Jack Stanley Call, PhD

Janitor and President of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychedelic Christianity, retired philosophy professor, LA Angels fan

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

@BuzzPatterson Good students dream this occasionally the rest of their lives. Bad students live it and think nothing of it.

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

She gets it.

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

We are a Christian nation, but for the opposite reason the authoritarian Christian Nationalist crew, and even more comically the integralists, think we are.

What makes us a Christian nation is that the founders placed a jurisdictional boundary between church and state. Not to protect the state from the church, but to protect the church from the state and more importantly to preserve the free conscience of man.

It is a jurisdictional boundary between the spiritual kingdom and the temporal one.

And it’s not something the founders invented from thin air.

It came from Christ Himself.

The coin bears Caesar’s image. But man bears God’s image.

The coin is Caesar’s. The soul is God’s.

Our founders accomplished politically what even the Reformers could not. They translated the Christian distinction between temporal and spiritual authority into a constitutional structure. They made the principle that your conscience is not the property of a king, pope, bishop, magistrate or political majority part of our national covenant.

That achievement was imperfect at first. Some states retained religious tests and establishments. But the federal Constitution refused to nationalize any of them. Article VI prohibited religious tests for federal office, and the First Amendment denied Congress jurisdiction to establish religion or prohibit its free exercise.

And it rested upon a profoundly Christian understanding of the limits of human authority.

God alone is sovereign. Civil power is delegated, not absolute. Government can restrain evil, punish violence and protect the innocent. It cannot regenerate the human heart. It can compel outward conformity, but it can never produce faith. It can manufacture hypocrites, but it cannot manufacture Christians.

The church was protected from political control because the Gospel was too important to become an instrument of the state.

The authoritarian Christian Nationalist gets this backward. He believes America becomes more Christian when Caesar acquires greater power over religion. But Christianity teaches us the opposite. It teaches us that Caesar is Christian only when he recognizes that he is not God.

The integralist gets it backward too. He treats the separation of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction as an abandonment of Christianity, when that distinction begins with Christ Himself. He would prove Christianity’s political authority by dismantling one of Christianity’s greatest contributions to the political order: the denial that any human institution possesses total jurisdiction over man.

America’s Christian character is not found in giving the government power to proclaim a favored theology and punish dissenters. It is found in a covenantal order that recognizes Creator-endowed rights, limits civil authority, divides power and leaves the conscience where it belongs: accountable directly to God.

That doesn’t mean all religions are true. It means civil government lacks the authority and competence to decide religious truth by force.

America is a Christian nation because its constitutional order embodies the Christian truth that power is limited, faith cannot be coerced and Caesar has no rightful claim on the soul.

The Christian state is not the state that seizes God’s authority.

It is the state that kneels before God by remaining within its own.

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

@DefiyantlyFree Well said!

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

Thank God.

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

Psychedelic Christianity doesn’t say anything new about Christianity. It says something new about psychedelic experience, namely, that it confirms the central truth of Christianity that the worst thing you can imagine turns into the best thing you can imagine.

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

@HawkEmDownChris Bobby Richardson

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

@Angels @WatchABTV @AngelsRadioKLAA @FBMSupply Why is Neto batting lead off?

[Andrew Anderson @uscfan981]

If we’re being honest, Rob Manfred is the worst commissioner that the MLB has ever had. Blacked out all local teams from their fans. You’ll get lucky to see 3 games a year now. However, it doesn’t really matter. There’s no laws. It’s the Wild West. The Dodgers have bought everyone. It’s time to replace this incompetent piece of garbage.

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

@DarkoStateNews In other words, perfect for the Dodgers.

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

@PHXFansAZ Wayne Randazzo is conceited and a lousy announcer.

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

@amandafortini Best post on this topic!

[Tom 365 @tom_tml]

I’m not halo basher by any means, however, I’m over Jorge Soler. He is taking up a spot in the line up. I would rather give the at bat to Guzman, Grissom, Peraza or Moore. It’s time to stop watching him K and roll over. #Angels

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

@walterkirn Yes. What has already happened is still happening. What hasn’t happened yet but will happen is already happening. What hasn’t happened ever will never happen.

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

Excellent advice!

[Shahriq Khan @RealShahriqKhan]

God actually calls us out in Matthew 7 when He says, “Don't give dogs what is holy and don't throw your pearls before swine.”

(Ironically the two most haram animals. But that's not important.)

What is important is you can't give something valuable to someone who isn't ready to accept it.

So, we're in this post pandemic, digital evangelism era now, right? And most people trying to reach Muslims are preaching the cross way too soon. 

If you lead with “Jesus died for your sins,” you're not preaching to them, you're triggering them. They're not intentionally rejecting truth - they're rejecting a message that their mental framework won't even let them hear yet.

So if you want to reach Muslims, stop swinging at weak spots, stop poking at Muhammad and what he did wrong. You want to build Islam up stronger than they've ever believed it, and then show them how it falls. That's how I was discipled. 

Start in Genesis, not John. You can show how Muhammad wasn't an Ishmaelite, how Abraham never built the Kaaba, how the Quran rewrites the entire tabernacle system, and how prophets are recycled with broken timelines. You don't even need the New Testament to debunk Islam. Let the Old Testament expose the cracks.

Jesus wasn't telling us to be harsh with our evangelism. He was telling us to be wise. And so if somebody's only here to trample the truth: You're not planting seeds. You are literally wasting your pearls.

So, don't preach just to prove that you're bold. Preach with a strategy and preach with a sequence. And preach like you want to win a soul and a human being, not just a comment section.

[Dr. Scott M. Sullivan @DrScotMSullivan]

If the self is an illusion, then who is being fooled?

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

The problem is not that soundness is a low bar. The problem is that whether an argument is sound is usually a question beyond the scope of logic alone to resolve. I can easily imagine that a theist might have been reduced to the simple argument of your example, where the premise and the conclusion are identical, through frustration at his lack of success in persuading a skeptic by using arguments that presumably met your higher bar. "Yes, I would have thought," he might say, " that in each case the skeptic could have come to know the argument is sound by reflecting on each premise--it seemed clear enough to me-- but unfortunately he still didn't agree. After all, sufficient reflection on the conclusion alone should have convinced him." And likewise for the atheist and his argument.
And I imagine this is more likely the less trivial both the arguer and the skeptic believe the conclusion to be. If the conclusion is trivially true, an argument whose single premise is identical to the conclusion will satisfy your proposed higher bar.

As for your objection to my saying that no one should ever be persuaded by an unsound argument, my reply is that when something unusual happens, so that a premise that was very well supported turns out to be false, what one finds out is that one shouldn't have been persuaded after all, that one sometimes is persuaded by an unsound argument, but not that one sometimes should be persuaded by an unsound argument.

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

Soundness is not a low bar. It is the highest bar for an argument. People often disagree about whether an argument is sound. Then further arguments are required to resolve the disagreement if possible. No one should ever believe that an unsound argument is sound.

[Joshua Rasmussen @worldviewdesign]

Theists should think this argument is sound:
1. God exists.
2. Therefore, God exists.

Atheists should think this argument is sound:
1. There is no god.
2. Therefore, there is no god.

Soundness is a low bar. An important bar, but there are higher ones. https://t.co/3BeCJ1dzFK

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

@jeromekelly Ha ha! Let me know when it happens.

[Jack Stanley Call, PhD @JackStanleyCall]

What has already happened is still happening, and what hasn’t happened yet but will happen is already happening. What never happened is what will never happen.