Vulcan's Mercy

THE UNCAUSED CAUSE

When it comes to the scope of our universe, there are only two positions regarding its size and duration.  It is either finite or infinite.  Modern discoveries in astronomy and physics indicate that our universe had a beginning and, though expanding (actually, because it is expanding), has a boundary.  Furthermore, its entropic nature indicates that our universe will have an end, thus a limit to its expansion and so a limit to its expanse.  Scientific observation alone argues for a universe that is bounded in both space and time.

Nevertheless, many atheists have a philosophical objection to a finite universe.  That is because a finite universe, like all finite things, must have been caused.  Therefore, if our universe were finite, it had a cause.  What would be the cause of that cause?  Of course, the Christian answers, “God.”  But the atheist retorts that God would then be an uncaused cause, a contradiction.  To resolve what he perceives as a contradiction, the atheist concludes that our universe is, in some manner or another, infinite in both time and space.  To accord with what science has informed us about the scope of our universe, the atheist may argue that only the current form of the universe is finite or that finite portions (like ours) of the infinite universe are in different states of evolution or that our universe is but a bubble in an infinite multiverse.

However, does the atheist’s infinite universe actually resolve his problem with the uncaused cause?  No, it doesn’t.  All the atheist has accomplished by attributing infinity to the universe is to make the universe itself uncaused.  To wit, if the universe is eternal then it can have no cause, because that which has always existed cannot have been caused to come into existence.  Thus, the problem of the uncaused cause remains.  However, the atheist is now confronted with a genuine contradiction in making our universe the uncaused cause.  One thing we are certain about our universe is that everything that composes it has been caused.  Our universe is ruthlessly mechanical as determined by the laws of nature (at least in regard to its physical elements), yet the atheist who posits that the universe is infinite must deny the universality of causality, at least in extremis.  Hence a contradiction:  The universe is causal except that which must be acausal to accord with its infinity, which in effect means everything.  (Click here for an article on this and other intractable problems raised by an infinite universe.)

The Christian avoids the atheist’s dilemma by acknowledging that our universe is finite and recognizing that its cause is external to it.  That external cause, a creator which by definition must be greater than its creation, is not subject to the limitations we observe within our universe.  That external cause therefore can be understood to not be caused in any sense that we understand everything within the universe, and indeed the universe itself, to be caused.  Thus, the Christian not only comprehends our universe, including its origin, to be entirely consistent with the laws of nature which govern it, but also that its creator – i.e., God – is apart from and beyond it.  Like all creators, God is not bound by his creation.  Just as my nature, as a manufacturer, is wholly distinct from and profoundly superior to the products I create, so is God's nature in relation to His creation, our universe.

In this way, the Christian does not confuse the realm of the natural with that of the supernatural.   However, the atheist who embraces an infinite universe must confound the two to accept both the causality that we presently observe of the universe with the lack of causality in its essence.

"THE DA VINCI CODE" IS A BUST

I saw "The Da Vinci Code" movie with Bridget and my mom on Saturday.  The wife and I probably wouldn't have bothered to go to it except that my mom wanted to see it.  I never read the book, but of course I would've had to have been on Mars for the past few years to not know what it was about.  But even if I hadn't a clue, the movie still would've have had next to no suspense in it.  Therefore, as great cinema entertainment, "The Da Vinci Code" is a bust.

Of course, the real problem with the film is that it is morally offensive to Christians.  No question of that.  Yet, "The Da Vinci Code" is also bust as far as being a threat to true faith.  Besides being both boring and overblown, its plot device that the Catholic Church (or at least a rogue element of it) is engaged in a campaign of murder and theft to destroy evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child is predicated on historical howlers and patent nonsense.  Morally offensive indeed, but about as titillating as a porn flick in which everybody keeps their clothes on.

MY OTHER SOAPBOX

[Note:  I don't post here as much as I might, because I have other websites I contribute content to.  One in particular is "The Local Area Watch", which is a journal for news and commentary on the misfeasance, malfeasance, and incompetence of public institutions in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area.  Because I provide a prominent link to the L.A.W. site, I haven't until now bothered to make any mention of my contributions there.  However, today I posted an article for L.A.W. on a matter I am passionate about, which I think my growing audience here at "Vulcan's Mercy" will find interesting.  It is reprinted below in its entirety.]

When will it stop?

When enough people of goodwill refuse to be intimidated by baseless accusations of racism and call out the racemongers as the evildoers who refuse to allow the wounds of bigotry, racial oppression, and segregation to heal.  I'm referring, of course, to the incessant refrain from so-called black leaders who decry as racist every public decision that doesn't cater to their special interests.

The latest example is a gang led by retired advertising executive Bob Crawford and, no surprise, Kent County Commissioner Paul Mayhue, who have vilified as bigots the Grand Rapids Board of Education for not selecting their choice, a black-owned firm, to supervise the school district's substitute teachers.  According to the Grand Rapids Press, Crawford was "absolutely appalled" by the board's decision as appearing "very racist in nature" and typical of a "white power structure [that] leaves us out of most of the governmental and business decisions in mainstream Grand Rapids".

What is actually typical of these disputes is that Crawford's charges are a calumny.  He and his group of activists offer no evidence of racism.  They simply cite the fact that the board didn't hire the black-owned firm they preferred.  Instead the board hired the same firm as seventeen other area school districts because the choice saved the taxpayers the most money.  That's it.  Zero facts to support the ugly charge of racism.  It is for this reason I cannot reasonably conclude that Crawford and Mayhue and their cohorts are acting in good faith.

I would like to think otherwise, especially because I have made common cause with Mayhue in the past on an important issue.  But accusing people of calculated bigotry is a serious matter, and I would be ashamed of myself to do so without a shred of evidence.  Could it have truly escaped the conscience of both Crawford and Mayhue that they are tarring the reputations of people without good cause?  I suspect they are so free with their strident denunciations of the Grand Rapids school board, because they don't honestly believe their own accusations and don't expect anyone of consequence to take them seriously either.  Not doubt there is also a healthy amount of end-justifying-the-means sanctimony in that mix, too.

If so, what they are doing is particularly reprehensible.

That's because, if for no other reason, Crawford, Mayhue, and company are refusing to let the wrongs of the past slip into history by stirring distrust and paranoia in the generation raised since the collapse of government-enforced segregation that is now coming into power.  They are poisoning the well of comity and exhausting the goodwill of those who have learned the lessons of the civil rights era.  I have already explained how this is so here and here, so I won't reiterate those points now.  Suffice it to say that I am not giving up on the ideal of a colorblind society and will continue to call out those who would derail us from that destination, even if that means I will be perversely labeled as bigoted or heartless or ignorant for doing so.

THE SACRAMENTS AND MATERIALISM

Since the beginning of the month, David Delaney of Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex has published an interesting series about how the sacraments of Catholic faith accord to the reality of the human condition and put the lie to the materialist assumptions so many of us, including the faithful, make about man, the universe, and his relationship to it.  In this so-called age of reason in which science is the epitome of knowledge, materialist beliefs have been tightly woven into the intellectual fabric of modern culture.  I know for myself, who was never hostile to a belief in God (merely indifferent to the idea for much of my life), materialism is a hard habit of thought to kick.  Articles like Delaney's are an excellent corrective.  Click here for the first installment in his series.

MADNESS OF THE MANDARINS

It's a commonplace to sneer at the ignorance and misconceptions of the great unwashed, yet the news during the past few weeks on a couple of topics reveals that the delusions of the elite in this country are deep.

One is the tsk-tsking over the release of the film United 93, the grim but heroic tale of the first Americans, ordinary Americans, to fight back against the jihadists on September 11th.  Five years later, we are ready for their story.  Indeed it's overdue.  But the mandarins of culture tell us that it's just too soon.  It will only rile us against the enemy.  Hmm, I remember Hollywood coming out with Wake Island only eight months after the fall of our base there to the Japanese.   Something has radically changed in this country when artistic appeals to patriotism in the midst of an existential war are deemed vulgar and hateful.

Today I'll focus upon a drier example of the mad mandarin contempt for us.  It is revealed in their response to the rise in gasoline prices.  It's true that the man in the street often holds beliefs about the most recent price hikes that are economic nonsense, yet the fact remains there is no popular unrest about $3 a gallon gas.  That tells me that John Q. Public doesn't place much confidence in whatever conspiracy theories he might entertain about collusion in fixing high prices for gas.  (Probably for the good reason that he remembers when prices spiked to three bucks after Hurricane Katrina, they dropped when supplies increased.)  Indeed, all the rabble-rousing about gas prices comes from our politicians and pundits who are quick to divine evil running amok in the companies that produce and supply gasoline.

Never do the plain facts spill out from the mandarin diatribe about price-gouging:  [1] A barrel of oil has skyrocketed because the Third World is industrializing faster than new oil fields have been put into production; [2] production of oil has been arbitrarily restricted in the U.S. by declaring off-limits large oil fields  in Alaska, the West Coast, the Florida Gulf Coast, and the Atlantic seaboard; [3] domestic consumption of oil is needlessly high because nuclear energy has been irrationally vilified in this country, although it is the only serious alternative to the use of fossil fuels to produce electricity; [4] gas supplies are subject to price hikes during periods of high demand because NIMBY politics and draconian environmental penalties have stopped the building of any new gasoline refineries in the U.S. for three decades now; [5] the refining capacity problem is further exacerbated by federally mandated special gasoline formulas for different sections of the country, which means that if oil companies don't forecast demand in every part of the country correctly, shortages can result in a gasoline of a particular formula; and [6] that bottled water you buy when you stop at the gas station costs you about eight bucks a gallon.  In regard to that last point:  For all that has to be done to find oil, pump it out of the ground, transport it to a refinery, refine it, pipeline it to your region, and then finally truck it to your gas station, a gallon of gas is remarkably cheap.  That's because competition in gasoline is intense.

These facts are not acknowledged by the ruling class, because Facts #2 through #5 show how they are at fault for high gas prices.  They'll never admit that.  To do so is to question their power to control these things, and they aren't about to give up that power.  Indeed, they want more.  Hence, they rabble-rouse about the evil of Big Oil to get you to acquiesce to that lust of theirs.  So, perhaps there is method in this particular madness of the mandarins.  But it's not to end that will do any of us good.