John C. Wright's Blog, page 81
February 18, 2014
On Martian Vampires
Here is a question I never tire of answering, albeit I am sure others grow tired of hearing it answered:
Let me start out by mentioning that I am a faithful Catholic. I believe in the empty tomb, and I accept that your revelation was the genuine article. I just can’t shake the sense that there is a flaw in the argument “An apparently supernatural event occurred (whether resurrection or revelation), therefore the event was the work of God.”
So, to be clear, I am largely coming from a Devil’s Advocate position here. I don’t actually believe the Resurrection was the work of Martian Vampires. I am trying to understand why an omnipotent god is a logically superior explanation to a potent god.
It doesn’t seem to me that my argument applies in general circumstances like you describe (me-as-robot, or discarding any conclusions in any field), because the hypothetical trickster that I’m talking about is definitely an inferior explanation, IF a non-supernatural alternative exists. In other words, I’m not saying that magical tricksters provide a superior explanation to general observations, I’m saying that they might provide a superior explanation to the existence of an omnipotent God.
[quoting me] A theory that does not contain an ad hoc entity, created only for the sake of argument and abandoned immediately thereafter, is weightier than one that does.
But don’t both theories contain an ad hoc entity? The difference is that yours is infinite and mine is finite. Further, your theory includes the existence of supernatural, superintelligent entities who are hellbent on spreading deceit.
Also, please don’t feel any obligation to indulge this thread any further. I know you’ve got more important things to do with your time.
No, I do not have anything more important to do with my time. I am not a novelist who philosophizes, I am a philosopher who writes novels. You are asking me a philosophical question about a matter of the deepest possible seriousness on the loftiest imaginable topic. I am delighted to write to you. I hope only I do not bore or offend you with my enthusiasm for philosophy.
Let us deal with your points in order:
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
February 17, 2014
Book Review: STORY AND YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS by Ted Chiang
This is a reprint of my review, which I posted to Amazon.com, of Ted Chiang’s STORY OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS. It was written a few years ago, back when I was an atheist:
(WARNING! I am a science-fiction writer in economic competition with Mr. Chiang. All my gripes must be taken with a grain of salt.)
Eight well-crafted stories with engaging and interesting ideas are marred by weak endings. Each story ends with tepid pessimism.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Warren Defies the Empire of Lies
David Warren tells of the profound lesson he learned on a filthy, stinking, overcrowded traincar in India many years ago.
For the next eight hours we rolled towards Raxaul, on the Nepalese frontier. I did not share a language with these people, who tried to address me in their musical Bengali, then included me in their glances after giving up on speech. While clearly allowing that I came from another planet, they adopted me for the duration of their trip. When they produced chapatis and fishpaste out of a battered tin container, I was casually offered my share; and one of the little boys fell asleep on my lap. They were ragged people, there were lice in the boy’s hair; they were ludicrously poor, and I the pampered child of Canadian parents (who could wire home for money if I ever really needed it). For only these few hours, we lived, this extended family and I, in a state of equality.
…
This by way of explaining what I learnt on that cattle-car. It was something which contradicted everything I, as a product of the post-industrial West, had expected about human nature. Without ever having been told in so many words, I had come to believe that people who live in poverty and squalor must be miserable and in some sense, oppressed. And surely the pressure and uncertainty of migration would make this all the more oppressive. Let me concede this may well be the case, for the migrant or refugee who is alone. Yet these people were profoundly contented and — I shall never deny this — profoundly free. They were — all of them, but especially that serene, pregnant woman, at the centre of them all — quite possibly the happiest people I had ever met, to my tender age of eighteen. They seemed to exist perfectly for each other.
Please by all means read the whole thing:http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2014/02/15/breeding-instructions-revisited/
I want to make a comment on the ending of the article, but it would be a crime against letters for me to quote out of context that powerful crescendo of the essayists art.
It is a crime I must commit in order for my comment to make sense, but all I can do by way of penance is is ask, nay, beg the reader not to read any further until you have clicked the link and read the essay in its full and subtle power.
Please do not click below the link until you have read this short essay. It is but a few paragraphs, but worth the five minutes it will take to read.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
February 14, 2014
Losing Religion II
John Derbyshire, a celebrated columnist for the National Review, and honestly a favorite writer of mine, recently published an essay exploring his apostasy. Raised Anglican, while he finds he might still believe in a remote and unconcerned divinity (perhaps like the watchmaker of the Deists) he can no longer take the tenants of Christianity seriously. He stopped going to church in 2004.
I cannot sum up his views with any justice because I don’t understand them. Read the whole thing.
The article is interesting to me because he and I, of course, are two intellectuals passing each other going opposite directions. I am a recent convert after being a lifelong atheist. He and I did not walk with road with the same level of interest.
By his own admission, he is and always was a Laodicean: he was lukewarm and the Lord spewed him from his mouth.
Now he confesses there is a mystery to the universe, perhaps the remote and disinterested deities of Lucretius or a Deist might deduce: but the existence or nonexistence of the dispassionate Unmoved Mover moves no one to controversy or passion.
On the other hand, I was a zealous and forthright atheist, dedicated and tireless in the cause of uprooting a vile and craven superstition. I was the brightest of the Brights. His approach, both to religion when he was religious and to agnosticism when he is agnostic, seem to be the opposite of mine: not analytical, not curious, not inquiring, not argumentative.
Hence, no one is less qualified to understand and comment upon his reminiscences than I am: if you wish to read informed and insightful thoughts on his essay, read no further. I cannot understand him. I cannot understand how anyone could approach so deep a question with such nonchalance.
Mr. Derbyshire has admitted philosophical speculations bore him. We can see the evidence of this in what he lists as the causes of his departure from the fold.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Hoyt Defies the Empire of Lies
On the feast day of St. Catherine de Ricci, an Incorruptable, Feb 13, Sarah A Hoyt has penned a fascinating piece on the decision to speak the truth while dwelling in the Empire of Lies: http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/02/13/and-shame-the-devil/
To speak or not to speak?
Imagine that you are in a situation where everything you hear around you, all the points of accepted truth are carefully manufactured from above. From your own experience, from the things you’ve seen yourself, you know that they’re not true.
Can you say anything?
Of course you can’t. People will think you’re crazy. In fact, you might start thinking you’re crazy yourself.
For years I seesawed on this point. I knew that there were things I’d seen, things I’d lived through that no one in the US would believe if told (I imagine it’s much like someone who is for a democratic government in the Arab world now trying to tell the truth in the US about the Arab Spring. Even with blogs, unless he’s very lucky, people will think he’s crazy or a supporter of a repressive regime. Because everyone they hear about the Arab Spring tells them how chocolatesprinklesawesome it was. And how it was populist and pro-democracy.) Heck, most people in Portugal, save the few who’d been there with me would believe it. And even SOME of those had gone into believing in the official version. Because it’s easier. Because then you don’t feel crazy. And even if you can’t bring yourself to believe in it, you talk as if you do, in public, because you don’t want anyone to think you’re crazy.
This subtle disconnect followed me to the US, where I found that to get ahead in life you needed to be as far left as you could be, or at least make noises like you were, and yet where every single TV show and TV report and book and magazine shouted that the left was downtrodden and the right firmly in control of government and everything else. Oh, and the rich were all right wing. (Guys, for those people who are my age, this was never the truth. Not even in Europe. The rich are more likely to be extreme left. And it’s not guilt. It’s that they know what is the end result of communism: a sort of techno feudalism. They want that. In its end stage, communism is a complete reversal of the anti-nobility revolutions of the eighteenth century. And that’s why the upper classes support it. By their fruits, etc, as a wise man once said.)
By all means read the whole thing.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
HASTEN FORTH AND PURCHASE JUDGE OF AGES
Having been puzzled and annoyed by the less than stellar review eructated by Kirkus for JUDGE OF AGES, I thought it only fair to give the opposing point of view by someone more qualified to have an opinion, our own Deiseach. What follows is an intermediate review (written before she reached the end of the book) and then a final review:
Dear Mr Wright, I go off-topic to express my delight with “Judge of Ages”, the most recent volume of the “Count to a Trillion” series.
I am still only half-way through it, and I spent my time reading equally divided between laughter and “WHAT????”
I can certainly say I never saw the plot convolutions coming.
Menelaus is as wonderful as ever 
I definitely see the family resemblance between him and Scipio, though I fear I may be racking up the time in Purgatory between the pair of them and their oaths as I’m mentally voicing them as I read – as Chaucer says in “The Parson’s Tale”:
For cristes
Sake, ne swereth nat so synfully in dismembrynge
of crist by soule, herte, bones, and
Body.
Though I am glad to apprehend Menelaus’ tasteful restraint – indeed, more than 2% of the interior of the Earth would be ostentatious and over-the-top
Dear Sir Guiden: were you not already a happily true-married man, I would be throwing myself at you. There were tears and smiles as I read Oenoe’s account of how she fell in love with her husband.
Dear Mickey the Witch: as a person of a spherical contour of bodily form myself, I appreciate the cunning use to which you put your superfluity of tissue. Also, I agree: the best way to sum up what Menelaus and his opponents are doing is “magic” 
I’m probably way off here, but did I detect the slightest hint of jealousy in Exarchel about Menelaus giving Mickey a nickname? Almost as if it/he were thinking “I’m the only one he gives a nickname! I’m his Blackie!”
Good grief: between the double-, triple- and quadruple-backstabbing and intrigue, and the fact that Menelaus planned most or all of this, I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen next, and I love every minute of it.
Also! You are making me like your characters! Soorm is charming, if one can say that of a Hormagaunt (licking up the brains and all), and dash my wig, if Reyes y Pastor died in defence of the Blessed Sacrament, I’ll have to pray for his soul. I already like Ximen much too much. And Illiance was already the best of a bad lot, so what you did with him – grrr, can a girl not have at least one villain to boo and hiss?
Can I please assume (not yet having come to the end of the book) that Naar at least comes to a sticky end? I don’t like Naar one bit, and if he reforms and all, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.
Finally, I appreciate your use of language. The names you give the Hermeticists (and others) are beautiful; they may be villains and rogues and traitors to humanity, but they have such absolutely lovely names: Sarmento i Illa d’Or is a scoundrel, but his name is gorgeous to say and to see.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
February 11, 2014
THE HOBBIT: The Desolation of Tolkien
I loved the first Hobbit movie and hated, hated, hated the second. It was stupid on every level of stupidity. It is rightly to be called THE DESOLATION OF TOLKIEN.
Before swan-diving into the sewer of total stupidity that is the DESOLATION movie, my intractable Southern courtesy requires that I say something good about this movie. Well, as it happens, there was not just one thing good about this movie, there were three: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, and Richard Armitage. They played their parts so well, that I feel I have met the real Gandalf, Bilbo and Thorin.
Sylvester McCoy did his best with what he was given, but the movie maker put bird poop in his hair. Which is not, come to think of it, so very different from what the movie maker did to us, his audience. This was to make Rhadaghast the Brown, the divine and august Istari who journeyed from the Blessed Lands beyond the Uttermost West to aid Middle Earth in its dark hour, to be as silly-looking a human whoopee cushion as possible.
On to what I hated with a nerdrageous passion that knows no sense of proportion: let us start at the beginning.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
A message from the Beautiful and Talented Mrs. Wright
I was asked to write a Story Behind the Story article for my novel PROSPERO REGAINED. I had great fun doing it and the site loved it.
Should any of you wish to read it, here is the link:
http://upcoming4.me/news/book-news/story-behind-prospero-regained-by-l-jagi-lamplighter
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Question for the Readers
Someone has asked me to submit some of the essays I have written here at my journal site for publication. I am a little at a loss, since I am not sure what is good and what is forgettable.
To any loyal reader with an opinion, therefore, allow me to solicit it. I’d like your help to make the decision. I have ten years of material here. Which essays stuck in your mind? Which do you think should be published?
(And maybe we can have a professional editor go through and correct the spelling errors…)
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
February 7, 2014
Modern Feudalism
A reader labeled Tenkev writes:
I agree with much of this essay; but, I would like to point out an area where I disagree; or, rather, which you left out of you analysis.
As you pointed out, two of the main causes of poverty are unchastity and gluttony. Surely you are correct in this. There are also laziness, excessive risk-taking, lack of foresight, gullibility and foolishness. But it is not enough to say that most poverty is caused by sin and character flaws. We are responsible for our brothers in all their imperfection.
I think the problem is not that men are not capable of providing labor equal to the wage necessary to raise a family; as you say, most able-bodied men are; but, rather, that they are incapable of managing the rest of their lives. As the proverb says, a fool and his money are quickly departed. This is especially true today with the failure of modern culture to guide our lives reasonably.
The problem I see with our modern economic/political structure is the assumed absolute sovereignty for every-non criminal person. With maximum liberty comes maximum responsibility, and there is a great mass of people who cannot handle this level of responsibility. Not every man is noble. There is nothing shameful in admitting this. It is a fact of life. Now it is extremely important not to take this fact too far; but, it is also important to recognize it and plan for it. This means developing a hierarchical structure of power similar to a feudal power architecture; where those prone to foolish decision making have a loving, paternal, individual authority to guide their decisions (in a limited scope) and with this authority comes a responsibility for care in tough times and a claim to a small share of the labor in normal times.
My comment: It has been a long time since I have heard anyone make an argument in favor of hierarchical feudalism. I salute you for your boldness.
I am a Virginian, and so find myself in deep mistrust to any man who would place one class of man above another for any reason. Sic semper tyrannis, and all that, ya’ll. The only king to which we gentlemen of Virginia will ever bow is one that walks on water. Be damned to any man who says he is born my better, and be me damned if I say any man is born my lesser.
And yet…
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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