Tonight Hugh Hewitt (who obviously hates me) messed up my evening walk by broadcasting a debate between David Allen White and Christopher Hitchens over the existence of God.
This isn’t what I want in an exercise partly designed to lower my blood pressure. So I had to switch to the cassette function of my Walkman. I climbed down in the basement to find a cassette that hadn’t flaked off all its oxidation. I found an acceptable Sissel tape, and so saved the walk.
I hate arguments. If the Calvinists are right, and I’m not among the elect, I expect Hell to be a room full of people arguing at the tops of their voices forever. I shrink inside when people argue. I don’t have to be one of them. My fetal-position instinct kicks in.
I admire logic and disputation. I have immense respect for men like C. S. Lewis, who could go at an argument with a colleague for hours, then laugh and share a beer with him. That’s the way it ought to be. Questions should be talked out to the bitter end, all permutations nailed down, and there should be either consensus or an agreement to disagree. And no one should bear hard feelings.
Wish I could do it.
In harmony with this theme, my doorbell rang tonight, and there was a young woman “organizing the neighborhood for NARAL.” Last year they sent a tattooed, one-armed lesbian with her female “bodyguard.” This year’s representative was more presentable, though she avoided avoiding a cliché by having a stud in her nose. No visible bodyguard.
How does she dare go out alone like that, in a country steeped in rape and violence against women?
Anyway, I told her I wasn’t interested and backed away. She asked me why not, and I told her, “I’m pro-life.”
“I’m a sexist pig,” I added, as I closed the door.
That’s my zinger. I pull out the insult I expect from my opponent, and I use it on myself, to disarm them. “Your feeble bullets have no power over me, because I just shot myself!”
It doesn’t even make sense to me.
But let’s not argue about it.
Have a good weekend. I’m down to Kenyon for the biennial (semiannual?) every two year Walker Family Reunion on Sunday.
I thought of saying I’d share pictures, and then I thought, “Why?”
I don't take people who argue against god seriously. (From a philosophical viewpoint.) To be an a-theist is to believe matter is all there is. If matter is all there is truth cannot exist. To then argue god does not exist is to make a meaningless claim.
– If you read materialists you find out that they claim the mind doesn't exist; that only the brain exists (ie. tissue) and that thought is merely chemicals in some kind of reactive process. (That obeys the laws of physics.) Well mr. Hitchens if that's your worldview I don't see any reason why I should pay any attention to the chemical reactions going on inside your skull. Whatever is going on up there has no meaning of any kind. Chemicals do not, and cannot have meaning. If I drop some vinnegar into some soda… the subsequent reaction has no meaning. The materialist argument defeats itself; but people like mr. Hitchens aren't ready to admit it.
What if the Calvinists are right, and you are elect? hmmm?
I would reply, but that would require disputation.
No, no. You go ahead and rant. I'll take up the "beyond dispute" position.
Arguments where people are more concerned about what's true than who's right are *fun*. Any time you want a little practice on trivia or anything more substantial, you know where to find me. If anybody can teach you to.. well, enjoy it might be too much to hope for, but at least not suffer from it, I reckon I might.
The secret is that short little phrase "more concerned about what's true than who's right", actually. Once you've got that down, everything else is *much* easier.