All posts by Wintery Knight

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News

Daughter of single mother explains how absent father ruined her life

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Do young women understand how to get to a stable marriage?
Do young women understand how to get to a stable marriage?

I found a YouTube video featuring a conversation about the fundamental problem that I see with young, unmarried women: their decision to have recreational premarital sex with hot guys throughout their teens and 20s.

Here is the conversation: (just listen to the first 7 minutes to start)

Note: this conversation contains vulgar language. Listener discretion is advised.

Molyneux gets her talking about the most important question that women who fail with men never want to answer: why did your mother choose this awful, awful man, to be your father out of all the other men in the world? At the end, she really has learned her lesson and gives a good warning to other young women at the crossroads.

Summary of key admissions:

  • Caller: I’m a 41-year-old single white female who was a bad girl in my 20s. I was raised fatherless by a loving Christian mom. Question: what caused me to fail at life and be living with my (divorced) mother?
  • I was gifted, very intellectual, top of the class
  • My mom is a very caring person
  • My mom approached my Dad when he was already in another relationship (i.e. – her mom was the woman her father cheated with on another woman, then her mom married this cheating man and he dumped the previous woman)
  • My mom was very attractive, and could have chosen different men, but she was really attracted to this terrible man
  • My mom had a desire to get away from her strict parents, who she resented
  • when I was 15 I chose a man, I had recreational sex with him before marriage, and he stalked me and humiliated me
  • I felt like an adult at age 15, and I had sex with this man then so that I could put childhood behind me and become an adult
  • My mother counter-acted the absence of my Dad by raising me as a Christian – she was a radical, intense Christian and that hyper-religiosity made me not want to talk about sex with her
  • My mom divorced my father because he was a jerk
  • My mom did not mind that he had other children from past relationships, was underemployed, and was lazy
  • I used to sneak out of my room and sit on the back porch and drink alcohol with the neighbor kids
  • My mom was a worrier and a control freak, so I rebelled against her warnings and attempts to set boundaries on my wildness
  • I and my 15-year-old recreational sex partner used a condom from my devout Christian mother’s drawer
  • I had sex with 5 different boyfriends from age 15-18 and caught mono
  • My mom had temporary boyfriends after the divorce
  • In my 20s, “there wasn’t much to do except go out and drink”. “two to three times a week, me and my girlfriends would get dressed up, go to the clubs, and try to attract hot guys”.
  • From 21-30, I stopped looking for relationships, I just hooked up with hot guys for one-night stands and FWBs
  • I felt better about myself, more confident and in control when I would drink and have one-night stands with these hot guys
  • “I don’t know why I was so focused on looks” in these guys
  • The hooking up stopped at 30, then dating (with sex) resumed
  • I realized that the hot guys I wanted were not going to settle down, especially with new younger women available
  • From 15 to now, I’ve slept with 60 different men, sometimes repeatedly, and on and off
  • I never admitted the true number of men I slept with to any of these men
  • last relationship was 5 years ago (at age 36)
  • I have lost interest in sex, and lost interest in men
  • I don’t have the mental toughness to be in a relationship
  • I have “been broken” by too many failed relationships
  • nobody told me that my decisions with men were not going to go well

In the final 8 minutes where Stefan explains the larger consequences of women’s choices for civilization is very important, I think. I was surprised that he spoke directly to the “hot” alpha males that women want and told them that they are breaking women, and share the blame for destroying our civilization. The thing is, I don’t think those hot alpha males care about civilization, or anything except for themselves. So why do young women choose them?

If I had to pick one essential characteristic of young, unmarried women which ruins their lives, it is their inability to choose responsible men who are proven to be good at doing the things that men do as husbands and fathers. Young, unmarried women today are attracted to men who are LOUSY at the things that men do as husbands and fathers. Responsible men with strict morals and settled religion are not attractive to young, unmarried women. These women can’t connect their choices with men to the tasks that men actually perform in a married home. I am talking about non-Christian women AND Christian women. Nothing that women learn in church corrects this flaw. They are taught to believe that God speaks to them through their emotions, that they must follow their emotions, and everything they do that blows up in their faces is the fault of men. It’s never their responsibility.

Men’s rights activists say that this flaw is the root cause of the end of civilization, and I’m inclined to believe them. Saving women from this flaw is the number one task of fathers, and it is the number one thing that women must look for in a man they make babies with: FIND A MAN WHO CAN BREAK YOUR FUTURE DAUGHTER(S) OUT OF THIS DELUSION BEFORE THEY CHOOSE A BAD MAN. Strong men confront women and set boundaries to help women make better choices. Weak men blame the bad men that women freely choose and this does NOT help women make better choices. Women need to understand that men who speak to them directly, and tell them no, and set boundaries and try to push them to be serious about education and career and finances and marriage are NOT anti-woman. We are trying to protect you and strengthen you, by telling you to make good decisions, and be responsible.

Polemics

What is the fine-tuning argument for God’s existence, and does the multiverse counter it?

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Christianity and the progress of science
Christianity and the progress of science

One of the best arguments for the existence of a Creator and Designer of the universe is the cosmic fine-tuning argument. The argument argues that individual constants and quantities in nature cannot be much smaller or larger than they are, because it would remove the ability of the universe to support life of any kind. Dr. Michael Strauss, an experimental physicist, explains some examples of the fine-tuning in a recent post on his blog.

He writes:

I liken the finely-tuned universe to a panel that controls the parameters of the universe with about 100 knobs that can be set to certain values. If you turn any knob just a little to the right or to the left the result is either a universe that is inhospitable to life or no universe at all.

Consider the knob that controls the strength of the strong nuclear force that holds quarks inside the neutrons and protons and binds the nucleus of the atom together. If the strength were increased by 2%, the element hydrogen would be either non-existent or very rare. Without hydrogen there would be no water (H2O) or stars that burn hydrogen as their nuclear fuel like our sun.  Without hydrogen there would be no life. If the strength of the strong nuclear force were decreased by about 5%, then hydrogen would be the only element in the universe. That would simplify the periodic table and make Chemistry class very easy, but it would render life impossible.

All known life in this universe is based on the element carbon, which is formed in the final stages of a star’s life. The carbon you and I are made of is the result of the nuclear processes that occurred as previous stars ended their lives. One nice recent study showed that if the mass of the quarks that make up neutrons and protons were changed by just a few percent, then the process that makes carbon as stars die would be altered in such a way that there would not be sufficient carbon in the universe for life. The masses of the lightest sub-atomic quarks are the precise value that is required for carbon to form and for life to exist.

Regarding the multiverse, let me just quote from MIT physicist Alan Lightman, writing in Harper’s magazine about the multiverse:

The… conjecture that there are many other worlds… [T]here is no way they can prove this conjecture. That same uncertainty disturbs many physicists who are adjusting to the idea of the multiverse. Not only must we accept that basic properties of our universe are accidental and uncalculable. In addition, we must believe in the existence of many other universes. But we have no conceivable way of observing these other universes and cannot prove their existence. Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove.

Sound familiar? Theologians are accustomed to taking some beliefs on faith. Scientists are not. All we can do is hope that the same theories that predict the multiverse also produce many other predictions that we can test here in our own universe. But the other universes themselves will almost certainly remain a conjecture.

The multiverse is not pure nonsense, it is theoretically possible.But even if there were a multiverse, the generator that makes the universes itself would require fine-tuning, so the multiverse doesn’t get rid of the problem. And, as Lightman indicates, we have no independent experimental evidence for the existence of the multiverse in any case. Atheists just have to take it on faith, and hope that their speculations will be proved right. Meanwhile, the fine-tuning is just as easily explained by postulating God, and we have independent evidence for God’s existence, like the the origin of biological information, the sudden appearance of animal body plans, the argument from consciousness, and so on. Even if the naturalists could explain the fine-tuning, they would still have a lot of explaining to do. Theism (intelligent causation) is the simplest explanation for all of the things we learn from the progress of science.

It’s very important to understand that if these values were any different, then it’s not like we would bridges on our foreheads, or have green skin, or have pointy ears, etc. That’s what science fiction teaches you. And many atheists form their view of science by watching science fiction entertainment. But the truth is that the consequences of changing these values are much more consequential: no stars, no planets, no hydrogen, no heavy elements, the universe re-collapses into a hot fireball. You’re not going to have complex, embodied intelligent agents running around making moral decisions and relating to God in a world like that.

Questions like the existence of God should be decided by feelings and faith and superstitious nonsense. They ought to be decided by evidence. Specifically, scientific evidence. Everyone has to account for this scientific evidence for fine-tuning within their worldview, and they have to account for it in a way that is responsible and rational. Punting to the multiverse, without any evidence for it, is neither rational nor responsible. Holding out hope that the evidence we have now will all go away is neither rational nor responsible.

Commentary

Clay Jones: why does God allow suffering?

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I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery
I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery

Last week a friend of mine who sent me lots of stories for my blog decided to commit suicide.

I had not been close to him for the past couple of years, because he wasn’t responding to e-mails and we lived in different cities. I only met him in person one time. I know that he was deeply hurt by his father’s decision to divorce his mother when he was only 9 years old. And his mother later died of cancer when he was 16. Although he had been a pretty serious Catholic early on, these two blows pushed him into a sort deistic agnosticism. During the time I knew him, he told me that he accepted all the scientific arguments for God’s existence, but he did not think that there was enough evidence for Christianity in particular. He didn’t believe in a God who cared about people, and answered prayers. Given the terrible things that had happened to him, I can understand why he felt that way.

Whenever I talked to him about my life and my childhood, he liked that I had also grown up with bad parents and had suffered some painful experiences. My experiences allowed me to be sensitive about the things that happened to him. He would talk about how his father never admitted any guilt for the divorce, even though divorces cause enormous problems for children – especially for their relationship with God.

I sometimes wonder why we both went down different paths when we were hit with suffering. I don’t really know the answer. But I thought of this post from Clay Jones, who writes about the problems of evil and suffering.

Excerpt:

Since I teach on why God allows evil, I often talk about Job. I have learned that many Christians have missed a major lesson of that book, if not the major lesson. Although many rightly conclude from Job that we should be humble when it comes to why God allows this or that suffering, there is something else amazing found in the book’s beginning.

In the first chapter we learn that Job is the wealthiest man in the world, renowned, and that he worships God.

But then we are told of a great contest in Heaven.

One day the angels presented themselves before the Lord and Satan came along with them and the Lord asked Satan:

“Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” (Job 1:8-11)

Here Satan contends that Job only serves God because God has given Job everything Job wants and that If God didn’t give Job what he wanted then Job would rebel.

Well, the Lord tells Satan that Satan can destroy all the things Job enjoys. Soon disaster kills his family, marauders steal his possessions, Satan afflicts him with boils, and Job’s wife tells him to “curse God and die.”

And here’s the question I ask my students: “what was the only thing that Job had to do to humiliate Satan in front of God and all God’s servants?”

The answer is simple: the only thing Job had to do to humiliate Satan in front of God and all the beings of the heavenly realm was to continue to honor God. As long as Job honored God, he humiliated Satan.

Satan would be humiliated because it would not only prove him wrong but, even more importantly, it would prove that some beings will serve God even if their lives are miserable.

And this would justify God’s final judgment of Satan! After all, why did Satan rebel? Isn’t it because Satan thought he deserved more? The implication is, “If you gave me everything I had ever wanted, then I wouldn’t have rebelled either.” Isn’t it Satan’s underlying argument that no one will serve God if He deprives them of what they value? Satan certainly believed that was the case with Job.

So, like Job, when our life gets very hard, if we get fired, or our finances tank, or we get cancer, but we still honor God then we too humiliate Satan.

And, of course, all of us, unless we die first, will get life threatening news which can be our finest hour! What I mean is that our finest hour isn’t getting a promotion or sitting on the beach in Kauai; our finest hour is when we get life shattering news, and our family and friends and acquaintances and the Heavenly host are watching, and we continue to honor God anyway!

When we do this, when we honor God in hardship, then we too humiliate Satan.

Eph. 3:10: “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.”

I think when people see Christians in the world, there is this assumption that God will look out for his own people and protect them and give them nice things. But we forget that God has his own reasons for creating us. He is using us to make his existence and character known to others. It tells other people something when they can see that your needs are not met, but you still remain faithful. People sometimes think that I keep my faith because I just haven’t been hit hard enough by suffering. But the truth is that I have suffered, and even now there are things I wanted, like a wife and family, that I never got. It’s important for people looking on to understand that I am not a Christian because it works for me, but because Christianity is a true worldview. I’m not guaranteed happiness in this life. Endurance is a Christian virtue.