Tatlock’s Suicide Note

March 2, 2024 4:18pm

“I am disgusted with everything… To those who loved me and helped me, all love and courage. I wanted to live and to give and I got paralyzed somehow. I tried like hell to understand and couldn’t… I think I would have been a liability all my life—at least I could take away the burden of a paralyzed soul from a fighting world.” – Jean Tatlock

Plutarch and Election Integrity

March 7, 2024 10:48am

“The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.” – Plutarch, The Roman Republic

If the American voter does not trust the outcome of our election this coming November (2024), we are further down the road to ruin than we imagine.

Mencken on Life

March 9, 2024 1:27pm

“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.” – H.L. Mencken

Matrix Turning Strange

March 12, 2024 11:14am

Now we approach the Ides of March – a portent of mischief or evil afoot in the land. The present state hangs in the balance while crafty manipulators work their machinations with a thumb on the scale.

A spirit wafts abroad promising a paradigm change, a matrix turning strange. What if we are all mad and don’t see it? The chemicals boiling in our blood lead us down paths the sane eschew. But we proud, we enlightened believe we pursue what’s true even as we stumble down the rubble-strewn way.

I don’t see how this ends well.

Fideism Notes…..

March 23, 2024 12:52pm

Faith vs. Reason – I have long struggled with the question and just stumbled upon the epistemological concept of fideism.

Many of the great thinkers have expressed their position regarding the relationship between faith and reason. Hardline fideists believe that the two are mutually exclusive and that any human understanding of God is beyond the realm of reason. God cannot be understood by reason.

Kant’s particular views of fideism led him to conclude that man must “deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.” William James suggested that the “will to believe” was a critical precursor for religious faith. That is, one must be open to the idea of God before the mystery of faith is revealed. The skeptic never has access to the inscrutable nature of belief because he will not open the door of that possibility.

Wittgenstein believed that “Christianity is not based on historical truth, rather, it offers us a historical narrative and says: now believe! But not, believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a historical narrative, rather, believe, through thick and thin.”

Lev Shestov dealt with the dichotomy of science and philosophy. He proposed an understanding of ontology that is beyond both reason and metaphysics. In his “Athens and Jerusalem,” (nod to Tertullian!) he suggests that science and philosophy are irreconcilable: science must focus on empiricism and philosophy on those aspects of human experience which cannot be measured.

Shestov says that God is so far beyond our ability to comprehend, that every attempt by every belief system to describe the mystery, using the primitive language of human thought, falls far short of the truth and he concludes: “What a sigh of relief men will breathe when they suddenly discover that the living God, the true God, in no way resembles Him whom reason has shown them until now!”

This line of thinking is now the only hope for one whose faith could not bear intense, objective, surgical examination and dissection under the laser light of reason and who could not set aside logic and will himself to believe.

The End?

March 29, 2024 8:19am

Have I come to the end of this search? The intensity is lost in the futility. Slowed by the sands of the desert we cross, I have come to a complete halt. Looking around this desolation, I realize I may have all the answers I sought. 1. Where did we come from? — An inscrutable physical universe that has existed forever. 2. Why are we here? — Because an inscrutable physical universe includes that possibility in its very design. 3. Where are we going? — To the recycle bin to start the whole business over again in a hundred trillion years when the present universe resets and the eternal recurrence starts.

This species, the humans, exist within parameters that few question and most do not even perceive. We are in our reality so completely that we cannot even conceive of any other.

Controlled by hormones and emotions that lead us to the most ridiculous actions, we think we are unique personalities with a destiny that we must fulfill. None of this is true but our egos lead us down a path to the metaphysical temple where we supplicants wring our hands in prayer seeking absolution for the sins of our hormones and, most important, a second chance. But to what end? Golden streets? Virgins? Happiness?

No, the search is done. We are here and the best we can do is follow our intellectual curiosity in hopes of making this existence less onerous…or to indulge our creative genius. Creation is the pinnacle of achievement and is the fruit of the intellect. That’s why we attribute it to the Gods.