dark_unicorn

Catholic Theology, or at least the pre-Aquinas variety that I think you are referring to, is heavily influenced by Ancient Greek Philosophy and also came out of the same Hebrew tradition that the current Jewish population also comes from. If you want my honest opinion on why faith over reason is prominent in Catholicism, I think there is a strong case to be made that Kantism and it's mutated off-spring are seeping their way into the church and reinforcing some of the rather primitive Platonistic influences, as well as some Augustinians who held similar views as Martin Luther yet didn't dare to oppose the Vatican. The Dominicans are guided by a much more rational kind of philosophy, and I think this deserves to be noted. I think that this explanation completely misses the point of why people choose to follow Objectivism, most people gravitate to it because they are sick of having their minds injected with unearned guilts and irrational ideas. I myself have been fascinated with Ayn Rand's books because they are a breath of fresh air from the psuedo-journalistic literature that has been dominating the non Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre of fiction for the past 100 years. Making money is a consequence of free enterprize, as laissez faire is the expression of freedom, and people who don't accept the guilts that are thrown at them gravitate towards freedom and all that comes with it. I'd suggest reading David's response on the history of Judaism and how it relates to Objectivism, this explanation is the most sensible of everything I've read so far.

This is the problem, any damage occured in this way would be psychological, and this is not exactly an easy thing to prove. I don't know if jail time is a neccesary punishment, but I would support some kind of actionable status in the civil courts, such as a compensation for breach of contract, proportional to the amount of damage that can be proven. I would agree with this, although I don't support sexual harrassment laws because they are too subjective, but I would add that "full disclosure" should be given as to company policy in the contract. If we have a signed contract that wasn't read properly, obviously the issue is null and void. But if we have a contract that makes no mention of what policy is regarding socializing between employer and employee, the court can step in. The media was primarily responsible for spreading all the gory details of the affair around, obviously displaying the true nature of muck raking journalism, but those details were not relevant to the issues of deception, threats, or breach of contract. I didn't join any Republicans on their ideas that the law should be used to enforce marital fidelity pre-emptively. But insofar as it pertains to a pattern of business behavior, you obviously question everyone that can help reveal this pattern. If he had taken this route, it would have surprised me, Bill Clinton has had problems with the truth since he was first elected Governer of Arkansas. Pretty much every politician today is a pragmatist at some level, but he embodied a very pure form of it. Later on in his series of testimonies he got into subjective reasoning that made me reminisce of a third rate student of Immanuel Kant I had once debated, debating what the definition of "IS" actually was. If this is fully laid out in the contract, and there is no provable deception, I'd definitely agree with you. There is no divine right to stupidity. If this unconventional practice is not included in advertizing or is freely accessable (a simple "we don't filter the movies we show on our flights and will show pretty much anything regardless of rating" would probably do the job) I'd say we have a problem. Now, word of mouth can travel pretty quickly with such things, but a surprise innovation of showing pornography on a plane, that is unannounced, is asking for trouble, law or no law. A company can lose customers if they have the impression that a certain kind of riff-raff has free run of the store, this kind of damage to profits could be defined as a form of vandalism. If there is an advertizing campaign that states certain kinds of stores have a certain policy, and a "we are a participating location" sign is clearly visible, legal recourse would definitely be an option. I can't think of a single store off-hand that would allow anyone to bring a goat in with him, this is pretty much common sense. If it's his first time at a store, it makes me wonder how he was getting his supplies before hand, unless maybe he's a young child. If you wished to argue in the case of a seeing-eye dog, this would be different, but I can't think of any other purpose to have an animal with you while being physically in a store.

In both cases we are obviously dealing with hypotheticals, as I don't think we can yet fully determine what the actual nature of that particular meeting was. However, I haven't yet been given any logical reason to doubt Ms. Flowers' honesty, while Bill Clinton has proven himself to be a compulsive liar on multiple occasions. So, my suspicions lead me to believe that Clinton probably used an amount of deception, granted my suspicions alone don't merit material proof, but only a likely senario. It is also quite possible that Ms. Flowers was interested in pursuing a more recreational visit, as Bill Clinton's obvious social appeal was well known. One thing is for certain though, Bill Clinton was one lousy president, on just about every issue he acted on.

Just as the Christians of the Dark Ages were revolted by Ancient Greek art works. Cultural trends being the guide for defining things is where I think the fallacy lies here. Pornography and Erotica both lend themselves to sexual expression on a rather narrow level, I would argue for the sake of satisfying physical desire divorced from any other value judgement. Although some would argue that Erotica is a bit more artistic than pornography, they both divorce the cognitive response of having a live partner. You do not know the values of the persons that you are viewing, nor do you think of their persons outside of the fantasy, so the result is a form of objectification. Whether this is right or wrong is a separate issue, but I would argue that just like junk food does to the body, excesses in pornography will confound your sense of reality. I personally don't support any laws regulating junk food, so I would apply the same logic to pornography. How does this apply to the Clinton situation? When someone knowingly fools you into thinking that food is good for you, and it isn't, we have an issue of a kind of fraud that can cause a measure of harm to the victim. Granted, there are varying levels of harm depending on how long this was going on and how bad the food was for the person. By the same token, if we assume that Ms. Flowers was decieved into thinking that her and her employer were discussing some separate business, and he then exposes himself, this can be construed as a breach of contract, and civil charges can actually be filed, whether criminal court should take this up is a bit harder to determine. I say "if we assume" because the assertion that she initiated the event, made early by ggwill I believe, is not something that I think has been objectively proven to have occurred.

Out of curiousity, are you a legal positivist? Because you seem to be suggesting that the law/politics is somehow divorced from ethics/morality. Any sense of rational law and political function is derived from a code of ethics, if you think that ethics is somehow divorced from law, I fail to see how a law can be established other than by arbitrary means. I think that a good deal of our laws nowadays are quite arbitrary, and that is part of the reason why our legal system is such a mess. Pornography essentially devalues sexuality on many levels, primarily by reducing an expression of personal values to a mechanical practice. I guess it could be argued that at times this can have maintanence purposes, but the drive of my arguement was that a form of deception applied to pornography can constitute a violation of one's rights. I got distracted onto this particular tangent, it was meant primarily as an example to illustrate the senario. I'm going to clarify my statements as it appears I may have misread your post slightly. My assertion of moral subjectivism was aimed towards the idea that pornography, like pretty much anything else, can be used for questionable purposes. One point where I strongly disagree with the blanket statement that pornography is not immoral is the issue of child pornography. Some cultures may view this as a perfectly acceptable practice, but I for one do not think it's morally defendable, for more reasons than I care to get into now. I don't think that pornography's identity is relative to cultural reactions, it is a clear application of visual sexuality, for sexuality's sake. I don't think the human practice of intercourse is relative to culture, the man's genitals have a specified purpose, as do the female's. A culture may choose to label something pornographic that doesn't itself lend to sexuality, that does not make the image pornographic, any more than Josef Stalin declaring that 1+1=3 makes it true.

Was Mardi Gras going on in that room when the alleged event occured? I think this discussion is getting a bit too far off from the original event. As to the pointing a gun at someone issue, I can think of one right off the top of my head, the gun that is pointed at every tax payer who disagrees with the tax code vis-avis government agents. One of the problems that I've found with the various means of arguement that you are putting forth is that there are alot of floating alternative senarios, but no consistent basis for describing a consistent ethical standard. Furthermore, force is not limited to the threatening of one's life, but also the threat of taking things by force. One of the methods of force that has been glossed over in your posts is the deception that was neccesary to get Jennifer Flowers into the given situation. I highly doubt that she had knowledge that she was going to be having a sexual encounter with Mr. Clinton, and that lack of knowledge constitutes a lack of consent. The issue is the deception, openly lying to someone in order to get them into a sexual situation is a form of coercion. If I have advanced knowledge that a sex show will be going on at someone's house, I won't be showing up there. However, if I am lied to and told that some sort of charity drive is going on, and am then subjected to being involved in a sexual situation that I had no knowledge of, I think I have a valid case at least to impose a restraining order of some sort. Furthermore, this doesn't take into account the employee/employer factor, which could be viewed as a breach of contract as being a sexual partner was probably not included in Ms. Flowers' contract. Further still, if we define property rights by a standard that people's gentals are property and can thus be utilized in public, a counter-arguement could be made that people's eyes (another body part) are also personal property, and should not be subjected to influence by others. A number of absurd senarios no doubt follow, until we come back to the basic ethical principle, deception and fraud take a number of different forms, and are very actionable offenses. This seems like a defense of Moral Subjectivism, and if taken to it's fullest conclusion, will result in even more absurdities such as "One man's murderer is another man's life giver" or "One man's green is another man's pink". Pornography has a specific standard, and that is the message of a sexual encounter that invites the viewer to mentally participate in a sexual act. Nudity alone doesn't accomplish this, but nudity with a certain facial expression, or in a certain context (such as S&M visuals) fall into this category. Essentially, in order to prove that Clinton was not advertizing sex to Ms. Flowers, you'd have to freeze him in a pose and have Ms. Flowers with a canvass and paint brush at hand, which I highly doubt can be defended as a senario pertaining to the event in question. If you have to ask, and are above the age of 18, I think you might be a good inspiration for a satire I've been thinking about writing on the issue of pragmatism and it's obvious conclusions. I think you know the answer to this question, and I think that Capitalism Forever's sarcastic responses to you are highly understandable. Actually it would be reactionary force, by definition. The person disrupting the wedding consented to the rules set up by the people whom rented the space, he is violating the law and disrupting an event where ownership is established vis-avis wealth being exchanged. It is similar to going into a candy store, sucking on candy, spitting it out, placing it back in the wrapper, and placing it back where it was. The property was tainted by your actions, hense you have violated someone's property rights, ergo an initiation of force by way of deception. I wouldn't guess this to be a joke, you don't seem to have a consistant definition of property rights, and the fact that you see property owners as not being able to defend their property rights as a quasi-humorous subject disturbs me a bit.

In the long-term this is a neccessity, but let's tackle your arguement regarding a finite resource. The arguement that resources are finite is not a valid arguement in itself, finite can define any amount between zero and infinite (I concur with the Objectivists that zero does not exist, but disagree with them regarding the existence of the other concept in metaphysics). Give me some hard numbers on how much oil, in gallons, that you think we have left, and then we can talk facts. Furthermore, from what I've read, off-shore oil exploration has alot of promise, of course we'd probably have to either deport or kill some enivornmentalists before we could pull it off. The earth is bleeding oil from the crust under the ocean, it's ready for the taking, and as it's numbers are not yet defined the arguement that it is finite is meaningless. P.S. - How does efficiency help if eventually we will still end up with no oil? It sounds to me like you are trading one allegedly losing situation with one that is equally as flawed, at least by the reasoning I've seen here. There is no disagreement regarding the free market (however, we do not live in a free market so until we do I think my senario is more likely, especially if the Socialist Dems. get hold of Congress and pass some stupid windfall tax on oil profits) , but I think we are seeing two separate realities here, and one of them has to be false. I assert that Alaska, Texas, Pennsylvania, and all the other places you mention are not the only sources of oil at our domestic disposal. Leave us not forget research into more efficient ways to extract oil from shale in Colarado and Utah, and this would represent more an increase in supply and less of that in terms of fuel efficiency. I say again, we can correct shortages without the round sunglasses and Jesus beards. The one who sells high loses to the person with the mind to get more product out at a cheaper price. Such geniuses as Rockefeller, Carnegie and Dow come to mind when we deal in issues of price trends in the free market. You can continue to open Adam Smith if you wish to mold your predictions on the outcome of the free market, I'll stick with Bastiat and Von Mises. I may take you up on this, although I do concur with softwareNerd that this is a synthetic take on reality, one that is highly subject to error vis-a-vis *winks at Inspector* human bias in the parameters that the game is defined within.

Congrats Capitalism Forever. P.S. - Please don't use that moving text feature too much, it's already making me queazy.

dictionary.com Actually it is a word, though it is out of place here. I have actually never really used the word that much in print so my sounding it out may be a bit off. Credit that to our brilliant public education system, I've learned more about proper spelling after graduating high school than I did while in school.

How about we drill for more of the product here at home and build a few dozen more refineries. We can put the towel-head cartels out of business without all the sandal wearing, reefer smoking, tree hugging nonsense. P.S. - Am I the only one who sees Oil companies losing out in the long-term by virtue of an economic slow down caused by a shortage of the fuel to run the engine of this country. Granted, causing Atlas to Shrug visive the Oil market might be a good method of vengence against the statists, but let's build Galt's Gulch before we do it please.

Feel free to join the Thomist Metaphysics versus Objectivism debate on the Debate Forum if you like. You guys have given me a run for my money and I'm still researching the writings of Thomas Paine and other opponents of revealed religion. Suffice to say, I'd argue that the Church is fleeing from Aristotelian Logic and the teachings of Aquinas in favor of older, more primative approaches to thought. As I am still a practicing Catholic and a theologian, this is the extent of my philosophical criticism.

My posts tended to focus more on the Procedural and Human Element because my experiences and those of my family with the system usually are observed there, however I also have some serious problems with the Substantive element also. I am not quite an Objectivist, but I subscribe to pretty much the same view regarding issues of court precedent. Essentially you don't have court precedent without the human element, ergo you have set up a dichotomy between human beings and a substantive system created by human beings, and I am having a hard time figuring out why this is. In regards to the OJ trial, the issue is that the system doesn't do this in just one instance (hense it was an example, and by no means the only one), but does this way too often to be a mere human element anomally. Furthermore, what good is identifying the irrationalism of those being selected from the jury pool if the set of laws that determine those selections give us no proof against it. The OJ trial brings this fact into it's full, ridiculously obvious result, but there are plenty of other cases where less obvious miscarages of justice go under the media radar. As to your comments on "objectivity in law", I can not make a single bit of sense out of what you just said. On one hand you are saying that I could be correct that the system sets up a bias, and then you argue that this has nothing to do with objective law. How in the heck can you have an absolutely clear law and yet have such a garbled implementation system. We have a system that is supposed to protect defendents, yet seemingly by your own admission we have a protection racket going on in our civil courts. On the other hand we have a system that is also supposed to reward just plaintiffs, and yet I see lower judges being overruled by political demagogues on higher courts on legal arguements that only a transcendental idealist could claim to understand. In conclusion, where is this complexity worship coming from? I'm not neccesarily saying that this is going to be easy, but I think you are multiplying things well beyond neccesity here, particularly in setting up this tricotomy that you have above. The Procedural Element and the Human Element are tied to the law, if one goes, it often reflects a weakness in another. Furthermore, human beings are imperfect, but when you have court after court upholding the same insanity, all the way to the supreme court, this is hardly an issue of mere human error or one-party bias. When injustice is upheld by all courts, we need to scrutinize this whole concept of "Blind Justice" and make certain that we aren't doing what I think we have done, and that is kidnap justice and hide it somewhere inside the law.

Well, they allow me to put my two cents in about how absurd I think Vatican II is and I don't get much flak over it from the priests at my own parish, but I always tend to do it within the confines of Thomistic theology so it's not quite the same thing. I don't know what the point would be in excommunicating her, she renounced her faith quite a long time ago from what I remember. The Vatican has been rather inconsistent in it's views on a number of things since Pope Leo XIII. They've had alot of quasi-Kantian apologists come in and out of the works (which is troubling as he is pretty much Aquinas' antithesis), not to mention John Paul II's rather pro-Augustinian/faith over research approach to matters of canonizing saints. Christopher Hitchens actually had some interesting things to say about the canonization of Mother Theresa, whose works were exceeded entirely by image and pretense, and whose justifications for sainthood were quite dubious. But this, along with the lack of enforcement of standards of justice with child abusing priests (mostly by covering up), are symptoms of a problem within the church philosophically. I was taken by Ayn Rand's Requiem for Man and Of Living Death, as they both pretty much sum up where the church has been going wrong in he past 40 years.

1. This is extremely vague, what criteron would you draw upon to distinguish arbitrary opinion from differing opinions regarding established factors? For instance, take the OJ trial about 10 years ago. A rational jury (if there is such a thing any more) would have focused primarily on the DNA evidence linking him to the crime itself. However, the jury that was selected chose to focus in on sociological factors such as the differing race and financial backgrounds of the defendant and the victim. The result was a complete retreat from scientific evidence into subjective conjecture regarding the guilt of someone whom, according to some rather murky reasoning, had been culturally alienated due to events transpiring against his race decades ago. It opens up the field of law into the mystical notion that a crime against one person can be projected into the senario of a completely separate event in a different time metaphysically. You may say that this is not what our laws are about, but many Harvard Law Profesors would disagree heavily with you. And as you so eloquently put it, differing opinions are equally valid. 2. Step one is thus accomplished, civil trials are highly costly and thus favor the plaintiff, regardless of merit. Step two is connecting this to the system of law we have set up, which exposes a rather lucrative racket for the pragmatic lawyer whose opinions on matters of law evolves with the bank account of his next victim. But who are we to question him, he is merely doing his part to aid in the diversity of opinion in matters of law that we simply MUST make sacrifices in order to maintain. 3. Exactly, just like paying protection is a better option than getting roughed up or having your property vandalized. 4. You seem to be heavily focused on the end result of the matter, whether or not the legitimate party is compensated or shielded from erronius accusations. However, I don't see much talk about the methodology that would make this come about, which would be objectivity in matters of law. If you think that what DavidOdden is suggesting is not possible, and that revamping our entire system through philosophical education is a waste of time, what is the purpose of distinguishing between what really happened in a given case versus what the court outcome is? If we can not know what actually happened, despite modern technology and advanced fact finding methods, why not just throw our full faith in the system and be done with it? If the court says that a pig has wings, who are we to question them?

When I see their Public Relations practices, I don't know if reason is high on BP's list of priorities, emotions are enjoying a fairly stable tyranny over there. Having said that, in the short-term there has been some gains amongst some in this field, but long term this will result in a drop in demand as people start consolidating their petroleum needs. This current ebb and flow of the oil market reeks of Pragmatism, just like our current political scene.

BP's media campaigns of late leave little doubt the amount of pandering to the green-freaks they are willing to engage in for the sake of public relations. I'm surprised that they didn't pull some sort of stunt like this sooner, considering all of the maggot infested hippies they've been using in their comercials. If BP goes belly up, here is one person who will not lose a second's sleep over it.

Tsk tsk, sometimes the Vatican can be it's own worst enemy. Every time the Pope or one of the Bishops shows himself to be thin-skinned on issues of Satire, they end up making themselves look like total fools. The best way to deal with the whole Madonna mock-crucifixion routine would be to ignore it, I for one don't care what she does on stage, I can't stand her music and wouldn't be caught dead at one of her concerts. Now there are some real issues concerning the Vatican and it's rather ridiculous attempts at damage control regarding the molestation scandals, and these need to be addressed and the people responsible need to be prosecuted. I would argue that Cardinal Law should be extradited and jailed for a good long time for conspiracy to commit sexual assault and obstruction of justice.

So the law is a matter of arbitrary opinion, in the hands of judges and random collections of simpleton jurists, by this estimation? After reading this explanation of how the law is supposed to work according to scholars, I now have a clearer picture of why people dread going to court and will often seek out of court settlements in the case of civil trials. This also explains a good deal of the corruption, ambulance chasing, and plunder tactics that many lawyers seem able to 100% get away with. If such beliefs persist, the old quote of "Kill all the lawyers" could indeed become a reality, and I'm not sure I could say I'd feel sorry for them.

I got Roark also, personally I would fancy myself more as the Henderson character from Atlas Shrugged (can't remember his first name, I need to get out my copy again as I haven't read it in a year) as I am a musician, but I guess Roark is the closest to me in terms of attitude towards life.

Not neccesarily, the only thing that would be needed is a universal understanding of individual rights in order to avoid state vs. state warfare and looting. The principle of limited government, at least as far as the founding fathers was concerned, is that as you go up the ladder, each level of government has less power and more restraint by the constitution. State and Local municipalities would obviously deal with the vast bulk of court and law enforcement issues, assuming that interstate crime would be handled by the federal government. A world government would be a redundancy, and the absolute abomination that is the United Nations is proof positive that it would never work in practice. As for commerce, I don't think that the federal government should have it's interstate commerce powers, nor do I support the state or local municipalities trying to manipulate the market with taxes punishing behavior or subsidies rewarding it. You could make an arguement that we have rival gangs in American politics right now by virtue of the current economic pressure group warfare, but this can be solved by getting the government out of the regulation of the economy business. Further this is a separate issue dealing with Property Rights, which is a separate right, though equally as vital as Liberty and Life.

So what you are essentially saying is that every individual must reserve his own right to either initiate force because of some percieved wrong or to respond with force without a set of objective principles upon which to create an understanding of individual rights? There is a huge blank out here regarding what use the individual has to the right to use force that I find a bit troubling here. Furthermore, Rand does not state that "some" of our rights must be delegated to the government, she names one specific right that the government is supposed to be placed in charge of, and further elaborates on why this should be for a host of reasons. I don't see anything in it that states that we surrender our right to protect ourselves, but instead the arguement that our actions are subject to objective laws, and that any rightful act of self-defense is based upon them. Further still, Rand draws a very clear line about the extent to which the government is delegated responsibility. Unlike the murky unknowns of a anarchist free-for-all, I don't see any slippery slopes in her views on this subject. In my estimation, the more we start to mimic the policies of the medieval period, the quicker we will start to resemble that period. I also take issue with the notion that the Evolution of Commerical Law is spontaneous. There is a very observable progression of market freedom that began when Thomas Aquinas brought Aristotle's political theories into prominence. This is where the alleged missing link between the old barter system and the modern market begins.

I've read about 90% of Ayn Rand's writings (including the Virtue of Selfishness) and I can not find anything that would suggest a Social Contract. And I can count several occasions where Harry Binswanger, Leonard Peikoff, and several others have utterly ripped apart Rousseau and several other philosophers whom are credited with developing the Social Contract approach.

While we are on the subject of the state, I think it would be prudent to treat the laws themselves and the body that enforces them as separate entities. The laws that are supposed to be implemented in a Constitutional Republic, as intended by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, are based upon objective natural laws. This is primarily where America's Constitution comes from, as opposed to the English one which has a more murky Utilitarian aspect to it that seems to evolve with the passing fancies of the members of government. Now, in keeping with this, I will pose this question to you. Can you give some specific examples of problems that have occured under a system of objective laws that would lead you to believe that it would be better to eliminate the system that we currently use? Material examples tend to make more abstract arguements easier to discuss, in my opinion.

Lieberman THE DEMOCRAT is about to be done away with, but as far as Lieberman THE SENATOR goes, I wouldn't count him out quite yet. His more pro free market mentality on taxes and his support of the war in Iraq are sins against the democratic base, which prides itself on being a rag tag bunch of post-modern marxist/irrationalists, but the voting majority in Conneticut are a separate matter as they are not solely comprised of this sort. What we are interesting is a quasi-Stalinist purge, but unlike Josef Stalin, the kook fringe of the New Left does not hold the say on who will win the senate seat, only his party affiliation. I do not harbor much love for Lieberman, but when I am given a choice between a person I don't care for and a satiricle moron who thinks that up is down, naturally the former gets my support.

1. I didn't notice any internal contradictions myself, although there are some issues of interpreting passages within the spectrum of senses that exist within scripture. Thomas Aquinas mentioned there being an issue of the mutliplicity of senses contained within the Bible, and that the literal sense of the documents contained within was something to be sought out from the various derivative senses (historical, figurative, parabolic, et cetera). Every example of an internal contradiction that has been brought to my attention results from the context either being dropped, or by confounding the obvious application of one sense with another in which the given passage exists for the sake of a given arguement. Granted, the full extent of the literal sense of scripture is still a mystery, because we would need to fully know every aspect of the natural universe in order to measure the contained ramifications as being parallel with reality. 2. I am currently still at study on the various figures of the Enlightenment, I am aware of this book, but I am currently occupied with Voltaire's various satires and John Locke's Treatises of Government. All of my study in this subject has been done independently as I am not currently studying at a university. I will get back to you on this when I manage to get a copy of the book and have had ample time to peruse it's contents. 3. In regards to the Genesis quote that I gave, which was in the context of my debate with MisterSwig, he has brought up the fact that many theists (some of them are probably Catholic) argue that God creates Ex Nihilo. Since most Christians use the Bible as a reference for this (most Protestants use it alone, without considering either sacred tradition, or taking the time to consider the possibilities of erronius interpretation being exposed by reality) I was specifically referencing the contradiction between accepting only what the Bible states and this particular belief. Whether or not the Bible is an effective debating tool is obviously an issue, given that it is an extremely complex set of parables whose meanings are not immediately obvious. Furthermore, because of the very touchy nature of the subject of religion, tempers often fly when seemingly ambiguous quotes get thrown around from an ancient book for the sake of proving or disproving itself. Simply and cavalierly throwing around Bible quotes for the sake of justifying an arguement is not the way a proper Catholic should try to make a point. My purpose in citing any passages in the Bible would focus mainly on the context of Christian religion, particularly errors in interpretation made by other Christian sects. which are utilized by a non-believer in a debate and then treated as though it also applies to me. The Bible may indeed not be a valid source of truth parallel to reality, but until someone can show the error of my particular beliefs on the matter, someone has to find an error in my interpretation as it applies to me and the school of theology that I belong to. I don't think there is anything scrambled about how I treated the analogy, I have not seen any concrete science to disprove the existence of God, an afterlife, or the given miracles mentioned (though this does not make them automatically true), and the obvious absurdity of attributing something to Leprechauns that even those Irish storytellers would laugh at makes this more a point of wittiness rather than factual arguement. It is not merely the obvious fact that leprechauns obviously do not exist, but also the fact that no one before MisterSwig has mentioned of such a thing as Super-Leprechauns who can miraculously cause the law of gravity. A distinction would have to be made between God's nature and the natural universe that would merit a dichotomy between the two. Ergo, nature would have to contain in it something contrary to God's nature in order for it not to be known to him. As far as I would argue, the primary distinction between the two is that the natural universe is finite, hense it is not one in the same with God's nature. Now granted, this distinction is based on metaphysical speculation, and I wouldn't argue this as proof positive of God's existence. Your assessment of Aquinas' explanation of interaction with angels is correct. However, the premise that God does not observe things directly brings up some noteworthy differences with my own conclusions. I treat God's work as something that is reflective of his nature (just as man's work is drawn from his nature to think), but the act itself is a product of volition. In other words, the parameters of the universe are set by God's nature, but his free will is the attribute that made the decision to utilize the act itself. In keeping with this, (Aquinas further elaborates that any description of God functions only as analogy), one would deduce that just as humans can observe their own creations (manipulations of nature), that God would possess the same ability. Only omniscience could account for the ability to percieve the natural universe as a whole, though granted that the actual concept itself is not within the scope of human nature. I am open to such a discussion, I've been paging through the section of Aquinas' Summa Theologica that relates to Angels and heavenly bodies and I think it does bring up many interesting possibilities. One of the points of theology that continues to demand my attention is the state of being after death, and the nature of angels would account for how the human soul, should it actually have existence beyond it's integration with matter on Earth. This would also mean that the reason for our lives would be to endow us with unique identities and individuality. You might find this odd but I essentially share your complaints about classical theism and traditional Christianity (particularly Platonic Christianity and the even greater confusion that existed before Augustine developed it). I've stated before that even for a Thomist I am a bit of a maverick and back in the days when Christianity held dominion over Euorpe, I might have been burned as a witch. Aquinas himself suffered some problems for his innovative way of viewing the relationship between theology and science. Most of his works were rejected and scorned by the main established universities, and the Dominican order was not free of enemies in the Church itself. When you think about it, it is astonishing that Aquinas was able to write what he did and have it not be outrightly destroyed when you consider the paranoid nature of the time he lived in. Some of his beliefs are similar to that of Pelagius, who was excommunicated and threatened with execution had he not fled to Persia (Augustine had his hand in this of course). I don't neccesarily think that God is unreachable, I prefer the more humanistic side of Catholicism that followed Aquinas' accomplishments. I actually took his mentor, Saint Albertus Magnus, as my confirmation name. One of the reasons why I came to this forum is because I am not greeted with the same hostility that I am often met with when discussing such things. Ayn Rand, my differences with her on theology non- widthstanding, has been a champion for many things that I hold dear such as the absolute nature of reason and the necessity of individual liberty, in a time when such things were becoming less fashionable. Kantians, despite the fact that many of them are Lutherans and thus fellow Christians, are very belligerent and inconsistent in their arguements and they often will resort to name-calling when backed into the corners that they create fore themselves. Many Protestant Christians have referred to me as being either a secularist under the guise of a theist or a blasphemer. And I'm not even going to get into the insanity that I encounter when I debate Existentialists, Hegelian Rationalists, or Nihilists.