kairosfocus

In one of the classics, in the Minor Prophets, we read a strange-seeming tale: Amos 5:18 Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD!Why would you have the day of the LORD?It is darkness, and not light,19 as if a man fled from a lion,and a bear met him,or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall,and a serpent bit him.20 Is not the day of the LORD darkness, and not light,and gloom with no brightness in it? [ESV] Switching metaphors, we can imagine being caught in a thorny thicket, or facing the horns of a many-pronged “multi-lemma” or even feeling that we have gone over a cliff, and are trying to cope with battered Read More ›

A classic rhetorical tactic is to pose a dilemma, an argument where the opponent is presented with alternatives, all bad so forcing him or her to either make a bad choice or back away from the position taken. In a variant, one of the choices is presented as a lesser of evils, which is to be taken even reluctantly. It is a powerful rhetorical strategy, and so it is often posed even when it is unwarranted, which is where fallacious dilemma arguments come from. This post is about that fallacious case, and the following infographic will help: Here, we see how policy proposal or argued position P is presented with a dilemma, Q XOR R — two exclusive, allegedly exhaustive Read More ›

UD sometimes hosts guest posts, some by request, some by promotion of comments. This is one of the latter. A key point is his note that the toll of our living posterity in the womb is now two billions (I can readily show 800+ millions and can plausibly support the 1.4 billion statistics I have seen). Similarly, the mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic shows sobering disregard for life and duties of care. We need to ask how we have come to this, within living memory of the Nuremberg trials. Without endorsing beyond “this is food for thought” we need to consider Harry’s concerns and considerations: >>The outrageous corruption of the godless elite is finally coming into the light of day. Read More ›

HT LCD, here is a sobering, 3-hour video on the Covid-10 crisis, by a dissenting expert: U/D: Based on a transcript and a debate on what is in Uttar Pradesh home isolation Covid-19 kits, I post two pictures: and: Here is a kit label passed to Malone from someone in Uttar Pradesh, it seems there were/are likely several suppliers and different levels of kits — notice the electronics in one kit above: I note a Dr John Campbell video that should be pondered: Let me put in the transcript clip from comment 3: Joe Rogan 37:52 So were they [= China, v. early in the pandemic, in its protocols] using Ivermectin as well? No. But other countries have, like Japan Read More ›

In a given time and culture, characteristic fashionable fallacies too often gain persuasive power by mutual reinforcement, and/or by swinging from one extreme to another; bypassing the point of responsible balance. So, too, we end up in a thorny thicket of errors, a hard-to-escape problematique. And yes, that often includes the [neo-]marxist version of the Hegelian triad, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, repeat. Where, too, babylonian captivity to the spirit of the age or the community . . . nowadays, strongly shaped by relativism . . . is of the very essence of ill advised worldly, destructive false “conventional wisdom.” We must ask, then, what are the crooked yardsticks that we have substituted for what is truly straight, accurate, upright? (Have we Read More ›

Steve Patterson, among many points of objection, is doubtful on the modern concept of infinity (or more strictly the transfinite): The foundations of modern mathematics are flawed. A logical contradiction is nestled at the very core, and it’s been there for a century. Of all the controversial ideas I hold, this is the most radical. I disagree with nearly all professional mathematicians, and I think they’ve made an elementary error that most children would discover. It’s about infinity. I’ve written about infinity here, here, and here, and each article points to the same conclusion: There are no infinite sets. Not only do infinite sets not exist, but the very concept is logically contradictory – no different than “square circles”. Infinite Read More ›

The events recorded in Ac 27 (a ship getting caught in an early winter storm due to imprudence and defiance of counsel) are a historical micro case study on how key changes too often have to happen in a community: Ac 27:8 Coasting along it [the south coast of Crete, in the second ship for the voyage] with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, near which was the city of Lasea. 9 Since much time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous because even the Fast [Yom Kippur] was already over, Paul advised them, 10 saying, “Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the Read More ›

To be monitored, here is the web site. Live video feed: Let us reflect on the ongoing killing of our living posterity in the womb, 800+ million and rising at about another million per week globally. Developing . . .

In the current thread on an unfortunate event with a newborn, there is an exchange of comments: BA, 45: Suppose the overwhelming majority regarded dumping newborns in dumpsters as good. Would it then be good? Sev, 56: Presumably, it would be good in the minds of the majority who approved of it. It would not be a good thing from my perspective. This, of course reflects the core relativist thesis that rejects objective, warranted, generally knowable moral truth, and so I commented, 57: “thereby hangs the fatal error of relativising and undermining knowable, warranted, objective moral truth reducing it to clash of opinions backed by power. Justice evaporates.” Such brings us back to a core issue, legitimate, morally anchored authority Read More ›

Yes. But it will be contested. As Dallas Willard highlighted: Human life has an inescapable moral dimension. That is, it essentially involves choices with reference to what is good and evil, right and wrong, duty and failure to do what ought to be done . . . . What characterizes life in so-called Western societies today, however, is the absence, or presumed absence, of knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice: knowledge that might serve as a rational basis for moral decisions, for policy enactments, and for rational critique of established patterns of response to moral issues. In short, we are up against a culture-dominating, institutionally entrenched narrative that even though lacking warrant, is backed by Read More ›

In the preface to his posthumous The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge (2018), Dallas Willard begins: Human life has an inescapable moral dimension. That is, it essentially involves choices with reference to what is good and evil, right and wrong, duty and failure to do what ought to be done. Any human community, whatever its scope, will exhibit patterns of such choices, more or less recognized as such by its fully formed members. Those patterns usually guide first responses to any question concerning what is to be done, and they provide a framework for further reflection on the appropriateness of actions, character traits, and social arrangements. He soon adds: Throughout history it has been knowledge—real or presumed—that was invoked to provide Read More ›

As we continue to explore the issue of the marginalisation of moral knowledge, let us highlight from 48b, Willard’s (incomplete) list of key causes: (2). How did this disappearance [of moral knowledge] come to be the case? Not through a discovery of some kind: e.g. that there was no such knowledge. But through a lengthy historical process of idea change. Some components: (A). The dismissal of theology from the domain of knowledge [i.e. the study and systematic knowledge of God, cf Rom 1:28 – 32], and the failure to find a secular basis for ethics [–> how can evolutionary materialism found ethics?].(B). Disappearance of the human self and knowledge of the self from “respectable” knowledge. (The “soul” from Plato on.) Read More ›

In the course of exploring the marginalisation/disappear-ING of moral knowledge, Professor Dallas Willard gave an expanded definition of knowledge that also draws out the legitimate authority of knowledge; including, moral knowledge, i.e. knowledge of duty to right conduct etc. As we can see from his handout for a 2010 video lecture: What is knowledge and what does it do? Knowledge is the capacity to represent something as it is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience. It and it alone confers the right and perhaps the responsibility to act, direct action, formulate policy and supervise its implementation, and teach. This helps us see what disappears along with “moral knowledge.” He goes on to note on the “[f]ear or resentment Read More ›

The eruption: Waves have hit Tonga (in about 20 minutes) and other parts including Hawaii and the California coast. Satellite imagery: UPDATE: Developing. END

The natural, built in law framework in 48g culminates: . . . in civil society with government, justice is a principal task of legitimate government. In short, nihilistic will to power untempered by the primacy of justice is its own refutation in any type of state. Where, justice is the due balance of rights, freedoms and responsibilities. (In Aristotle’s terms as cited by Hooker: “because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That since we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain, with such-like .”) Thus also, 11] Eleventh, that as the US DoI, 1776 Read More ›