Whores, Tarts and the Modern Person

Sex is everywhere. You walk into a corner shop, you will see lads magazines on the racks. Go into a clothes shop, you will view revealing clothes. People do not go to Church anymore, but to clubs like Gatecrasher and Snobs, dens of drink, fun and primal urges. It is everywhere. And it has infected the characters in our societies.

Many girls have been brainwashed into thinking that they have to be sexual objects for other people by the media, their friends and their culture. It is just expected of them. As such, many embrace it full heartedly, viewing hedonism as the purpose of life, having pleasure and providing satisfaction for others. This, to me, is very sad.

I guess it is similarly true of men. Men are expected to be tonk, manly, sporty, getting drunk, pulling girls etc. The list goes on. The same stereotype manifests itself in both men and women.

It is not a new thing though. Some of the earliest philosophers, called the Sophists, supported this kind of view, celebrating hedonism, pleasure and fulfillment of basic desires. Many other thinkers, such as Nietzsche and Existentialism, have followed a similar pattern. It is a recurring theme.

But is it wrong? On a relativistic world view, so popular these days, there is no problem with it. All views are equally true or false, for they all share assumptions that cannot be justified. Therefore, if you want to be a sexual object and spend your time getting pleasure, that is as equally valid as not doing it. And relativism seems to be the logical conclusion that many existentialists have seen of scientism, secularism and naturalism.

However, I do not find this very convincing. Firstly, a rejection of relativism. Aristotle, the philosopher as St. Thomas Aquinas called him, introduced fully the Principle of Non-Contradiction, the concept that something cannot be both X and Not-X simultaneously. This is the foundation of all logic, and thus rational and meaningful thought. One cannot justify this by appealing to anything outside of experience or a further reasoning, for it presupposes those things. However, to deny this principle's validity, one must use the principle. So for example, to say that the Principle of Non-Contradiction is false, is to say that it is not true, or Not-X, as opposed to X. It is not both at the same time. Thus, we all use this principle. Now relativism asserts that an object can be X and Not-X, but if you believe logic is correct, which we all do, then it follows relativism is false. So this foundation is fallacious.

Thus, absolute values exist. Some things are really bad, and some truly good, regardless of what we think. So does this mean the sexual nature of this culture is also objectively and truly wrong?

I think it does. If we look at all the absolutist systems of morality, such as Plato's, Kant's, Christianity's, Islam's, Communism etc. They all have an emphasis on family and cohesive community. Now hedonism is essentially an individual pursuit. The type of sex in our culture is based on individual pleasure, not union of anything like that. This prevents family love being created, for you think of yourself, not others. Now I am not arguing from one system, but all of them. And so, it follows that only people who are ignorant of the basic principle of reason can assert a system on which hedonism is acceptable. And thus, this culture is filled with unjust acts of sex, promiscuity and whorism.

Of course, these systems may be wrong. But if you accept rational and meaningful thought, I think that you should adopt one of the absolutist systems of morality. And the vast majority of accepted ones claim that the way our current sexualisation of girls and boys is wrong, and we should try to change this.

The Foolish Society

On Saturday, I was at an all day rehersal with a concert in the evening (which was pretty good, and well done to all those involved). Now I spent the majority of the day with the people sitting next to me, and there was something from those conversations which really struck me. During a break in the bit I had to sing, I got out a set of Sonnets and began to read them, trying to make mental notes as a comparison to Shakespeare and Donne's poetry, as the writer is a modern poet who uses similar themes but twists it to fit his own ideas. Well, my friend called me weird, saying it is not normal or cool to do this kind of thing. Obviously, they had a very negative view of studying for qualifications. But then they, for large parts of their time not just on that day, but in general, spent glued to their phone, BBMing and texting friends, rather than engaging with the people around them. This just seemed to confirm my thoughts that this person is highly misguided and sadly shuns two of the richest and beautiful things humans have: education and social bonding. Unfortunatley, I fear that they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this kind of thinking.

Too many young people think it is 'hip' to reject learning, or wierd taking an interest in the challenging, classy, or even just something which isn't served on a plate for you. Many teenagers want something which is instant, quick, constantly changing, like video games, which require little to no thinking and just reflexes. Likewise, texting isn't bad, it can actually be quite good, but when it dominates your life, it makes you an introverted, self-centered person who constantly needs attention. By contrast, the person who educates themselves in history, literature, philosophy and other humanities experiences a world of depth and wonder, marveling at the many questions and experiences the human race has had, and makes informed choices in their lives, living to their full potential. This can only benefit society, unlike the texter who does nothing worthwhile in their lives.

We as individuals should question ourselves on the matter: are we like the fool who mocks the cultured life? If not, what are we? What do we ultimately want to be remembered for? I think these are things only an education and social bonding can offer you, and unless we work to promote them amongst our friends, the next generation of people will become the slobs of the world. And like Plato, I too think that a large majority of people are willing to be ignorant, selfish and fools, pleased with whatever they want and not going beyond it, and we must help remove this false state of affairs.

Of course, I may be totally wrong on this issue. Perhaps I am just a weirdo who is completely uncool because I am interested in things which transcend just the physical, mundane and everyday (I hope you are not agreeing at this point :) ). However, I sincerely think that to live our lives to the fullest, we should reject the Foolish Society and educate not only ourselves, but our peers in what it means to live worthwhile lives.

Are secular societies actually secular?

Today, many people like to think that we live in a largely secular society. Whilst the Church of England is attatched to the state in Britain, it has little to no power and is largely bypassed. However, are we truly secular, or have we just one set of religious beliefs for other more material wants?

The online dictionary defines secular as the following: of or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred. And in a very literal sense, society does just that. We often do most things without thinking of supernatural beings, or only go to church once a week and then forget it till the next etc. We go about our lives, dealing with earthly things, trying to do one of the four F's: feeding, fighting, fleeing and reproducing. We don't have time for God or religion in our 'civilized' culture, and as Nietzsche once exclaimed 'God is dead', which he is also. 

But in a more metaphorical sense, I think we still do have a religion, its just not doctrinally based. When you ask people what will make them happy, or what they want in life, it is usually along these lines 'I want to be rich' 'I want a job where I can buy lots of things' or 'I want that new iPhone 4, because it will be so amazing to have.' What people worship now is the material goods and status, the ability to own something, the fulfillment of possessing the latest gadgets. This has been around ever since the enlightenment, for people started to believe God could not be their source of wish fulfillment any more. So, they turn to comfort from the latest gadgets, power, wealth, which is somewhat demoralizing. 


For those of you who live in Birmingham, the Bullring is our new temple, just like the one Jesus' cleansed in the Gospels, and the Bull is our Golden Calf, a symbol of this new religion. Businesses, adverts, people, they all tell us that we should have this good and that thing, and we follow them like they are sages, believing that they can really give us peace. 


Is this really the aim of a rational, scientific minded society? Is this what they worship, status and material wealth? It seems very shallow and not very life enriching to be enslaved to such things. But even worse, as Schopenhauer demonstrated so well, wish for goods will always end in disappointment, for there will always be something better just around the corner, always more to have, and you will never be satisfied.


So what I hear you cry. Well, I just find it ironic that we live in a society with anti-religious feeling, anti-God like attitudes, and yet we worship and crave materialistic things in much the same way, like it is a substitute. Its just hypocrisy, in the open, and people should reflect on whether they are guilty of being in this quasi-religion created by the media, friends and advertisements.

Sex: should we all do it?

Today, culture is run by sex. Go into any shop, and I guarantee you will find something which can be connected to sexual promiscuity in some way. In fact, every culture has pretty much been dominated by it, even the Victorians who tried to brush it under the carpet. It just won't go away.

But is that a bad thing? As Darwin so helpfully emphasized, procreation is our natural instinct, it what drives our animal side, and fulfillment of this succeeds in our primal satisfaction. As Dr. Alvin Plantinga commented once 'we all do one of the four F's in all our actions of some kind: feeding, fighting, fleeing and reproducing.' And from what little my friends have said, they seem to enjoy it quite a lot. So many things point towards us supporting sexual behavior.

However, it does come with a cost. Leaving my religious views to onside and trying to be objective in Schopenhauer's sense, I cannot but help feel that constant romping could damage the absoluteness of love. What I mean by that is that love is a special thing, which transcends physicality, with sex being a symbol for two becoming one. However, if you have sex all the time, it loses its symbolic meaning, because the people you do it with don't want to be united with you in the same sense as love. So I think that needs to be taken into consideration if you want to have a rich life.

Also, babies. As I mentioned earlier, sex is the method for creating such demons, and as such the cost inevetably is that you may create one. No doubt that this could be a strain on your life if you don't want one, especially if you are single. So that could be a downside too.

At the end of the day, I guess it all depends on what you consider the best way to enhance your chances of having a meaningful life, outside of the humanities (A.C. Grayling reference for all of you KEFW kids). If you prefer a hedonistic view of the world where you are king/queen and your own ruler, or Nietzsche's superman, then go for it, create your own values, and gain happiness through fulfilling your base desires. However, if you believe that there is more to life than physical pleasures, that to be human is to apply a sense of meaning to things and that sex is a symbol of 'spiritual' union in some way, I would suggest being a bit reticent about it all.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: did it happen?

For those of you that read my post last night, I promised to publish my article on the resurrection of Jesus, and whether any historical data points towards its validity. So here it is.

It is a fundamental part of the Christian Religion that a 1st Century Jew named Jesus, who embarked on a public career of proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom of God through miracles and parables, died and miraculously came back to life. Traditionally, people have seen this as something you just have faith in. However, recently christians such as Gary Habermas, Mike Licona and N T Wright have all been arguing that there is good historical evidence, and thus reason, for believeing that the resurrection truly happened. This article will attempt to assess one version of this new type of argument, primarily from facts which the majority of scholars, even sceptical ones, agree on, and evaluate whether any of the counters are successful. This is called the minimal facts approach.

The Argument in full:

There are four facts surrounding this event which can be historically proved without referring to the four Gospels:

1) **Jesus was crucified and died on the cross**. This is evidenced by reference to non-Christian contemporaries writing about it like Josephus (Antiquities 18:63-64 - 'When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified') and Tacitus (Annals 15.44 - 'derived their name and origin from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death by the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate'), with current medical articles supporting the medical grounds for believing Jesus died if he was crucified (http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/content/99/4/185.full).

2) **The tomb of Jesus was found empty**. This is justified on the basis that the Jewish authorities, who had the most reason to deny the empty tomb, admitted it by saying the disciples stole the body (Justin Martyr claims this in AD 150, Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 108.)  For if the tomb was not empty, how would it make sense to say the disciples stole the body? So even the contemporaries most sceptical about the Christian claims admitted the empty tomb.

3) **The disciples had experiences within individual and group settings which they interpreted as the risen Jesus physically appearing to them, which then inspired them to found the Christian religion and subsequently die for their beliefs.** This is found in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul provides a brief summary of some of the people who had these experiences 'and that he appeared to Cephas (Peter), and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also.' This offers a large amount of eye witness testimony, even from sceptics such as James, who had earlier rebuked Jesus.

Paul received this material in about 35 AD, which he alludes to in Galatians 2, where he visited Jerusalem and met Peter and James, who gave him this tradition of the early church. They would have written it prior to this, so these sources come from right on top of the events; the documentation is just a few years at the most after the actual experiences, so claiming they were added in is false, because they are dated almost back to the actual events.

4) **A Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus, who persecuted and hated the Christians, converted to Christianity after having and experience which he interpreted as the risen Christ appearing to him and he subsequently became and apostle named Paul, despite no predisposition to doing so.** This can be found in Galatians 1:11-16  and Acts 9.

Now these four facts require an explanation which:

i) **Explains all the facts** **not just one or two**

ii) **Does not bend itself to fit the evidence**

iii) **Has very few assumed premises**

Now the Christian would argue that the resurrection is the only theory which achieves this. If so, they will have shown that the reusrrection can be shown to be true using non-Gospel sources. As such, let us now look at whether one: the resurrection hyptheses is cogent and two, whether there are any better explanation.

Firstly, the fact that the Jesus died on the cross is not easily provable. Whilst many historians conclude Jesus died by execution, only Josephus relates that to the cross. A common counter to this is that it was a common method of executing dissenting Jews, in particular the leaders of Messianic groups. So one can reasonably argue that this fact, whilst not conclusively proved, is valid on the basis of inference from the historical context as a whole.

Another criticism is that of 'twin theory', in that Jesus managed to escape his captors and when they tried to find him, they arrested and executed either a look a like or his twin. This is not a very serious threat: there is literally no evidence for it, and it is inconceivable how Jesus' would have escaped a group of Roman legionaries.

 One final criticism of this fact is the notion that Jesus did not really die on the cross, but was able to survive in a sort of coma state. Despite the medical evidence conclusively agreeing that Jesus could not have survived crucifixion, proponents of this theory claim that as he died earlier than most crucified people, which is a sign he was still alive. However, what the theory lacks is the ability for Jesus to roll away a stone weighing about two tonnes, fighting off the roman guard and travelling for many miles to the disciples house when he is half dead. So we can be sure this theory is highly implausible.

Secondly, the most controversial fact is by far the empty tomb. It has been argued that the disciples may have found the wrong tomb, or that grave robbers stole the body. The first theory is simply false: it was common in 1st Century Palestine that after six months a buried Jew would have their remains put in a vase of some form. Thus, even if the disciples did not know where the body was, the Jewish authorities would have, and as such they could have provided the body if it was still there. Secondly, the claim that grave robbers took it cannot account for all the other facts, so is also a weak argument.

Thirdly, the leading naturalistic theory, hallucinations, attempts to say that the sightings of Jesus were caused by grief related hallucinations. This also very weak: it can explain Jesus' death; it cannot explain the empty tomb, for hallucinations in themselves would not explain why the body had disappeared (in fact, it contradicts the theory the disciples stole the body, for if they thought their hallucination were genuinely true, why would they steal the body? Surely that would show they recognise that it is a lie); it can explain the individual experiences but cannot explain the group ones, because hallucinations are mental not group phenomena; and it cannot explain Paul's conversion, because the cause of post-death hallucinations is grief, but as a persecutor of the Church, Paul would be the last person to feel sorrow at the death of Jesus. So this theory is very poor at explaining these facts because it cannot account for them all.

Fourthly, the criticism made against Paul's experience is that he suffered from an epileptic fit, as Luke's account in Acts 9 seems consistent with that. This seems the best theory for Paul, but it never seems to happen again, nor does it correspond with the fact that Paul believed to have seen him physically.

As we can see, most of the objections can be denied by their basic flaws, but overall none of them can explain all the facts sufficiently. If you take any sceptical theory, you will struggle to explain all the facts without bending it to fit in some way. However, with the resurrection, you can explain all the facts without being in trouble.

Basically, if you deny the resurrection of Jesus happening, you must either show that the evidence is false, or explain all four facts sufficiently without bending the model to fit the facts. If you think you can do that, please post it because I want to see this truth that I have missed. Otherwise, you must either accept the rational of this argument or irrationally reject it.


I didn't have time to go into a full exegesis, but if you want me to expand on anything feel free.

Richard Dawkins: A man of reason?

For those of you who know me, I am a massive philosophy geek. I am concerned with all things rational, and make it my pride to analyse truths using logic and reason, and try to map out a model of reality according to that.

Now I am a christian, which I will attempt to justify in later posts. All I will say for now is that Jesus is the Logos (word, eternal and creative reason) and as such all seeds of truth in my view, no matter what the path, lead to the philosophy of the Logos (for Jesus is the physical and historical instantiation of this eternal and creative reason). Now recently I have been preparing for a debate on whether Jesus rose from the dead by sending my argument to various distinguished philsophers, such as Alvin Plantinga, Daniel Came, Daniel Dennett, Arif Ahmed and Timothy McGrew, who were all helpful to me. Now the person who concerns this post is Richard Dawkins, who I also sent my argument too (which will be put up at a later date).

Now Dawkins is a busy man, and as expected his assistant replied, saying unfortunately due to the sheer volume of emails he receives he could not answer mine. Fair enough. However, she also said that I should post it on the discussion forum, for it would be an exciting topic to debate 'rationally and intellectually'.

With such an invitaion, I polished my article, evidencing all I claimed and made it pristine as could be (although I did discover some factual errors, which were not to far wrong but slightly off, now re corrected for the version I will share with you later). I was really looking forward to a good debate, for the discussion forum claimed to support 'critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.' I thought they would be rigorous representatives of naturalism and all that entails against my views, and as such either strengthen my own cogency or correct my falsity. Unfortunately, neither happened.

The Richard Dawkins reserves the right to not publish any article they please. Now you can understand that if say, the article was offensive, or misinformed, or whatever. But they decided not to publish my article. It did not offend anyone, was checked thoroughly and would give people a chance to rip into me. This made me very puzzled, but I think I have worked out why they did not publish it now.

If you go on the discussion page, you will find that the majority of the discussion posts are very short, not academic and basically ignorant assertions which aren't very powerful. If an article such as mine could threaten the validity of these people's views, it would be dangerous and almost self-defeating to put on. I do not want to blow my own trumpet, but I genuinely feel I have a strong case, and that Dawkins cronies don't really know how to respond to it. If they thought it was rubbish, they could have attacked it and used it as atheist propaganda against the foolishness of Christianity. But they did not, which makes me sceptical. As the head of such an organisation, does Dawkins really stand for reasonable debate, or just views which agree with his own and hounding out anyone else? Well, I think you know my view, what is yours?

Kony and this insufferable campaign

Recently, a man named Kony has become internationally famous. Due to a new documentary, his presence in Africa and his horrific crimes have become known to the western man, and as such groups of teenagers are going to pressure the government into aiding the capture of this man. That in itself, can be no bad thing.

However, perhaps Kony, despite his terrible crimes and disgusting way of life, is the wrong target. Perhaps he is just an easy scapegoat for a bunch of westerners to feel self righteous about, and ignore the blatant misery they cause every day when they buy goods made in sweat shops, or pollute the earth using their cars. Or perhaps Kony has a nice ring to it, unlike Ahmadinejad.

The point is, that poverty is a bigger killer, and as such a bigger problem. This is just a self evident truth: most people on earth are not effected by Kony, whereas most of the world has citizens living in dire sanitation, with barely any food or water and no opportunities in life. Indeed, these factors are probably the cause of why a man named Kony ever rose to power. If people got so worked up about poverty as they do about Kony, then maybe the greatest problem of all may be solved. But if we head just for Kony, there will always be more warlords to take his place.

This is why I call upon you all to raise awareness of poverty, not Kony. Poverty is the biggest killer in the world, coupled with disease, and we owe our fellow humans the dignity to live in reasonable standards. I don't intend to offer solutions here, but I do think that without awareness, poverty will be still something locked in a dark room, while one warlord in the Congo is the worst thing ever. So do not be gullible, emotionally drawn in or persuaded that this Kony campaign is the right course of action. Start your own campaign against poverty.