The Secular Frontier

During the presidential debate between Trump and Harris, Donald Trump made a comment about crime in the United States: …all over the world crime is down. All over the world except here. Crime here is up and through the roof. … Crime in this country is through the roof. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-trump-presidential-debate-transcript/story?id=113560542 (Viewed 10-11-24) In my Part 1 post on this subject, I showed that Trump was implying the following claim: The rate of VIOLENT crime has drastically increased under the Biden administration AS COMPARED TO the rate of VIOLENT crime under the Trump administration. I also showed that this was a BIG FAT LIE by Donald Trump, despite the protestations of the legal scholar Jonathan Turley in his editorial in The Hill. Because the crime rate data both from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program and from the National Crime Victimization Surveys conducted by the DOJ clearly indicate that the above claim by Trump was a ... Read Article

Previous Posts in this Series: (1/4) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Continental/Analytic Philosophy Divide (Part 2 of 4) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Continental/Analytic Philosophy Divide (Part 3/4, AFTERWORD) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Christ Myth Theory and the Lord’s Supper (Part4/4 Appendix) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Christ Myth Theory and the Lord’s Supper The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus Last Time: Does Literary Imitation Suggest Christ Never Existed? Now, the Conclusion: Do the imitations in writing (typologies) the New Testament like Jesus as the New Moses in Matthew mean the gospel narratives are simply invented out of whole cloth, or do they contain a trace of the historical Jesus in them?  Probably both, and it is very tricky to pinpoint where on that spectrum a real story may reside.  So, McGrath notes some of the proposed typologies are very poor fits and so not the kind of story you would in ... 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 #11 from Donald Trump: The jobs revision After the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics announced in August that its annual revision of jobs data found that the economy added about 818,000 fewer jobs than initially reported for the 12 months ending in March, Trump told a story about how the government had been planning to announce this downward revision “after November 5th,” Election Day, but was forced to do so before the election because of “a whistleblower” – “a patriot leaker.” Another fabrication. The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly releases the preliminary revised data in August, and it had disclosed the precise ... Read Article

It's now more mainstream to acknowledge that the NT writers were rewriting OT scripture to flesh out the biography of Jesus, and so we have Mark create his crucifixion narrative out of Psalms and Isaiah since Paul doesn't record any details. Matthew presents Jesus as the New and greater Moses. Spong had actually written about this for years prior. Mark says “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ ; as it is written in the prophets.” Mark immediately interprets John the Baptist as a forerunner of the Messiah (a la Elijah in II Kings 1:8). Mark then clothes John similar to Elijah (Mark 1:6. II Kings 1:8.) He then says John ate locusts and wild honey,the food of the wilderness in which Elijah lived (and so on and so on). Dr. Kipp Davis recently noted the Dead Sea Scrolls writers did the same thing to flesh out a biography of their Teacher of Righteousness (who obviously existed) rewriting scripture because they saw their Teacher of Righteousness as realizing them. How did the Christians do it? ... Read Article

Trump is polling well with conservative Christians but is really trying to overcome the problem that conservative Christians often stay at home on election day. ... Read Article

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)? The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus (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 ... 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)? The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus (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, ... 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