Checking out Into the Video Game World

Posted on March 16, 2017 by PaulVK

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/escape-to-another-world

Posted in Daily Links and Notes | Leave a comment

The Cheap Grace of the Ascending Civil Religion

Posted on March 16, 2017 by PaulVK

https://twitter.com/PWRBTTMBAND/status/800758685219819520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

In 2008 Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were against Same-sex marriage and for “civil unions”.  While we don’t know what they believed personally.  Politicians prevail by reading the room. From 2000-2012 the cry was “don’t you judge me!”. From 2012 to today the cry is “shame shame shame!” The irony of the tweet above is that it assumes the progressive narrative-complaint that racism elected Donald Trump by simply declaring it so. This of course sets up one of the best SNL skits in years.

Tracking the ascendant morality isn’t hard, just watch who has the power and why. Who deflects, who keeps silent, who turtles up. Figuring out how we got here is important if we want to understand what its doing to us and why.

What do We Really Think About Closets?

The prevailing opinion on the damage done to women, sexual and racial minorities has long blamed “the closet”. Weaker groups have not been able to “speak their truth” or “speak truth to power” because of their lower status, overt and implicit victimization at the hands of dominant groups. The hope was that letting these groups out of the closet would “normalize” their status and insure equality of outcomes. As a gripping article on gay loneliness demonstrates while faith perseveres in the mechanism for equality realization of the hope remains deferred.

As the ascendant morality continues to dominate the commanding cultural heights we are discovering that closets are useful for all sorts of people and reasons. People closet themselves because they can read a room and will learn to employ a closet for their own survival or advantage.

CRC Anti-Racism Continue reading →

Posted in book review, CRC, Culture commentary | Leave a comment

Mother and son become transgender father and daughter | MLive.com

Posted on March 16, 2017 by PaulVK

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2017/03/mother_and_son_complete_transi.html#incart_river_home
Ht to Bill Vis

Posted in Daily Links and Notes | Leave a comment

SNL Fire Island and Cherry Grove

Posted on March 15, 2017 by PaulVK

Posted in Daily Links and Notes | Leave a comment

Materialism Alone Can’t Explain Consciousness

Posted on March 15, 2017 by PaulVK

https://aeon.co/essays/materialism-alone-cannot-explain-the-riddle-of-consciousness

It’s hard not to feel the intuitional weight of today’s metaphysical sobriety. Like Pickett’s Charge up the hill at Gettysburg, who wants to argue with the superior position of those armed with ever more precise fMRIs, EEGs and the other material artefacts of the materialist position? There is, however, a significant weakness hiding in the imposing-looking materialist redoubt. It is as simple as it is undeniable: after more than a century of profound explorations into the subatomic world, our best theory for how matter behavesstill tells us very little about what matter is. Materialists appeal to physics to explain the mind, but in modern physics the particles that make up a brain remain, in many ways, as mysterious as consciousness itself.

When I was a young physics student I once asked a professor: ‘What’s an electron?’ His answer stunned me. ‘An electron,’ he said, ‘is that to which we attribute the properties of the electron.’ That vague, circular response was a long way from the dream that drove me into physics, a dream of theories that perfectly described reality. Like almost every student over the past 100 years, I was shocked by quantum mechanics, the physics of the micro-world. In place of a clear vision of little bits of matter that explain all the big things around us, quantum physics gives us a powerful yet seemly paradoxical calculus. With its emphasis on probability waves, essential uncertainties and experimenters disturbing the reality they seek to measure, quantum mechanics made imagining the stuff of the world as classical bits of matter (or miniature billiard balls) all but impossible.

Posted in Daily Links and Notes | Leave a comment

“Tired of toxicity in your activist community?”

Posted on March 15, 2017 by PaulVK

http://everydayfeminism.com/2017/03/tired-toxicity-activist-community-address-6-issues/

Posted in Daily Links and Notes | Leave a comment

Where would Christianity be without the civil powers that privileged it?

Posted on March 15, 2017 by PaulVK

https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/benedict-or-constantine-part-2

Dreher and Ben Op

Reynolds: I guess I have a real concern here, though, in that I don’t think that it takes the actual history of the world seriously enough. Orthodox communities would not have survived in the Middle East to the extent they did if not by God’s grace. The Orthodox Czars had the political muscle to help keep them alive. And I think there’s a naivete’ to think that lay communities of people are going to be able to raise their kids with their own values without some kind of political protection the equivalent of the Russian Orthodox Czar in the Ottoman empire. It’s simply a fact that if there hadn’t been a major Orthodox power there would be a lot fewer Greek Orthodox Christians in the world today.

Part one. https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/benedict-option-or-constantine-project

Posted in Daily Links and Notes | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Andy Crouch on the Ben Op

Posted on March 15, 2017 by PaulVK

http://andy-crouch.com/extras/the_benedict_option_in_percentages

Posted in Daily Links and Notes | Leave a comment

Sarah Bessey Quit Drinking

Posted on March 15, 2017 by PaulVK

http://sarahbessey.com/quit-drinking/

Posted in Daily Links and Notes | Leave a comment

We made the banana

Posted on March 15, 2017 by PaulVK

https://www.wired.com/2017/03/humans-made-banana-perfect-soon-itll-gone/

Posted in Daily Links and Notes | Leave a comment