The Fuzz in Descartes' Belly Button

By Michael David Rawlings

Nowhere in the West during the period of the Enlightenment was the hostility toward religion more palpable than it was in France. Rationalist thinker René Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, was among the most sterling exceptions to the general rule until the arrival of the early proponents of laissez-faire in 1750 and the classical liberals of the so-called Thermidorian Reaction of 1794. This is not to say, however, that I approve of Descartes' epistemological ground for substance: that being (what is) is subordinate to the cogito (the thought of it).

God is the self-subsistent ground of all reality. He is the "God Who stands and stays",¹ as Carl F. H. Henry puts it, and the natural law of human apprehension conferred by Him, as rendered by Thomas Aquinas and refined by John Calvin, is the only legitimate foundation for a universal morality and for civil law. This is not a conditional aspect of human psychology.

A more satisfying epistemology, one that more perfectly mirrors that of scripture, is a synthesis of rationalism and empiricism, albeit, one that is contingent upon the imperatives of the imago dei and the historic, objectively independent interventions of transcendent revelation. In other words, it's because God does exist, and for that reason only, that we may be confident that the calculi of human consciousness correspond with the structures and mechanics of the temporal world beyond . . . insofar as they are guided by revealed religion. For whether one be aware of it or not, all scientific theory rests on an apriority of faith as a matter of practicality: the assumption that the rational forms and logical categories of the human mind are reliably synchronized with the apparent substances and mechanisms of empirical phenomena.

To be fair, Descartes never intended to cloud our awareness of the innate, natural law of divine origin or diminish the stature of nature's God. But he failed to anticipate that the reduction of the basis for knowledge from man's intuitive, preanalytic apprehension of cosmic order (which entails his moral and aesthetic senses) to the first impressions of a detached introspection would lead to the subjective relativism of postmodern popular culture—the untutored, inner musings of human reasoning making baby talk about the world beyond. He also failed to recognize that his basis for knowledge could not withstand the logical implications of an empiricism likewise detached from divine revelation . . . and he never imagined the subsequent nihilism of a Darwinian naturalism.

________________________________

¹Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority:  God Who Stands and Stays (Waco, TX:  Word Books, 1983), Vol. VI, Part II.

Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speach

 

That is to say, if you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove that you're not a racist, please vote for somebody else in 2012 to prove that you're not an idiot.

 

In America we celebrate success; we don't apologize for success. . . .

It's the genius of the American free enterprise system that harnesses the extraordinary creativity and talent and industry of the American people with a system that is dedicated to creating tomorrow's prosperity, not to redistributing today's.

Obama's Campaign about Nothing

John Ransom

Aug 25, 2012

Townhall.com

Obama may go down as the first president in the history of the U.S. to run a campaign based, like Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy, on nothing.

 

It’s gotten so bad that the New York Times is appealing to people to "believe in” Obama, like he’s a children’s character or a Vegas magic act, rather than president of the United States.

Talk about bitter clingers who cling to their religion.

But I know what they mean. There is isn’t any good logical reason to vote for Obama even if you are a liberal.

         

Let’s take his tax policy.

He wants to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires in an effort to do what?

Nothing really.

THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

The Political Physiology of the Left and Right Brains

 

 

 

We The People

 

 

 

A Tiny Brown Moth and a Little Gray Sparrow

By Michael David Rawlings

Copyright © 2011

　
A tiny brown moth, believing his heart above all else,
Battered himself against the window pane,
Thinking to embrace the morning air—wings a-flutter.

 



A little gray sparrow, believing his hunger above all else,
Battered his sharp beak against the window pane,
Hoping to spear the tiny morsel—wings a-flutter.

Eager, persistent, furiously tap, tap, tapping.
Bemused!
Frightened!
Angry!

"What is this?" the sparrow exclaimed. "His soft belly bruises my beak!"

And still the tiny brown moth
Battered himself against the window pane,
Eager to embrace the morning air—wings a-flutter.

The Ontological Materialist's Photo Album

 

Darwinian Theory

 

 

Your Brain on Darwinian Theory

 

 

A Darwinian Meth-Lab Apparatus

 

 

The Mechanism of Natural Selection

 

 

The Transitory Form Homeritus Simpsonias Odditateum

 

 

The Mechanism of Natural Selection Again

 

Uncle Chuck

 

Abiogenesis

How Highbrows Killed Culture

 

By Fred Siegel

April 2012

Commentary

Exhibit A

It is one of the foundational myths of contemporary liberalism: the idea that American culture in the 1950s was not only stifling in its banality but a subtle form of fascism that constituted a danger to the Republic. Whatever the excesses of the 1960s might have been, so the argument goes, that decade represented the necessary struggle to free America’s mind-damaged automatons from their captivity at the hands of the Lords of Conformity and Kitsch. And yet, from a remove of more than a half century, we can see that the 1950s were in fact a high point for American culture—a period when many in the vast middle class aspired to elevate their tastes and were given the means and opportunity to do so.

The wildly successful attack on American popular culture in the 1950s was an outgrowth of noxious ideas that consumed the intellectual classes of the West in the first five decades of the 20th century—ideas so vague and so general that they were not discredited by the unprecedented flowering of popular art in the United States in the years after World War II. And, in the most savage of ironies, that attack ended up not changing popular culture for the better but instead has led to a popular culture so debased as to obviate parody.

READ MORE

'Post-racial' Lynch Mob

By Ann Coulter

March 29, 2012

Jewish World Review

Even after the Duke lacrosse case, Texaco executives allegedly using the N-word in private meetings -- which turned out to be "St. Nicholas" -- the Tawana Brawley case, not to mention virtual hailstorms of racist graffiti and nooses materializing on college campuses, all of which invariably end up having been put there by the alleged victims, the Non-Fox Media (NFM) didn't even pause before conjuring a racist plot in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida last month.

READ MORE

City Journal

Winter 2012, Vol. 22 No. 1

Farewell to the Free Market?

By Nicole Gelinas

Western governments have compounded the economic crisis by rejecting the one force that can end it.

 

In the years leading up to 2007, the rules necessary to govern a flourishing market economy broke down, producing a financial and economic crisis. Rather than responding to the crisis by fixing those rules, the West aggressively repudiated market economics, and the repudiation continues to this day. Through their actions, which have lately involved everything from European debt to the American financial system to house prices in Britain, government officials around the world have revealed a disturbing assumption: that they can decide how to allocate resources better than markets can. No longer, it seems, do Western governments use investor signals as valuable feedback in devising effective policies; instead, they ignore those signals and plow ahead with their policymaking, leaving chaos in their wake. Often, in fact, public officials actively mute market signals in a vain but destructive attempt to impose their own will on struggling economies.

READ MORE