The Secular Frontier

FOR THE SHORT INDEX OF MY PHILOSOPHY POSTS, SEE: The Joy of Philosophy (Postscript and Poetry) Heraclius: “physis kryptesthai philei” (Being/The Nature of things loves to hide) Hegel, in his inaugural address, Heidelberg, 1816, says “The Being of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no power which can offer resistance to the search for knowledge; it has to lay itself open before the seeker — to set before his eyes and give for his enjoyment, its riches and its depths.” Heidegger: “Both scientific and prescientific comportments are a knowing in the sense of uncovering what is previously concealed, of revealing what was previously covered up, of disclosing what so far was closed off.” For the Greeks, "Truth" was “Aletheia (un-hiding)” with the grammatical alpha privative ("A-letheia" = disclosing from hiddenness"). For example, in circumspection, a doctor deliberates about all the patient's symptoms and possible causes and remedies until the doctor comes to an ... Read Article

Washington (CNN) —Former President Donald Trump is littering his public remarks with fictional stories. ... the Republican presidential nominee is telling colorful lies that are completely untethered to reality. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/politics/fact-check-donald-trump-fictional-stories Here is LIE #10 from Donald Trump: Migrants, prisons and ‘the Congo’ For months, Trump has told a story about how “the Congo” has deliberately emptied prisons to somehow get its criminals to come to the United States as migrants. “Many prisoners let go from the Congo in Africa, rough prisoners,” he said at an August event in Arizona. At an August rally in Pennsylvania the week after, he said, “In the Congo, in Africa: 22 people deposited into our country. ‘Where do you come from?’ ‘The Congo.’ ‘Where in the Congo?’ ‘Jail.’” But Trump has presented zero evidence that “the Congo” has actually emptied any prisons for migration purposes. Representatives ... Read Article

I've been talking about how Paul introduced the Lord's Supper into the Jesus movement tradition as miming Jesus did alone in prison that represented a ritual meal for future Christians. The importance of Paul having this vision is it solidifies the idea that Jesus saw his own death as salvific and central to the religion. This is very important because it is contrary to the message the historical Jesus taught of repentance and charitable works as the key to salvation, not himself. Paul says 3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures 4 and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:3-5) The disciples, who Mark said got violent at the arrest and all fled, came to frame Jesus’ fate through an allegorical and mystical reading of scripture.  As I said bef ... Read Article

For the first post in this series, see HERE For the second post in this series, see HERE (Appendix) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Christ Myth Theory and the Lord’s Supper (1/2) Does Literary Imitation Suggest Christ Never Existed? Does Literary Imitation Suggest Christ Never Existed: The Trump Lens (2/2)? (1) Last time one of the things I talked about was the crucifixion seems to frame the evidence in a way that shows the Christ Myth theory is false.  I wrote: One popular idea is Jesus started out as a vague dying/rising savior myth who was later placed in historical fictions/gospels (Euhemerized). But the key point is that the dying/rising salvation theme of the Jesus tale is a later development, and so is not at our earliest level of the Jesus salvation message. Against Christ-mythicism, Prof Bart Ehrman notes for Paul righteousness came through the cross/resurrection, that if it came through the law Chris died for nothing (Gal 2:21). Mark wrote a Paul-inspired pro ... Read Article

For my previous post see HERE! For the Afterword in this series CLICK HERE (Appendix) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Christ Myth Theory and the Lord’s Supper (1/2) Does Literary Imitation Suggest Christ Never Existed? Does Literary Imitation Suggest Christ Never Existed: The Trump Lens (2/2)? (Depictions of the Last Supper in Christian art have been undertaken by artistic masters for centuries, Leonardo da Vinci's late-1490s mural painting in Milan, Italy, being the best-known example. Wiki) Last time I noted: One popular idea is Jesus started out as a vague dying/rising savior myth who was later placed in historical fictions/gospels (Euhemerized). But the key point is that the dying/rising salvation theme of the Jesus tale is a later development, and so is not at our earliest level of the Jesus salvation message. Against Christ-mythicism, Prof Bart Ehrman notes for Paul righteousness came through the cross/resurrection, that if it came through the law Chris died ... Read Article

As someone who focuses on the history of Philosophy in the Continental tradition, perhaps the main style of reasoning you see is phenomenology/phenomenalizing.  Hegel gives the example that a torn sock phenomenalizes the previously hidden invisible category of Unity belonging to the sock, precisely “as” a lost unity.  This little word “as” is the key to phenomenology, which Aristotle thought of with the logos apophantikos, something “as” something else, e.g., The Dog “taken as” brown.  And so, if I hear a living thing in the forest near my legs only to look down and see it was dead leaves rustling in the wind, this “mis-taking” phenomenalizes our basic stance toward the world is “taking-as,” taking something "as" something.  Phenomenology in Continental philosophy is dis-closing / un-hiding the hidden.  See for example HERE.   The important part of analytic philosophy I’ve been looking at recently is probability reasoning, and so for examp ... Read Article

Washington (CNN) —  Former President Donald Trump is littering his public remarks with fictional stories. This isn’t run-of-the-mill political spin, the kind of statistic-twisting and accomplishment-exaggerating that political candidates of all stripes engage in. Rather, the Republican presidential nominee is telling colorful lies that are completely untethered to reality. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/politics/fact-check-donald-trump-fictional-stories Here is LIE #9 from Donald Trump: A ‘Man of the Year’ award in Michigan Since 2016, Trump has told a lie that he was named “Man of the Year” in Michigan before he entered politics. Media outlets including CNN have repeatedly noted that Trump never got such an award and that the award doesn’t even appear to exist. But Trump claimed at a Michigan event on Tuesday that he has now been vindicated. “The press said, ‘Oh, it never happened.’ Well, then it did happen. They found out where it was,” Trump said. “Bu ... Read Article

I've been thinking with Keith Augustine on supposed survival after death that some claim for mediums, Out of Body Experiences, and Near-Death experiences. Gregory Shushan  ("Diversity and Similarity of Near-Death Experiences across Cultures and History: Implications for the Survival Hypothesis")  claims Augustine makes an error regarding NDEs. Shushan writes: Some critics fall back on Karl Popper’s ‘promissory materialism’, maintaining that whatever might eventually be revealed by cross-cultural NDEs will inevitably reinforce a scientific materialist explanation (Greyson, Citation2007, p. 142). This is exemplified by Augustine’s (Citation2007, p. 116) statement that if NDEs prove to be universal, they ‘would be best explained in neuroscientific terms’. However, as seen above, the mere fact of universality specifies neither a metaphysical nor a neuroscientific conclusion. Furthermore, as Greyson (Citation2007, p. 142) noted, models of NDEs as either hallucinatory or transcendental create a f ... Read Article

Last time, I thought a bit about mediumship, and how the observational evidence doesn't lead us to a supernatural spirit-world medium hypothesis rather than a "mundane" supernatural psychic mind reading that does not involve undead spirits communicating with the medium. This time, I'd like to think a little about how Sudduth shows the natural explanation is preferable to the supernatural one. Sudduth frames the survivalist position in this way: Parapsychologists and survivalists have presented arguments to show that, with respect to mediumship, the fraud and chance hypotheses are improbable. Unfortunately, the form of argument on which they have relied to show this is bogus ... One salient point raised by Broad, Royall, and Sober is that hypotheses must be tested against an alternative ... In the case of mediumship, the survivalist needs to show that the survival hypothesis confers a greater probability on the observational evidence than does the fraud hypothesis. The observations will then favor s ... Read Article

(Theatrical poster for a mind reading performance, 1900 wiki) In this essay Sudduth covers a lot of ground, but mainly considers Keith Augustine’s critique of recent attempts to use the example of a well-known medium Mrs. Piper to argue the soul continues to exist after death.  The idea of being a medium is generally someone acting as a conduit for people to communicate with deceased loved ones.  Perhaps the best-known medium in our time is Theresa Caputo.  Here are some short examples of her working on the Drew Barrymore talk show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7SpzWZs3qU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0CzCkwK6BQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quTrURdyLGk The most compelling part of the medium survivalist argument is also its greatest limitation: the confirmation of the person of information the medium shouldn’t know but does.  What can we say about it?  Perhaps the medium is a conduit for the undead, but for the sake of argument one might equal ... Read Article

Previously, I've talked about how Trump is positioning himself that a vote against him is a vote against God. What better way to spend a political rally than as Christian Worship time, lol? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RJ86JGoX05o For anyone not familiar with evangelical worship practices, Noem is raising her hand filled with the Spirit. ... Read Article

According to the George Washington University website, Jonathan Turley is: ...a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. Despite this, Turley has written an extremely misleading and deceptive editorial piece for The Hill, called “With fact-checks like these, how does truth stand a chance?” Although it is possible that Turley is just stupid or ignorant about the issues he discusses in the editorial, and that the misleading and deceptive ideas in his editorial are the result of his stupidity or ignorance, it is much more likely that the falsehoods and deception in his editorial are intentional, and that the editorial displays serious dishonesty and untruthfulness by Turley. Of course, lawyers who LIE for Donald Trump are nothing new (John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, Jeffrey Clark, Sidney Powell, Michael Cohen, and Alan Dershowitz come to mind). Perhaps Jonathan Turley has deci ... Read Article

Check out the trailer for our new Kids chapter book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GLemL5pm3g ... Read Article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxiaZEhS3g8 There is a really interesting thing happening in politics right now. Politicians have adopted a lawyer schema where they defend their side at the expense of the truth. And, the people have responded accordingly. For the above example, liberal voters say Vance is avoiding the question, whereas conservative voters say Vance flipped the script questioning the interviewer. ... Read Article

An editorial by legal scholar Jonathan Turley was published in The Hill recently, in which Turley spewed LIES in support of one of Donald Trump's BIG LIES: The Justice Department’s released survey found that, under the Biden administration, there has been a significant increase in crime. Violent crime was up 37 percent from 2020 to 2023, rape is up 42 percent, robbery is up 63 percent... It's bad enough when the con artist and SOCIOPATH Donald Trump spews LIES like this, but for a legal scholar to engage in such LYING (or idiocy?) is intolerable, so I gave Professor Turley a piece of my mind in an email this evening: ========================== Jonathan Turley, According to the George Washington University website, you are: a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. I don't understand how a legal scholar can FAIL to understand basic crime statistics, but you apparen ... Read Article