Apologetics Archive

Voice of Reason 36: Seven Deadly Strengths

Posted August 14, 2022 By John C Wright

Voice of Reason posts the next installment of the Last Crusade oration: Last Crusade 36 Seven Deadly Strengths.
The Last Crusade takes up arms against a fallen world.
The seven strongholds of the enemy are the Press, the Cinema, the City Hall, the Marketplace, the Groves of Academia, the Salon of the Intellectuals, the Church. All are corrupt. To retake them requires warning of the weakness that corrupted each.

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On Usury and Other Dishonest Profits

Posted August 10, 2022 By John C Wright

For the record, usury is not capitalism.

This is from Vix Pervenit (Pope Benedict XIV – 1745):

I. The nature of the sin called usury has its proper place and origin in a loan contract. This financial contract between consenting parties demands, by its very nature, that one return to another only as much as he has received. The sin rests on the fact that sometimes the creditor desires more than he has given. Therefore he contends some gain is owed him beyond that which he loaned, but any gain which exceeds the amount he gave is illicit and usurious.

II. One cannot condone the sin of usury by arguing that the gain is not great or excessive, but rather moderate or small; neither can it be condoned by arguing that the borrower is rich; nor even by arguing that the money borrowed is not left idle, but is spent usefully, either to increase one’s fortune, to purchase new estates, or to engage in business transactions. The law governing loans consists necessarily in the equality of what is given and returned; once the equality has been established, whoever demands more than that violates the terms of the loan. Therefore if one receives interest, he must make restitution according to the commutative bond of justice; its function in human contracts is to assure equality for each one. This law is to be observed in a holy manner. If not observed exactly, reparation must be made.

III. By these remarks, however, We do not deny that at times together with the loan contract certain other titles-which are not at all intrinsic to the contract-may run parallel with it. From these other titles, entirely just and legitimate reasons arise to demand something over and above the amount due on the contract. Nor is it denied that it is very often possible for someone, by means of contracts differing entirely from loans, to spend and invest money legitimately either to provide oneself with an annual income or to engage in legitimate trade and business. From these types of contracts honest gain may be made.

While the Holy Father’s bull on this issue is worded elliptically, the issue is not difficult. The talk of parallel contracts refers to a practice, meant to avoid technical violation of laws against usury, where the interest was written up in a separate contract parallel to the contract for the principle. The holding that parallel contracts are lawful when part of legitimate trade, hence not a return above what one has received, applies to interest payments. In such a case, charging for interest is legitimate, not usury.

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Voice of Reason 35: Fountains of Falsehood

Posted August 7, 2022 By John C Wright

Voice of Reason posts the next installment of the Last Crusade oration: Last Crusade 35: Fountains of Falsehood.

The Last Crusade takes up arms against a fallen world.
The enemy control of news, academia, and art allows them to promote three false visions. One story is about how victims suffer repression and can only be saved by Caesar; the next is that each man’s truth is personal; and finally that love is self-gratification, not self-sacrifice.
Hence, new stories are needed: to offer heroism finer than victimhood, and to offer a savior nobler than Caesar.

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A Note on the Logic of Theology

Posted August 6, 2022 By John C Wright

I used to be a scoffer, so I behooves me to be patience with scoffing. And yet, at times, it is difficult to summon Christian charity when dealing with Postchristians.

Their common refrain is to scoff at monotheism as if reason and evidence do not support such a belief. The opposite is true.

Their belief is not only unsupported, it is literally a conspiracy theory: for its holds that all accounts and all evidence of every supernatural event ever reported, from the creation of the cosmos to the resurrection of Christ to that time your Aunt Bellena says she saw the ghost of greatgrandmama, are all frauds, mistakes, misperceptions,  or delusions. All religions, major and minor, are conspiracies to deceive the gullible, and the opiate of the masses.

History, if nothing else, shows this is not true. Opium use is much higher in times and places when religion is weak. Opium is the opiate of the masses. Monotheism, if anything, grounds men in reality, and keeps them away from the junk.

Logic and evidence supports a belief in God, not the other way around.

“It happened for no reason” is a weak explanation for the Big Bang, that is, the creation of nature from nothing; for the utility of reason, for the existence of the moral sense, for the human ability to think in symbols.

If these things arose from a nondeliberate natural process, then none of these things have a purpose, an end, and aim intended by a maker.

A tool is an instrument make with an end in mind. No toolmaker, no tool. If reason, conscience, abstraction are not tools, then they cannot be tools for reasoning, for moral reasoning, for abstraction, and you could not be reading this sentence here and now, and think about it honestly — because reading, thinking, and honesty are not logically possible in a godless universe.

Who told you there is no evidence for God? No proposition has more obvious and more available evidence imaginable.

 

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Voice of Reason 34: Sexual Counterrevolution

Posted July 31, 2022 By John C Wright

Voice of Reason posts the next installment of the Last Crusade oration: Last Crusade 34 Sexual Counterrevolution.
The Last Crusade takes up arms against a fallen world.
In which the madness of the Sexual Revolution is explained. Vice does not make the vicious joyful. It makes them vicious.

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On Words

Posted July 25, 2022 By John C Wright

A large fraction of difficulty in reasoning arises from the misuse of words; a smaller but more dangerous difficulty arises if misuse is avoided by margins so large, that use is lost.

Of misuse, some is deliberate, and some is negligent.

Life on earth is life beneath the Father of Lies, who, for a time, hold dominion here, and deceives the nations.

A high priority of the Prince of Darkness, perhaps paramount, is to teach mankind to ape him, so that man naturally welcomes lies in the form of flattery or newspaper headlines, tells lies in order to win friends and influence people, advertise goods, and advance political or social agendas, and believes lies and comes to love them, in order to create an inner world of self-esteem where one’s own self-identity is unmoored from the constraints of reality.

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Voice of Reason 33: Know Thine Enemy

Posted July 24, 2022 By John C Wright

Voice of Reason posts the next installment of the Last Crusade oration: Last Crusade 33 Know Thine Enemy.
The Last Crusade takes up arms against a fallen world.
There is a twisted logic to complaints of the Feminist. What vexes the shrew is not wholly imaginary, and her pain is real. What she cannot do is identify the real source of her discontent: which is the Sexual Revolution itself.

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A Message to the Church

Posted July 19, 2022 By John C Wright

 

A message to Christian churches from the remarkable Dr Jordan Peterson.  Ponder why exactly one outside the church understands her mission as well as we within, if not better.

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Voice of Reason 32: Fighting the Wrong Battle

Posted July 17, 2022 By John C Wright

Voice of Reason posts the next installment of the Last Crusade oration: Last Crusade 32: Fighting the Wrong Battle.

The Last Crusade takes up arms against a fallen world.
The Last Crusade is a Holy War, so any effort to achieve its aims by compromise or conciliation is foredoomed, as is any approach which aids the division in America. A spiritual war cannot be defeated by cultural influence; a culture war cannot be won by political maneuvering. Only truth prevails.

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Voice of Reason 31: The Strumpet Fortune

Posted July 10, 2022 By John C Wright

Voice of Reason posts the next installment of the Last Crusade oration: Last Crusade 31 The Strumpet Fortune.
The Last Crusade takes up arms against a fallen world.
The Enemy silences opposition by leveling accusations.
Finally is the accusation that dissent defies the inevitable. The pattern of history conforms to certain scientific and unavoidable steps. Any debate about the unavoidable is in vain, hence need not be answered.

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The Riddlework of Time

Posted July 9, 2022 By John C Wright

Time confounds man. The central paradox of man is fourfold:

First, reason sees eternal truths; conscience whispers of eternal law; love bespeaks eternal beauty. These airy things are above our grasp, yet no stoic has the self-command nor quietist the resignation as never to yearn for them.

Second, foresight foretells mortality, which condemns all victories to vain oblivion. We make provision for our posterity, even as our forbears did for us. Each generation forges a link in the golden chain between parent and progeny, between tradition and growth.

Third, volition permits man to see and decree between alternative forks the flow of time may bring, whereas beasts are governed by instinct. Volition allows us to volunteer to ignite the fire of current sacrifice which future blessings may demand.

Fourth, wisdom grants awareness of the flowing stream of time, of which the innocent beasts are blissfully unaware. Wisdom recalls things past and forewarns of things to come, allowing us to learn, to regret, to fear, to hope.

The paradox is that all fours blessings are also curses.

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Voice of Reason 30: Beware the Heffalump

Posted July 4, 2022 By John C Wright

Voice of Reason posts the next installment of the Last Crusade oration:  Last Crusade 30 Beware the Heffalump.
The Last Crusade takes up arms against a fallen world.
The Enemy silences opposition by leveling accusations.
This includes the accusation that current danger is too immediate to permit any dissent. It is too late in the day for a debate, and the nursery is already on fire, so to stop now and talk is a waste of time, if not sabotage and sedition meant to aid the enemy.

This alleged danger is never real, and always follows the same pattern: an assertion of wisdom by the foolish, compassion by the heartless, courage by the craven, combined with a promise to work wizardry, changing nature and human nature.


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Voice of Reason 29: The View from Nowhere

Posted June 26, 2022 By John C Wright

Voice of Reason posts the next installment of the Last Crusade oration: Last Crusade 29: The View from Nowhere.
The Last Crusade takes up arms against a fallen world.
The Enemy silences opposition by leveling accusations. Third is the accusation that an honest argument is merely subjective opinion, hence arbitrary, hence need not be answered, and indeed cannot be answered. For who can have an argument about a mere matter of taste?

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Voice of Reason 28: Wolves in Wool

Posted June 19, 2022 By John C Wright

Voice of Reason posts the next installment of the Last Crusade oration: Last Crusade 28: Wolves in Wool.
The Last Crusade takes up arms against a fallen world.
The Enemy silences opposition by leveling accusations.
Second is the accusation that any opposing argument is in bad faith, hence need not be answered.

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Voice of Reason 27: Thought is Thought Crime

Posted June 12, 2022 By John C Wright

Voice of Reason posts the next installment of the Last Crusade oration: Last Crusade 27: Thought is Thought Crime.
The Last Crusade takes up arms against a fallen world.
The Debate is Over (Continued): The Enemy calls on settled authority to quell debate. The Enemy quells debate by the corruption of language.

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