The irreconcilability of irrationality with reality is
a strong indication that secularism’s days are numbered.
Technologically-educated
people may very well appreciate science fiction as an escape from the pressures
of everyday life, or as a catalyst for one’s imagination to think outside of
the box; but they won’t ordinarily[1]
seek from it the details to solve concrete
problems pertaining to the actual
world (e.g. getting to the moon and then back!). Despite perceptions of events at the quantum level
implying, for example, to Niels Bohr that humans by their very observations make light behave differently than it
would if we weren’t watching it, sober scientific reflection says otherwise.[2] Humans can’t create reality. Neither can we even manipulate it in violation of the laws of physics or even nature in
general.
The 41 story, 514 foot Rainier Tower in Seattle, Washington rests on a base that is far narrower than are its
horizontal dimensions. On first sight it
would seem to be extremely vulnerable to toppling, especially in the middle of
the earthquake-prone Puget Sound region.
Yet despite its apparent defiance of the laws of gravity when observed at
ground level,[4]
the extensive cement base that extends
downward 87 feet below grade and is surrounded by the appropriate rock and
gravel fill, has ensured that it would stand secure, just as it indeed has for
over 40 years. It is certain that no
contractor would ever construct a structure
(as opposed to compose a fiction) that
was in defiance of the facts of nature and reality. Yet our increasingly autonomous[5]
culture imagines that it can ignore time-tested rational principles in its
determination to create a new (utopian) society.
From the initial rupture of public sexual boundaries in the “60s,” all
the way to the denial in certain cases[6]
of even a semblance[7] of
boundaries, including both personal[8]
and nationalistic[9] ones,
in a span of just six decades, we are witnessing the disintegration of both the
glue[10]
and the discriminative[11]
tools that are absolutely vital for holding civilizations together.[12]
Our culture is currently entangled in
two fundamental self-contradictory errors, the first of which commits gross logical inconsistencies, while the
second entails seeking to create “new realities”
on the basis of metaphysical[13]
impossibilities. To be continued...
[1] There are exceptions. See https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/02/08/jules-verne-prophet-of-science-fiction
[2] Hugh Ross. The Creator and the Cosmos: How Latest
Scientific Discoveries Reveal God, 3rd ed. (RTB, 2018), pp. 153-4.
[6] With respect to certain perspectives on sexual
identity and “identity politics.”
[7] As of February 13, 2014, ABC News writer Russell
Goldman identified 58 gender options for Facebook users (https://abcnews.com).
[8] In the 60s the societal plea was for acceptance of
homosexuals (HS). In the 70s the demand was shifter to affirming as a valid
lifestyle. In the 80s it was demanded that HS couples be treated as married couples if they so desired, which then led to the
insistence that HS marriage be declared
the equivalent in both status and privilege to heterosexual marriage. Nowadays,
in violation of the facts of biology, the classical view of two genders has been
utterly discarded in virtually all legal and socio-political contexts.
[9] Vocal advocates of the Democrat political party with virtual unanimity decry the concept
of controlled borders between the U.S. and Mexico.
[10] In June of 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded due to the failure of the glue in the “O Ring seals,” thereby killing the
entire crew.
[11] The very fact that popular culture decries the notion
of discrimination is in itself an indication that our society is in the process
of intellectual disintegration. Although popular culture takes the term to
stand for employing a double-standard as to how separate parties of people can
treated unequally, the term actually stands for employing both a fair and thoughtful
standard for picking between options on the basis of the best available
evidence that is independent of personal preferences. In the absence of such reflection, mistakes
are sure to follow.
[12] Social critic C.P. Snow once stated, “Civilization is hideously fragile and
there’s not much between us and the horrors beneath, just about a coat of
varnish.” Cited in the American
Family Journal, (November, December, 1991), p. 19.
[13] This strange but useful word pertains to the question
of the relationship between matter and spirit.
In contrast with philosophical material-ism which holds that existence
consists ONLY of matter, Christianity holds that God (Himself being spirit in
essence according to John 4:24) created not only material things but also
soulish creatures (human beings and angels) and non-material yet impersonal entities
such as language, reason, moral standards, etc.
The term metaphysical can also refer to the potential interrelationship
between matter and spirit.
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