Showing posts with label South Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Park. Show all posts

Saturday, December 19, 2015

The Harvard Placemat


Everyone knows that Harvard is Satan's Vatican and that it issued special Holiday Placemats For Social Justice.

Rod Dreher gives some helpful advice to families trying to cope with their social justice warrior children ruining Christmas with their obnoxious "talking points." Dreher recommends you go full Cartman:

When your Harvard undergraduate comes home for the holidays and undertakes to preach about politics at the dinner table, ask yourself, “What would Eric Cartman say?” Then say it over and over again, until the SJW runs sobbing from the table.



Harvard has since apologized for it's risible placemats, but remember this, the Devil is the Father of Lies.

Your Friend,

LSP

Friday, December 17, 2010

Dawkins - Peerless Stinker

Dawkins

From time time to time this blog degenerates into a samey mix of horses, guns, space creatures and cheap jibes against the fast disappearing ACoC (Anglican Church of Canada) and its larger sister TEC (The Episcopal Church). To say nothing of the all too easy game of awarding "alien heads" to offending ecclesiastics.

So here's some philosophy to even things out; it's a reflection on Dawkins' take on Aquinas' 4th Way and you'll have to forgive the length but I like the argument.

First, the 4th Way itself, from the Summa:

Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But 'more' and 'less' are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being [i.e. maximally ontologically secure]; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in [Aristotle's] Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

Dawkins doesn't like this at all and decides to sneer:

"That's an argument? You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God."

But Aquinas is dealing with properties that have an intrinsic and logical, as opposed to de facto, maximum. Eric Mascall explains:

"Goodness, so the argument claims, demands as its cause a God who is good; while heat, though it necessarily demands a God whose knowledge of possible being includes an idea of heat, does not demand a God who is hot as its cause, but only a God who can create."

Peter Williams sums up:

"In modern philosophical terminology, Aquinas is arguing along the following lines:

  1. Things exist in the world around us that exhibit finite degrees of great-making properties (e.g. being, goodness, truth, beauty)

  2. The existence of something exhibiting a great-making property to a finite degree implies the existence of something that possesses the property in question to a maximal degree

  3. Therefore, all great making properties possessed in finite degree by beings in the world around us, including being, are possessed to a maximal degree by something

  4. An effect cannot exceed the greatness of its cause

  5. Therefore, there exists a maximally ontologically secure being that possess every great-making property possessed by its effects to a maximal degree; and this we call God.
It should at least be clear that Aquinas' argument is logically valid and consequently that this line of thought cannot be dismissed with a jeering reference to smelly people, which is all Dawkins does."

Well said, Peter Williams.

This site supports Aquinas -- not that he needs it.

Cheers,

LSP