Wallenda is the first human to walk across the Grand Canyon.
At one point during the feat, Wallenda began praying.
“That’s a view there buddy. Praise God, this is awesome,” he said, as he stepped out into the void. “Thank you Jesus for this beautiful view,” he added.
“Praise you Jesus, how I love you,” he said repeatedly, adding that there was “a lot of wind”….
“Winds are way worse than I expected,” he said about six minutes into the wal
He later told reporters: “I was fatigued until I was three quarters of the way across, and then it was all just adrenaline,” Walenda said afterwards.
“There was dust. My mouth is extremely dry, it feels like I was walking in the desert for three weeks, not 20 minutes.”
Earlier, Wallenda said he was confident in his ability.
“But the mental part is where I have to be very, very cautious. It’s very challenging leading up to an event like this, it’s a worldwide event … that really plays a role on me mentally,” he said.
Wallenda, a seventh generation member of the Flying Wallendas circus family, said that as he steps out he would be thinking of his great grandfather Karl Wallenda, who died in 1978 after falling from a tightrope.
Video of the fatal fall in Puerto Rico is easily viewable online, and Wallenda said it is a constant reminder of the risks – and that he must stop performing at a much younger age than his forefather, who died aged 73.
“He had said publicly that that’s the way he wanted to go,” the younger Wallenda said, but added: “I don’t want to go that way … I wanna die in a bed next to my wife, at an old age over 100 years old. That’s my dream.
With almost every step Nik was calling upon his God for Providential care…
He walked over the Abyss… above, not though the Valley of death.
This was truly a testament to what a man of faith can accomplish…in defiance of Death.
Nik it truly an inspirational Man of faith and courage, and has given us all a valuable lesson!
Life is for the brave.
Life is either a bold walk faith, or a slow death… of slavery to your fears.
Live a victorious life Brothers and Sisters! Choose to put your faith in God’s word, and Christ!
“…and ye shall know the truth, and the Truth shall make you free”
Jesus Christ.
Pay no mind what other voices say
They don’t care about you
Like I do
Like I do
Safe from pain and truth and choice and other poison devils
See they don’t give a **** about you
Like I do
Just stay with me
Safe and ignorant
Go back to sleep
Go back to sleep
‘ll be the one to protect you from
Your enemies and all your demons
I’ll be the one to protect you from
A will to survive and a voice of reason
I’ll be the one to protect you from
Your enemies and your choices son
One and the same I must isolate you
Isolate and save you from yourself
Swaying to the rhythm of the new world order and
Count the bodies like sheep
To the rhythm of the war drum ….
Lyrics from Perfect Circles ‘Pet’.
I am *Very Sorry* to hear that after 125 years the Truth is going out of Biz… It was one of the few truly Independent Media voices in New Zealand.
It was Tits out!…. It covered ‘Nude’ stories the mainstream Media intentionally ignores for the sake of maintaining and pandering to the delusions of the ‘Populus’… the Mob.
It was Raw… seedy…. Real!
With the Truth gone there will be no *Real Free Press* left in NZ. Only Retarded State arse kissing PC wowzer Status quo Nannyist socialist Rubbish which functions like it’s a branch of government.
š
We will be reduced to Freedom blogs, and ‘Scoop NZ’ … and yet these rely heavily on Non professional Independent activists to supply their take on things.
Stuff article>>>> The Truth newspaper to stop publishing
The Death of the Truth Really is an indictment on just how mediocre minded and sheepish New Zealanders really are.
They are not interested in Independent thinking.
They lap up Reality TV… the kardashians… the Breakfast shows… and they Religiously worship Nanny State.
They believe all lifes problems have political solutions.
They believe in Totalitarian regulation of everything.
They absolutely deny an individual has inalienable rights which ought to be protected from Mobocratic power…. etc etc…
This is a society which tollerates Racist Law and Government.
This is a society of slaves which allows Rapacious Government to fleese them of 80% of their earnings and to give it to lazy bums who cant be bothered getting out of bed in the morning.
This is a society which allows the government to treat us all like children… banning our toys… etc etc…
In a society of sheep… an Independent Paper cant make enough to dosh to pay the lease.
And it’s not just NZ but the whole of wester Civilisation!
They have allowed their Governments to become their OverLords… To spy on them… to probe them… to disarm them…
“Goodbye Truth! We have no need of thee BAAAAA BAAAAA”
This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts after the kingās share had been harvested and just as the late crops were coming up. When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, āSovereign Lord, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!ā
So the Lord relented.
āThis will not happen,ā the Lord said.
This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: The Sovereign Lord was calling for judgment by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land. Then I cried out, āSovereign Lord, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!ā
So the Lord relented.
āThis will not happen either,ā the Sovereign Lord said.
This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord asked me, āWhat do you see, Amos?ā
The Theory of evolution is a bloody joke!
Yet itās fanatical devotees infest our media and schools to the extent that those of us who donāt believe it are considered the Lunatic fringe.
And yet when ever you examine any of the so called evidences or rationale which under girds this Belief, all the thinking man finds is hocus pocus and minuscule facts stretched to their extreme.
The latest findings of the Mars Rover āOpportunityā serve as yet another example of just how devoid of real substance the atheist naturalistic cosmology really isā¦
In an NZ herald article (pg A25) June 13 2013 a Cambridge Professor of Mineral Physics Simon Redfern talks about The Rover performing an xray on some Mars āEsperanceāā¦ rock which revealed mineral deposits within which gives plausibly to this rock having been formed via Water borne sedimentary actionā¦ muddy clays which absorbed water, rather than Sulphuric acidā¦ as has been the interpretation given to the majority of other āhydratedā rocks examined.
This discovery is in the words of the Professorā¦
āPowerful evidence that water interacted with this rockā¦ā
Now that is interesting, and I have no reason to believe there is anything wrong with his conclusionā¦ It is the fantastic conjecture which Atheists draw from this sort of thing!
Like squeezing blood from a stoneā¦ they then leap to the conclusion that
āROCK REVEALS LIKELIHOOD OF LIFE ON MARSā (see Here)
^^^^ Is it possible to justify that statement ā¦ which was the actual title of the whole NZ Herald articleā¦ from the mere fact that this rock probably had contact with water of a potable quality?
Lets look at what the article saysā¦
āItās the strongest evidence yet for a past environment that would have been conducive to life.ā
I can live with that Ideaā¦ I can conjecture that Mars may indeed have been a far more āhospitable placeā that had water… aeons ago.
Where did it all go?
Did Mars fall victem to a capitalist society causing catistrophic ‘Climate change’? š
I digress.
It is at this point in the article we move from what I consider āfairā scientific speculation straight into the extreme realms of Evolutionary Fairytaleā¦ The article continuesā¦
āSpeculation linking the origins of life on Earth to the presence of clays minerals has been something of a theme since it was suggested in the 1950s.
Swelling clays, like those seen in Esperance, demonstrate the presence of neutral water early in Mars history. But at the molecular scale the inter-layer structure of clay can also act as a template to any organic molecules present and potentially, promote replication of enzymes and proteins, which are necessary for life.
The findings back up earlier theories that the Martian surface once hosted an ocean , covering much of itās Northern Hemisphereā.
Blar Blar Blar! There you have it!
The Wild and unfounded atheist conjecture as to the origin of life on Earth is used to vindicate further conjecture to Life on Mars!
There is no real science in any of this!
Atheism is a belief in Martian Sea-monkeys!
Just add waterā¦ and hey presto āInstant Lifeāā¦
These claims in fact prove how Baseless and devoid of Science the Naturalistic notion of the origin of life really is!
Their simpleton rationale goes something like this… “ā¦ Life needs waterā¦ Mars had waterā¦ Oh that means the probability of life having existed there ….’once upon a time’…is likely!
They are grasping at straws.
And they are guilty of the very assumption they accuse theism of… ie baseless conjecture.
There is *zero evidence for life on Mars*
End of story
This claim is pure whim! Pure pseudo science!
The latest discoveries of Genetic science explode the idea of a āsimple cellā.
The Cell is super complexā¦ a super organized structure, and knowing this ought to slay any remaining delusions that Life can spontaneously arise by fortuitous circumstances, and indeed explains whyā¦ even here on earth where conditions are perfect for lifeā¦ abiogenesis/ spontaneous generation has never been observed, in fact Pasteurs Law is absoluteā¦ *Life always and only comes from life*ā¦ a sterile environment will remain sterile foreverā¦ unless āseededā from an external source.
Math destroys Atheism.
The impossiblility of spontanious generation is Scientific Reality. Abiogenesis is a mathematical absurdity…yet because these facts simply dont fit the irreligious opinions of the professor and his ilk, he chooses to ignore science and to substitute the facts with his own irreligious Bullshitā¦ Blar blar “clays act as templates”, etc….and that folks demonstrates just how and why the theory of evolution keeps it legs and continues to be preached in schools and in the Media.
It is a Wolf in sheeps clothing.
St Paul warned us to beware āScience falsely so-calledā.
What do the scientist say – John Eccles, winner of the Nobel Prize and one of the foremost brain scientists in this century speaks of one chance in 1010,000 as being “infinitely improbable…..Carl Sagan and other prominent scientists have estimated the chance of man evolving at roughly 1 chance in 102,000,000,000.34……Harold Morowitz, a Yale University physicist,calculated the odds of a single bacterium emerging from the basic building blocks necessary were 1 chance in 10100,000,000,000.24…….Dr. David J. Rodabough, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri, estimated the more realistic chance that life would spontaneously generate (even on 1023 planets) as only one chance in 102,999,940.21……scientists Walter L. Bradley and Charles Thaxton, point out that the probability of assembling amino acid building blocks into a functional protein is approximately one chance in 4.9 X 10191.16…..
Scientist Harold F. Blum, writing in Timeās Arrow and Evolution, wrote that, “The spontaneous formation of a polypeptide of the size of the smallest known proteins seems beyond all probability.”…..David J. Rodabaugh, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, shows the probability that a simple living organism could be produced by mutations “is so small as to constitute a scientific impossibility” ā “the chance that it could have happened anywhere in the universe,is less than 1 [chance] in 102,999,942.”7….Moshe Trop, Ph.D., with the Department of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, concludes,”All calculations made of the probability [that life could evolve by chance, lead to the conclusion that] there could have been no possibility of the random appearance of life….(NOTE – All evidence cited orginates from the science community)….(continue)
A discussion of the staggeringly complexity and elegance of the cell, which has been described as a nano-factory full of machinery millenia beyond what today’s brilliant engineers can produce.
Is this all the product of filtered, mindless, purposeless accidents or of brilliant design? You be the judge.
“Although the tiniest living things known to science, bacterial cells, are incredibly small (10^-12 grams), each is a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of elegantly designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.”
–Michael Denton, Ph.D. geneticist
“To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must first magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is 20 kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would see then would be an object of unparalleled complexity,…we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.”
–Michael Denton, Ph.D. geneticist, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, pg.328
^^^^This is quite funny, yet still the subject matter is mind blowing!
Many people probably mistake all this talk of Neurons, etc as evidence of real understanding.
It’s supposed to make Science ‘Poetic’ and profound yet is really a song of ignorance, myth and superstition.
“Our Reptile Brain”.
“It evolved from the inside out”
Quite pathetic.
This is a Materialist Hymn.
Why would anyone believe this nonsense?
The reality is Science cannot fathom how our Conscious Minds, our Self awareness, and freewill are related to our Grey matter.
They must wax lyrical about ‘Collage explosions’… I assume on the ‘Entertainment systems’ in our heads!
The closest these guys get to the Truth is when they call our Brains.. ‘an enchanted room’.
’20 million volumes of information… A very Big place in a very small space’
The confession… “It is the most mysterious part of our Body”.
The biggest questions of Consciousness are well beyond reach, and as long as modern science remains dominated by Monist Materialism they will never be able to understand the Mind/ Brain paradox because they have willfully shut their minds to non-physical spiritual realities.
I laugh at the ‘all to common’ claims these days that mankind has mastered how the brain works, and Technology … that scientists will within the next 20 years have invented ‘Conscious computers’ which will be capable of thinking ‘human’ thoughts, and ‘feeling’ human emotions.
It is mind boggling that materialists can be so Absurd as to be contemplating ‘ethical issues’ of granting Robots ‘rights’!!!
They have traveled so far into materialist fantasy that they have forgotten the reality that *’Robot’ and ‘Morality’* are Oxymorons!
Morality only being possible for Free willed beings which have a choice, and whom exist in a universe governed by Objective Moral laws.
All these necessities are absolutely alien to Materialist cosmology.
I have said many times before that mankind may one day make an imitation mechanical bird which may be able to fly and sing, and that a person may have trouble identifying it as being a fake… none the less that Machine will never be a real bird.
Likewise with a Humanoid Robot.
They may be clever enough to program a machine with human mannerisms, so that when we interact with it we can believe we are dealing with a living, thinking…even emotional and caring *Person*, but in reality that is all just a gigantic Deception… The Robot will not be alive… will not be conscious, will not be moral, will not care… etc etc…
It is staggering to know that these fundamental truths are completely ignored by materialist thinkers.
What is worse to contemplate is just what materialists believe our life and human consciousness is!
Death, the Materialist must believe is nothing more that ‘pulling the plug on your computer’!
And *you* literally ‘vanish’.
Materialism is one of the most powerful Opiates of them all!
It’s stupefying!
Why do they choose to think this way?
Simply because they desire to subject the whole universe …neatly into their own puny… small minded Naturalistic Rationale.
They allow themselves to be dominated by their own primitive theories.
It makes them feel good.
They refuse to be Objective and admit that there are plenty of things in reality which donāt fit at all well with their materialism.
The moment they admit this to themselves, their entire ‘religion’ falls apart… and that is what materialism is… a falce religion.
The moment a person awakens to the idea that there are greater realities than mere Matter and energy is the day that their subjective scales fall from their eyes and they appreciate spiritual truths, Free will, Consciousness, Love, ā¦Good and evil, etc are not properties of matter… nor ever could beā¦ and they are then in a much better position to appreciate the Amazing truth of the Bible.
^^^^ YEAH RIGHT!
Many Modern Atheists are Pompous White horse Riding ‘Moralists’!
They are Religious Zealot’s on a Righteous Crusade, fighting the ‘Evils’ of Religion, and vigously propagating and defending their Faith.
They often get extremely vicious against declarations of Faith in the Christian God, which led one Blogger to inquire…
” I mean, if you truly believe there is no God, why get all worked up over what a bunch of delusional Christians think?”… Valley Girl Appologist.
Pondering upon a post on Richard Goode’s Face book page discussing this Atheist Mentality in respect to why many of them are so militantly Anti-Christ, and so strongly desire to deny God’s existence… I made the following comment…
“There is a psychological reason Richard, They Hide from God in the Dark so as to delude themselves they can do as they please, and yet Pesky Christians keep reminding them that there is a God, and that He sets the Moral Laws… not them, and that one day they will stand before him and answer for their sins. *This is a message they HATE* … to the very pit of their self deluded souls! They simply donāt want to know about God *End of story*
Which Solicited the following response from ‘Atheist Greg’
……… “GARBAGE!”
^^^ Now Greg has expressed an opinion, not a counter argument.
It is no doubt a very common ‘opinion’ among Atheists, yet I donāt think my position as stated above can be so easily dismissed.
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Atheist Greg has actually provided me with further opportunity to discourse the arguments for the Theistic vindication for Objective Morality vs Atheist Nihilism, and the origin of Mans innate sense of Good and evil.
Here I employ the basic argument used by the Late great C S Lewis.
My Reply…
If You Greg, and your kin, are nothing more than ‘Space Algae’, well *then* my arguement would be ‘Garbage’, yet you are a Conscious Moral being with a sence of Good and Evil, and you appeal to the ‘Moral law’ governing human actions every day… eg when you get a bill in the mail which overcharges you, you immediately feel a pang of āinjusticeāā¦ and experience emotions of sorrow, and angerā¦. And begin to make self righteous determinations to see justice is restored. Now this sense of injustice at ‘wrong’ is more than simply being upset that an agreement was broken (social compact)ā¦ie that a mere human convention was violated, It is a sense that *A Real Moral absoluteā¦ binding on all humanity has been broken* and that you are within your right to seek justice for your injury.
You are in fact appealing to an objective Moral absolute… a ‘higher Law’ which you implicitly believe underpins all ‘conventional’ human agreements as moral duties/ obligations to fulfil.
Thus I say that You Greg do not/ cannot live as a human being consistently with your claim that the universe is nihilistic/ A moral, or that Mankind is merely āSpace Algaeā.
To do so you would have to loose all sense of moral duty. You would have say to yourself that a person steeling your carā¦ was not doing anything wrongā¦ that even saying the car is āmineā is a moral irrelevanceā¦ the universe caring nothing for your claims to ownership.
And you certainly have no basis to think that when a school bus full of children plunges over a cliff that any ācosmic injusticeā has occurredā¦ no basis to shake your fist at heavenā¦ the only reason you would do that is if deep within you believe in Moral absolutes, and know that Children *donāt deserve* to die, and that you are angry at God for allowing this sort of thing to happen.
The people who come the closest to the embodiment of Atheism are the Tyrants, Mass murderers, and Serial killersā¦The Hitlerās, the Ted Bundiesā¦ the Hannibal Lecters… The Sociopaths and Megalomaniacs who… like Wild beasts devour and enslave their fellow human beings *as if they are mere Space Algae* .
These are the Atheist ‘Realists’, who live under the conviction that all Morality and Lawās of society are merely Human conventionsā¦and that there is no Real āHigher moral Lawā than their own Will.
They are God’s unto themselves.
Thus unless you (Atheist Greg) are prepared to accept that these Killers are absolutely right, and are prepared to drop any sense of Moral consciousness you have, I say
āGarbage!āā¦ to you!
I say deep within you know there is a real Higher Moral Lawā¦ you know that you are a Moral beingā¦ and these things all point to the notion of *Universal Justice*ā¦ God will judge!
…and as I was saying Atheists hate this Knowledge and seek to hide themselves from it.
They despise Christians for their ‘Pesky declarations’ which puts a tourch light on them…reminding them of their flight from Reality and their knowledge of the Truth.
Thus We witness the Ironic spectacle of Atheists who insist they are Moral, yet deny all Moral Obligation! They are ‘moral’ in their own eyes, and ‘holy’/without sin according to their own standards.
*How Convenient!* š
What Basis is left for Morality if God… the Divine Lawgiver is Obliterated?
Atheist Materialists in the 1800s admitted that Materialism was the end for objective morality, yet the Modern atheist is not so bold, nor so rigorous as to where their premises ultimately lead, and instead pretend that their Atheism makes them *more moral than theists!* and they attempt to utilize Historic atrocities committed in God’s name as evidence that ‘religion is evil’… forgetting they have no ‘higher ground’ upon which to stand to make any such moral judgments, and that in doing so they are applying standards which are not theirs to use!
Such a one eyed approach which only looks at particular negative historic events does not succeed in knocking all religion off it’s perch, or by default add one ounce of objective moral reality to Atheism.
While defending God’s Divine right to execute judgments upon Mankind, Christians themselves are just as rigorous as any atheist in their condemnation of atrocities like 911, or the Salem witch trials…committed in God’s name.
I attended a Debate in Auckland a Few years ago between Matthew Flannagan and Prof Bradley on the topic ‘Is God the source of morality’ in which Dr Flannagan presented the God Command Moral theory, and the atheist Prof Bradley made the statement that he believed that because God does not exist that therefore he cant be the source of morality.
Instead he argued morality can only be founded upon ‘sentiment’!!!
Now ‘sentiment’ is an absolutely pathetic, subjective, and culturally relative foundation without any authority to impose Moral obligations! (and I criticised him for it at question time!)
This is really the subject fit for another Blog post, yet what is interesting about the modern Atheist is that they cannot bear the reality that their belief system is definitively Amoral and De-humanising.
To avoid this they attempt to change the game as to what morality really is.
Important End Note:
The Genesis story of the Fall of Mankind into sin declares that we were transformed from a child-like innocence into a ‘Knowledge of Good and Evil’, and It is this inner knowledge of Good and Evil which makes all mankind, in all times and places, accountable and Guilty before God and deserving of Judgment because they all have a knowledge of their own moral responsibilities. Thus I am saying that the Savage whom tortures his neighbor to death *knows he is committing Evil*… even if he has never herd of Jesus Christ. And God will Judge him for it. So too with the Atheist who does not believe Jesus Rose from the dead. This denial does not negate the Atheists own knowledge of sin, and guilt for his immoral actions for which God will hold him accountable.
Thus contrary to what Many atheists assert: The Bible does not deny Atheists cant have any sense of Moralityā¦ it insists that everyone does!
What We Christians say is that the Atheist position cannot justify their moralityā¦. That Atheism itself is Amoral, and that it leads to mere cultural relativism, and social arbitrary law.
When Atheists claim to be moral, they a contradicting themselves.
Tim Wikiriwhi
King James Bible Believer, Dispensationalist, Libertarian, Christian.
Does that actually mean anything????
This Meme is supposed to inspire Awe and portray Atheism as ‘an Enlightenment’.
Is this so?
What sort of ‘self’ is ‘discoverable’ via the loss of religion?
It can only be an ultimately worthless self… trapped within a Cold, nihilistic, indifferent universe which will inexorably pulverize and expunge all evidence of humanity’s existence into oblivion … and render our acts of love and kindness as valueless, and indistinguishable as our Acts of Violence and depravity…. When Man looses God… he suffers Eternal death.
He looses everything that makes his Humanity ādistinguishableā, from the cold indifferent Material reality. He looses his Rights. His Moral compass looses itās North.
What is left but to Eat, Drink and be Merryā¦for tomorrow we die?
I pity the man who believes this is āSelf discoveryā!
Yet there is something in all of this which I believe is *Really what such People* seekā¦ and that is that they actually *want* to loose their ānorth poleāā¦because they are tired of knowing that that is the direction they ought to travel …when all their lusts and their sloth has them looking South!
When they Loose Godā¦and seek to hide from objective moral reality… they abandon their conscienceā¦ and travel south āfreeā of Objective moralityā¦. Now in their new Nihilistic reality they can do as they pleaseā¦
They have abandoned God to escape Moral accountability.
This is what Pitt means by being ‘Untethered’.
I ask… “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Matt16vs26
I do not deny the fact that this is a very ‘Natural’ a very powerful urge’ for The Sons and Daughters of Fallen Adam… Yet it must be resisted at all costs!
This is not an enlightenment, but the very opposite!
It is to Run from the light… into the Dark.
It is pure self Delusion!
It is not an act of bravery, but a cowardly retreat… a defeat from following the High road, and instead to take the Lower, easier path…. with all the rest who cant be bothered living as Human beings…. that is Moral Agents in a Moral reality…
They prefer to run off into the Jungle and live as beasts…
That is their self delusion…. their verdict on humanity.
Yet God is not mocked.
It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the Judgement.
“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”
John 3:19
One of the chief reasons many Atheist’s react with Demon-like Tirades and Blasphemies against Theistic declarations of faith in God is because they simply wish to remain hidden in the darkness of their own self delusion. The last thing they need is Pesky Theistsā¦ spoiling their Buzz by Being told that one day they shall stand before God and give account for their sins!
This is the very truth they seek to hide from!
It summons the deepest hatred, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
What is truely sad about this is that they will be damned by their own choice.
God has done everything to save us sinners from Damnation if we will but simply trust in Christ and his work of Salvation on the cross.
“But God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”
“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved”
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Chriat our Lord”
St Paul.
At tomorrow night’s meeting of the New Inklings, the paper for discussion is Derek Parfit’s classic Personal Identity, first published in The Philosophical Review in 1971.
Parfit uses many examples seemingly inspired by Star Trek and other science fiction, such as the teletransporter, to explore our intuitions about our identity. He is a reductionist, believing that since there is no adequate criterion of personal identity, people do not exist apart from their components. Parfit argues that reality can be fully described impersonally; there need not be a determinate answer to the question “Will I continue to exist?” We could know all the facts about a person’s continued existence and not be able to say whether the person has survived. He concludes that we are mistaken in assuming that personal identity is what matters; what matters is rather Relation R: psychological connectedness (namely, of memory and character) and continuity (overlapping chains of strong connectedness).
On Parfit’s account, individuals are nothing more than brains and bodies, but identity cannot be reduced to either. Parfit concedes that his theories rarely conflict with rival Reductionist theories in everyday life, and that the two are only brought to blows by the introduction of extraordinary examples. However, he defends the use of such examples because they seem to arouse genuine and strong feelings in many of us. Identity is not as determinate as we often suppose it is, but instead such determinacy arises mainly from the way we talk. People exist in the same way that nations or clubs exist.
A key Parfitian question is: given the choice of surviving without psychological continuity and connectedness (Relation R) or dying but preserving R through the future existence of someone else, which would you choose?
Parfit described the loss of the conception of a separate self as liberating:
My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness… [However] When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.
Needless to say, I’m with Parfit on this one. His view is both liberating and … dare I say it, Christian.
(Or, at least, conducive to a Christian way of life.) (But with some startling implications for some Christian views of salvation.)
Here’s the Parfitian question again.
Given the choice of
(1) surviving without psychological continuity and connectedness (Relation R), or
(2) dying but preserving R through the future existence of someone else,
which would you choose? (Hint: what matters is Relation R.)
Some people try and deny we have any freewill, or control over what we Believe or accept, yet I reject this.
I say that we are responsible for what we believe because we incrementally condition ourselves step by step, via our desire to know, or our desire to avoid knowing, and this grows into such an edifice that it can be a highplace from which the whole world can be Surveyed accurately… seeing it as it really is, or a self imposed ignorance can settle like a heavy fog completely blinding us from the truth.
This latter condition is all too common… the millions who have placed scales upon their own eyes so that the truth seems completely alien… completely ‘unreal’…. then they cry? How can I be blamed for not being able to believe?
They pretend they are the victims of circumstances… instead of being a victim of their own ignorant and foolish choices.
The same can be said of Hardness of heart.
As we go through life we all face times of horror and hurt, and one of the ways people seek to survive on this earth is to ‘harden up’… to stop themselves caring so much about things which they cant control, ..etc, yet this process is very dangerous… It is Dehumanizing, and we can build such ‘A Wall’ about ourselves that we become completely insensitive to the plight of humanity, and incapable of perceiving the real Moral issues and dilemmaās of life. And this hardness also blinds the individual to the need to seek Personal salvation, or to reform the world.
Yet again We are not victims of the world.
Our hard hearts are of our own creation, and we are morally responsible for our own lack of conscience and Narcissism.
We have freely created ourselves.
When you admit this to yourself you can then choose to awaken and walk with your eyes open and your heart restored.
This can be painful and taxing, yet it is the moral thing to do, as opposed to shirking morality and truth.
Dare You stand in the light of day?
Tim Wikiriwhi
Christian Libertarian.
