But semantics by nature deals with the changing meaning of words and the often subjective nature of language and its structures. To say the absolutes of logic are a result of the use of the subjective meanings of words is problematic. How do you derive logical absolutes from the non-absolute semantic structures of non-absolute languages?
Furthermore, simply asserting that logic is a result of the semantics of the language does not explain the transcendent nature of logic. Remember, the TAG argument asserts that Logical Absolutes are independent of human existence — reasons given at the beginning of the paper. Since language, in this context, is a result of human existence, the argument would suggest that logic came into existence when language came into existence. But this would invalidate the nature of logical absolutes and their transcendent characteristics. Therefore, this objection is invalid. - If logic is the result of language, then logic came into existence with language. This cannot be for the reasons stated above.
- If logic is the result of language, and since language rules change, then can we conclude that the laws of logic would also change? If so, then the laws of logic are not laws, they are not absolute.
- Saying that “a statement is a theorem of logic” does not account for logic, but presupposes existence of logic. This is begging the question.
- “Semantics of the language.” Semantics deals with the study of the meaning of words, their development, changes in meaning, and the interpretation of words, etc. But semantics by nature deals with the changing meaning of words and the often subjective nature of language and its structures. To say the absolutes of logic are a result of the use of the subjective meanings of words is problematic. How do you derive logical absolutes from the non-absolute semantic structures of non-absolute languages?
An Example of “Begging the Question”
In a discussion where the person refused to focus on the topic — but wanted instead to move to William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA), he [Tim C.] challenged me with the following syllogism, expecting it to be sound.
Here is the challenge:
1.) Every material thing that begins to exist has a material cause.
2.) If theism is true, the universe does not have a material cause.
3.) The universe is material.
4.) The universe began to exist.
5.) Therefore, theism is false.
This is better than my own formulation. Borrowed from Cale N.
Premise one is simply “begging the question,” so if that is enough for you, fine. But here is the conversation that got nowhere because of the presuppositions of Tim.
One commentator did rewrite Tim’s first premise to encapsualte what is in it:
- “The material cannot be caused by the immaterial” ~ Thomas B.
Yep, that about sums it up.
FYI, I am Calvin of Calvin and Hobbs, Tim is Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons.
Premise 1 is embedded with philosophical naturalism. In other words, you just took a metaphysical position to disprove metaphysics.
The responses to me are shameful, but I dredge on hoping my point restated will sink in:
Try and challenge P1, why don’t you?
This is the only time I really delve into #’s 2 and 3, I try to stay focused on #1
The jump from Premise 2 and premise 3 are unconnected. They are a non-sequitur, making the syllogism false. A material universe has no bearing on whether its cause was immaterial or material.
What premise don’t you accept? The syllogism is valid, if you are questioning its soundness, challenge a premise.
So far, premise 1 is metaphysical (embedded with philosophical naturalism/assumption). Premise 2 and 3 are unrelated, and 5 does not come naturally from your metaphysical stance in #1 [it is demanded]…
How is P1 of the KCA not “metaphysical” then?
No, Craig’s is not metaphysical, because it merely states: “whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.” (It does not posit a metaphysical claim, which is why Dawkins agrees with Intelligent Design but in the end of the documentary [Expelled] says that the best explanation is space aliens.) 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence. 2.1 Argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite. 2.11 An actual infinite cannot exist. 2.2 Argument based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition. 2.21 A collection formed by successive addition cannot be actually infinite. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence. Scientism, materialism, empiricism, existentialism, naturalism, and humanism – whatever you want to call it… it is still a metaphysical position as it assumes or presumes certain things about the entire universe. D’Souza points this a priori commitment out: Naturalism and materialism are not scientific conclusions; rather, they are scientific premises. They are not discovered in nature but imposed upon nature. In short, they are articles of faith. Here is Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin: Dinesh D’Souza points to this in his recent book, What’s So Great about Christianity (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2007), 161 (emphasis added). Sorry. You skipped right by Craig’s support for P1. Which would be the exact opposite of your premise… BOTH, then, would start with a metaphysical point in that case. Do you see Tim C. where you premise #1 went astray? There was some cross-talk about what Dr. Craig appealed to in his premise number one, I said the law of cause and effect, Tim C. said intuition. I merely excerpted a portion from Dr. Craig’s book, On Guard. (In other words, I let Dr. Craig define his own position.) Back to the main premise of why I am rejecting his premise number one. After repeating myself on Premise #1 and Tim C. rejecting my refutation of his first premise, I simply state [again]: “In premise one… you assume the conclusion.” No I don’t. What have you ever seen just pop into existence in our experience without a material cause? Nothing! Any sincere seeker of the truth would acknowledge this. It is the SAME EXACT support Craig gives for his defense of P1. EXACT. SAME. If you reject my formulation you must reject Craig’s defense of his P1. Sorry, can’t go both ways on this!! No, Craig does not assume a metaphysical position like you did. [….] Your Premise: Craig’s Premise REWRITING Craig’s like yours No I don’t. What have you ever seen just pop into existence in our experience without a material cause? Nothing! Any sincere seeker of the truth would acknowledge this. It is the SAME EXACT support Craig gives for his defense of P1. EXACT. SAME. Tim still is not getting it so I reword it a bit: No, Craig does not assume a metaphysical position like you did. He didn’t assume his conclusion. You essentially said: Robert A. Morey, The New Atheism: And the Erosion of Freedom (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P & R 1986), p. 57. He still does not get it, so I state that this isn’t Rocket science, it is philosophy 101: … you cannot assume your conclusion in the first premise. You exclude God in Premise 1, Craig doesn’t exclude God or exclude naturalism in his first premise. Again, what support do you have to deny P1? You need support, bucko. Try and address the issue, and not fallaciously claim I’m begging the question. I am done… if you don’t get that your syllogism is as bad as this: (1) Fido is Joe’s dog. Then you need to rush out and get Philosophy for Dummies. Tim C. responds: Haha!!! You are so transparent I think you may be a ghost! You clearly can’t defeat P1 and are disingenuously slinking away under the cover of a bogus accusation. Your syllogism isn’t valid. Good grief!!! Jesus weeps for his modern day “apologists”!! No, you are defining God out of the picture in Premise #1… if you cannot see that you are on some heavy pain pills. When you say “Every material thing that begins to exist has a material cause,” you are already giving an answer” [your conclusion]. You assumed PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM in your premise #1 — you are assuming — then — a metaphysical position [which you reject in your conclusion]. Atheist philosopher Dr. Monton points this out: If science really is permanently committed to methodological naturalism – the philosophical position that restricts all explanations in science to naturalistic explanations – it follows that the aim of science is not generating true theories. Instead, the aim of science would be something like: generating the best theories that can be formulated subject to the restriction that the theories are naturalistic. More and more evidence could come in suggesting that a supernatural being exists, but scientific theories wouldn’t be allowed to acknowledge that possibility. Bradley Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design ~ Apologetics315 h/t And the aim of a proper syllogism is not to exclude in your first statement what your conclusion should. Again, Craig did not exclude anything in his premise #1 Again, please attempt to offer evidence against my P1. Apparently you can’t. Your only possible claim is the universe, which just goes to show that the KCA itself is pretty much question begging. Hey if you’ll admit that, we’re cool. No, the KCA is not begging the question, it is allowing the 2nd (and subsequently 2.1 and 2.2) to help reach a conclusion. You premise #1 excludes theism. Craig’s does not exclude atheism. +++++ Your Premise: Every material thing that begins to exist has a M-A-T-E-R-I-A-L cause. [Your cause can only be material] Craig’s Premise: Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence. [Craig’s cause could be material, or, it could not be] Tim C. still didn’t get it. Tim is the epitome of inserting his presuppositions into a premise, I can picture Francis Schaeffer smiling in heaven. I would merely rewrite the original horrible syllogism with this horrible one:
2. The universe began to exist.
2.12 An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
2.13 Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.
2.22 The temporal series of past events is a collection formed by successive addition.
2.23 Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite.
(2) Fido is a mother.
(3) Therefore, Fido is Joe’s mother.
Again
+++++
The Law of Cause and Effect (Sproul and Craig)
The video is by Dr. R.C. Sproul, followed by Dr. William Lane Craig’s explanation from his book, On Guard, explaining the first premise from the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Another good article is found by Dr. Jeff Miller at Apologetic Press, where I get this definition from for clarity:
- “causality,” in physics, is “the principle that an event cannot precede its cause” McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms (2003), pub. M.D. Licker (New York: McGraw-Hill), sixth edition, cf., causality.
PREMISE I
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
I think that the first premise, that whatever begins to exist has a cause, is virtually undeniable for any sincere seeker after truth. For something to come into being without any cause whatsoever would be to come into being from nothing. That is surely impossible. Let me give three reasons in support of this premise:
1) Something Cannot Come from Nothing. To claim that something can come into being from nothing is worse than magic. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, at least you’ve got the magician, not to mention the hat! But if you deny premise 1, you’ve got to think that the whole universe just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatsoever. But nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.
This isn’t rocket science. In The Sound of Music, when Captain Von Trapp and Maria reveal their love for each other, what does Maria say? “Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could.” We don’t normally think of philosophical principles as romantic, but Maria was here expressing a fundamental principle of classical metaphysics. (No doubt she had been well trained in philosophy at the convent school!)
Sometimes skeptics will respond to this point by saying that in physics subatomic particles (so-called “virtual particles”) come into being from nothing. Or certain theories of the origin of the universe are sometimes described in popular magazines as getting something from nothing, so that the universe is the exception to the proverb “There ain’t no free lunch.”
This skeptical response represents a deliberate abuse of science. The theories in question have to do with particles originating as a fluctuation of the energy contained in the vacuum. The vacuum in modern physics is not what the layman understands by “vacuum,” namely, nothing. Rather in physics the vacuum is a sea of fluctuating energy governed by physical laws and having a physical structure. To tell laymen that on such theories something comes from nothing is a distortion of those theories.
Properly understood, “nothing” does not mean just empty space. Nothing is the absence of anything whatsoever, even space itself. As such, nothingness has literally no properties at all, since there isn’t anything to have any properties! How silly, then, when popularizers say things like “Nothingness is unstable” or “The universe tunneled into being out of nothing”!
When I first published my work on the kalam cosmological argument back in 1979, I figured that atheists would attack premise 2 of the argument, that the universe began to exist. But I didn’t think they’d go after premise 1. For that would expose them as people not sincerely seeking after truth but just looking for an academic refutation of the argument.
What a surprise, then, to hear atheists denying premise 1 in order to escape the argument! For example, Quentin Smith of Western Michigan University responded that the most rational position to hold is that the universe came “from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing”—a nice close to a Gettysburg Address of atheism, perhaps!
This is simply the faith of an atheist. In fact, I think this represents a greater leap of faith than belief in the existence of God. For it is, I repeat, literally worse than magic. If this is the alternative to belief in God, then unbelievers can never accuse believers of irrationality, for what could be more evidently irrational than this?
2) If Something Can Come into Being from Nothing, Then It Becomes Inexplicable Why Just Anything or Everything Doesn’t Come into Being from Nothing. Think about it: Why don’t bicycles and Beethoven and root beer just pop into being from nothing? Why is it only universes that can come into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can’t be anything about nothingness that favors universes, for nothingness doesn’t have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness, for there isn’t anything to be constrained!
I’ve heard atheists respond to this argument by saying that premise 1 is true of everything in the universe but not of the universe. But this is just the old taxicab fallacy that we encountered in chapter 3. You can’t dismiss the causal principle like a cab once you get to the universe! Premise 1 is not merely a law of nature, like the law of gravity, which only applies in the universe. Rather it’s a metaphysical principle that governs all being, all reality.
At this point the atheist is likely to retort, “All right, if everything has a cause, what is God’s cause?” I’m amazed at the self-congratulatory attitude of students who pose this question. They imagine that they’ve said something very important or profound, when all they’ve done is misunderstand the premise. Premise 1 does not say that everything has a cause. Rather it says that everything that begins to exist has a cause. Something that is eternal wouldn’t need a cause, since it never came into being.
Ghazali would therefore respond that God is eternal and uncaused. This is not special pleading for God, since this is exactly what the atheist has traditionally said about the universe: It is eternal and uncaused. The problem is that we have good evidence that the universe is not eternal but had a beginning, and so the atheist is backed into the corner of saying the universe sprang into being without a cause, which is absurd.
3) Common Experience AND Scientific Evidence Confirm the Truth of Premise 1. Premise 1 is constantly verified and never falsified. It’s hard to understand how anyone committed to modern science could deny that premise 1 is more plausibly true than false in light of the evidence.
So I think that the first premise of the kalam cosmological argument is clearly true. If the price of denying the argument’s conclusion is denying premise 1, then atheism is philosophically bankrupt.
William Lane Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010), 75-78.
No Cute/Fuzzy Pig Hats Allowed in Holland
I hope everyone buys one and wears it.
(Via Moonbattery) Until recently, Holland was famous for its tolerance. Then came the twin evils of political correctness and Islam. Now you can be dragged off to a paddy wagon by a dozen police officers for wearing a pig hat, on the grounds that pig hats are disrespectful to Muslims — even if there are no Muslims around to be offended.
Japanese Internment ~ Regrettable But Complex
This post shed light on an all too simplistic tactic of left-leaning thinking and the internment of many innocent Japanese. Remember, this is NOT a post defending this historical failure of the U.S., but it merely sheds some light on the type of manure created today that causes misplaced activism in our youth.
Part of the problem with the left is that they try to equate our current problem with a low-number of 100-million people in the world that would like to kill and support those that kill Westerners for being nothing more than Kaffir with internment of an innocent population of people in the U.S. — the Japanese American. That being said, another thing I cannot stand about the left is that they do not understand the complexities of decisions in hard times.
They look back and simply say,
- “I wouldn’t have made that choice.”
They have no idea the choice they would make given the intel of the day in question. Thomas Sowell likens this thinking to Stage One Thinking. So, even though every leading Democrat believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs, and every intelligence agency worth their weight in gold said he had them… Bush still lied, knowingly, in order to steal oil that we never ended up getting.
It’s childish thinking at best, at worst it is destructive to the fabric of our complicated Union. Like the complete-and-total-myth that the Iraq war was over oil. This type thinking and simplifying of complex decisions is dangerouse to the fabric of our nation and since the Iraq war we have gotten extremists movements like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and others.
(Many actions taken during this time are regrettable)
Here is the excerpt from Michelle Malkin’s book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror:
…The Japanese quickly staved off the formation. During the air battle, Nishikaichi shot down one enemy plane, but his aircraft took several hits. One punctured the Zero’s gas tank. Nishikaichi steered the crippled plane toward the westernmost Hawaiian island: Niihau. The 19-mile-long tract was privately owned by the Robinsons, a Scottish ranching family. Fewer than two hundred residents, mostly native Hawaiians plus three laborers of Japanese descent and their families, called Niihau home. Nishikaichi’s superiors had mistakenly informed him that the land was uninhabited. In case of emergency, the Japanese planned to use the island as a submarine pickup point for stranded pilots.
Nishikaichi crash-landed the plane in a field near one of the ranch homes. The first to reach him was Hawila “Howard” Kaleohano, a burly native Hawaiian employed by the Robinson family. The island had no telephones. On that tranquil, late Sunday morning, with church services just letting out, none of the inhabitants was yet aware of the death and destruction that had just rained down on Pearl Harbor.
Nonetheless, Kaleohano wisely confiscated the dazed Nishikaichi’s gun and papers. Kaleohano, perhaps the most educated native Hawaiian on Niihau, had been keeping tabs on world affairs through newspapers supplied by ranch owner Aylmer Robinson (who paid weekly visits to the island and lived twenty miles away on Kauai). Wary but warm, Kaleohano brought the enemy pilot to his home. Along the way, Nishikaichi asked Kaleohano if he was “a Japanese.” The answer was an emphatic, “No.”
“The question was a gambit in what was to become a search for a confederate,” wrote Allan Beekman, a Hawaii-based historian who published the definitive account of the Niihau incident. Nishikaichi would find a yes-man soon enough.
After sharing a meal and cigarettes, Nishikaichi demanded that Kaleohano return his papers, which included maps, radio codes, and Pearl Harbor attack plans. Kaleohano refused. To make their communication easier, Kaleohano asked his neighbors to summon one of the island’s three residents of Japanese descent to translate for Nishikaichi. They first brought a Japanese-born resident and laborer, Ishimatsu Shintani, to the house. He reluctantly exchanged a few words with the pilot in Japanese, but the spooked Shintani left in a hurry—apparently sensing trouble and wanting nothing to do with his compatriot in name only.
The islanders then turned to Yoshio Harada and his wife Irene, both U.S. citizens, born in Hawaii to Japanese immigrants. Harada had moved from Kauai to California as a young man and lived there for seven years before relocating to Niihau with his wife in 1939. The hardworking and unassuming parents of three ran the Robinson ranch’s company store. Nishikaichi was cheered by the Haradas’ presence. “Oh, you’re a Japanese!” the enemy fighter pilot exclaimed when Yoshio Harada addressed him in their native tongue. Instantly at ease with the Nisei couple, Nishikaichi dropped the bombshell news about the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Haradas did not inform their neighbors.
That night, the hospitable Niihau residents—still in the dark about the atrocity at Oahu—treated Nishikaichi to a festive luau. They roasted a pig and swapped songs. Silently, Nishikaichi despaired. He had lost hope that he would be rescued.
Later that night, the islanders apparently learned about the Pearl Harbor attack on the radio. They decided to confine the pilot in the Haradas’ home until help arrived.
Exploiting their common ethnic ties and urging loyalty to the emperor, Nishikaichi won over the Haradas. They enlisted the other resident of Japanese descent—the skittish Shintani—in a conspiracy to retrieve Nishikaichi’s papers from Kaleohano. On the afternoon of December 12, a reluctant Shintani visited Kaleohano and asked for the enemy pilot’s papers. He offered his neighbor a wad of cash. Kaleohano refused. Shintani desperately told him to burn the papers. It was a matter of life and death, Shintani pleaded with Kaleohano. Japan made him do this, Shintani insisted. Kaleohano again refused.
An hour later, Nishikaichi and the Haradas launched a campaign of terror against the islanders. They overtook the guard on duty and locked him in a warehouse. Mrs. Harada cranked up a phonograph to drown out the commotion. Yoshio Harada and Nishikaichi retrieved a shotgun from the warehouse and headed to Kaleohano’s home. Kaleohano, who was in the outhouse, saw them coming and hid while Nishikaichi and his collaborators unsuccessfully searched for the pilot’s papers. They recovered Nishikaichi’s pistol and headed toward his grounded plane. Harada watched as the enemy pilot tried in vain to call for help on his radio.
Meanwhile, Kaleohano fled from the outhouse and ran to the main village to warn his neighbors of Nishikaichi’s escape. He returned to his house to retrieve the papers, hid them in a relative’s home, and set out with a strong team of islanders in a lifeboat toward Kauai to get help. They rowed for fourteen hours before reaching shore, where they informed their boss, Aylmer Robinson, and military officials of the intruder Nishikaichi and the treachery of the Haradas. That night, Harada and Nishikaichi set both the plane and Kaleohano’s home on fire. They fired off their guns in a lunatic rage and threatened to kill every man, woman, and child in the village. After gathering for a prayer meeting, many residents escaped to a mountaintop with kerosene lamps and reflectors in an attempt to signal Kauai. Others weren’t so fortunate.
On the morning of December 13, Harada and Nishikaichi captured islander Ben Kanahele and his wife. It was a fateful choice that Harada and Nishikaichi would live to regret. Kanahele was ordered to find Kaleohano. In their own “Let’s Roll” moment of heroism, the gutsy Kanaheles refused to cooperate. When Nishikaichi threatened to shoot Kanahele’s wife, fifty-one-year-old Ben lunged for the enemy’s shotgun. The young Japanese fighter pilot pulled his pistol from his boot and shot Kanahele three times in the chest, hip, and groin. Mrs. Kanahele pounced at Nishikaichi; her once-peaceful neighbor Harada tore her away.
Angered, the wounded Kanahele summoned the strength to pick up Nishikaichi and hurl him against a stone wall, knocking him unconscious. Quick-thinking Mrs. Kanahele grabbed a rock and pummeled the pilot’s head. For good measure, Ben Kanahele took out a hunting knife and slit Nishikaichi’s throat, ensuring his death. A desperate Harada turned the shotgun on himself and committed suicide.
The Kanaheles’ harrowing battle against a Japanese invader and his surprising collaborator was over.
On Sunday afternoon, an army expedition party arrived with Kaleohano at the village and took Shintani and Mrs. Harada into custody. The next evening, the rest of Hawaii finally got wind of the nightmare on Niihau. Radio station KTOH in Kauai broadcast a news bulletin on the ordeal. The Honolulu Star Bulletin published a follow-up account the next day. Shintani was sent to an internment camp and later returned to Niihau; he became a U.S.
citizen in 1960. Irene Harada was imprisoned for nearly three years in Honouliuli. In 1945, after she was released, she asked for permission to bring the bodies of both Harada and Nishikaichi to Kauai for a funeral. Mrs. Harada was never charged with treason or any other crime.
Forgotten in today’s history books, the bravery of Howard Kaleohano and Ben Kanahele was justly rewarded at the time. Kanahele received the Purple Heart and Medal of Merit; Kaleohano received the Medal of Freedom and an $800 award from the army to pay for belongings that had been damaged or destroyed in the fire set to his home by Nishikaichi and Harada.
The significance of the Haradas’ stunning act of disloyalty and Shintani’s meek complicity in collaboration with Nishikaichi was not lost on the Roosevelt administration. “The fact that the two [sic] Niihau [ethnic] Japanese who had previously shown no anti-American tendencies went to the aid of the pilot when Japan domination of the island seemed possible, indicates likelihood that Japanese residents previously believed loyal to the United States may aid Japan if further Japanese attacks appear successful,” noted Captain Irving Mayfield, then district intelligence officer for the Fourteenth Naval District, after a naval intelligence investigation on the Niihau takeover in January 1942. Lieutenant C. B. Baldwin was more emphatic. The facts of the case “indicate a strong possibility that other Japanese residents of the Territory of Hawaii, and Americans of Japanese descent . . . may give valuable aid to Japanese invaders in cases where the tide of battle is in favor of Japan and where it appears to residents that control of the district may shift from the United States to Japan,” he said.
Unbeknownst to Mayfield and Baldwin, at least one high-ranking Japanese naval intelligence officer apparently concurred. In November 1941, less than one month before the Pearl Harbor attack, Lieutenant Commander Suguru Suzuki met with Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s chief of staff, Matome Ugaki, to discuss conditions in Hawaii. If Japan were to invade Hawaii, Suzuki informed Ugaki, local ethnic Japanese probably would cooperate with the occupying forces.
The Haradas were neither radical nationalists nor professional spies. They were ordinary Japanese Americans who betrayed America by putting their ethnic roots first. How many other ethnic Japanese—especially on the vulnerable West Coast—might be swayed by enemy appeals such as Nishikaichi’s? How many more might be torn between allegiance for their country of birth and kinship with Imperial invaders? These were the daunting questions that faced the nation’s top military and political leaders as enemy forces loomed on our shores.
Was The Iraq War About Oil?
- (CNNMoney.com) — Despite claims by some critics that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to take control of its oil, the first contracts with major oil firms from Iraq’s new government are likely to go not to U.S. companies, but rather to companies from China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia. ~ via my old site in April of 2007.
SWEETNESS-N-LIGHT points out in their post on the subject that China will get about 80% of the oil from Iraq:
…The International Energy Agency expects China to become the main customer for Iraq’s vast oil reserves. Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, recently declared “a new trade axis is being formed between Baghdad and Beijing.” Birol said that about 80 percent of Iraq’s future oil exports were expected to go to Asia, mainly to China.
Iraq’s potential for oil production is huge. The International Energy Agency predicts that Iraqi production will more than double in the next eight years and that the country will be by far the largest contributor to growth in the global oil supply over the next two decades. By the 2030s, the agency expects Iraq to become the second largest global oil exporter, overtaking Russia…
Iraq hasn’t become the bonanza for big Western international oil companies that some might have expected when the U.S. invaded 10 years ago…
The below is an update from 2013, 10-years after the war… I am going to highlight something for the reader to emphasize the proclivity of the Professional Left in dumbing down complicated choices and simplifying history. It comes from FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE:
Now that the tenth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom has arrived, the American left has taken another opportunity to revive the trope that going to war in that nation “was all about oil.” The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald is one such revivalist. In a column on Monday he’s magnanimous enough to concede that saying the war in Iraq was fought strictly for oil is an “oversimplification.” Yet just as quickly, he can’t contain himself. “But the fact that oil is a major factor in every Western military action in the Middle East is so self-evident that it’s astonishing that it’s even considered debatable, let alone some fringe and edgy idea,” he contends. The war for oil mantra may be self-evident to Greenwald and his fellow travelers, but the facts say otherwise.
If oil were a major factor for prosecuting war in Iraq, it stands to reason the United States would be getting substantial amounts of it. It may come as a shock to Greenwald as well as a number of other Americans, but with regard to importing oil, the overwhelming percentage of our imported oil does not come from the Middle East. Canada and Latin America provide the United States with 34.7 percent of our imported oil. Africa provides another 10.3 percent. The entire Persian Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia at 8.1 percent, provides us with a total of 12.9 percent of our imported oil.
As recently as December 2012, Iraq provided the United States with approximately 14.3 million barrels of oil out of a total of about 298 million barrels imported, or 4.8 percent of our total imports. And as this chart indicates, we were importing the highest amount of oil from Iraq before we went to war to oust Saddam Hussein.
Furthermore, the United States fully supported the United Nations’ oil embargo against Iraq, imposed when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, despite the reality that we were far more dependent on imported oil then than we are now. We continued to support it even when it was revealed that the eventual softening of those sanctions, known as the oil for food program, revealed that Russia, France and a number of other nations were collaborating with Saddam Hussein to violate sanctions in return for billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains. Of the 52 countries named in a report compiled by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker detailing the scandal, only 28 even wanted the evidence, and the United States led the way in prosecuting those implicated.
In 2010, the UN Security Council lifted most of the remaining sanctions. The Security Council said it “recognizes that the situation now existing in Iraq is significantly different from that which existed at the time of the adoption of resolution 661” in 1990. In other words, they recognized that Butcher of Baghdad and his brutal dictatorship had been tossed on the ash heap of history, and a relatively stable government had taken its place. The Council also voted to return control of Iraq’s oil and natural gas revenue to the government by June 30 of that year. “Iraq is on the cusp of something remarkable–a stable, self-reliant nation,” said Vice President Joe Biden, who chaired the meeting.
It is precisely that self-reliant nation–not an oil-rich client state of America–that Iraq is becoming.
If America went to war in Iraq mostly for oil, it would stand to reason that we would maintain a stranglehold on both their supply and production. Ten years after the war began, China has emerged as one of the main beneficiaries of a relatively stable Iraqi government and a country that, after two decades, is poised to become the world’s third largest oil exporter. Trade between Iraq and China has doubled almost 34 times, soaring from $517 million in 2002, to $17.5 billion by the end of last year. If current trends continue, it will replace the U.S. as Iraq’s largest trading partner.
Furthermore, the first postwar oil license awarded by the Iraqi government in 2008 was to the state-run China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), in the form of a $3.5 billion development contract for Iraqi oil field Al-Ahdab. In December 2009, in the second round of bids to develop Iraq’s vast untapped oil reserves (following a June auction allowing foreign companies the chance to increase production at existing fields), China and Russia emerged with the lion’s share of the contracts. At the time, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani envisioned a bright future. “Our principal objective is to increase our oil production from 2.4 million barrels per day to more than four million in the next five years,” he said.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL notes more recently that these many myths presented to us by the Left are deserving of being retired:
…OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there wasGeorge W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me.
None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired….
See more about the “behind the scenes” machinations that included Alan Greenspan at COLUMBIA JOURNALISM JOURNAL. REUTERS noted the clarification as well…
New Mormon Challenge Back Cover
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Jumping into the line of firs to save a fellow feline! Via So Cute Kittens
- Hey, if Bowe Bergdahl is a hero, so is that kitten! (comment from my YouTube)