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Chit-Chat » Besides English, what languages do you speak? » 1/01/2019 7:37 pm

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I speak English, but I'm fluent in American.

Chit-Chat » Quotes to live by » 1/01/2019 9:59 am

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Proust is a writer to live by. It's the most amazing story ever told.

"Sweet Sunday afternoons beneath the chestnut-tree in our Combray garden, from which I was careful to eliminate every commonplace incident of my actual life, replacing them by a career of strange adventures and ambitions in a land watered by living streams, you still recall those adventures and ambitions to my mind when I think of you, and you embody and preserve them by virtue of having little by little drawn round and enclosed them (while I went on with my book and the heat of the day declined) in the gradual crystallization, slowly altering in form and dappled with a pattern of chestnut-leaves, of your silent, sonorous, fragrant, limpid hours."

"The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years."

"Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is inexistent; but, if so, we feel that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, must be nothing either. We shall perish, but we have as hostages these divine captives who will follow and share our fate. And death in their company is somehow less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less probable."

[color=#000000]"I knew that now I could knock, more loudly even, that nothing could again wake her, that I would not hear any response, that my grandmother would never again come. And I asked nothing more of

Religion » Judaism Opposes Open Borders & Immigration » 12/22/2018 3:04 am

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Thanks for the clarification.

Etzelnik wrote:

I believe that turning it into a partisan cudgel only demeans its sanctity and debases it. It is analogous to cutting up a beautiful tapestry and using it as toilet paper.

I agree. I cite the rabbi for hopefully more modest reasons. In the course of the last few years I've been engaged in conversations where defending a rational immigration policy is branded as "fascist" and worse. The term "Nazi" pops up with the predictability of integers if even tepid support for Trump is evinced. I can cite an Orthodix rabbi to make the case that my position isn't intrinsically evil (though some of its supporters are right for the wrong reasons).

That said, tepid enthusiasm and dreams of anything rational happening have taken a worse hit than my 401k. Politics is depressing. The current spectacle is worthy of Suetonius. David Benatar, some days I feel you, man.

Dark times help one focus on the permant features of reality. This is a fascinating paper I just found: Why So Negative About Negative Theology?  "In Part One of his Warranted Christian Belief, Alvin Plantinga launches a forceful attack on apophaticism – the view that we can’t meaningfully speak about God, at least not discursively. His arguments are compelling and his rhetoric is dazzling. It really is a master-class in argumentative philosophical prose. Nevertheless, in this paper, I argue that apophaticism is far from defeated." Sam Lebens
 

Religion » Judaism Opposes Open Borders & Immigration » 12/18/2018 4:50 am

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Interview with the head of Machon Shilo, Rabbi David Bar-Hayim


Also from Rabbi Bar-Hayim: The Noachide movement "was not to be found in the world over the last 2,000 years or perhaps ever at all in history. This is a new development and therefore we are beginning to see, in our days, the fulfillment, the very beginning perhaps, of this process that Zechariah describes."

"If you become the ideal type of Noachide you will be doing a greater service to humanity than by converting to Judaism. You will be a living example for others to follow." 

President Trump Made History at the U.N.

Dedicating Oneself to HaShem: Jew, Gentile, & Yeshiva Student

Religion » My Greatest Fear » 12/17/2018 2:27 am

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It's weird how many Christian Theists worry about preserving free will in the face of problems posed by the cosmo arguments and G-d's immutability and omniscience. The tradition is deterministic to the core. Predestination is also a part of Catholic doctrine. This was a very informative post on this board. When we turn to the source, he doesn't waffle.

Thomas Aquinas wrote:

According, then, as He has preordained some men from eternity, so that they are directed to their ultimate end, He is said to have predestined them. Hence, the Apostle says, in Ephesians (1:5): ‘Who predestinated us unto the adoption of children … according to the purpose of His will.’ On the other hand, those to whom He has decided from eternity not to give His grace He is said to have reprobated or to have hated, in accord with what we find in Malachi (1:2-3): ‘I have loved Jacob, but have hated Esau.’ By reason of this distinction, according to which He has reprobated some and predestined others, we take note of divine election, which is mentioned in Ephesians (1:4): ‘He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world.'  Summa Theologica and Contra Gentiles

Read Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange on The Meaning of Predestination in Scripture and the Church. How is it any different than what the notorious Calvinists believe? [url=https://archive.org/stream/Garrigou-LagrangeEnglish/Predestination%20-%20Garrigou-Lagrange,%20Reginald,%20O.P__djvu.txt]Full text[/url].

The Reformation wasn't really about indulgences. Luther maintained that the church didn't put enough emphasis on predestination. [url=https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/double_luther.html]Double Or Nothing:

Theoretical Philosophy » Non-personal necessary being » 12/16/2018 12:03 pm

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I liked Leslie's Universes ... until that weird chapter about the universe existing because it ought to. Feser has an interesting take on what Leslie means: 

Ed Feser wrote:

 John [Leslie] has sometimes described his position as entailing that “creative value” is the source of all things, and that the universe exists because of its “ethical requiredness.” I think that in substance what he is defending is essentially the sort of view one finds in Plato and Plotinus, but that the language in which he expresses it is arguably too modern and potentially misleading. At least since Hume, “value” connotes for most philosophers something that depends on someone who does the valuing, and thus seems essentially subjective or mind-dependent. And the “ethical,” for most modern philosophers, essentially connotes a property of the actions of rational creatures like us. Hence a position like John’s is quite mistakenly, but understandably bound to seem very strange and even unintelligible to most contemporary philosophers. More traditional Platonic expressions like “the Form of the Good” or even just “the Good,” while hardly common in contemporary philosophy, are in my view preferable since they better convey the objectivity or mind-independence of what John is talking about.)

Can anyone recommend a great book on Spinoza?

Chit-Chat » What are you reading? » 12/14/2018 1:09 am

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The 10,000 Year Explosion, the most shocking and fascinating book about evolution I've read. Here Cochran comments on David Reich's new opus[color=#1c1c1c] on prehistoric DNA and how it confirms some of his speculations. I like Cochran because he doesn't spit in my face by telling me how stupid my religious views are and he doesn't have a PC bone in his body. Dawkins (& others) think they're philosopher kings. Not. Just tell me the current state of the theories and shut up.

Blueprint by Robert Plomin makes a great accompaniment to The Nurture Assumption by Judith Harris. Both are footnotes to Strawson. (This stuff starts me brooding on how we cling to the PSR and avoid determinism.)

Dharmakiirti's Refutation of Theism by Roger Jackson was featured in a great Feser post where Ed has Maimonides answer the Eastern skeptic. Definitely see the concluding remarks of Jackson's article:

"If we strip away the almost bewildering variety of arguments we have reviewed, we find at bottom two basic issues on which our two main antagonists the Nyaaya -Vai ‘sesikas and Buddhists have disagreed: (1) the existence of a permanent entity and its relation to the impermanent and (2) the requirement that c

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