Moral Nihilism is a Garbage Philosophy

In the past I have attacked moral relativism as contradictory, but I could not accuse moral nihilism of that.  Still can't.  But that doesn't mean I can't call moral nihilism a garbage philosophy, even if it's logically consistent.  I also feel comfortable claiming it's a philosophy from the devil himself.  If these sound like ad hominem attacks, that's because they actually are ad hominem attacks.  But moral nihilism is so weak, it can't even argue that ad hominem attacks possess any less moral worth than actual solid arguments.  That's pathetic.

A fulfilling life requires two things.  It requires a meaningful path to pursue, and it requires the courage to actually take that meaningful path.  Moral nihilism removes both of these things, calling them not worth the effort, and equating them to stagnation.  It removes the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from the declaration of independence and equates them to death, enslavement, and the helplessness of perpetual misery.  

What's sad is this philosophy attempts to mask itself into something honest, implying that since we can't know moral absolutes, it's best to pretend they don't exist.  As if this philosophy knows what the best of anything is.  Best isn't in its vocabulary, at least not in the rare event that its adherents are being consistent with what they claim to believe.  In this philosophy a lie is not in any way inferior to the truth, but how often do we hear moral nihilists say that?

Abandon moral nihilism and treat it as worthless.  After all, it declares itself to be so.  

Man Created the Integers - All Else is the Work of God

A mathematician named Kronecker once said, "God created the integers, all else is the work of man."  And it's hard for me to imagine how he said that.  He was obviously more advanced at mathematics than I will ever be.  But the properties and results that flow from just a few mathematical rules are just so mind-blowingly unexpected I don't see how one could have argued that they were intentionally created instead of discovered.  

It's very easy to create the concept of an integer, but no one in the world would have thought of the argument principle in complex analysis.  No one would have intentionally created the Basel problem to sum up to its result either.  These were unexpected discoveries that seemed to stem from nature itself.  

Kronecker was apparently something called a constructivist, and I believe most of mathematics has not taken this approach.

Was I Closer to God When I Sinned More?

When I was a young man in my early 20's, I couldn't shake the sin of adult websites, even after several years.  And as awful as that is, despite the rest of the world thinking it's fine, that enslavement did keep me in quite a bit of prayer.  At times I felt like the tax collector in the parable mentioned in Luke 18.  And now sometimes I wonder if I'm more like the pharisee in the parable, which of course isn't a good thing.  I still fall prone to anger and sloth and many other sins, sometimes perhaps worse than the sin I used to do, but I don't pray quite as much for forgiveness now, or even pray as often for any other reason.  I think I primarily pray now for guidance during life's upcoming challenges.

But even if I was closer to God then than I am now, I can't WILLINGLY go back to the sin that God delivered me from 16 or so years ago.  Biblically it would be like a dog returning to its vomit.  That's a path I can't knowingly justify.  It may still happen, but if it does I won't be happy about it and I believe I will be quite devastated.

It kind of reminds me though of my favorite episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, the one titled Tapestry.  Where Picard learns that the unflattering parts of your past are so engrained in your life story that you can't really unravel them, and even if you could it would lead to unexpected and potentially undesirable consequences.  I might have mentioned that episode in this blog before because I love it so much, even though I am not sure if the message is 100% true.

But if I ever need to be reminded of my continued sin, all I need to do is read about turning the other cheek regarding personal affronts.  That's a HARD verse to obey and I definitely know I'm guilty of not obeying it.

Your Effort is More Important than Who You Vote For

Something that puzzles me is the emphasis on who you vote for.  Sure, it's an important decision and should be given due diligence if possible, but is it really more important than the labor your put into your job and your family day in and day out?  You really think pulling a lever once every two years or so can substitute for a requirement like that?  Maybe if your labor is light, or meaningless, then you might have that opinion, but I can't imagine any consistent amount of labor possessing that quality for that long of a span.

Vote for whoever you feel called to vote for, but realize that voting is just one part of your life, and MANY other votes are considered besides yours.  Your vote is your decision, and people have fought and died for you to have the right to decide it.  But don't ever think it can substitute for the other efforts you need to put into your life to be a good and worthwhile citizen.

Believing Magic is Fake Doesn't Add Much IQ

Will your SAT score automatically go up more if you give up your belief in a holy book with magic in it? The answer is no. However, it WILL go up more if you study and practice problems, regardless of your beliefs regarding magic.

You will not master intellectual content unless you expose yourself to it. You can't expect to learn probability or the binomial coefficient just by saying you don't believe in magic. Skepticism is not a substitute for opening a STEM book and absorbing the content within.

Anyone that believes that adopting a "magic is stupid" philosophy is sufficient to rank them among the highest of the high in terms of intellect is being severely misled. Going to take A LOT more than that.

Math and Science Made Me Believe in Miracles More

Events can only be scientifically confirmed when they're a part of a controlled, consistent environment.  Is real life outside of a laboratory ALWAYS controlled and consistent, without exception, as the philosophy of determinism insists?  Impossible to prove, but I would say the odds are not good.  Reality has no obligation to fit inside of the small box of required criteria to always make sense to our nature-created brains.

After studying a bit of the natural sciences over the years, particularly mathematics, I've come to discover that rare, uncontrolled events simply have no part in a scientific experiment.  It's not that they can't possibly exist so much as they can't possibly be detected through the scientific method.  These kinds of events cannot be verified scientifically ever, whether they have the ability to exist or not.

In the admittedly stupid movie titled, "A Talking Cat!?!" the feline protagonist Duffy attempts to help a few mentally lost people with some of their life problems.  He talks to each of them separately, but explains he can only talk to them once, never really giving us a satisfactory explanation of why this is.  Now if a situation like this ACTUALLY happened outside of an imaginary story, the only evidence we'd ever have of it is eyewitness testimony that's not worth believing.  No one can control when Duffy chooses to talk.  For all we know he never spoke to anybody else other than these few dimwits.

So it does help to know the potential limitations of the scientific method as well as its incredible strengths.  It's clearly the best tool we have for understanding the physical aspects of reality, but that alone isn't enough to make it infallible.  Weird and rare events that happen to only a few unreliable people can still potentially pop up without the scientific method ever acknowledging their reality.  Only a deterministic philosophy, which encompasses FAR too much to be proven by empirical methods, places a limit on such possibilities.  

But even if eyewitnesses claim such events occurred, I think I'll be like Arthur C. Clarke and remain skeptical of such claims.

Condemn, Tolerate, or Embrace?

I think I remember my son getting some sort of Minecraft strategy guide a long time ago, and it classified sentient objects you encounter as either benign, neutral, or aggressive.  And that reminds me of the response people can have towards behaviors.  They can embrace the behaviors, tolerate them, or condemn them.  

Notice the distinction between tolerate and embrace here.  They are not the same thing.  Tolerance is comparable to allowance in the form of ignoring a behavior without any active participation.  Embracing on the other hand consists of genuine involvement and enthusiastic approval with repeated encouragement.  Tolerating and embracing are two very different responses to a behavior.