Why the State Won’t Tolerate Independence for Christianity

From Zachary Yost on Mises.org (Mar. 11, 2021):

On February 25, the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, a bill that is touted as a step forward for civil rights in the United States. If enacted, the bill would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the federally protected classes that cannot be discriminated against and would expand where such protections are applied. While expanding such protections is not necessarily widely opposed (Mormon Republican Chris Stewart has introduced the Fairness for All Act as an alternative bill), the act explicitly says that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 cannot be invoked, and this has generated tremendous concern that both private businesses and religious institutions will be forced to toe the current cultural line regarding sexual and gender ideology, or else face discrimination suits and be sued into oblivion.

Organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and Christianity Today have argued against the bill on the basis of its effects on religious institutions, private schools, the legal rights of parents, and women’s athletics. While a discussion of such effects is important, the conversation has largely been missing the broader context of where this legislation and the numerous other proposals like it emerge from.

In his important essay “The Balance of Power in Society” sociologist Frank Tannenbaum argues that “society is possessed by a series of irreducible institutions, perennial through time, that in effect both describe man and define the basic role he plays.” These perennial institutions are the state, the church, the family, and the market. These institutions have eternally striven against each other to gain dominance and become what sociologist Robert Nisbet would call the primary reference group for its members, meaning the primary way in which they understand themselves and shape their beliefs and actions. At various times we can see one group coming to dominate the others, such as when the “trustee” form of family dominated social life in clan-based societies, or when the Roman Catholic Church exhibited tremendous power over the political affairs of Europe. Currently, we live in an epoch where the state has come to dominate social life to an extent never previously seen in human history.

It is useful to analyze the Equality Act from this perspective to truly understand its full implications. State hostility towards religion and the religious institutions through which religion is exercised is not driven solely, or in some cases even primarily, by the current secular zeitgeist. Rather, religion and religious institutions represent a major obstacle to the exercise of state control and the centralization of social power. In the Western context, orthodox Christianity especially poses a threat to this agenda due to its adherents’ membership in a kingdom “not of this world.” It is difficult for the immanent state to compete to be the primary reference for people who, by virtue of their religion, are members of a transcendent order.

However, it cannot be denied that the state has been very successful in undermining and sapping the power of religious institutions through two different means. The first is by expropriating those mundane areas of social responsibility and function that have traditionally been the purview of the church, such as charity and education. While churches are still involved in such things, the state has supplanted them as the primary social institution that provides them.

As Nisbet argues in his book The Quest for Community, a social group cannot survive for long if its chief functional purpose is lost, and unless new institutional functions are adapted, the group’s “psychological influence will be minimal.” No doubt the state has succeeded in centralizing so much power due to its success in poaching the historical functions of the church and family.

I noted above that in the Western context the emphasis of orthodox Christianity on transcendental concerns has proven to be a stumbling block to the state when it comes to becoming citizens’ primary reference group. However, the state has also attempted to muscle into that territory as well. Earlier I classified the state and the church as being two different institutions with separate functions. While this is often true, especially in the West due to the Augustinian formulation of the City of God and the Earthly City, in various times in history the functions have been unified.

In his work The Political Religions, political theorist Eric Voegelin explored this idea and traced its earliest sophisticated formulation back to Amenhotep IV/Akhenaton, a fourteenth-century BC pharaoh who temporarily upended Egyptian civilization by abolishing the old deities and introducing the monotheistic worship of the sun god Aton. By abolishing the old gods (references to traditional deities were eradicated and Amenhotep changed his name so that it no longer referenced the old god Amon), the newly named Akhenaton also abolished the old priesthood as well. What was new and innovative about Aton was that he was not just a limited god of Egypt, but in fact the god of the universe, who speaks and acts through his son, the Pharaoh. By obliterating the old gods such as Osiris, Voegelin argued that Akhenaton abolished those aspects of the Egyptian religion that were of the utmost importance to individuals, such as judgment and life after death, and replaced them only with a collective political religion of empire. This inability to fulfill the spiritual needs of the people, combined with the reaction of the defrocked priestly caste, led to backlash and restoration of the old order after the death of Akhenaton, when it was his turn to be obliterated from history.

Voegelin traces this idea of political religion through the ages and argues that Christianity, through the work of Augustine, seriously upended “the cosmos of the divinely analogous state” by subordinating the political-temporal sphere to the spiritual one. For hundreds of years this understanding dominated medieval Europe, but with the advent of the Enlightenment began to crack apart under a succession of philosophers, most notably Thomas Hobbes with his conception of the Leviathan state. However, Voegelin notes that over time, as the world has secularized, the political religions have closed themselves off to claims of being the conduit for God’s action on earth and instead have come to embody immanent forces such as “the order of history” or “the order of blood.” Metaphysics and religion have been banished in favor of a vocabulary of “science” that is “inner-worldly” and therefore closed off to what Voegelin would call the ground of being through which humans experience transcendent reality.

In the United States, our political religion takes the form of progressivism, which itself is the product of Protestant clergy who abandoned orthodoxy in the nineteenth century in favor of an immanent ideology in which the US would serve as the instrument to build God’s kingdom on earth. In his essay “The Progressive Era and the Family,” Murray Rothbard traces this movement to the rise of what he terms “evangelical pietism” and the way in which it altered traditional doctrine to require that man work for his own salvation by working for the salvation of the rest of the world through its immanent reformation.

The song “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was one product of this way of thinking and, in the words of one Voegelin scholar, its author “transforms Christ’s redemptive mission—which is not of this world—into the world immanent social activism of the Anti‑Slavery movement.” Rather than waiting for Christ to return, when he shall establish a new heaven and a new earth, the progressive creed held that it is the job of every true Christian to redeem the fallen world and to build God’s kingdom on earth right now. The Civil War was understood as one such redemptive episode (complete with a martyr in the form of Abe Lincoln), as was the First World War. In his book The War for Righteousness, historian Richard M. Gamble documents the way in which Progressive Protestant clergy led the charge to bring the US into the war with hopes of redeeming the world. Like Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson was perceived as a tragic martyr for the cause and was viewed with clearly religious veneration.

While the American political religion began by attempting to build the kingdom of God on earth, it has, in Voegelin’s term, ended up as an “inner-worldly” religion that does not even attempt to maintain a connection to the transcendent order of reality, and instead justifies itself as being the conduit through which the inexorable march of “progress” flows forth. Democracy and equality, not the return of Christ, are the new end of history.

The end result is that the state seeks to not only supplant religious institutions by usurping their mundane functions but by usurping their spiritual functions as well. Like the priests of Akhenaton’s day, American religious institutions, especially orthodox Christian ones, are both a competing pole of social power and the manifestation of a rival religion that must be subdued if the “State-God,” in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, is to prevail.

In this context, with legislation like the Equality Act the state is not only seeking to further erode the social power of religious institutions by making religious education or adoption more difficult, but it is also advancing a rival religious doctrine at the same time by foisting progressive sexual and gender ideology on society.

It is likely that the Equality Act will not manage to pass the Senate in its current form, but the reality of the situation is that as long as the progressive political religion remains a potent force in American life, independent repositories of social power such as the family and the church will continually be under sustained attack. We can only hope that one day progressivism will meet the same fate that Aton did after the passing of Akhenaton, but until then, those who do not adhere to the cult of the “State-God” can only resist its impositions as best we can. [source]

The Left doesn’t want independence for Christianity (or Judaism for that matter) but independence for Islam is fine. But appeasing the Islamists only gets you slavery or death. They don’t want to assimilate with any country that is not Islamic.

By Compensating Slave Owners, Great Britain Negotiated a Peaceful End to Slavery

From Mises.org (Sept. 8, 2022):

The 2018 announcement that the British government completed the payment of a loan that was borrowed to compensate slave owners for the abolition of slavery continues to evoke a flurry of emotions. Many find it outrageous that the British government would contemplate compensating planters rather than the enslaved. Such responses are expected because people are using current moral standards to judge historical realities.

But an appreciation of the sociopolitical events surrounding the loan suggests that compensating planters was a feasible alternative at the time. English laws and customs placed a premium on protecting the rights of property owners, and slaves were considered property. The idea of owning people today seems abhorrent; however, this was not always the case. In British colonies, planters fiercely guarded their right to acquire slaves and appropriate their labor.

Questioning the right to own property provoked contention, even when the property was a human being. This was also the case in the context of indentureship in Barbados, where white indentured workers were perceived as property and could be inherited. British colonies in the West Indies valued autonomy and often resented Britain’s involvement in West Indian affairs.

As a result, when dealing with West Indian colonies, the British government had to tread carefully or face the wrath of the powerful British West India interest. The concerns of West Indian planters were voiced by proslavery parliamentarians in England, who were unwilling dissolve the plantation system without a fight. Politics is futile without compromise, so to abolish slavery, the British government had no option but to negotiate with proslavery forces who saw abolition as a violation of property rights.

Due to the primacy of property rights in England, proslavery lobbyists were able to galvanize the support of nonplanters by arguing that abolishing slavery without compensating property owners would more broadly erode protection for property rights. Their messages were carried by newspapers, journals, and pamphlets admonishing abolitionists for hesitating to compensate enslavers.

Contextualizing the case for compensation, Kathleen Mary Butler shows that the proslavery West India interest employed blackmail to guilt parliamentarians into granting compensation:

The interest argued that successive British governments had condoned and encouraged slave holding…. On several occasions, the Quarterly Review pointed out that various acts of Parliament had encouraged slave owners to spend vast sums of money to buy land and slaves. To deny them compensation, the Review believed constituted a “flagrant breach of faith.”

Jamaican planters weaponized the rhetoric of property rights with equal vigor to bolster the case for compensation. Radical journalist and reformer Augustin Hardin Beaumont, editor of the Jamaica Courant criticized slavery but still noted that enslavers deserved compensation because slavery was enabled by the British and hence it was only fair for British taxpayers to compensate West Indian planters. Throughout the West Indies, slave owners echoed the sentiment that abolishing slavery without compensation was unjust.

These views were so widespread that black slave owners were unwilling to part with slaves unless they received compensation. In 1831, free people of color in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, organized a meeting to flesh out the problems of abolition and its effect on property rights. The chairman of the meeting was the prosperous Benjamin Scott Moncrieff, a prominent official who possessed four hundred slaves, owned three estates, and served as an attorney for other properties.

Kathleen Mary Butler reveals that this community endorsed compensation as a tool to safeguard their property rights:

Those attending the meeting objected strongly to comments that Stephen Lushington, the British abolitionist, had allegedly made to the effect that in Jamaica the free people of color had authorized him to emancipate their slaves. The members categorically denied giving any such authorization and stressed their determination to defend their property and surrender it only “for the most full and ample compensation.”

In fact, their resolutions were published in Jamaican newspapers and sent to proslavery outlets in Britain. The historical accounts covered indicate that compensation was a creative strategy to placate enslavers who refused to cede authority to abolitionists. Absent compensation, abolition would have been delayed and blacks would have served remained in slavery for a longer time. Some feel that slaves deserved compensation, but bribing planters was the best tradeoff that the political climate could accommodate.

Yet despite the complexities of the decision, many think that the British owe blacks an apology. However, the truth is that the British atoned for their actions years ago. Britain in 1846 instituted the Aberdeen Act, which intercepted Brazilian ships suspected of trafficking Africans and prosecuted slave traders in British admiralty courts. Historians assert that maintaining the African Squadron alone came at the cost of $6.8 million and the lives of five thousand seamen and officers, who died primarily due to malaria, all in the name of suppressing the slave trade.

The cost of resourcing the African Squadron was also greater than the value of Britain’s trade with the continent. Suppressing the global slave trade incurred considerable expenses for the British, and few appreciate this bold political move that came at the expense of British taxpayers. Indeed, it is ironic that the British are instructed to atone for the slave trade when their counterparts in the Middle East and Africa were coerced into abolishing slavery due to Western directives. Compared to its peers, Britain was a moral superstar and should be lauded for taking a tough stance when others vacillated on the question of slavery. [source]

Those slaveowners were laying down a bunch of bull crap.

Tiny robots made from human cells heal damaged tissue

From Nature.com (Nov. 30, 2023):

Scientists have developed tiny robots made of human cells that are able to repair damaged neural tissue. The 'anthrobots' were made using human tracheal cells and might, in future, be used in personalized medicine.

The research "points the way to a 'tissue engineering 2.0' that synthetically controls a range of developmental processes", says Alex Hughes, a bioengineer at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Developmental biologist Michael Levin at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and his colleagues had previously developed tiny robots using clumps of embryonic frog cells. But the medical applications of these 'xenobots' were limited, because they weren't derived from human cells and because they had to be manually carved into the desired shape. The researchers have now developed self-assembling anthrobots and are investigating their therapeutic potential using human tissue grown in the laboratory. They published their  findings in Advanced Science.

Levin and his team grew spheroids of human tracheal skin cells in a gel for two weeks, before removing the clusters and growing them for one week in a less viscous solution. This caused tiny hairs on the cells called cilia to move to the outside of the spheroids instead of the inside. These cilia acted as oars, and the researchers found that the resulting anthrobots - each containing a few hundred cells - often swam in one of several patterns. Some swam in straight lines, others swam in circles or arcs, and some moved chaotically.

To test the anthrobots' therapeutic potential, Levin and his colleagues placed several into a small dish. There, the anthrobots fused together to form a 'superbot', which the researchers placed on a layer of neural tissue that had been scratched. Within three days, the sheet of neurons had completely healed under the superbot. This was surprising, says study co-author Gizem Gumuskaya, a developmental biologist also at Tufts, because the anthrobot cells were able to perform this repair function without requiring any genetic modification. "It's not obvious that you're going to get that kind of response," she says.

Going forward, Levin, Gumuskaya and their colleagues think anthrobots made from a person's own tissue could be used to clear arteries, break up mucus or deliver drugs, with or without genetic engineering. By combining several cell types and exploring other stimuli, it might also be possible to develop biobots - robots made from biological material - with potential applications in sustainable construction and outer-space exploration.

"Once we understand what cell collectives are willing and able to do, then we can begin to control that not just for stand-alone bots, but for regenerative medicine," says Levin, including to regrow limbs. [source]

Nice.

Senator: Biden Agency Used ‘Benghazi’ To Hide Emails On Planned Parenthood Loans

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 29):

The moment is etched in 21st century memory. The shrill voice of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, agitated and stretched, still rings in the ears. 

“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?” Clinton, with dreams of the White House dancing in her head, scolded Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., during an early 2013 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

The Wisconsin Republican had gotten under Clinton’s skin, asking her about the secretary’s slow response to a preventable attack in September 2012 on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Benghazi became a political lightning rod, the leading symbol of the Obama administration’s anemic, incompetent, and deceptive foreign policy, particularly Clinton’s ineffectual “Smart Power” strategy. More so, the committee investigating Benghazi opened the lock to Clinton’s emails, the secret server, and more Clinton lies and obfuscation that contributed to her stunning loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

So what on earth does Benghazi have to do with abortion factory Planned Parenthood? It appears to be the codename for cover-up involving some $90 million in taxpayer-funded Covid-era forgivable loans to a nonprofit organization ineligible to receive the government handout.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, is asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into why President Joe Biden’s Small Business Administration used “Benghazi” in the subject lines of internal communications regarding the funding. Ernst, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, asserts “Benghazi” is code for “the possible unlawful concealment and attempted concealment of federal records by President Biden’s Small Business Administration officials, and potentially their White House colleagues — a violation of the Federal Records Act.”

‘Benghazi (PPP/PPH) Decisions’

In a letter this week to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Ernst details the emails her office has obtained to date revealing that Biden officials, apparently led by the SBA’s top lawyer, developed strategies to explain how Planned Parenthood qualified for Paycheck Protection Program Loans.

An email from SBA General Council Peggy Hamilton, dated April 30, 2021, appears to be the first with the subject line, “Benghazi (PPP/PPH) Decisions” in the subject line. Note that the reference to the small business loan program and the abortion provider are in parentheses, making requests for communications about the Covid relief program nonresponsive, or not relevant to key records search terms. The agency arguably would not have to turn over the requested information because, understandably, “Benghazi” would not be in the Freedom of Information Act request.

Hamilton’s email was part of a months-long thread about Planned Parenthood’s SBA loans, as well as the abortion giant’s loan forgiveness requests.

“The context of Hamilton’s email, as subsequent SBA emails elucidate, is whether or not the Biden administration would require the repayment of COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans made to potentially ineligible Planned Parenthood affiliates and how the SBA would respond to Congressional inquiries over its decisions,” Ernst’s letter states.

The loans were meant for employers with less than 500 employees, designed to help cover the paychecks for employees of small businesses hit hard by the pandemic and the destructive government-ordered lockdowns that accompanied it. Republican lawmakers, upon learning of PPP loans going to to the abortion industrial complex, demanded President Donald Trump’s DOJ at the time investigate which Planned Parenthood facilities received forgivable loans.

“These Planned Parenthood entities self-certified eligibility for these loans despite the clear ineligibility under the statutory text of the CARES Act,” Republican senators wrote in a letter to then-Attorney General Bill Barr. The CARES Act was the first massive infusion of panic cash thrown about to deal with Covid and the fear attached to it.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America denied any wrongdoing, asserting that some independent operations were awarded loans under the “eligibility rules established by the CARES Act and the Small Business Administration (SBA).” [read more]

More Biden regime corruption...

Anthony Fauci adviser indicted by DOJ on charges of concealing COVID records

From NY Post.com (Apr. 28):

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has indicted a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci for allegedly destroying and concealing records from investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

David Morens, 78, has been charged with one count of conspiracy against the United States; two counts of destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; and two counts of concealment, removal, or mutilation of records.

The conspiracy also included an alleged “kickback” scheme where Morens took or was promised gifts — including wine bottles and meals at Michelin-starred restaurants — to conduct “official acts favorable” to a federal grantee.

The ex-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) official faces up to 51 years in federal prison if convicted of all charges.

The indictment, unsealed Monday in Maryland federal court, also notes two unnamed co-conspirators who “concealed, removed, destroyed and caused the concealment, and removal of federal records to evade FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] and FRA [Federal Records Act].”

Information in the indictment indicates the co-conspirators are Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of Manhattan-based non-profit EcoHealth Alliance, and Dr. Gerald Keusch, an associate director of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory Institute and National Institutes of Health (NIH) grantee.

Former House COVID Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup told The Post Tuesday that “additional indictments may follow.”

“The repercussions of these actions have caused significant damage to the public health system, and recovery may take considerable time due to the involvement of numerous individuals within various agencies,” he said. “The ongoing pursuit of justice is essential for the well-being of the American people.”

Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, added that “the evidence against the three is compelling.”

“Unless one or more flips and provides evidence against Fauci and others in exchange for immunity, all three should be, and likely will be, convicted,” said Ebright, who noted Keusch approved the first EcoHealth grant awarded to the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2002.

Fauci, who left government service in December 2022, is also referred to as “Senior NIAID Official 1” in multiple communications cited in the indictment — but not named as a co-conspirator. [read more]

So, this advisor is accused of "destroying and concealing records." That sounds similar to what Hillary Clinton did. Unlike, Clinton though, this advisor is being indicted. Good to see some justice. Too bad Fauci can't can't be held accountable since he was pardoned by the Demented One.

A video about Fauci and his misdeeds: Connecting the Dots Between Fauci, MKUltra, and JFK

Democrat melts down after Secretary Doug Burgum drops bombshell about NGOs during committee hearing

From The Blaze.com (Apr. 21):

Democrats had a meltdown during a committee hearing while grilling Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum on all of the programs he is attempting to shut down.

And no one was ready for his answer.

In a Monday House Committee Hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) asked for clarification on Burgum's proposed "complete elimination" of some programs in the Fish and Wildlife Service, including some state and tribal wildlife grants.

Burgum replied with a shocking statistic about where some "nongovernmental organizations" get their money.

"There was a review done of the grants," he said.

"And that is an area where there's been substantial review. We found organizations that were receiving grants from Interior where 80 to 100% of the revenue of that NGO was a grant from the federal government."

"And yet those organizations, we were the sole source of their revenue, but they would have a CEO making $650,000 and four $400,000 lobbyists," Burgum continued.

DeLauro stammered in reply: "It would be very interesting because we can't get any information. We may agree with you. Give us the reasons why all of these grants are cut, the organizations are cut. ... We just can't take your word." [source]

Gut away! Keep going!  You never hear the Left complaining about CEOs of NGOs (or for that matter labor unions) making huge salaries.

The Insanity of Denying Free Will

From Breakpoint.org (Nov. 20, 2023):

In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton observed that even insane explanations for the world can have a perverse consistency. A madman who thinks he’s the king of England has a ready explanation for anyone who denies his claim: They’re conspirators trying to keep him from his throne. “His mind,” wrote Chesterton, “moves in a perfect but narrow circle.”

Chesterton’s asylum example also applies to a recent article published at Phys.org about a scientist who has written a book to convince everyone that humans don’t have free will. Neuroendocrinologist and MacArthur “genius grant” winner Robert Sapolsky has studied people and primates for over 40 years. In his book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Dr. Sapolsky argues that humans are molecular machines, wholly determined by our genes, our environments, and our past. Thus, our behavior, even when condemned as criminal or evil, is no more a choice than “the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of our hearts.”

Of course, the implications if this were true would be incredible. As a Los Angeles Times reporter memorably put it:

This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane.

However, rather than justifying or enabling acts of violence, Sapolsky believes his deterministic view of human choices could actually make society better:

The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over. We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.

Sapolsky’s argument isn’t new. It is, in fact, the standard, reductive version of metaphysical naturalism, which teaches that all phenomena have material causes. Since these causes are themselves materially caused, nature is a closed system of dominoes. In this theory, an observer with perfect knowledge of the initial conditions of the universe could accurately predict every event that followed, right down to the choices individuals make about what to eat, where to live, who to love, what to believe, and even whether to kill.

The problem, which philosophers and writers over the years have pointed out, is that if everything is determined and humans do not have a free will, that would include the belief in metaphysical naturalism and every part of the thought process that led to it. Assuming this view, the reason Sapolsky believes what he does has nothing to do with what he has learned in his research or whether it’s true. Instead, it is the predetermined result of a long process of material causes stretching back to the Big Bang. His book, his arguments, and his belief that they’ll somehow make the world a better place are not meaningful. They’re just the latest dominoes to have fallen, and it could never have been otherwise.

In his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis critiqued this brand of reductive naturalism:

[N]o account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished.

To his credit, Sapolsky seems aware of this absurdity but just accepts it: “It is logically indefensible, ludicrous, meaningless to believe that something ‘good’ can happen to a machine,” he admits. “Nonetheless, I am certain that it is good if people feel less pain and more happiness.”

But why is it good for people to be happier or have less pain if everything is determined? Why is it preferable to live in a society marked by peace and safety, instead of chaos and violence? And why appeal to people to make a meaningful choice between these options when their choice is already determined and meaningless? 

Chesterton’s answer to such small, reductive worldviews was to confront them with the immensity of the real world and human experience, and to notice how they do more explaining away than explaining.

We know our choices are not mere results of physical processes, and that they have a deep moral significance. We know it so deeply that even those trying to convince us we’re mere machines must contradict themselves by treating some choices, such as their choice to write books to convince readers, as if they mean something.

In the very act of denying our moral responsibility in a moral universe, we must, in some sense, act as if meaning exists. It’s a crazy effort to deny meaning, but that doesn’t stop even geniuses from trying it. All the more evidence of our profound freedom, and of our ability to abuse it. [source]