Civil Commotion

God is incomprehensible — yet theology is sure his “infinite love” spawned nature’s slaughterhouse of foxes ripping rabbits apart, sharks gashing seals, pythons suffocating pigs and the rest of the “grand drama of life.”

What evidence supports this peculiar conclusion? None — just trust theology.

That’s why I’ve decided that there is no such thing as sophisticated theology. At bottom, the issue is simple: Either supernatural spirits exist, or they don’t. Either heavens, hells, gods, devils, saviors, miracles and the rest are real, or they’re concoctions of the human imagination.

James A. Haught

Correct. Theology has no intellectual dignity, it is not a branch of knowledge, and it deserves no respect. And the reason is simple: Theology does not do the hard work of establishing its premises. First, you have to prove the existence of a supernatural being. Then, you have to prove it’s the supernatural being Abraham was so proud of. After that, you have to prove that supernatural being somehow superintended the production of the Bible, in order to communicate with us.

Theologians know they can’t do that, and dodge the problems by grandly calling themselves ‘presuppositionalists,’ which means they presuppose the truth of all those claims.

Sorry, but … No. An engineer might cover tens of pages with calculations when analyzing a problem — and every single line has a documented pedigree. That’s the reason theologians have nothing to show for themselves but millennia of savagery, and engineering has put a man on the moon.

A fight broke out over a noose, and another guy was carrying around an axe, at today’s demonstration at the Michigan capital in Lansing.

Tension mounted at Thursday’s Michigan Capitol demonstration about Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s shutdown orders when two protesters fought over a noose display, and police confiscated an ax.

A brief skirmish occurred when some protesters objected to another demonstrator’s display of a doll with a noose around its neck, along with an American flag, witnesses said.

You can no more deny the racism of a doll in a noose that you can deny the racism that undergirds the Confederate battle flag. And what has that to do — precisely, please — with objecting to Governor Whitmer’s lockdown order? And what could possibly be the point of carrying an axe, but to intimidate lawmakers?

Nothing. These demonstrations are no more than a spasm of rage on the part of the disaffected, left behind by education and technological progress, and have nothing to do with the lockdown order. The demonstrations will survive the lockdown order, though, because these fools are going to remain out of step and facing a world they are no longer able to understand.

And these clowns will go to the polls on November 3rd, along with the swelling numbers of evangelicals who have managed to convince themselves that Our Invisible Friend anointed Donald Trump to run things.

Much of the lunatic behavior on the Right is informed by a sense of desperation, awareness that the world has changed in ways they can’t understand or adjust to, and those people are likely to view the upcoming election as an Alamo-like Last Stand against the smartypants who are comfortable living online, letting robots do the hard labor, and don’t need the scowls of an Invisible Friend to know it’s wrong to lie and steal.

A classic, near-perfect deepity — profound-sounding, and utterly meaningless. This is especially the case when you recall that Piper et. al. are intensely hostile to the norms of marriage and insist that it’s sinful to let your wedding vows and parental responsibilities interfere with devotion to the cult. This is typical:

Bah. What a screwed-up bunch of people.

To the surprise of only idiots, Covid-19 is rebounding in places that reopened too quickly.

As many parts of the world, including the United States, explore ways to ease restrictions aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus, countries that had already opened up are closing down again after renewed spikes in infections.

Such a resurgence of cases had been widely predicted by experts …

I don’t know how things are in other parts of North Carolina, but I’ve no doubt at all that it’s going to rebound hard in my area. For two months, I’ve left my house for only unavoidable trips: pickup groceries, prescriptions … that sort of thing. Local traffic was down perhaps 20% for a while, but is now back like Christmas. I’m hoping the neighbors will take the next shutdown seriously.

Belief by church attendees that Trump
was ‘anointed by God’ on the rise: survey

And, yet — I am not kidding you — church attendees go there to worship that god. Not to berate Him. Not to demand that He explain his thinking. No — they go to church to worship Him. It’s the oddest damn thing.