Lost on the Last Continent, Episode 80 The Skirmish on the Sky-Ship, is now posted.
Episode 80 The Skirmish on the Sky-Ship
In this exciting episode, The pirate warship of the air bearing Colonel Lost is rammed by a flying saucer, and is boarded. Colonel Lost, sword in hand, along with the Legionnaires of Rome, must fight giants! Then the sky-ship crashlands, the city gates are stormed, and all hope is lost.
I was asked about possible solutions to the Overpopulation Problem. Below is a reprint of an essay that first appeared in this space in the first year of the new century.
I am a Cornucopian, which is the opposite of a Malthusian.
The term was coined to define the position of economist Julian Simon whose famous wager with doomsayer Paul Ehrlich in a sane world would would have put paid to the Malthusian predictions of the latter. (You can see more about the Simon-Ehrlich wager here.)
A Malthusian says that population growth (especially of Irish, Hindoos and Negroes) leads to disastrous scarcity of resources, resulting in mass famine, war, and apocalyptic megadeath.
A Cornucopian says that population growth, while it creates dislocations and even disasters (such as the enclosure laws of England) does not necessarily lead to the scarcity of any particular resource, nor all of them.
More people does not mean less stuff.
Let me make a startling suggestion — that we look at the evidence that overpopulation exists, ever had existed, or ever will exist.
What evidence is there?
Certainly there are crowded and miserable places on the Earth. There are also crowded and wealthy places. What factors or conditions are present in the one case and not in the other? Is population the only contributing factor, or are there others? Are there any factors that mitigate the alleged miseries provoked by population growth?
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Part of an ongoing discussion.
I asked Mr. Justin Johnson, one of those rare atheists willing to talk rationally and philosophically about theology, a rather pointed question, namely this:
Whether the God in the Bible is true or not, there is a God that the Deists deduce must exist, following a Thomistic argument from First Causes.
Let us call him, for the sake of argument, the God of the Philosophers or “The Absolute Being”.
Read the remainder of this entry »
Gene Wolfe passed at his Peoria home from cardiovascular disease on April 14, 2019 at the age of 87.
This man is one of two authors who I was able to read with undiminished pleasure as a child, youth, man and master.
I met him only briefly at science fiction conventions, and was truly impressed by his courtesy and kindness. We shared a love of GK Chesterton. I never told him how I cherished his work, and how important his writings were to me.
One of the best bits of writing advice I know comes from the quill of Horn of Lizard Island of a whorl called Blue beneath a strange, short sun shaped like a bright ball. He is one of Gene Wolfe’s creations, unless, of course, he was someone else entirely:
“The chief thing is to begin, after all—after which the chief thing is to finish …. It is all in the pen case. You have to take out the ink and string it together into the right shapes. That is all.”
Join us for tonight’s Red Pill Religion podcast! Action! Thrills! Surprises! We will talk about censorship until such time as we are yanked off the air by the Thought Police!
YouTubeQuote of the Day for Great and Holy Monday. This is from http://www.peekinthewell.net/blog/no-i-know-no-such-thing/
In answer to a quips from atheists denying the faith-based character of their movement, such as “You know that Atheism isn’t the BELIEF that no god exists, but the LOGICAL CONCLUSION that no god exists, right?” or “Atheism is a religion the way baldness is a hair color”, a writer with the most excellent name of Severian opines:
To say “I have logically concluded there is no God” entails “I am better at logic than Thomas Aquinas.” To say “There is no God, because science” entails “I am better at science than Isaac Newton.” To say “Religion is just a bunch of superstitious hooey” entails “I am a clearer-eyed observer of reality than Thomas Hobbes.”
I am not better at logic than Aquinas. I am not better at science than Newton. I am not as sharp as Hobbes. And I can’t convince myself that I am, no matter how strong my beer muscles get. Even on the internet.
Now, none of that means those guys are right about everything, or anything — I’m not committing the appeal-to-authority fallacy (I think that subject, at least, has been thoroughly hashed out right here on this site). It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about humility. And while declaring myself not-as-smart-as some of humanity’s greatest minds isn’t all that humble, it’s a start. It allows that crucial sliver of doubt, that just maybe the opinions of others are worth listening to, because they might know something I don’t.
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Last weekend I had the honor of being a guest at a science fiction convention here in Virginia. One of the panels was on some other topic I cannot bring to mind, but the question arose asking which novels and short stories from the old times did old timers like me suggest the younger generation should read?
The panelists, two men and two women, with at least one Christian and one pagan among them, agreed on whose names were justly famed in days gone by, and who had been unjustly forgotten, but should not be overlooked.
So far, so good. No leftwing sucker punch yet. It was coming.
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As of 4:00 pm EDT, the bill banning abortion in Ohio after the first detectable heartbeat was signed into law.
The Republican governor [of North Dakota] signed legislation imposing Class C felony charges on people [sic] who perform a “human dismemberment abortion”…Ten other states have such bans on the books, but eight of them are on hold due to litigation
The Dems have fallen, of late, into the interesting habit of dropping their masks of angels of light, and showing their true diabolical, Moloch-worshipping visages dripping and oozing beneath, eyes crazed and aflame with hate.
Their infanticidal racism combined with nauseating hypocrisy, and unreason akin to madness, is each day becoming clearer to the sight even of the unwary.
For example, this is also from the PJ Media Website: Read the remainder of this entry »
As part of an ongoing conversation about infinite regress one objection raised, (and quite a reasonable one) is to ask about the possibility that rather than an infinite line of causes and effects reaching backward to no beginning, reaching in a circle?
Could not a hyperspherical bend of causation, so popular in time travel stories, have a line of causes and effects reaching backward as well as forward through time? Could our chain of causes and effects move through a great cosmic cycle with no beginning and no end?
Actually this idea calms none of the objections against an infinite regress, and raises additional difficulties.
The objection against an infinite line of contingent causes is that nothing is ultimately causing the effect, which means, in effect, nothing is causing any effect at all.
Read the remainder of this entry »
Recently in this space, a certain well meaning skeptic claimed that an argument I humbly presented to justify the belief in an uncaused First Cause was lacking in proof. Well, no longer! Modern science rides to the rescue!
Here is a photo of an uncaused First Cause:
PHOTO CREDIT: Saint Thomas Aquinas (AD 1274)
Just kidding. It is the first photographic evidence of that long-theorized phenomenon of astronomy, the singularity, also called a black sun or black hole.
The picture shows a halo of dust and gas, tracing the outline of a colossal black hole, at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy some 53 or 54 million lightyears from Earth.
A read asked me to explain the argument against infinite regress. I pass it along in case my other readers find it of interest.
The First Cause argument is not all that complex, and it can be put in simple words. It might help if I use examples.
The question is about cause and effect. A cause (let us say a cue ball) has an effect (cue ball strikes the eight ball, and the eight ball falls into the side pocket).
In life, whenever we see an effect (an eight ball in the side pocket) we know there must be a cause (a cue ball) even if we were not looking when the cue ball struck. Eight balls just do not start rolling on their own.
Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing happens for no reason. Read the remainder of this entry »
Lost on the Last Continent, Episode 79 Fate of the Happy Fortune, is now posted.
Episode 79 Fate of the Happy Fortune
In this exciting episode, Colonel Lost and the sky-pirates of the City of Swift Death launch a desperate assault on the high command of the Fifth Men!
Jagi, here.
Like stories of magic and wizards? Looking for new books? Here’s a great opportunity to download free novels and samples from forty different authors. (The first Book of Unexpected Enlightenment is one of the forty.)
Magically Bewitching on Book Funnel!
(Note: this says through the 21st, but it is actually going to be up through the 13th.)
The show for today addresses the topic of gullible skeptics. Why are so-called skeptics not skeptical about “easy-answer” skepticism — that predictable type of skepticism that poses no hard questions and disturbs no convenient assumptions.
YouTubeLost on the Last Continent, Episode 78 The Battle Pyre of Lemuria, is now posted.
Episode 78 The Battle Pyre of Lemuria
In this exciting episode, a strange, prophetic voice issues from the lips of Colonel Preston Lost, as the sky-pirate battleships stoop like hawks above the ferocious Lemurians. But what fatal error has the enemy made? For now, seeing the observation platform holding the high command of the Fifth Men has drifted into striking range, the Vengeful Widow orders an all-out attack!
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Note: please forgive that this week’s episode is tardy! My schedule has changed and Monday may be easier than Wednesday for my weekly deadline. Does any reader have a preference?
