Carl Sagan

In a recent post on Lifehacker, as part of their series on people's productivity tips, was a set of 'tips' from Carl Sagan; notwithstanding that he is long dead. So I guess there's a bit of a paean to the famous scientism-ist in that.

But two of his tips collided with each other:

"Scrutinise your own beliefs" and "Remember your place in the Universe"

The latter is a belief and Sagan's notion of placeness is a direct outgrowth of his materialism. His dictum amounts to saying that we are just dust so nothing is of true value...indeed that statement itself has no value in Sagan's world as he dumbly excludes himself from his own epistemology. But it also means that the notions of 'belief' and 'scrutinise' collapse into the same self-important dust.

Another self-refuting puff from a materialist! Must we give these people air time when by their own world-view nothing is important, only momentarily diverting.

Man and Wife

Quote from The Year 1000 by Lacey and Danziger (1999):

...it does seem that the Anglo-Saxons separated and divorced when they had to, without any particular ethical complications. The only concern of the community was practical -- the proper partitioning of property and the care of the children. One Anglo-Saxon law code makes clear that a woman could walk out of her marriage on her own initiative if she cared to, and that if she took the children and cared for them, then she was also entitled to half the property.
The Old English law codes were concerned to shield women against the hazards of life in a rough, male-dominated society...

And the terms for man and woman? Men were called waepnedmenn "weaponed-persons" and the women wifmenn "weaving-persons".

But, the point of the quote?

Today, there is much ado by the social engineers to have the state create male-male and female-female marriages (whether the people are actually male and actually female). It is as though the state, the community empowered, is interested in people's romances. It is not, and should not be, and the Anglo-Saxons set the precedent: the state's interest in marriage its about protecting children (and women).

I think the sub-plot to 'same sex marriage' is to legitimise an artificial union so as to enable the exploitation of children. This might not be sexual exploitation, but forcing children into an arrangement where they are inevitably (and not accidentally) deprived of one of their parents is exploitation. Children become possessions subservient to the interests of adults. If money changes hand in procuring such children we have returned to child slavery, and sanctioned by the state!

It is that that is abhorrent. The social tinkering of pagans I'm not the least interested in, otherwise.

Changing Feet

Simon Smart opens his mouth to change feet in this article on The Drum. And without a biblical doctrine of creation, that's all he can do.

Not biblical? Not as far as I know. CPX is famous for thinking that the materialists have it all sewn up when it comes to how things really are, and not the Bible; so he can't really argue a biblical position, because he doesn't really have one. He's got a quasi materialist position if he's anything like John Dickson.

So how do you argue with a  materialist like Fry? First off, his ethical epistemology is derived from a Christian one...so let's find out what his world view really has to say....[waiting]...[waiting]...why, nothing, of course!

If material, or as I like to say, 'dirt' is all there finally is, then nothing has any significance, finally. And therefore, not at all, really. So where does his notion of bad things come from?

Then to deal with the substance of Fry's complaint, its baselessness in his world aside: God created a perfect world but mankind rejected fellowship with him: turned its back on life, and so continues to do, reaping as a result death, which by the rend from God has permeated the entire creation that was given to our stewardship. It is by God's mercy that it's not worse, and we can turn to him to join his undoing of it; but none of this death and falling apart, anti-love is his doing. It is all the death mankind brought that we are reaping: from little chln with cancer and up.

God shared our plight in Christ, so we can share his life in the same person.

Churchill and Darwin

From Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples, vol. 4, p. 73

Religious preoccupations were probably more widespread and deeply felt than at any time since the days of Cromwell. But thinking men were also disturbed by a new theory, long foreshadowed in the work of scientists, the theory of evolution. It was given classic expression in The Origin of Species, published by Charles Darwin in 1859. This book provoked doubt and perplexity  among those who could no longer take literally the Biblical account of creation. But the theory of evolution, and its emphasis on the survival of the fittest in the  history of life upon the globe, was a powerful adjunct to mid-Victorian optimism. It lent fresh force to the belief in the forward march of mankind.