I have a little experience with metaphysics – just what I learned from a few lectures by the wonderful Christian professor Dr. J. P. Moreland. What I remember from those lectures is that metaphysics can be useful for defending the reality of non-physical minds, and dogmatic skepticism is self-refuting. But I found a nice, easy article by Tyson James to give us a real overview of metaphysics.

His article is on Worldview Bulletin.

He starts like this:

One day, a close church friend asked me, “What is metaphysics?” Dr. Paul Gould notes in a previous article that local bookstores often locate the subject of metaphysics somewhere around tarot cards and astrology. It may be surprising, then, for some to learn that metaphysics is actually the name of a very important field in philosophy.

So, what is metaphysics to philosophers and what in the world does it have to do with Christianity? These are actually very important questions, since metaphysics is a subject which touches on some of the most fundamental elements of the Christian faith.

So, I looked down the list and he has these:

• Is there a first cause?
• Do we have free will?
• Are there any unchanging truths?
• What are space and time?
• How do things which change maintain their identity over time?
• Is the physical universe all there is?
• Are objective morals real?

This is what he has to say about the one I remember:

How do things which change maintain their identity over time? Christians believe that the same person who was a sinner may also accept Christ, be saved from his sins, and enjoy eternity with God. But some people say that there is no “self” which maintains identity over time, that we’re just collections of atoms which change every time an atom is gained, lost, or rearranged. So, answering this question is important for showing that the same person who is lost without Jesus may be saved and restored in Jesus.

As a software engineer from an immigrant family, reading philosophy is as painful to me as a root canal. I just keep thinking “why do I have to know this if no one will pay me to know this?” But I like to win apologetics battles more, so I have forced myself to learn a little about some of the topics in his list. Every good Christian apologist knows how to defend philosophical attacks, like the problem of evil, religious pluralism, postmodernism, physicalism of minds, the hiddenness of God, rational unbelief, animal pain, etc. And we know how to go on the attack with objective morality, mind-body dualism, persistent identity through time, free will, etc. Not to mention first cause arguments, but I try to only think about that as a scientific problem. Metaphysics is useful for many of these tasks.

Anyway, metaphysics. Let me find you something useful to teach you some metaphysics. Here is a good short essay from Dr. John Depoe, who defends the reality of the non-physical minds, which is also known as “substance dualism”, because there are two substances – your body and your mind.

He writes about the persistent identity argument for the soul:

Another argument supporting substance dualism is that one maintains personal identity through change. Even though one is continuously going through physical changes and experiencing different mental states, a person continues to be the same person. If persons were identical with their physical parts or mental states, they would cease to be the same persons as these changes occurred. Therefore, it is necessary to postulate an immaterial, substantial self that endures through change.

Suppose that someone believes that people do not maintain identity through change and concludes that the previous argument for substance dualism fails. This denial of personal identity through change, I contend, presents untenable difficulties. First, there is one’s own awareness of being the same person through change. Moreover, if one is not literally the same person through these changes, how can a person maintain long-term goals and desires?

If you are your body, and your body is always changing, then you aren’t the same person now as 5 minutes ago.

There are many other good arguments for real non-physical minds. First of all, we know about the existence of at least one non-physical mind. God. That’s who brings the physical universe into being. He’s not physical. And there is also our first-person awareness of our mental state, our experience of consciousness, our ability to think about other things (“intentionality”), and our experience of free will.

So you see, this is all very practical, even if it frightens my practical West Indian parents if I talk about it too much.

Matt Walsh linked to this article from the UK Telegraph in his article about how federal and state law enforcement covered up the motive of the Nashville shooter (archived). The UK Telegraph talks about a new study that suggests that a rise in “excess deaths” since the pandemic. The study does not conclude that vaccines were responsible for excess deaths.

Here’s the article from the UK Telegraph: (archived)

Covid vaccines could be partly to blame for the rise in excess deaths since the pandemic, scientists have suggested.

Researchers from The Netherlands analysed data from 47 Western countries and discovered there had been more than three million excess deaths since 2020, with the trend continuing despite the rollout of vaccines and containment measures.

They said the “unprecedented” figures “raised serious concerns” and called on governments to fully investigate the underlying causes, including possible vaccine harms.

[…]The study found that across Europe, the US and Australia there had been more than one million excess deaths in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, but also 1.2 million in 2021 and 800,000 and 2022 after measures were implemented.

Researchers said the figure included deaths from Covid-19, but also the “indirect effects of the health strategies to address the virus spread and infection”.

They warned that side effects linked to the Covid vaccine had included ischaemic stroke, acute coronary syndrome and brain haemorrhage, cardiovascular diseases, coagulation, haemorrhages, gastrointestinal events and blood clotting.

I think this is significant, because there was always concern among taxpayers that these vaccine mandates were being pushed by secular leftist fascists who were irrationally overexuberant about the idea of forcing people to act uniformly. The fascists don’t like differences of opinion or behavior. That’s why they like things like mass transit, but despise individual retirement accounts. They long for a “unity” brought about through the use of government power.

Secular left fascists realize that science has the respect of taxpayers, so they want to misuse science to compel taxpayers to behave uniformly. You can see it with the way that global warming hysteria is used to control the decision-making of taxpayers around energy consumption.

Another problem with the vaccines was how it was impossible for taxpayers to sue the vaccine manufacturers in case the product caused harm. I can’t think of another product that has an exemption like that. You would think that Ralph Nader socialists would want to protect taxpayers from big corporations, but we saw the opposite. Secular leftists sided with corporations, and the propaganda against dissent was so strong that the secular left had many people believing that firings, imprisonment and seizing of children were all appropriate ways of dealing with dissenters.

The manifesto of the transgender terrorist who shot up a Christian school in Nashville has finally been released, despite the efforts of the Biden administration and the ERLC.

Here’s the latest from the UK Daily Mail:

Transgender killer Audrey Hale wrote about her ‘imaginary penis’ and how she would ‘kill’ to get puberty blockers in the weeks before her horrific attack on the Covenant School in Nashville last year.

The Tennessee Star obtained some four dozen pages of Hale’s writings that shed light on her female-to-male transition and why she shot and killed six people at the elementary school in March 2023.

Hale wrote about anger toward her parents, how she hated her conservative Christian upbringing, and how she had suffered because hormone blockers were not available when she was as a child.

The explosive writings, sometimes referred to as Hale’s ‘manifesto,’ have been a source of controversy, with many accusing officials of keeping them secret because they would hurt the trans community.

Now released, they help explain why the 28-year-old artist, who identified as a male named Aiden, shot her way into the Tennessee school, killing three adults and three nine-year-olds, before responding officers killed her.

A big Democrat city and the Democrat Biden federal law enforcement opposed the release of the shooter’s manifesto:

After the shooting, Nashville’s Metropolitan Police Chief John Drake said his force had recovered the shooter’s manifesto, as well as hand-drawn maps in her car, and said they would eventually be made public.

But both city police and the FBI later said the material shouldn’t be released because it could hurt the investigations.

But they could not escape the investigative efforts of the conservative Tennessee Star:

The Star and others have been part of a lawsuit seeking to compel the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) and the FBI to release Hale’s writings.

The FBI reportedly advised the MNPD not to release them and other ‘legacy tokens’ in the wake of mass shootings.

Daily Wire had more to say: (archived)

So there’s nothing political in the manifesto, according to the director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. There’s nothing coherent at all, except maybe a desire to emulate school shooters. That’s what they told us, and if you asked questions — as you just saw — the media labeled you a conspiracy theorist. But at the same time, they wouldn’t let us see the manifesto for ourselves. That was a pretty big clue that they were lying to us. And indeed, once again thanks to the Tennessee Star, we have the proof.

[…]You know that’s a lie because the FBI’s failure to release the manifesto is what led to false narratives, as you just saw. Without the manifesto, the media was free to lie to us — and pretend that there was no relation whatsoever between the shooter’s transgender identity and the killings. But in fact, there was a clear relationship. This shooter was clearly enraged about the fact she couldn’t be a man. Joe Biden’s DOJ understands that this kind of revelation might be a set back for the White House’s narrative, so they just covered it up. They told you that the “trans community” was in danger instead.

In a country where the government actually cared about the well-being of its own citizens, and felt the slightest need to be honest with them, this would be a national scandal. The FBI director and the senior leadership of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation would all be fired immediately, at a minimum. But our government instead lies as a matter of course — and they’re not subtle about it. That’s why the government’s narrative about the Tennessee shooter is just one of several mainstream lies, cooked up by the government and promoted by the media, that we’re only learning about this week.

If you’re looking for a good conservative news source, you might want to check out the Tennessee Star. They stayed on the case and finally got us the information, despite the efforts of the secular leftists to cover up the details of a terrorist attack against conservative Christians.