David B. Calhoun’s Blog

“Behind the world in which we live, far in the background, lies another world, and the two have about the same relation to each other as do the stage proper and the stage one sometimes sees behind it in the theater. Through a hanging of fine gauze in seems as it were, a world if gauze, lighter, more ethereal, with a quality different from that if the actual world, Many people who appear physically in the actual world are not at home in it but are at home in that other world.”

-Kierkegaard, The Seducer’s Diary

I already quoted this before, but it’s such a good summary of the way I’ve really felt my whole life. I have never felt a part of this world. I have never really fit in.

There was a time I was really optimistic and sure of myself, and I thought I would use this to my advantage. All my pains of utter loneliness - perhaps they could be used for the good. This is the time when people really shine - this is the time the best books are written, the best poetry is written..

I only wish I could shine like this. I know I have it in me, if I put my mind to it. But it’s so maddening staying here in the world and being disappointed so bad. I pray for inner peace.. for release from anxiety.. but this has been happening so long, that maybe it’s something I’m doing to myself, or maybe God has truly cursed me. I am worthy of nothing, but I pray that God is merciful. God has no obligation to act for my benefit, but I pray for it, now more than ever. I’m either going insane or I am really at the end of my rope.. if God doesn’t help me now, then there will be no other time for Him to help me.

I’ve been using BBClone as a web counter for several years now, and it’s always been very useful and fun to watch. The biggest catch is that your pages must be in PHP format in order for the counter to function. However, with the latest releases, supposedly you can now monitor your webpages via your Apache htmlaccess logs.

Anyhow, I have finally gotten around to upgrading from version 0.4.3 to 0.4.9a. All I had to do to upgrade and transfer over all my old web stats was the following:

1. Save a copy of the old installation. Always keep backups, especially before you make big changes! All I did was rename my bbclone directory to bbclone_old.
2. Transfer the new files over.
3. Make the entire directory (and subdirectories) writable. If you don’t do this, BBClone won’t be able to save its data! Technically I suppose you could just make the bbclone/var directory writable, but I haven’t tried that and I’m not sure if it would work.
4. Transfer your old web stats files from your backup directory into the exact same location in your new directory. There are two files: 1) bbclone/var/access.php and 2) bbclone/var/last.php. Simply move/copy them into your new bbclone/var directory.
5. Test it out! This should be all you have to do to get it working!

I’ve been really anxious lately, and it’s come to the point again where I’m completely disabled by it.. to the point where the day is wasted because I can’t get myself to focus. This is why I have so many unread books - I try to read, but my mind is so heavily weighed down by other things. It’s a curse.

Why do people have hopes for worldwide peace when even a person alone in their own room can’t be at peace with themself?

I’m going to bed early.. maybe tomorrow will be better.

Two posts in one day!

Anyhow.. just a quick note that Kierkegaard is living proof (living??) that being single doesn’t mean someone can’t accomplish much and have a powerful influence on the ideas of the world. He alone ought to give anyone hope. Although he did die young..

One of the biggest objections leveled against the existence of God has been the “problem of suffering”. This is a derivative of the more general “problem of evil” objection. It goes something roughly like this: if God is truly all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, then why does he allow people to suffer (or why does he allow evil in the world)? After all, since he is all-powerful, he could completely eliminate evil and suffering, and we could live in a practical paradise.

First I want to say that there are good arguments for the existence of God that are independent of the problem of suffering, so this one objection alone shouldn’t suffice for us not to believe in the existence of God. At this point I think we should take up the course of study that posits that if God really exists, then he must have good reasons for allowing evil and suffering in the world. There is a lot of fruitful discussion that comes out of this philosophically, but ultimately there is no trump card explanation of why there is suffering in the world.

However, there are some very good explanations that account for some cases of suffering. For instance, there is one argument that goes something like this: if Person A hadn’t suffered through that experience, he would never have developed to be so strong-willed and driven as he is today. That is, there are some cases where a person ultimately benefits from the suffering, because it allows them to build a character trait that they otherwise wouldn’t have developed. Certainly this is true in many cases.

I’ve been thinking about this - and I really can’t think of cases where people develop character “for fun”, i.e. where there is no necessity for it. If I encountered someone like this I would be suspicious of them being crazy or of developing their character for some undisclosed purpose (maybe they have a big ego, and they want to build what are genuinely good character traits, for the wrong reason - to build up their ego, for instance). I’ve come to the general conclusion that most humans do things out of necessity. It’s only those brief brilliant flashes of insight or those spontaneous actions that are perhaps not driven out of necessity - and we praise these types of actions for their ingeniousness.

I’ve always been suspicious of terms like “character development”. These things were taught to me in school as if I could grow in character with the flip of the switch, on my own will. Another similar term was “self esteem” - this was taught to me and my peers with the hope that somehow someone suffering from low self-esteem could, after being taught about self-esteem, flip a switch and all the sudden be all better. In recent years some educators have given up on this entirely. Let’s give them drugs, a la Brave New World. Depressed? Low self-esteem? Your answer: prozac. Hyperactive? Unable to restrain yourself? Your answer: ritalin.

But I have hope that there is really a thing such as “character development” - although it might look much different from what we’ve been taught. Getting back to my main thought - it seems to me that most of genuine character development is initiated by involuntary events. For instance, social relationships gone bad, great physical or emotional trauma, great losses, etc. These are the types of things we wouldn’t wish for even our worst enemies - these are the places in life where people hit rock bottom. But they’re involuntary, and they have no control over them. It’s not the tragedy itself that defines a person - it’s living and coping with the tragedy that defines a person. And it’s the actual character development that results from this that changes lives for the better, and as it turns out, often times this cannot occur first without a tragedy. It cannot occur without suffering and evil.

Hey Dave, here’s the recipe for the beef teriyaki that I made for the BBQ:

* top sirloin
* 1 cup sugar
* 1/2 cup water
* 1/2 cup shoyu
* 2 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
* 1/8 tsp grated ginger

Cooking Directions

1. Mix the sugar, water, shoyu, garlic, and ginger in a large bowl.
2. Remove as much fat as you can from the meat, and slice the meat across the grain into thin strips that are about 1.5 inches wide and 1/8 inch thick. Try to make these strips long, if possible.
3. Place the meat in the marinade, and refrigerate overnight, mixing every now and then so the all the meat gets marinated on all sides.
4. Weave the meat onto skewers, and spread it so it is flat. If the strip of meat is short, put two or three strips of meat on the skewer (this is why we wanted the strips to be long ). Discard the marinade.
5. Barbecue the meat until it is well cooked.
6. Enjoy!

-Allison

Take a gander at this: places I’ve been

Apparently I need to visit more foreign countries!!

Which is more important? To live a life pursuing truth and wisdom (that’s the task of philosophy) or to strive to live a good life and to dedicate your efforts to helping others also live good lives? Or do they necessarily go hand-in-hand?

I’d think philosophers would want to say they go hand-in-hand, but I’m suspicious of this. What worries me more is that the task of living a good life, helping others, and setting an example for them, is actually more worthwhile than spending all one’s efforts doggedly pursuing truth and wisdom.

Or maybe this - that we should spend a certain period of our lives pursuing truth and wisdom, and the rest of our lives actually living it out. So you could say that the first half of our lives are spent pursuing theory, then the second half is spent actually living out that theory? Or maybe we would want to say that we can actually do both at the same time? So we can strive to understand truth and wisdom while actually living out a good life (which may involve constantly revising our definition of what the “good life” actually is…)

Went to see Grindhouse at the Chinese Theater last night with Megan, Matt, Mark, and Chris. It was pretty fun. The director, Quentin Tarantino, and most of the cast from the movie was in attendance, which was fun. The audience loved the two films (it was a double-feature) and gave a lot of feedback in the right places during the film.

I lost the rock/paper/scissors match with Mark, so I ended up driving, but we made it there and back safely. I think I drove too fast on the freeway on the way back..

There’s a video up at LiveLeak.com that asks ten questions. The video is well done and asks very good, intelligent questions. Because of the honesty and rationality of the video, I’ve decided to honor the request for answers by trying to answer them myself. There are a few that I don’t have answers for, but for the others - I hope they are as good as the questions, and I hope this helps someone out there, so I’m posting it.

1. Why won’t God heal amputees?
2. Why are there so many starving people in our world?
3. Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible?
4. Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense?
5. Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible?
6. Why do bad things happen to good people?
7. Why didn’t any of Jesus’ miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence?
8. How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you?
9. Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood?
10. Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians?

1. If God exists and is a good God, would he necessarily have an obligation to heal uniformly all types of ailments? Does God have an obligation to anything at all?

2. I don’t know. This does seem to be a problem for a good God. (to read more, see The Problem of Evil or, more recently, topics on the Problem of Suffering)

3. These are part of the laws of the Hebrew Testament, what Christians call the Old Testament (laws which have been superceded by the New Testament). The laws are a product of their times. I don’t know what to think myself about them, whether they are made by humans or actually given by God. In either case they are laws made in very different times that address a very different culture. Also, consider that anyone breaking these very harsh laws were likely breaking the law knowingly - that is, they were aware of the law when they broke it.

4. Again, the Bible was written in a very different time. The current standard of science is a very recent standard that is a product of our times. To hold the Bible to scientific standards is to retroactively hold it to a standard that had not yet been created and is not even guaranteed to be the “end-all” standard of truth. This is to say nothing of whether God is the author of the Bible at all. But in any case, if the Bible was written by man or by God, it would be unthinkable that a document written originally for an ancient culture would be written in a scientific standard, which would not benefit anyone nor be understood by anyone of that time.

5. I know of no passage in the Bible (though I’m no expert) that directly advocates slavery. Each of the verses mentioned (ex 21:20-21, colo 3:22-24, eph 6:5, 1 peter 2:18) I looked up and found to be biblical instructions for the pre-existing institution of slavery. The Bible didn’t invent or advocate it. There’s a valid point in saying that giving instructions for it is the same as advocating it, which is a fair point, but need not be the case. I agree tough that it’s disappointing that the Bible (in both the Old Testament and New Testament) didn’t advocate ending slavery.

6. I don’t know. The Bible itself tries to answer this with the book of Jonah, which basically ends up saying “God does what he wants to do - don’t judge him”. In other words, we don’t get an answer. Here’s an inverse problem: why do good things happen to bad people? I don’t have an answer for this.

7. What kind of evidence should we expect from Jesus’ miracles? Which miracles would leave behind this kind of evidence? For instance, changing water to wine, walking on water, healings, raising the dead (Lazarus), feeding thousands of people with very little food to start with, etc? I’m not sure how these would leave evidence. If written testimony from multiple sources suffices as evidence, then we definitely have that kind of evidence. But I think this question is asking for harder evidence - it’s difficult to see how that could be provided, even if the miracles did happen.

8. If God exists, should we expect that Jesus appears to everyone? Did Jesus say he would appear to everyone? It would be nice if he did, but he obviously doesn’t. Why not? I don’t know. This doesn’t necessarily point in his non-existence though.

9. This is a question of Biblical exegesis, which I’m definitely no expert on. Commentaries on this passage with give you different conclusions based on the scholar’s interpretation. In the actual passage in John, it says that many followers actually leave after Jesus says to eat his body and drink his blood, because they thought he was advocating cannibalism, and though it it to be just as ridiculous as it sounds. Even his disciples are confused and ask Jesus for clarification about this, and Jesus basically implies he doesn’t mean it literally. What he said was symbolic of entirely accepting Jesus and his teachings. He was in effect saying that his word must be accepted wholly - the flesh and blood is symbolic of this “whole”, plus I wouldn’t doubt Jesus wanted to add some dramatic effect in there. That’s what the best rhetoricians do…

10. Because most Christians treat their marriages no different than non-Christians do. The marriage ceremony is effectively asking God to bless their marriage. I don’t even know if God blesses any marriages. Let’s say for the sake of argument that God blesses all Christian marriages. Why then do they get divorced? Simply stated, it’s their own doing. There are some things in this world that are God’s responsibility and some things that are our own responsibility. It would be wrong to blame God for things we ourselves have done, whether God has blessed us or not.