@alvins52
Person who writes, plays music, plays video games, and is overly obsessed with ideas he can't wrap his head around. Agnostic nontheist. Exvangelical. Pretend existentialist. Leftist or something. 🖊: alvins52.wordpress.com 🎸: youtube.com/hatredapathy52
Mark Kelly: "I said something that was pretty simple and non-controversial, and that was that members of the military should follow the law. In response to that, Trump said I should be executed, I should be hanged ... it says a lot more about him than it says about me. I'm not going to be silenced."
Perhaps Democrats should come up with some sort of a "New Deal" for the American people. It might be popular.
This offers Democrats the greatest gift you can have in American politics: a second chance. I am now an 81-year-old man and I know that in the minds of many, I carry the torch from a so-called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic Party must now run on the most Populist economic platform since the Great Depression. It is time for Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic and altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage. This is our only way out of the abyss.
James Carville, in his NYT Op-ed, says it's time for Democrats to "embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic, and altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage. The most populist platform since the Great Depression."
I can dig it.
Resistance. Reformation. Revolution.
Inspiring Philosophy encounters Sheng Tsai and accuse him of failing to steelman their arguments, while completely painting his entire critique as an argument in favour of secular humanism.
Evidently the principle of charity runs in only one direction.
alvins52.wordpress.com/2025/11/12/n...
Noa Nini: “ @naamalazimi.bsky.social is one of the ONLY Israeli MKs I admire. Strong, smart, unapologetic, she is a woman that could lead this country. Together with @karivgilad.bsky.social and of course Yair Golan, head of the Democratic Party, they are a tour de force and a source of great HOPE.🧵
What held them together, I think, was a style of catchy and danceable rock music that sings about 'relatable' topics, as well as a word of solidarity with Canadians against the Trump Regime in a tradition that has roots in denouncing authoritarianism.
So two iconic bands from different milieux of punk rock, both originating in the 70s--England's Buzzcocks and the United States' Descendents--are taking contemporary act Mattstagraham on a Canadian tour of historic proportions.
alvins52.wordpress.com/2025/08/30/d...
Famously, Buddhism rejects the concept of a self. Charlie Kirk asserted four times, in Buddhism ‘it’s all about your self‘ and we ‘ascend ourselves.’ Not knowing anything about his chosen topic, Charlie Kirk does not care about the truth of the matter. alvins52.wordpress.com/2025/07/16/c...
Nobody is without ideology, even if we think we are. Robert Price seems to think his 'thug' comments are without ideology because he can rationally explain them. This is not how language works and we all know it. This is exactly why we study religion critically.
Dear Derek at MythVision, the left is so much better and more valuable than our toxic leftist purists and gatekeepers. alvins52.wordpress.com/2025/05/26/i...
Jordan Peterson thinks Prime Minister Mark Carney is a radical socialist whose utopia 'segregates' group identities, for what purpose, we are only left to speculate. Presumably he thinks it's the leftist analogue of pre-civil rights United States segregation.
alvins52.wordpress.com/2025/04/15/j...
I wrote a thing complaining about InspiringPhilosophy's uninspiring attempt to challenge the work of ESOTERICA on the origins of Yahweh. alvins52.wordpress.com/2025/03/14/n...
'I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies...
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.'
(Amos 5.21-24 [NRSV])
45/47 'trampled on the poor and the needy so that he could go stand in front of the church, hold up a Bible [upside down] and scowl at a camera. He's doing precisely what the prophets in the Hebrew Bible and Jesus in the New Testament condemn. youtu.be/IB8P6R6ZLGo?...
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
Luke 4.18-19; Isaiah 61.1-2
'For I desire mercy [Hebrew: *chesed* = 'unfailing love'], not sacrifice.'
(Hosea 6.6 [NIV]; quoted by Jesus in Matthew 9.13 and 12.7 [cf. NRSV])
'The dominant theme is clearly stated in [Amos] 5:24, which calls for social justice as the indispensable expression of true piety.'
(NIV Study Bible, 'Amos: Introduction [Zondervan publishing], page 1368)
Wes Huff misspoke a few times on The Joe Rogan Experience, the biggest podcast in the world, and was corrected by many scholars and popularizers, only for cheerleaders to hold him up (against his own wishes) as the Jesus Christ of apologetics. alvins52.wordpress.com/2025/01/21/a...
I notice that Thursday does not sing the word 'love' once in the New Three.
P.S. This, and the links to some relevant videos, are on my blog thing. 11/10 alvins52.wordpress.com/2024/12/13/s...
I have a suspicion, with intellectual honesty, William Lane Craig-style apologetics fall flat and give way, not necessarily to atheism, but to what we now call 'deconstruction.'
As an opinionated disclaimer, Craigian apologetics should not be conflated with Plantingan philosophy of religion. 10/10
I thought his oldest video was a decent presentation of the content of the Ontological Argument in its modal version, but his address of objections to the argument left much to be desired. 9/10
The point in telling this story is to make an excuse to say that, 12 years ago when InspiringPhilosophy uploaded the current oldest video on his channel, 'The Ontological Argument (The Introduction),' I couldn't help but compare his self-assured lecturing to memories of Veritas48's discussions. 8/10
These videos sharply exhibit Veritas48's turn from a style of apologetics to existential contemplation of the meaning of Christianity, foreshadowed by his encounter with Nietzsche, including a well-articulated rebuttal of Craig's famous lecture on 'The Absurdity of Life without God.' 7/10
About 12 years ago, TheoreticalBullshit uploaded 'Nonbelief Revisited: The Ghost of Veritas48,' in which he renews dialogue with one of Veritas48's old-era videos.
Veritas48 made a small splash for a brief moment 12 years ago, six videos on Vimeo with an average of 458 views each. 6/10
The last thing I recall was in the works before the deletion of the channel was to be a video response to TheoreticalBullshit's challenge that Veritas48 produce a novel, original argument for his Christian theistic worldview, published 14 years ago. 5/10
According to the story at the time, there was a misguided attack on his account, which saw the hacking and deletion of his entire channel, after which Veritas48 seems to have disappeared from the internet. 4/10
Throughout a few years enjoying popularity and respect among certain circles of atheist YouTubers, including DasAmericanAtheist, TheoreticalBullshit, and SisyphusRedeemed, he also experienced trolls and detractors who disliked him for both okay and dumb reasons. 3/10
During this era there worked who I thought and think was the apologetics popularizer/YouTuber par excellence, Veritas48. This was a Christian who knew Dr. Craig's best arguments like the back of his hand, delivered his defence with an honesty and humility unparalleled by most of his peers. 2/10
A thread of deconstruction
My favourite era of Christian apologetics on YouTube was amidst the early years of William Lane Craig videos on the DrCraigVideos channel. (The oldest video listed on drcraigvideos' profile is 17 years old. Craig on 'What Type of Literature Are the Gospels?') 1/10
