John W. Burge

Codesmith for a living, wordsmith for fun

[RazörFist @RazorFist]

2020: The Science™ is settled

2021: Trust the Science™

2022: Sorry you lost your job for not trusting The Science™

2023: We have recalled The Science™ from the market

2026: The Science™ pleads the 5th

[James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames]

Anyway, here's the original reverse of the great seal of the United States, which ended up going unused. Any idea what it depicts, who drew it, and how the original Americans saw themselves?

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

Exactly right. Central to Odysseus’ character (and something that doesn’t sit right with many modern™️ readers) is gloating to Polyphemus about his deception. The same craftiness that sacked Troy brings the rage of Poseidon upon him and his men. Leaving it out is foolish.

[MauLer @MauLer93]

>References the pun without having to translate
>Can't use it because it doesn't translate

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You also lose the contrast of hubris in Odysseus taking credit with his real name, later.

Weakens the character consequences for the cursed voyage, I fear.

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

@The_Kyle_Mann If you haven’t read Tyers’ other EU novel “The Truce at Bakura,” I recommend it. Not the best EU, but the baddies are interesting and highly unsettling. Also a time capsule with a supposedly Galadriel-inspired love interest for a pre-Mara Jade Luke.

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

Been meaning to start reading this for some time now. Great to hear this, I need to prio.

[Kyle Mann @The_Kyle_Mann]

I am on Book 9 of 19 in the New Jedi Order series (read some of it in... high school maybe? College? Don't remember)

Book 1 (RA Salvatore) was great. 2 and 3 (Stackpole) was great. The next couple were solid.

Balance Point (Book 6) was kind of slow. However, I started picking up on pro-life themes and Christian theology throughout. So I looked the author up and yup she's a PCA Christian. Cool.

Book 7 CONQUEST is one of the best Star Wars EU novels I have ever read.
Book 8 was almost as good.

My overall thoughts now that I'm almost halfway through - still love the Yuuhzan Vong. And man what a waste that Disney didn't do anything with these characters. It's weird to see Luke happily married, Han raising his kids, etc., when Disney trashed all that stuff. It's a very pro-family, pro-marriage universe.

The hurdle I see the series having to overcome is Star Wars is all about heroes prevailing and saving the day against desperate odds. You can get away with a tragic ending in the 2nd movie of a film trilogy, because you know the heroes are gonna rally back in the third. But the first half of this series (and I assume most of the way through) is the New Republic losing battle after battle. So you're just waiting for that tipping point when the tide turns.

Thus, the very best books in the series have the heroes strike some kind of victory at the end, but the bad guys are gonna come back stronger in the next one. The weakest ones it's just the New Republic and Jedi evacuating planet after planet.

Anyway very excited to finish this series. And very sad Disney scrapped the EU.

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Style is.

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

One of the simplest ways to corrupt a person is to subvert his perception of beauty.

C.S. Lewis demonstrates this in That Hideous Strength, the final book of his Space Trilogy. Protagonist Mark Studdock is subjected to "training" by the sinister institute "N.I.C.E." to remove his emotional responses and his ability to recognize right from wrong.

Mark is made to get used to a windowless room filled with nonsensical architecture and ugly art designed to disorient him. It is lit strangely and has unsettling proportions: too tall and narrow, a subtly wonky arched door, and dots on the ceiling positioned with such irregularity that it would be impossible to count them.

On the walls are grotesque and creepy pictures, but just verging on normal. There is a hyper-real portrait of a young woman, but her mouth is filled with hair. One is a giant mantis playing a fiddle while being eaten by another mantis. Some are distortions of Bible scenes, like a painting of the Last Supper with hundreds of beetles under the table.

This is Mark's first step toward "objectivity": "the process whereby all specifically human reactions were killed in a man so that he might become fit for the fastidious society of the Macrobes."

Later, Mark is forced to do simple, deliberately pointless or mildly offensive acts repeatedly. The kinds of things most people would find stupid or rude. For Mark, they are meant to gradually erode his sense of anything being important.

Our ability to recognize good from bad, virtue from vice, or beautiful from ugly is precisely what makes us human — our ability to make value judgments.

When we spend too much time surrounded by ugliness, it has a dulling effect on this especially human part of us. Even worse is when we are forced to call these ugly things beautiful, or bad things good. If we are not careful, it will ruin our ability to properly recognize anything of value in our lives.

Interestingly, Mark is ultimately won over against N.I.C.E. when he refuses to trample on a crucifix — not because he is a Christian (he isn't yet), but because it is inherently ugly and evil nonetheless.

When someone intentionally creates ugly art, Lewis calls on us to call it out as such. The beauty we include in our lives is not neutral, nor is it trivial.

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

In “On the Trinity,” medieval monk Richard of St. Victor demonstrates why God, the greatest being of which there can be none greater, is maximally loving and therefore necessarily triune. His nature is a model for humanity. Rousseau saw chains; the reality is liberation.

[Nancy Pearcey @NancyRPearcey]

Every Christian should understand the impact of Rousseau on our own day:

"Most of the ideologies that bloodied the twentieth century were influenced by Rousseau. His writings inspired Robespierre in the French Revolution, as well as Marx, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Mao. Even Pol Pot, who massacred a quarter of the population in Cambodia, was educated in Paris and read his Rousseau.

So if you get a grip on Rousseau’s thinking, you have a key to understanding much of the modern world.

What exactly was it that made his worldview so revolutionary? Rousseau said the way to grasp the essence of human nature was to hypothesize what we would be like if we were stripped of all social relationships, morals, laws, customs, traditions—of civilization itself.

This original, pre-social condition he called the “state of nature.” In it, all that exists are lone, disconnected, autonomous individuals, whose sole motivating force is the desire for selfpreservation—what Rousseau called self-love (amour de soi). Social relationships are not ultimately real; instead they are secondary or derivative, created by individual choice.

What did that mean for Rousseau’s view of society? If our true nature is to be autonomous individuals, then society is contrary to our nature: It is artificial, confining, oppressive. That’s why Rousseau’s most influential work, The Social Contract, opens with the famous line, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

He did not mean chains of political oppression, as we Americans might think: For Rousseau, the really oppressive relationships were personal ones like marriage, family, church, and workplace.

This line of thought represented a stark break from traditional Christian social theory, which takes the Trinity as the model of social life. The picture of ultimate origins given in the Bible is not one of disconnected solitary individuals wandering under the trees in a state of nature. Instead, the picture is one of a couple—male and female—related from the beginning in the social institution of marriage, forming the foundation of social life.

The implication of the doctrine of the Trinity is that relationships are just as ultimate or real as individuals; they are not the creation of autonomous individuals, who can make or break them at will. Relationships are part of the created order and thus are ontologically real and good. The moral requirements they make on us are not impositions on our freedom but rather expressions of our true nature.

By participating in the civilizing institutions of family, church, state, and society, each with its own “common good,” we fulfill our social nature and develop the moral virtues that prepare us for our ultimate purpose, which is to become citizens of the Heavenly City.

This explains why it was so revolutionary when Rousseau proposed that individuals are the sole ultimate reality. He denounced civilization, with its social conventions, as artificial and oppressive.

And what would liberate us from this oppression?
The state.

The state would destroy all social ties, releasing the individual from loyalty to anything except itself. Rousseau spelled out his vision with startling clarity: “Each citizen would then be completely independent of all his fellow men, and absolutely dependent on the state.”

No wonder his philosophy inspired so many totalitarian systems."

(From Total Truth)

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

@NancyRPearcey Richard of St. Victor’s “On the Trinity” is a magnificent articulation of God’s necessarily triune nature. Relationships are foundational to creation because they first exist in God Himself.

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

Ramsey and Cruze are professed Christians. Christianity views divorce as grievously wrong and rarely justified. Dave and Rachel are right to reject this absurd idea. It’s economics devoid of morality, and anyone paying attention should realize by now the two cannot be separated.

[fortunate @Fortunate_hm]

Dave Ramsey suggests a caller tell their kid no instead of getting a legal divorce to save $100,000 on out-of-state college tuition

Co-host: ​Should my wife and I get a divorce so we can change one of our permanent residences to that state and keep the other permanent residence in our state? Doing so would save us over $100,000 by paying in-state tuition for both kids. My wife and I love each other very much, and the paperwork wouldn't change our relationship."

​"I think if you can't afford the out-of-state tuition, y'all can't afford the college."

​Dave Ramsey: Oh, here's an idea. Tell your kid no. Oh, there's a shocking concept. Before you divorce your wife, maybe you just tell your kid no."

​"How about no? You can't go to school over there. No. That's a lot easier. Dude, you're weird

[Josh Billinson @jbillinson]

Florida to California via the Moon is a domestic flight until another country proves otherwise

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

No lies detected

[Roman Helmet Guy @romanhelmetguy]

Ok so everyone in the West was Christian for 1000+ years, and that Christianity gave us our moral intuitions, but then 18th century philosophers stopped believing in Christ while still retaining those moral intuitions, so they came up with a bunch of semi logical secular principles that kinda justified those moral intuitions, but all their ethical frameworks had extremely unintuitive radical implications if taken seriously, and now 21st century philosophers are removed enough from Christian society to take them seriously, so now they’re trying to reshape society around those radical implications, and they just happen to be best friends and fuck buddies with the guys making killer robots, so now this radical pseudo religious cult has been given control of killer robots and we’re all gonna die.

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

@megbasham To carelessly make accusations about professors' motivations is going to galvanize their opposition and make it harder for those who agree with you and support your work.

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

@megbasham I personally know teachers at Biola who are aware of people's concerns, who know things have to change, and who are actively working to get activist elements out of the university. They know your work and appreciate it.

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

I read about an agency called N.I.C.E. one time and long story short the rebrand would be worse

[Bo Loudon @BoLoudon]

🚨BREAKING: President Trump is being urged to rename “I.C.E.” to “N.I.C.E” so the mainstream media would be forced to say “NICE Agents.”

N.I.C.E = National Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This push is coming from viral posts on social media.

Follow: @BoLoudon

[John W. Burge @JohnWBurge]

@ericmetaxas What you believe determines how you behave and ultimately who you become.