Minton

I had such a nice time interviewing Diana about her podcast and passion of helping people find personalized and comfortable ways to take care of the selves in mind, body, and spirit. I talk with her about yoga, reiki, and the Celtics! and as always we talk about it in the context of New England.

She also interviewed me for her show! So check that out and the rest of her work online.

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In this episode I am so excited to be joined with Cameron. His show, the Southern Maine Report, is an insightful and interesting look at the most populous part of Maine. He is from the south but, like me, an alien to New England. We talk about his show, some of the issues he is reporting on and the importance of local involvement. 

https://www.thesouthernmainereport.com/

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"I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her."

Pedagogy is a fancy word for the art/science of teaching. In this episode the Pilgrims talks with a fellow educator and good friend "D". WE talk about "core knowledge" and "what every American should know"

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Hi thanks for tuning in! This Podcast is about New England. Its a great region of the country. I am so excited to share my experiences in New England and to talk with the many amazing people I have met over the years! 

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As a bookish, curious kid growing up in a rural, working class area in the 90s, my life revolved around three things: my soccer team, the library, and Pizza Hut. The latter two were intrinsically connected for reasons I will explain shortly (and the first certainly helped burn off the calorific aftereffects of the…

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"My Karma ran over your dogma."

Warning: As the title of this post may have already suggested, this post is a bit heady – and a bit long. I’m going to get into some rather tall metaphysical grass as I go about defending free will. But for those who are interested in the free will debate and who are willing to tax their brain a bit, this post may prove worth the time and effort.

First a little background. For the last three months I’ve been involved in a friendly e-mail debate with a brilliant physicist who was once a Christian but who became an atheist several years ago when he concluded that free will was an illusion. I’ll refer to my friend as K, shamelessly borrowing from Kalfka’s great novel, The Castle.

K’s reasoning was that all events, including people’s “free” decisions, have antecedent causes that determine them, or they happen capriciously. But an event that is either determined or that happens capriciously is not free. Hence, K concluded, the concept of morally responsible free will is incoherent.

As an aside, early on in our correspondence I pointed out to K that his conclusion did not necessarily require him to reject Christianity, for some Christians (Calvinists) also deny that people have free will. But K responded that he’d rather be an atheist than bow his knee to a God who predestines all the hideous evil we find in our world. I had to admit that his stance was morally commendable.

In K’s last email to me, he argued that our sense of being free morally responsible agents was an illusion. In fact, he argued,

Virtually all human experiences are illusions…Color, to use one example, does not exist outside of the human brain….It just so happens that the receptors in our eyes are tuned to resonate with EM waves in the frequency band which we call “visible light”.

K argued that we evolved the ability to see color because it was useful. The same is true for all our sense experiences. And, in K’s view, the same holds true for all our internal experiences. We evolved the inner illusion of being free and morally responsible because it was evolutionarily advantageous. What follows is part of my response to K’s argument.

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So, K, you say that “virtually all human experiences are illusions,” and you illustrate this (for example) with color. Since color results from the interaction of our eyes with light and has no reality independently of this interaction, you contend that colors “are not ontologically real things.” I would like to raise two objections to your way of assessing what is and is not “ontologically real,” and then I’ll flesh out the implications this has for our assessment of the ontological reality of free will.

First, K, can you see that you arrive at this conclusion only because you assume that particle physics tells us the “real story” about what is and is not “real”? But why should we assume this perspective? Physics gives us one perspective on things, but why privilege this perspective over all other perspectives? Yes, physics tells us that the rainbow wouldn’t exist unless our eyes had the qualities they have, empowering them to interact with sunlight in such and such ways. But why conclude on this basis that the rainbow isn’t “ontologically real”?

I would argue that the rainbow is as “real” as sunlight and human eyes. In fact, I would define the reality of the rainbow as the disposition of sunlight to appear in such and such ways to visual receptors with such and such qualities and in such and such conditions. Why should the fact that this disposition is only actualized in such and such specific circumstances render the rainbow “unreal,” for this much is true of all reality.

The final thing that can be said about every distinct thing is that it is what it is by virtue of how it is disposed to interact with every other distinct thing in such and such conditions. We can wonder what X would be like in isolation from everything else – what Kant called the ding an sich (“thing-in-itself”) – but we can form no conception of it for, among other considerations, we can only conceive of X by imagining ourselves interacting with X! Which brings me to my second objection.

It seems to me that this holds as true in physics as it does for everything else. We only know particles by virtue of interacting with them (which generated Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, as you know). What it means to be particle X is, at its base, nothing more than this: we generate such and such responses on our measuring devices in such and such circumstances. When we refer to particle X, all we mean is that reality is disposed to act in such and such ways under such and such conditions as measured by our devices. And notice, our measuring devices and measurements are nothing more than the fact that reality is disposed to interact with our senses in such and such ways and under such and such conditions.

You see where this is going, don’t you K? If we slap the “illusion” label on everything that is “real” only by virtue of our interacting with it, then we have to accept that everything physics deals with is also an illusion. Unfortunately, this was the standard of reality you appealed to when you judged virtually all human experience to be an illusion. And so, K, it seems to me your reasoning process has undermined your standard of reality against which everything else was judged an illusion, thus leaving you with no criteria to assess anything, including human experience, to be an illusion.

In short, K, I would argue that your perspective is a) arbitrary, inasmuch as it privileges one perspective (physics) on reality over other perspectives, and 2) self-defeating, inasmuch as it saws off the only branch of reality you had to sit on.

Allow me to offer up for your consideration an alternative approach, which I’ve already hinted at. Instead of starting from a position that leads us to conclude everything that is disposed to interact with us is an illusion, why not start with the assumption that everything that is disposed to interact with us is real? In fact, I suggest we define “reality” as the set of all interactional dispositions.

This is, after all, all we really know. To know X is to know how X is disposed to interact with every other distinct thing in such and such conditions. We might call this perspective a phenomenology of interactive dispositions, and if we assume this perspective, we can see that there is no basis for privileging one set of interactional dispositions (physics) as telling “the real story” and then judging all other sets of interactional dispositions to be “illusions.” There is only reality, which is to say, there are only interactional dispositions.

This doesn’t mean we can’t talk any longer about “illusions,” such as when a child imagines they’re seeing a ghost lurking in the corner of their bedroom. But “illusion” must always be contextually defined. When we say the ghost is an “illusion,” we mean that no other person would see it if they were in the bedroom. The way reality is disposed to interact with this child in these conditions doesn’t correspond to the way reality is disposed to interact with all other people in those or similar conditions. Hence we conclude that things are going on in the child’s mind that caused him to see this “illusion”. To be sure, the ghost is real, just real in a way that fails to correspond to everyone else’s perception of reality, and thus is defined, in a social context, as “illusory.”

But by the same token, when everyone experiences the same thing in the same or similar conditions, this must be accepted as real. And since everybody (even determinists) experience themselves as free moral agents, this means that free will is real. If the perspective I’m advocating is accepted, it entails that our experience of ourselves as agents who originate new lines of causation – who make choices that are neither pre-determined nor random – must be allowed to form our understanding of reality as much as the perspective of physics.

To make the same point another way, within the metaphysical framework I’m advocating, it would be arbitrary to assume that the way reality is disposed to interact with humans that we call “being a free morally responsible agent” can be adequately understood by reducing it down to the framework of the interactional dispositions that define physics. This perspective, in other words, bucks up against the foundational Enlightenment reductionist assumption that the we only understand X when we’ve reduced it to its smallest constituent parts.

This assumption is at work when you insist that determinism and capriciousness exhaust the possibilities (based on the assumption that physics tells “the real story”), which is tantamount to assuming that morally responsible free will doesn’t exist. But K, you experience yourself as an originator of new lines of causation that is neither predetermined nor random. While we can’t fully understand it within the framework of physics, that experience is as real as anything could be! Indeed, it’s at the heart of your experience of being human!

Yet, your reductionistic Enlightenment assumption requires you to force this experience of freedom into the Procrustean bed of antecedent causes and to thus judge it to be illusory. As I’ve argued, this is not only arbitrary, it’s self-defeating, for the same logic that leads you to judge your free will to be illusory must also lead you to judge physics to be unreal and to end up judging all reality to be an illusion – but without even a standard of reality to measure it against.

In the end, K, I’m simply encouraging you to allow the whole of reality as you experience it to inform your understanding what is real instead of allowing one vantage point on reality (physics) to undermine the reality of every other vantage point. I look forward to hearing your response to my metaphysical musings.

Your friend,

Greg

Photo by Harold Laudeus on Visual hunt / CC BY-ND

The post A Metaphysical Defense of Free Will appeared first on Greg Boyd - ReKnew.

TASK #42: BROTIQUETTE

“Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.” Mark Twain

What separates man from beast? Not much. Take your average ape. He walks around with his ass hanging out. Or dogs–they crap in the neighbor’s yard. Camels spit. Pigs don’t bathe and coyotes eat cats. I’ve done all of the above, except eat cat. So I ask you again: What’s the difference? I’ll tell you: a soul, a pair of jeans, and etiquette!

Brotiquette is bro etiquette, which means being a good wing man, and not hitting on your bud’s woman, or napalming another man’s bathroom, or drinking a guy’s last beer, or vomiting on a friend’s $100 dress shoes that he wears once or twice a year to weddings, funerals and family occasions.

But I also want to talk about etiquette in general, which is important, especially in this day and age, when tempers are on edge and violence is in the air.

So I looked up some rules on etiquette, which is a weird word by the way. Anywhoo, this is some of the stuff I found:

IN GENERAL:

–Dress appropriate to the occasion, i.e. don’t wear crocs to a restaurant. Actually, don’t wear crocs at all.
–Let people OFF the elevator before you try to push your way on.
–Give a brother a “good morning”, or “how the hell are ya?”, or at least a smile.
–Hold the damn door open for the next person through…
–Be on time. Always.
–Tip appropriately.
–Do you have roommates? Don’t eat their food or drink their liquor.
–Shake hands with a purpose.

AT SOMEONE’S HOME

–Chew with your mouth closed.
–Say please, thank you and excuse me.
–Don’t hog the food.
–Complement their furniture, even if it looks like they dragged it out of the alley.
–Wash your hands after you use the bathroom.
–No spit takes.

WHEN COMPETING

–Play fair. Don’t cheat. Even if you can…
–Lose with dignity. I know this one personally, as I had to take shit this fall from a dumbass who is a die-hard Iowa fan. The corn-fucks lucked out and beat the Buckeyes and I just smiled and congratulated him, though I wanted to wring his neck.

AT THE GYM

–Rack your weights.
–Wipe down the equipment. Don’t be that guy…
–Keep a towel on in the locker room. Don’t show off your junk.

ON-LINE

–Never say something on-line that you wouldn’t say to a person’s face.

AROUND WOMEN

–Don’t stare at their tits.
–Put down the toilet seat.
–Hold open the car door.
–If you’re sitting next to a woman, keep the man-spread to a minimum.
–Try a little hygiene.

TASK:

Get out there in the world and try a little etiquette. And don’t be stingy about it.

Photo by Vilmos Vincze

The post How is Your Brotiquette (Bro Etiquette)? appeared first on The Good Men Project.

Lately, I’ve found myself not wanting to be associated with christians. Not Christianity – nothing’s wrong with Christianity or Christ for that matter – but christians. I’ve just been disappointed with so-called “people of the way”, who have recently shown that their way and mine are markedly different, even though we say the way begins and ends at the same place – Christ.

Christians doing unChristian like things in the name of Christianity is nothing new, however. From the Christian Crusades to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 in Great Britain; and the Tripura rebellion, the religious violence in Odisha, and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland and their religious cleansing in Manipur – all in India; to the sectarian violence against Muslim civilians by Anti-balaka Christian militants in Central African Republic and Maronite Christian militias in Lebanon, or the Orange Volunteers in Northern Ireland; and The Lord’s Resistance Army led by infamous Joseph Kony in Uganda, to the Ku Klux Klan in the U. S. whose early goals included reestablishing protestant christian values in America “by any means possible;” the list of christians historically being unChristian-like goes on and on.

But that’s what makes us christians, right? Our brokenness; our fallibility – generally understood to be a result of our separation from Christ. And it’s my separation from these historical events and actors in Christianity that allows me personal comfort in my present day faith. They are not me. I am not them. Every thing that is good today was not necessarily good yesterday. “This is not Christianity today,” I tell myself.

Until Dylann Roof walks into a christian church and murders, in cold blood, other christians who welcomed him. And not only is he christian, but a Lutheran, baptized and confirmed just like me. So was Dylan Klebold, 1 of 2 of the Columbine killers, and James Eagan Holmes, the Aurora, Colorado theater shooter, and Dennis Rader, the BTK serial killer – who was even church council president.

I’m 4th generation Lutheran.

And while I’m not sure what any of this means exactly, I have been examining my faith a lot lately as it relates to other people who claim to believe what I believe, who were taught what I was taught by the church. Is this Christianity today? My Christianity?

I feel guilty by association.

Particularly in the wake of the last 1.5 years of politics and subsequent election of Donald J. Trump as president, thanks to a heavy lift from 81% of white evangelical “born again” christians. People who I am not that separated from. People who I am very connected to whom I share the gospel with. Was it you? Or was it you??

I feel guilty by association.

While my personal faith is in no way dependent upon other people, I find myself not wanting to be associated with people whom I allegedly share the same God with, who are capable of committing such unGodly acts, or capable of committing to such an unGodly candidate.

I just wonder which part of the gospel, or which message of God’s grace they heard over their lifetimes that was different from what I’ve heard and internalized over mine? I’m questioning everything and everyone these days. I thought we left THOSE christians in the past with history – in some far away land, even further away from God.

But we are right here. You are right here. History repeats itself.

Then I look in the mirror.

Can I, a black man in a Lutheran church of 1% African Descent trust you, the 96% of white Lutherans whom I’ve called brothers and sisters in Christ for all of my life despite our church’s failure to live up to its promise to diversify? Can I, a black man in America trust you, the 81% of white evangelical “born again” christians whom I’ve embraced as my brothers and sisters in Christ for the better part of the last decade, despite our very different interpretations of what it means to be “evangelical”? Can I?

White people, I have no problem with. Racist white people I can deal with. But christian white people who have weaponized their faith to other the other instead of loving the other  – I’m terrified of.

Can I trust you not to kill me when I welcome you into my safe space unlike Dylann Roof?

Can I trust you not to hurt me, or the women I love, or the Muslims I share tea with, or the disabled I care for, or the LGBTQ I advocate for, or the foreigner I welcome into my home unlike the presidential candidate and cabinet we just elected to office?

Can I trust you?

God didn’t. God didn’t trust us to love our neighbors as ourselves because God understood that some of us didn’t even love ourselves, so God sent Christ to give us a new covenant to love our neighbors as God first loved us. And in Jesus’ very first sermon on the mount, he affirms me, and the poor, and the mournful, and the meek, and the merciful, and the pure of heart, and the persecuted, and #blacklivesmatter.

For that, I still trust Christ. But christians? Lately I find myself not wanting to be associated with christians, especially the white kind. And while I’m not sure what that means exactly, I have been examining my faith a lot as it relates to other people who claim to believe what I believe, who were taught what I was taught by the church; yet who are capable of committing such unGodly acts, or capable of committing to such an unGodly candidate – and I’m having a hard time trusting anyone down here these days.

So do me a favor christians: this holiday season, let us worry less about putting “Christ” back in Christmas, and more about putting Christ back in christians. Amen?

Amen.

The post I’m Having a Hard Time Trusting Christians Right Now, Especially the White Kind appeared first on The Salt Collective.

I recently had an impromptu conversation with a former classmate I ran into at a sports bar. What was only supposed to be a brief exchange of pleasantries turned into an hour long thought provoking discussion about social movements like #blacklivesmatter, the 2016 presidential election, and rhetoric – the latter being what struck a chord with me.

Rhetoric.

Rhetoric is an art, the art of discourse. The art of persuasion. Those who master it can effectively communicate anything to anyone, and convince them to believe it whether it’s true or not.

That last part, “whether it’s true or not,” is the problem with rhetoric – it doesn’t matter if the basis for which you persuade, inform, or motivate is false – only that you are good at persuading, informing, and motivating.

My classmate expressed that he doesn’t believe the BLM movement, in its current iteration, will achieve the outcome we desire because despite the fact that the basis for the argument that black lives matter is absolutely true, the way in which it’s communicated is ineffective to the audience in which we need to reach – in his opinion. We say “black lives matter” and they hear racism. We peacefully protest injustice and they see rowdy rioters disturbing the peace. We lament over the brutalization of black and brown bodies by police and they only see anti-police rhetoric.

Rhetoric.

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Those who master it can effectively communicate anything to anyone, and convince them to believe it whether it’s true or not.

In contrast, my classmate predicted the election of Trump long before it was a reality, despite the fact that Trump ran a campaign largely predicated on falsities. But it didn’t matter, because he’d mastered the art of rhetoric – and rhetoric doesn’t require the message to be true – only eloquent. Except linguists analyzed Trump’s speech and determined that he speaks at a 4th grade reading level; many wouldn’t classify that as “eloquent”, but rather basic. I’d agree, if I didn’t know that 40% of Americans read below literacy – the average American being at a 7th or 8th grade level, or that even the highly educated prefer to read at a level lower than what their schooling would suggest.

To give this more context, George W. Bush spoke at a 5th grade reading level according to the Flesch-Kincaid index – the lowest of presidents examined at the time. Both Presidents Clinton and Obama spoke closer to an 8th grade level during their presidencies. But Trump? 4th grade on average, meaning there were times his speech dipped as low as 3rd grade, and as high as 6th grade levels. Trump’s rhetoric was the closest a president has ever come to matching the literacy of the American people. He was the perfect messenger with the perfect message for Americans where it counted the most.

Audience.

All of this is hinged upon knowing your audience, and if we’ve learned anything in the last year, it’s that the audience is anti-truth. Facts are out. Beliefs are in. The word of the year is “post-truth”.

Yikes.

Alister McGrath, both scientist and theologian, once said that, “Beneath all the rhetoric about relevance lies a profoundly disturbing possibility – that people may base their lives upon an illusion, upon a blatant lie. The attractiveness of a belief is all too often inversely proportional to its truth… To allow “relevance” to be given greater weight than truth is a mark of intellectual shallowness and moral irresponsibility.”

The rhetoric of relevance is now more weighty than truth. We have hit rock bottom on intellectualism.

Like McGrath, I too consider myself to be both scientist (formally) and theologian (informally), so facts are really important to me. They are the foundation of many of my arguments. But I also have deeply held beliefs relative to my lived experiences and my faith. I try and maintain a thoughtfulness that includes both – this sweet-spot between truth and belief. We call that knowledge.

But after this past year, and even after this impromptu conversation with a former classmate at a sports bar, I am having to reconsider what “knowledge” is exactly in an era where facts have lost its relevance, and the rhetoric of relevance is in tapping into and affirming what people believe and not necessarily what they think.

How do we change what people believe when thinking no longer has relevance?

By drawing on the connectivity that we all share in our common humanity, my classmate reminded me. It matters not what we think in our minds, only what we believe in our hearts – and the way we penetrate hearts is to tap into souls, a spiritual reclamation where you can believe that black lives matter because black lives are human lives just like yours; or share different social and political ideologies without dehumanizing one another, because we all want and deserve the human right to food, shelter, safety, education, and healthcare – we just might not agree on how to get there.

I speak to audiences for a living. My mastery of rhetoric is crucial not only to my social justice ministry, but to my livelihood. Until now, I’ve relied on facts and truth to persuade, inform, and motivate – but I’m now forced to reconsider what “knowledge” is exactly and how I use it to touch souls and soften hearts. My initial inkling is that, moving forward, knowledge must be where history, spirituality, storytelling, lived experience and audience intersect, and not just the sweet-spot between truth and belief – but I’m not sure. The only thing we can be sure about at this point, is that we can’t be sure about anything.

So then, how do we change what people believe when thinking no longer has relevance?

That my friends, is the rhetorical question.

The post Facts Are Out, Rhetoric Is in appeared first on The Salt Collective.

"The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any."

Back in 2007 after the death of Jerry Falwell, famed atheist Christopher Hitchens took to the airwaves of Anderson Cooper’s CNN talkshow to blast the late Baptist reverend. He began by saying that Falwell certainly wasn’t in heaven “and it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to.”

From there he went on to attack Falwell for anti-semitism as well as his noxious comments after September 11 before claiming something that may not have been true of Falwell but almost certainly is of other prominent leaders of Falwell’s movement: that he was a fraud who didn’t believe a word of what he said but was in it purely to make himself rich and powerful.

You can see the full interview below:

Beeson Divinity School dean Timothy George and Summit Ministries director Jeff Myers both came to Falwell’s defense. Many other evangelicals were scandalized by Hitchens’ remarks and chalked it up to Deranged New Atheist Syndrome, a diagnosis which, given Hitchens’ book, did not seem at all far fetched, even if the reality beneath Hitchens’ public persona was more complex.

Regarding Falwell himself, Hitchens’ comments still seem out of line. Certainly the testimony of both Beeson’s eminently trustworthy Dr. George as well as that of a former Liberty student with no professional reason to praise him would suggest as much.

However, it now looks increasingly likely that, if Hitchens words were wrong, it is not because his critique was wrong but only that his subject was. If he said the same thing of Falwell’s son or Ben Carson or Mike Huckabee or, now, depressingly, Rick Santorum, he’d be exactly right. Indeed, I have wished more than once this election cycle that Hitchens were still alive, if only so he could give these charlatans the treatment their behavior so richly deserves.

For years, conservative evangelicals, including writers at this site, have tried to defend the religious right where we could, arguing that what we need is not a repudiation of the religious right but a better religious right. We needed a religious right more understanding of how institutions work. We needed a religious right that understood that fighting a culture war requires actually having a Christian culture. We needed a religious right that paid as much attention to daily rituals as it did to world views. But the religious right’s overall project was basically sound and the men leading it were trustworthy. That’s what we told ourselves. So we defended many of the men who have now proven themselves to be so cowardly and lacking the very thing they said the secularists and liberals were missing—a moral compass.

In 2007 we even endorsed Huckabee in the presidential primary. All of that seems depressingly naive and short-sighted this side of Trump 2016. There may have been good leaders in the religious right—Falwell Sr. was probably one and Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop certainly were—but the conduct of these aging leaders during this campaign season is shameful and fully merits the strongest condemnation from serious believers.

It is also a cautionary tale about seeking to acquire power and influence while lacking the sort of Christian practice necessary to sustain virtue in the teeth of success. We chased fame and prestige as it is defined by the world and we had it… for awhile. It’s just too bad it clearly cost us our souls. Now the party we pledged ourselves too and which clearly never saw us as anything more than useful idiots is ready to kick us to the curb. But rather than standing by our principles, the purported moral voices of the old religious right are cravenly throwing themselves after the scraps that a racist, womanizing, vulgar, and laughably insecure rich boy brushes off his table.

Nine years after Hitchens’ blistering attack on Falwell, conservative Christians stand on the edge of exile, facing a dark and uncertain future in which our colleges and universities’ very existence may well be in jeopardy and in which our religious liberty is likely to disappear under the weight of a Hillary presidency and a Supreme Court stacked with Clinton appointees. And you know what? It’s no less than we deserve.

Our only hope may be that our exile will be like that of the southern tribes of Israel, who were preserved thanks to a faithful remnant and in time was even restored to the land, rather than that of the northern tribes whose banishment proved permanent. Even so, if we do suffer the same fate as the latter group, we will have no right to complain.

When we buy stuff with cash and even save money in the bank, these United States systems have Alexander Hamilton to thank.

It’s the hottest ticket on Broadway, and the “Hamilton” effect is spreading across New York City. Tourists are visiting Trinity Church — where Alexander Hamilton and his wife are buried — and his home in Harlem. Donations are also spiking to Graham Windham, the orphanage founded by his wife Eliza.

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Photo: Getty Images

The post Ripples from the “Hamilton” Wave appeared first on The Good Men Project.

Progressivism is indeed a self-inflicted mental disorder, and last week provided us with a stunning illustration of this fact.

First Indiana passed a religious freedom bill giving business owners the right to refuse to do things that might go against their religious beliefs. For instance, as has happened a few times now, a bakery might decide it doesn’t want to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

Well, the idea of gays possibly being deprived of cake and other commodities sent our society into a tizzy. They yelled and screamed and organized boycotts, insisting that allowing businesses to potentially refuse service, in some circumstances, constitutes a dehumanization of gay people.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, Dynal Lane stabbed Michelle Wilkins in the uterus, cut her open, and ripped out her unborn daughter. Wilkins almost bled to death, and her young daughter died.

The Colorado DA announced that no murder charges will be filed against Lane. Sure, there will be dozens of other charges related to, among other things, attempted murder of Wilkins, but there will be nothing on her rap sheet indicating that she killed a person. That’s because, of course, in Colorado and in the rest of the country, an unborn infant doesn’t count as a person. Yes, some states have laws allowing the baby to be a person if she’s killed by someone other than her mother (a dynamic that doesn’t feel any more just, in my eyes) but, still, nationwide unborn children are legally slaughtered every day. 60 million and counting since 1973.

SIXTY MILLION.

Yet most of the people insisting that gays have a right to cake will not argue for, and in fact will viciously oppose, the basic right to life for infant children. The dead bodies of children pile up all around us, and all these clowns can do is whine about their right to pastries.

It’s preposterous. Also, deplorable, barbaric, and evil. We have a right to PRODUCTS but a baby has no right to be free from decapitation and dismemberment?

It makes no sense. None of it makes any sense:

Click here to read.

The post It’s legal to kill babies, but let’s worry about a gay person’s right to cake appeared first on The Matt Walsh Blog.

Just like the mop on top of your head needs to be taken care of, so does the mop on the lower half of your face. This involves regular shampooing, trimming, combing…and an oft-forgotten step: oiling. Beard oil offers a variety of benefits for an unshaven man: it moisturizes the often dry skin underneath, it tames beard frazzle, and it just smells nice.

I’m a recent convert to beard oil, and now I won’t turn back. While I’d seen it on plenty of men’s websites and even in retail shops, I hadn’t ever even tried it before finding some at a farmer’s market and testing it out. I was immediately entranced by the smell, and was hooked by the softness of my beard and the health of my skin underneath it. While I loved the product, it was expensive — as most beard oil is. You’re looking at paying between $10-$20 for a 1-2 oz. bottle (you only use a few drops at a time). While that amount will last awhile, I figured there had to be a way to make it on my own a little more cost effectively. And don’t ya know it, there is! Follow the simple steps below, and you’ll be on your way to having a soft beard that shines and doesn’t itch — a miracle I say!

Ingredients

• 1oz bottles
• Mini measuring cup or shot glass
• Small funnel
• Carrier oils (more on that below) — I used jojoba, sweet almond, and coconut oil
• Essential oils — I used tea tree, peppermint, cinnamon cassia, and orange

The carrier oils and essential oils were bought at my local GNC. Be warned, they aren’t cheap ingredients, but they’ll last a really long time. The essential oils were $5-$10 each and the carrier oils were each about $10 (even though the jojoba oil was 4oz and the sweet almond was 16oz — keep that cost difference in mind when making your own recipes). So while startup costs are higher, your per-bottle cost ends up being just $2-$3 using the recipes below. (Keep this in mind when thinking about Christmas presents for your bearded friends and relatives!)

A Primer On Carrier and Essential Oils

Carrier oils will make up the bulk of your beard oil recipes. They’re a base oil that carries the more potent essential oils and dilutes them to make them more palatable for your skin. When not diluted, essential oils can actually cause irritation and burning. There are a variety of carrier oils out there that provide different benefits, and most have just a faint scent (unlike the potent essential oils). My choices for carrier oils — jojoba, sweet almond, and coconut — were chosen mostly on availability, but they’re also the ones that are most common in beard oil recipes.

A few carrier oils and their benefits:

• Jojoba – is similar to your natural human oils and is easily absorbed by your skin
• Argan – makes skin softer and protects against signs of aging like wrinkles
• Sweet almond – keeps inflammation at bay, which particularly helps prevent in-grown hairs
• Coconut – one of the best natural moisturizing and hydrating products on the planet, great for dry environments
• Hazelnut – helps prevent acne and eczema
• Hemp seed – another moisturizing oil, helps prevent facial hair from becoming brittle

Essential oils are natural compounds found in seeds, stems, flowers — and almost every other part of a plant. When you squeeze an orange peel or lemon peel, for instance, the fragrant residue left behind contains essential oil. Essential oils are extremely potent to the nostrils and provide scent and additional health benefits to your beard oil. They have been used for thousands of years for their medicinal and therapeutic benefits, a few of which are listed below:

• Cedarwood – helps prevent acne
• Eucalyptus – aids again skin irritation
• Lemongrass – invigorates, like a good aftershave
• Peppermint – invigorates and refreshes the skin
• Amla – repairs damaged hair

Other essential oils are used primarily for their scent: sandalwood, clove, sage, rosewood, tea tree, lime, bay rum, vanilla, etc. All told, there are around 100 essential oils available to consumers.

How to Make Beard Oil

It’s really quite simple to make your own beard oil with these ingredients. All you do is mix the various oils and you’re good to go. The key is to simply experiment with various combos and find what you like best based on scent and desired skin and hair benefits. Follow the basic steps below, then create your own recipes! I provide a few sample recipes, but the options are limited only by your imagination.

1. Start With Carrier Oils

The first ingredients in your recipe are your carrier oils. Basically, mix and match your oils to get about 1oz’s worth (you can always do more or less as desired; I have 1oz bottles, so that’s how much I made). In this first recipe I measured out half an ounce each of jojoba oil and sweet almond oil. You could also simply use a single carrier oil rather than mixing. Again, it’s about scent and the health benefits accrued, as well as what feels best on your skin. Experiment with various combinations of carrier oils to find what you like best.

2. Add Essential Oils

After you’ve added your base carrier oils you’ll add drops of essential oils for scent. Your essential oils will come in a bottle with a built-in dripper; remember that they’re potent, so you don’t want to add more than 10 or so drops to each 1oz mixture. For the more powerful scents, 3-5 drops is all you need. You can mix and match essential oils to find the scent that you like best.

3. Mix and Enjoy

Making your own beard oil is that easy! After you’ve added your essential oils, put the cap on, shake it up, and enjoy. To use, simply put a small dab on your fingers (a few drops is all that’s necessary) and rub into your beard. The best time to use is after a shower when you’ve washed your beard and your skin is fresh.

A Note on Using Coconut Oil

Coconut oil, being an excellent moisturizing agent, is often used in beard oils. The coconut oil that you buy in the store is most often in solid form, as it has a high melting point of about 76 degrees F. This can obviously make it difficult to work with. To use coconut oil as a base carrier of your beard oil, you’ll have to first melt it so you can mix with your essential oils. I put a large tablespoon of the solid oil into a dish, then set that dish into another that had hot water. The oil liquified in no time and I was able to mix in a few drops of an essential oil. It will then re-solidify, and you end up with more of a beard balm. You simply rub a little on your fingers, and your body heat will melt it, thereby turning it into oil again, ready to use on your facial hair.

A Few Recipe Ideas

After some experimenting, you’ll quickly find your favorite combos. My favorite scents are definitely peppermint and tea tree. As for carrier oils, I enjoy the coconut because the dry Colorado air dries out my skin. The jojoba is also a great base since it closely mimics the natural oil your body creates. Again, refer to the benefits above of the various carrier oils, and figure out what works best for you. Below are a few of my favorite recipes. The names are my own creation, but feel free to steal them.

Coco-mint

• 1 tablespoon melted coconut oil
• 3 drops peppermint oil

Sweet Mint

• 1/2oz jojoba oil
• 1/2oz sweet almond oil
• 5 drops peppermint oil
• 2 drops tea tree oil
• 2 drops orange oil

Forest Haven

• 3/4oz jojoba oil
• 1/4oz sweet almond oil
• 5 drops tea tree oil
• 3 drops peppermint oil

Fall Face Foliage

• 1/4oz jojoba oil
• 3/4oz sweet almond oil
• 2 drops cinnamon cassia oil
• 2 drops orange oil
• 2 drops tea tree oil

Have you made your own beard oil? What’s your favorite recipe?  

Gloriously funny.

"But what is the difference between literature and journalism?/ ...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all."

"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."

"Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?"

Stanton Peele blames the Temperance movement for expurgating our Founding Fathers’ prolific drinking habits from American history:

It is impossible for Americans to accept the extent to which the Colonial period—including our most sacred political events—was suffused with alcohol. Protestant churches had wine with communion, the standard beverage at meals was beer or cider, and alcohol was served even at political gatherings. Alcohol was consumed at meetings of the Virginian and other state legislatures and, most of all, at the Constitutional Convention.

Indeed, we still have available the list of beverages served at a 1787 farewell party in Philadelphia for George Washington just days before the framers signed off on the Constitution. According to the bill preserved from the evening, the 55 attendees drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of porter, eight of hard cider, 12 of beer, and seven bowls of alcoholic punch.

That’s more than two bottles of fruit of the vine, plus a number of shots and a lot of punch and beer, for every delegate. That seems humanly impossible to modern Americans. But, you see, across the country during the Colonial era, the average American consumed many times as much beverage alcohol as contemporary Americans do. Getting drunk—but not losing control—was simply socially accepted.

Falling into a frozen lake is no laughing matter, and getting out isn't as easy as it might seem. The folks over at The Art Of Manliness have put together a great guide to surviving a fall through ice.

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Conservative commentator Ann Coulter provoked controversy today by calling for the public execution of Coca-Cola's CEO. In an interview with Fox News this morning, the bombastic author claimed that the company's Turkish-American leader Muhtar A. Kent should be hung for treason over Coke's Super Bowl commercial celebrating diversity. The advertisement, which featured the song "America the

               I attended the debate between Bill Nye (“The “Science Guy”) and Ken Ham (of Answers in Genesis (AiG) and the Creation Museum) on Tuesday night (by webcast at a local church, now available here and here), and though I didn’t pull my hair out and found it moderately interesting, I came away disappointed that so little was said.  Both sides have claimed victory which is pretty standard for these sorts of affairs.  Also standard was that this was enabled by the fact that both sides spent a little over an hour each picking holes in the other’s theory while mostly avoiding confronting any of the problems brought up against their own.  By about half way through the second hour (and especially into the question-and-answer), it was clear the debate was really over, with the unfortunate outcome that both sides walked away satisfied in their own strengths and their assessment of the other’s weaknesses.

                If you haven’t seen the actual debate, I do recommend it, especially if you’re new to these issues, as both sides presented frankly fairly predictable talking points for their positions.  The actual event was nothing near a “Scopes Monkey Trial”, much less a battle between science and religion: the real battle was between Ham’sYoung Earth Creationism (YEC hereafter) and Nye’s populist and vaguely agnostic science.  Being neither an agnostic nor a Young Earth Creationist, I didn’t really have a dog in this fight.  I wasn’t aware before the introductions that both men have relatively little formal education in their respective fields: Nye has a bachelors in mechanical engineering while Ham has an undergraduate degree in environmental biology and some graduate work in education.  Neither has any background in Biblical studies, philosophy or history, and it showed.  I was repeatedly frustrated: one comment would be made from either side (more often Ham’s) and I would think, “ah, now we’re getting somewhere”, but the ball would be dropped and they would go back to talking points.  This was true even when the comment would’ve been a coup for one side or the other.  Though the debate lasted nearly three hours, for all practical purposes it was over after each side made their opening remarks and their 30 minute position statements.

                Both sides were adept at poking holes in the other’s theory.  To his credit, Nye probably stayed on topic a bit better.  The question they were debating was “is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?”  Ham’s points largely boiled down to:

• “Evolution” is used equivocally in science education; for a discipline valuing precision and reasoning, these things are often lacking in science education
• It’s perfectly possible to be a YECist and a scientist (he gave several brief interview snippets with such scientists)
• Science has an experimental arm (like chemistry) and a historical arm (like paleontology); this latter is beholden to secularist interpretive paradigms  which skew the scientist’s ability to reconstruct history accurately
• AiG prioritizes “the account based on the Bible, taking it literally as Jesus did”, meaning a recent (6000 years ago) creation over 6 24-hour days and a global flood
• The real battle is over authority, i.e. the authority of the Bible or the authority of scientists wedded to secularism

 

Nye in a sense had the easier job and was better at staying on target, largely restricting his comments to poking holes in Young Earth Creationism while not presenting what (I think) he assumed everyone knew:  that science has developed the theory of evolution as a satisfactory and helpful theory of origins.  His specific criticisms:

• Multiple lines of evidence point to an old earth: limestone layers, Antarctic ice layers, ancient trees, rates of soil deposition, radiometric dating as well as astronomical evidences
• Creation science has its problems: high rates of speciation after the flood which are not observed now, fossil evidence which is inconsistent with Middle Eastern origins of many animals (e.g. kangaroos), and the lack of observational evidence to support a recent catastrophic global flood.
•  He also brought up logistical problems in the story of Noah, and on several occasions questioned the reliability and universal applicability of the Bible (though this was by far his weakest area, creating many cringe-worthy moments for someone who does know something about the Bible)
• A repeated refrain concerned the dangers of YEC: it would weaken science and technology education and possibly imperil America’s leadership in these areas.

 

A rebuttal period followed these position statements, but it was frankly fairly unproductive.  Ham advocated trust in the Bible over trust in the interpretations of scientists, no doubt a good talking-point for Christians but obviously not going to impress any non-Christians.  He called into question the results of some radiometric dating, and generally called into question the idea of death existing before the Fall (i.e. death could not have occurred before Adam and Eve existed and sinned).  Nye largely responded by insisting that radiometric dating is accurate, that fish shouldn’t be afflicted with death because of human sin (“are fish sinners?” he asked at one point), and accused Ham of “magical thinking” in claiming that rates of speciation have changed over the last few thousand years.  The debate was largely over at this point, however, and it tended to degenerate into “your theory is SOOOO dumb…” after this.

There was a question-and-answer session after their presentations and rebuttals, but what was most amazing was each speaker’s unfamiliarity with the other’s ideological community.  For instance, one asked Ham (both had a chance to respond to each question), “can you think of anything that would change your mind?”  This question is straight from the skeptic manual of How to Talk to Christians, but Ham interpreted it as a call to battle, “here I stand, I can do no other.”  His supporters clapped, in other words, while his opponents rolled their eyes.  A more nuanced approach to the question (perhaps the subject of a future post) did not occur to him apparently.  “How did consciousness arise from matter” and “where did atoms come from”, both clearly weaknesses of materialism were asked of Nye; his response?  It’s a “mystery”, which says to Christians that he refuses to accept the truth of the Bible and says to skeptics that he’s humble and a good scientist.  “If YEC is untrue, can you still be a Christian?” (I was paying attention now):  no, according to Ham, “if you believe in millions of years, you have a problem with the Bible”.  And so goes the remainder of my respect for Answers in Genesis, though I’ve no doubt they’re wonderful people.

 

So what was the end result of all this?  My hunch is that YECers will go away affirmed: Nye just doesn’t understand what naturalistic presuppositions he brings to his scientific interpretations, he doesn’t understand the Bible, and he’s obsessed with sex like most evolutionists (he spent about 5 minutes discussing the advantages of sexual reproduction in fish).  Likewise, skeptics walked away affirmed: Ham doesn’t understand science, doesn’t understand that most people don’t agree with the Bible, and can never be convinced otherwise no matter what the evidence shows.

There are bigger ways to understand each of these issues and arrive at an intellectually consistent way to look at the Bible, the age of the earth, the nature of the scientific enterprise: these were not discussed.  There were tantalizing hints that came and went in a flash during the debate:

• Nye repeatedly referred to YEC as “Ken Ham’s Creationism”; I don’t think this was meant to goad, but to point out that there are other ways to believe in a God who created the universe and the earth without buying the whole YEC meal package.  Alas, Nye didn’t bring up any other theories, though his Biblical literacy is poor enough that it’s probably good he didn’t, as I doubt he could articulate it coherently, much less to Ham’s satisfaction.
• Ham mentioned that scientists are working from Christian assumptions, such as belief in an ordered and predictable universe where human effort is both productive and meaningful.  “Now we’re getting somewhere interesting,” I thought.  But it was not to be: Ham mentioned it once more, but did not pursue it, and I doubt Nye even knew what he was referring to.
• There was some mention of the need to interpret data (whether Biblical or geological or biological or astronomical), but this was also not developed.  Both ultimately seemed to agree that some things just didn’t need interpreting: evidence is evidence, they just differed on whether the Bible or radiometric data required more interpretive gymnastics to rely upon.  Clearly neither man appreciated that there is no such thing as interpretation-free evidence: nothing just “speaks for itself”.  Who knows how many microbiologists threw away contaminated petri dishes before Alexander Fleming said, “say, I wonder if this mold might have some sort of ‘anti-biotic’ property, so to speak?”  The reader of the Bible and the classifier of fossils both bring ideological baggage with them; what are we to do with it?  Alas, neither speaker went here.
• Nye at a couple points brought up the issue of whether natural law can vary.  For instance, YEC says that Noah only brought onto the ark “kinds” (roughly analogous to the “family” level of taxonomy) which then rapidly (over a few hundred years) diversified into the millions of species over the entire earth that we see today.  Does natural law change like this?  Ham did not directly respond, and it would’ve been interesting for Nye to push the point: does God not only intervene in the miraculous, but change classes of physical laws and constants for periods of history? What would this sort of theology do to scientific inquiry?  Did this God of order and truth only make the universe “appear” to be old?  Did he make Genesis intentionally debatable, and if not, why didn’t he make it clearer?  Why is it clear to Ham, and so unclear to others (including many Christians)?  Again, theology is not Nye’s strong point, so he was well not to go here.  He did offer a general argument against Christianity generally known as “the argument from pluralism” (there are so many gods, how can you know the right one?), but he neither developed it, nor did Ham point out its difficulties.

 

            In short, Nye spent his time attacking Ham’s estimate of the age of the earth, while Ham spent his time attacking the philosophy of naturalism.  Both left their own ideological cities unguarded while they went to attack the other’s city.  The end result is two destroyed cities, but little else.  A truly neutral observer likely left thinking, “well, I can’t be a young Earther, but the science seems so tentative, and there are a few scientists who buy it; I guess we’ll never know.”  Fortunately, people of this mindset probably ignored the whole debate from the beginning.  If you pushed me, I would say that Nye “won” the debate in the sense that at least he addressed the actual question (“Is creation a viable model”) more directly.  I ultimately think Ham has a sturdier worldview (i.e. Christian theism), but his commitment to a young earth is baggage he’s not willing to leave behind in the race toward the goal, so he’s likely to lose the race.

The man responsible for copy editing the Republicans' response to the State of the Union speech says he supports President Obama's proposal to raise the minimum wage. James Evans Jr., who was responsible for editing Utah Sen. Mike Lee's speech for grammar, spelling and other errors, and then transferring the speech onto a teleprompter, said

You computer may be at risk. Your privacy may be at risk. Hell, you may be at risk. But if you've got a lot of apps running and that update will require a restart? Forget about it. [XKCD]

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