Ong on Steroids

Walter J. Ong and Marshal McLuhan argue that the invention of the printing press enabled the Protestant Revolution by encouraging Christians to sit by themselves and read the Bible without the help of Priests. Earlier reformers had tried to do this, but without plentiful cheap copies of Scripture this was impossible.

Today we have plentiful cheap copies of everything. While some utopian dreamers think that this might bring us all closer together, the opposite seems to be the case. What the internet enables us to do is to break into even smaller communities of like minded individuals. Instead of unifying us, it Balkanizes us.

I won't read your blog unless I already agree.

Christian Humulity

Christian humility means believing that the entire cosmos was created just for you.

Morality Doesn't Need Religion

We all know that religion can be used for both good and evil purposes. We all know that a religious person could be either good or evil. This proves that morality is not grounded in religion.

Atheism scares some people because they think that morality requires religion -- take away religion and anything goes. But if that were true then it would be impossible to be an immoral religious person or to be a moral non-religious person. Since both options are possible it follows that morality does not need religion.

If you honestly believe that being watched by God is the only thing keeping you from doing evil things, then please believe.

Feyerabend's Real and Imagined Motives

Paul Feyerabend wants to isolate science in order to save cultures and politics. In an autobiographical chapter of Against Method, he explains his discomfort at teaching Western Imperialistic Science to diverse and multi-ethnic students. He laments the destruction of so many ways of thinking in the search for The One Big Truth. He writes that science has its ways of thinking and that other believe systems have theirs. That's his imagined motive.

Unfortunately, what he really does is try to undermine science completely. The real motive is nothing more than the familiar one among humanists: "Science Bad, Art Good." Undermining science is not a way of showing that science has its own ways of thinking; rather it is the way of supporting superstitions and ignorance.

End of American Democracy

The United States is ripe for a military takeover. The approval rating for Congress has been in the toilet for decades while the military enjoys perhaps the highest approval rating of any public institution. Criticizing the military is now considered unpatriotic heresy while criticizing any level of government is considered healthy. The military is often seen as the only government agency capable of getting anything done but they are constrained by civilian leadership more concerned about reelection that winning. Most potential voters don't bother and haven't for generations.

The Roman Emperors were not kings -- they were military leaders who temporarily took power in a time of crisis. The Senate still met but was ignored. That temporary period lasted a thousand years.

A charismatic general who claims to talk to Jesus could "temporarily" seize power during a crisis and the world's oldest experiment in self-government would return to the world's oldest form of government -- violent theocracy.