An Argument for God: The World as an Interacting Whole

I happened to hear about a fantastic book that I immediately ran out and purchased which is written by two brilliant professors who teach philosophy of religion at Boston College.  (Peter J. Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli)  The book is entitled “Handbook of Catholic Apologetics”.  I have a long way to go still in my reading of it, but have thus far been thoroughly engrossed by their well-written and strongly presented arguments throughout the book.  In the second chapter of the book, the authors give twenty different arguments for the existence of God.  They are all very well-reasoned and logical in their presentation.  I thought I would share one of these gems with my few readers accordingly to see what you all thought about their logic.  Enjoy:

Norris Clarke, who taught metaphysic and philosophy of religion for many years at Fordham, has presented in The One and the Many an intriguing version of the design argument.  We present it here, slightly abridged and revised, for your reflection.

Starting Point.  This world is given to us as a dynamic, ordered system of many active component elements. Their natures (natural properties) are ordered to interact with each other in stable, reciprocal relationships that we call physical laws.  For example, every hydrogen atom in our universe is ordered to combine with every oxygen atom in the proportion of 2:1 (which implies that every oxygen atom is reciprocally ordered to combine with every hydrogen atom in the proportion of 1:2).  So it is with the chemical valences of all of the basic elements.  So too all particles with mass are ordered to move toward every other according to the fixed proportions of the law of gravity.

In such an interconnected, interlocking, dynamic system, the active nature of each component is defined by its relation with others and so presupposes the others for its own intelligibility and ability to act.  Contemporary science reveals to us that our world-system is not merely an aggregate of many separate, unrelated laws but rather a tightly interlocking whole, where relationship to the whole structures and determines the parts.  The parts can no longer be understood apart from the whole; its influence permeates them all. 

Argument.  In any such system as the above, (like our world) no component part or active element can be self-sufficient or self-explanatory.  For any part presupposes all the other parts—the whole system already in place – to match its own relational properties. It can’t act unless the others are there to interact reciprocally with it.  Any one part could be self-sufficient only if it were the cause of the whole rest of the system – which is impossible, since no part can act except in collaboration with the others. 

Nor can the system as a whole explain its own existence, since it is made up of the component parts and is not a separate being, on its own, independent of them.  So neither the parts nor the whole are self-sufficient; neither can explain the actual existence of this dynamically interactive system.

Three Conclusions

1.       Since the parts make sense only within the whole, and neither the whole nor the parts can explain their own existence, then such a system as our world requires a unifying efficient cause to posit it in existence as a unified whole.

2.       Any such cause must be an intelligent cause, one that brings the system into being according to a unifying idea.  For the unity of the whole – and of each one of the overarching, cosmic-wide, physical laws uniting elements under themselves – is what determines and correlates the parts.  Hence, it must be somehow actually present as an effective organizing factor.  But the unity, the wholeness, of the whole transcends any one part and therefore cannot be contained in any one part.  To be actually present all at once as a whole, this unity can only be the unity of an organizing unifying idea.  For only an idea can hold together many different elements at once without destroying or fusing their distinctness.  That is almost the definition of an idea.  Since the actual parts are spread out over space and time, the only way they can be together at once as an intelligible unity is within an idea.  Hence the system of the world as a whole must live first within the unity of an idea.  Now, a real idea cannot actually exist and be effectively operative save in a real mind, which has the creative power to bring such a system into real existence.  Hence the sufficient reason for our ordered world-system must ultimately be a creative ordering Mind.  A cosmic-wide order requires a cosmic-wide Orderer, which can only be a Mind.

3.       Such an ordering Mind must be independent of the system itself, that is, transcendent –not dependent on the system for its own existence and operation.  For if it were dependent on – or part of – the system, it would have to presuppose the latter as already existing in order to operate and would thus have to both precede and follow itself.  But this is absurd.  Hence it must exist and be able to operate prior to and independent of the system.  Thus our material universe necessarily requires, as the sufficient reason for its actual existence as an operating whole, a Transcendent Creative Mind.

And that transcendent creative mind is God.

Obama: Get Out

The Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton

“It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”

“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance.”

“A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”

“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

“When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.”

“Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverend realism, says that they are all fools.”

“In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a Man I am the chief of sinners.”

“There is only one very timid sort of man that is not afraid of women.”

“When a man has found something which he prefers to life, he then for the first time begins to live.”

“Politicians have to be progressive; that is, they have to live in the future, because they know that they have done nothing but evil in the past.”

“The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.”

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

“One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.”

The Progressive's Declaration of Dependence

Today, July 4^th 2012, marks the two hundredth and thirty-sixth year of the existence of the United States of America.  On this date in 1776, 57 men signed the document that created the American republic, which has thus risen to become the greatest nation in the history of the world in terms of freedom, economic power, and military might that mankind has ever seen.  These brave signers truly risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honors in establishing the Declaration of Independence as they were then considered guilty of sedition and treason by the British Crown.  The odds of a nascent America surviving to become the bastion of freedom it STILL is today were very great indeed.  But by seemingly Divine Providence, we won our independence from Great Britain and established that shining city on a hill called America.

Unfortunately, there are many of our fellow American brothers and sisters today that think America is evil and must be changed to align with their progressive designs.  Unfortunately our current President Obama seems to be amongst these folks.  With that in mind, I have been only mildly presumptuous in drafting a new declaration for these folks; a Declaration of DEPENDENCE, if you will:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for millions of amerikans to dissolve their allegiance which have connected them in equal station with all of America and to assume among them the rights of their progressive ideology, the separate and greater station to which nature, Mother Goa, and the Democratic Party entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of all rabble rousing protestors should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that your truth is not necessarily my truth, that government is the source and summit of our rights, and that the purpose of that said government is to solve whatever problems we would rather not confront ourselves, and to provide us with whatever entitlements we desire out of the public coffers.  That to secure these rights, our government should be instituted among hyper-liberal Men, Women, and transgender people, deriving their just powers from the various labor unions, progressive PAC’s, and liberal Democratic party members, regardless of the opinion of the majority of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the amerikans to alter, abolish, or form an “occupy” rally to intimidate government to acquiesce to our demands.    The history of the past Republican congress and President Bush, even though he was illegally elected by disenfranchising the votes of our progressive brothers and sisters in the state of Florida, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world or at least to those that watch MSNBC or read the Huffington Post.

He and evil tyrannical conservatives have insisted on governing “constitutionally”, instead of recognizing that the constitution is a living breathing document and is really more just a set of guidelines anyway.

He and evil tyrannical conservatives have tried to infringe upon our right to abortion on demand.  The government has no business making laws that affect life, no matter what the Declaration of INDEPENDENCE stated.  Why should we be “punished with a baby” after all?

He and evil tyrannical conservatives have tried to enforce our national borders, thus potentially disenfranchising a whole new voting block of illegal alien Democrat voters.

He and evil tyrannical conservatives have tried to block Obamacare in order that single payer socialized medicine cannot be incrementally realized, thereby preventing the ushering in of a greater progressive utopia, even if health care services will suffer as a result.

He and evil tyrannical conservatives have tried to enact laws that would cut our welfare entitlements so that we would have to actually leave our parents’ basements, find work, and become self-sufficient against our wills.

He and evil tyrannical conservatives have tried to curb the already waning power of progressive unions by making public sector union employees actually pay for a slightly greater part of their health care and retirement.  Oh! The inhumanity of it!

He and evil tyrannical conservatives have brought contempt charges on our beloved Attorney General Holder simply because a few hundred (or thousand… whatever) people were killed in an illegal gun-walking operation with his knowledge, instead of realizing that this program was instituted for the greater good of ridding the nation of guns (at least by the law-abiding anyway) and thereby making irrelevant that silly second amendment thing.

He and evil tyrannical conservatives have had a hissy-fit that our current beloved leader refuses to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act.  They still want to govern by the antiquated notion that marriage should be between a man and a woman.  We want to love, or at least lust after, in marital bliss (or at least on a trial basis) the person we so desire.

He and evil tyrannical conservatives actually want to cut government spending and balance the budget, when everyone knows that only through Keynesian economics and ever greater government spending of the dwindling tax payer dollars will we amerikans be able to get all of the goodies and rightful entitlements which we want. 

He and evil tyrannical conservatives want to cut taxes for the evil rich who refuse to pay their fair share, even though we bottom 50% of wage earners either pay no net taxes now or actually get a tax refund/credit.  If we cannot confiscate more of the tax dollars from all of the evil rich, how are we to fund our government-provided desires, aside from the federal reserve simply printing more money from thin air, of course?  (Note: George Soros, Warren Buffet, and any Hollywood liberal should be exempt from such taxation as they are working for the common good behind the scenes.)

We, therefore, the Representatives of the progressive movement of amerika, assembled in chat rooms, Starbucks, and union halls throughout the country, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, John Roberts, for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the DNC, solemnly publish and declare, that these United States are, and of Right ought to be subjected to a new all-encompassing government that will govern not by some silly archaic constitution that was written hundreds of years ago by sexist, homophobic, old white guys, but rather by the will of the progressives that want to be governed by an all –powerful and benevolent federal government. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the ACLU, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives (as long as they really aren’t in jeopardy), our Fortunes (as acquired from the evil and greedy rich), and our sacred Honor.  (So don’t you dare ‘dis us!)

Obamacare is %&@*ing Constitutional?

Well, the unimaginable has happened.  The Supreme Court of the United States has declared that the patently unconstitutional Obamacare law does indeed pass constitutional muster.   I am still trying to wrap my mind around the contorted adjudication that rendered THAT decision. 

I fully expected Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Ginsburg to ignore the Constitution and put their politics above that of our supreme law of the land.  Hell, Kagan was advocating for the law personally and as solicitor general prior to being appointed by Obama to the Supreme Court, so that certainly comes as no surprise, even though she should have recused herself from the decision for that very reason. 

As for Ruth Vader Ginsburg, well her seeming disdain, if not outright loathing, of the Constitution is well known.  After all, she was the one that suggested to the newly elected Egyptian government to NOT use the United States Constitution as a model for their own.  She has long been inclined to look at international law when rendering Supreme Court decisions.  That alone strikes me as a violation of her oath and reason for impeachment from the bench, but I digress.

It is ironic that the “swing voter” Justice Kennedy wrote the dissenting opinion in this thoroughly baffling and asinine 5 to 4 decision and correctly stated that the entire law was absolutely un-constitutional. 

It was George W. Bush appointee Chief Justice John Roberts that appeared to lose all control of his mental faculties and refused to actually apply constitutional law in his decision and thus voted with the “liberal” members of the court in upholding this travesty of a law.  Whereas Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan are all about as useful as football bats, one had hoped that Roberts would have actually perused the Constitution and related law in reaching his decision.  Evidently that hope was misplaced like Miley Cyrus’ virtue.

What I find fascinating is the fact that Roberts and the progressive justices ruled that Obamacare was able to proceed in tact because the federal government could indeed levy such taxes (penalties) for those that did not acquire health insurance in accordance with the law.  Why that is interesting is because during the debate prior to its passage, all the players in support of the law including then-Speaker Pelosi and President Obama insisted that this was not to be considered as a tax, as that would constitutionally invalidate the bill.  Of course we were also told that the law would lower our health care costs and that the entire process would be transparent and debated on C-Span too.

Well now that the left has spoken, there is only one more firewall left to prevent this egregious freedom-stealing, life-destroying, cost-raising law from being fully implemented.  America MUST elect Romney to the presidency and ensure that he has solid majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate so that this monstrosity can be fully repealed.  If we fail to do this as a nation, the law will be fully implemented in 2014.  I fear our nation as we currently know it will not survive if full repeal does not come to pass.

Once people become dependent upon this new program, it will be nearly impossible to repeal.  Never mind the fact that this law has already proven to make the costs for small businesses go up and thus reduced their ability to hire new employees.  Never mind the fact that there are indeed pro-abortion mandates within the law.  Never mind the fact that conscience clauses and religious exemptions are null and void for this law.  Never mind that rationing of critical medical services will indeed occur.  Never mind that medical devices stocks are already plunging today in light of this news.  Never mind that the death panels that Sarah Palin warned us about and was summarily laughed at accordingly will come to pass, albeit under the gentler euphemism of “end of life counseling”.  Never mind that we have created one more entitlement program that is so gargantuan in its scope that it encompasses 1/6 of the nation’s economy.  Never mind that the added costs of this law will add to the already $16 TRILLION debt we currently have as a country and are unable to pay right now.  Yep, never mind.  Instead of being the rugged individuals that fought for and supported liberty in this greatest country on earth, we will have become a nation of progressive victims that look to our nanny government to solve every problem we encounter in our lives.  Those that would proudly take care of themselves and their kin will be looked at as a kind of odd and slightly amusing anachronism to the left.

One wonders, now that the Supreme Court has stated that the federal government can mandate that private citizens must purchase whatever goods or services that the government deems as necessary for the "common good", just where that might take us?  I wonder just how loudly the progressives would scream and whine and gnash their teeth if some future congress and president mandated that every citizen must purchase a firearm, as part of a citizen militia, or face penalties.  There certainly seems to be more constitutional standing for that mandate than there is for Obamacare, not that we are using the Constitution as our standard any more apparently.

Oh, and by the way, I don’t EVER again want to hear the foolish meme from Rachel Maddow and the rest of the useful idiot progressive talking heads on TV and the radio whine about the “right wing Supreme Court”.  That dog simply won’t hunt anymore.  In fact that dog is road kill, along with one more of our essential liberties.

Political Gain Trumps National Security for Obama

In July of 2003 Robert Novak had an article published in the New York Times that created quite an uproar because it supposedly outed a CIA operative by the name of Valerie Plame.  This was done, so the left theorized, in retaliation by the White House for Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson, having had the temerity to tell about the administration’s attempt to “manufacture evidence to gin up support for going to war in Iraq”.   

The fact was that Wilson’s “fact-finding mission” to Niger to determine whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was trying to acquire yellowcake uranium from them had enormous holes and contradictory statements in his report on the trip.  Indeed, The Iraq Intelligence Commission and the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that many of Wilson’s claims were incorrect.  Further, the Senate report stated that Wilson’s report actually bolstered rather than detracted from intelligence about the purported sale of uranium to Iraq.  To this day, British Intelligence stands by the claim that Saddam Hussein did indeed attempt to acquire such material from Niger.

With all of that said and done, the progressive mainstream media nonetheless had a field day regarding the supposedly “politically-motivated” security leaks regarding the outing of a CIA agent.  Indeed the New York Times ran no less than 521 articles suggesting it was wrong of the White House, and presidential advisor Karl Rove in particular, to divulge such information.  So vexed were the Democrats that Bush’s Attorney General John Ashcroft saw to it that a special counsel by the name of Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate the case in depth.   Mr. Fitzgerald though seemed more bent on finding Republicans in the administration to skewer rather than any real interest in finding out who was the actual source of the leak.  Indeed he was told at the very beginning of his investigation that a high ranking State Department official who was critical of the Bush administration’s foreign policy by the name of Richard Armitage was the source of the leak that outed Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent.  Fitzgerald proceeded with the investigation anyway in the hope of trying to find any sort of malfeasance on behalf of such possible trophies as Karl Rove or possibly even Vice President Dick Cheney himself.  What he ended up with was a perjury conviction of Cheney’s assistant Scooter Libby for statements that really weren’t even particularly pertinent to the leaking of Plame’s identity from Armitage.

In September of that year, Novak stated, "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. There is no great crime here," adding that while he learned from two administration officials that Plame was a CIA employee, "[The CIA] asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative and not in charge of undercover operators."

The case was closed.  The left was disappointed that they were unable to catch a bigger fish in the “scandal” than Scooter Libby, and they decried that national security was weakened because an agent who was not working undercover and who was widely known in the DC cocktail circuit had her identity proclaimed to the world for purely crass political reasons.

Fast forward a little less than a decade and it would seem that numerous security leaks that have been done almost assuredly with White House knowledge if not outright orders to do so for absolutely political reasons is now the norm.  Multiple recent stories of national security interest leaked to the press all have one thing in common; they try to make President Obama look like he is tough on terrorism and a stalwart hero on foreign policy accordingly.  The problem is that Obama’s leaks truly do endanger national security.  They put covert assets in mortal danger, destroy trust and credibility with our allies, and enable our enemies to determine how to plug holes in their security.

Indeed in early May the Associated Press reported that a CIA asset from Saudi Arabia had infiltrated al-Qaida and had thwarted another planned underwear bomb attack on a flight to the United States.  His cover thus being blown, the United States had to extract this asset thereby precluding him from gaining future intelligence to protect America. 

At the end of May, the New York Times reported how President Obama personally is choosing the targets on a classified “kill list” of terrorists via drone attacks. 

On June 1^st, the New York Times ran an astonishingly detailed story regarding the administration’s working with Israel to create the Stuxnet computer worm to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons program.  This removed plausible deniability for America and further exposed our ally Israel in the process. 

Immediately after the successful killing of Osama bin Laden last year, for which President Obama should indeed be congratulated, he released vital details of the mission including the fact that Seal Team 6 were the operators of the task.  Obama’s decision to take the announcement of this great coup to press so quickly after its execution precluded the ability of our intelligence agencies from following up on numerous other possible leads acquired during the successful raid.  Further, Pakistani Doctor Shakil Afridi reportedly provided critical intelligence on the location and identify of bin Laden thus allowing his termination to even be attempted.  Dr. Afridi is now serving 33 years in a Pakistani prison because of the public leaking of this information.  Such actions will make future would-be assets think twice about providing crucial information to the United States if they have to fear about their own safety or well-being.

“Too many people in too many places are talking too much about this operation,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said after the bin Laden raid, adding that the level of disclosures and blabbing violates an agreement reached in the White House Situation Room on May 8, 2011, to keep details of the raid private.  “That lasted about 15 hours,” a very vexed Gates said.

So severe are these continued leaks of vital national security issues that they have even been a source of great concern to many Democrats in the House and Senate.  “The accelerating pace of such disclosures, the sensitivity of the matters in question, and the harm caused to our national security interests is alarming and unacceptable,” said the statement from Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. — the chair and ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee — and Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, D-Md. – the chair and ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.  “Each disclosure puts American lives at risk, makes it more difficult to recruit assets, strains the trust of our partners, and threatens imminent and irreparable damage to our national security in the face of urgent and rapidly adapting threats worldwide.”

When asked about the seeming politically motivated release of such important national security information by the White House, spokesman Jay Carney told reporters, “This administration takes all appropriate and necessary steps to prevent leaks of classified information or sensitive information that could risk ongoing counterterrorism or intelligence operation.  …Any suggestion that this administration has authorized intentional leaks of classified information for political gain is grossly irresponsible.”

Okay, I would like to be able to take that statement at face value; however, it doesn’t seem to jibe with the facts at hand.  First, there was absolutely no condemnation or attempt to suppress any of these leaks by the White House after they were publicized.  Second, there was no statement on the matters whatsoever until the White House was specifically asked by reporters.  If these leaks were truly not politically motivated, one would expect that some harsh statement from the White House would have been issued and a concerted effort made to find the source of these leaks immediately. 

No, once again, our dear President is putting his own political career above that of our national security.  This time though how many lives could potentially be affected for his own narcissistic gain?  How many lives have already been affected or even lost because of Obama’s political calculations, with our national security being damned in the process?  Barack Obama is not just in over his head as I had once believed.  He has now become a threat to the very well-being of this country and is in violation of his oath of office.  He must be removed as president and commander in chief.  One hopes America can survive the rest of the year until that finally comes to fruition.

Democrats Disenfranchise Voters in Massachusetts

I came across an interesting little story during my lunch hour today that once again displays the shameless levels of hypocrisy perpetrated by the Democratic Party.   Of course it was not reported in the mainstream media.  It would seem that the Massachusetts Democratic Convention was held last Saturday on June 2^nd.  What was particularly interesting to note was that anyone entering the MassMutal Center for the convention would be required to show photo identification.  This was clearly spelled out on page 14 of the convention program accordingly. 

Now isn’t it amazing that the very party that screams about the disenfranchisement that the evil Republicans are creating by wanting to ensure that the people voting in elections are who they claim to be by showing photo ID prior to entering the voting booth is making it a requirement that photo identification must be presented in order to enter the Massachusetts Democratic Convention?  Is it possible that the Democrats really didn’t have altruistic motives in allowing anyone and everyone to vote based only on their good word that they were legally authorized to vote? 

If this disenfranchisement of Democrats from their state convention is offensive to you people, I would suggest that you make your complaint known in person to the Honorable Attorney General Eric Holder at the Department of Justice in Washington DC.  Just make sure you take along your driver’s license with you though, as I guarantee you will need a photo ID to gain access to this voter/taxpayer funded office building.