The world, we are told, was made by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world, He foresaw all the pain and misery it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that… Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
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Chess Game of the Day: Caro-Kann Defense
One of my online chess games. Two or three weak middle game moves by me and I got hit by an avalanche. Some annotations below . . . 1. …c6 Caro-Kann Defense 3. e5 Advance Variation 3. …c5 Botvinnik-Carls Defense 13. Qd4? Maybe 13. a4, instead of putting the queen where Black can point a bishop at it. 29. Ra2 Black has the best of things at this point. Possibly Rxf8, taking a piece out of the attack, is an improvement. 34. Ra8? Moving the rook back to a2 would have been better. 39. …Ra1 I thought 39. …Ra2 was better but this move still doesn’t put much of a dent in a large Black advantage. 41. Re2?? 41. Ke3 could have prolonged the agony. The game is really over at this point, but in a blitz game where we both had a little under 40 seconds left, why not… Read more →
There’s No Comprehending
There’s no comprehending Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes And the lips you can get And still feel so alone — Joni Mitchell, “Coyote” Read more →
Utterly Different From What We Expected
We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected. — Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom Read more →
Aside
Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one — You know yourself better than anyone else knows you.
P.J. O’Rourke, 1947-2022
Like many men of my generation, I had an opportunity to give war a chance, and I promptly chickened out. I went to my draft physical in 1970 with a doctor’s letter about my history of drug abuse. The letter was four and a half pages long with three and a half pages devoted to listing the drugs I’d abused. I was shunted into the office of an Army psychiatrist who, at the end of a forty-five minute interview with me, was pounding his desk and shouting, “You’re fucked up! You don’t belong in the Army!” He was certainly right on the first count and probably right on the second. Anyway, I didn’t have to go. But that, of course, meant someone else had to go in my place. I would like to dedicate this book to him. I hope you got back in one piece, fellow. I hope you… Read more →
Aside
Although experiences may seem solid, they are passing memories.
There Is No Country Like America
From an interview with Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears: There is no country like America. There is not. Not one. . . . I mean, I’m the one who got off the plane and here I am, here in the former capital of the Confederacy for goodness sake. I am second in command. Second in command. I’m a black woman. I am not first-generation American. I am still the immigrant. As I said, I’m a black woman, immigrant, and what else can you say to me that would say, well, “racism, racism, racism”? How do you explain me? I’m not an outlier. I’m not a one-off. The opportunities are here. Are we denying that there have been problems, that there has been slavery, that there has been racism, or that there has been segregation, and redlining, and blue codes, and all this stuff? No, we’re not denying any of that.… Read more →
God Hates Children?
“God hates children.” For a moment Viking Man is too lost in his reverie to have heard, but then he turns to the other man. “Can’t say I ever thought of it that way, vicar.” “God is always killing children in the Bible, or threatening to,” says Vikar. “He kills His own child.” Viking Man nods slowly. “That’s a hell of an observation,” he says. — Steve Erickson, Zeroville Read more →
If You Gotta Go, Go Now
One of my students says she was so frustrated with an assignment she was ready to throw her computer out the window. “What floor do you live on,” I ask. “Second.” “Oh, well that probably wouldn’t kill anyone, just a bump on the noggin. But you can’t say for sure if it hit them just right. Be sure you’re wearing a mask though when you do that.” She lives in New York. My son also lives in New York so I had to call to warn him to be on the lookout for falling computers. “Because I know someone who may be throwing one out a window. But only from the second floor so you’ll probably be able to see it coming and step out of the way.” If I lived in New York and it came down to being killed by COVID or by a falling computer, I’d take… Read more →
Chess Game of the Day: Queen’s Pawn Game, Chigorin Variation
One of my online chess games. Some annotations below . . . 2. …d5 Queen’s Pawn Game: Chigorin Variation 12. Ne5 12. Nd2 might be better, as the queen’s bishop runs into a wall in this line. 16. Bg3 A sacrifice that’s maybe not easy to find in a 2+1 blitz game is 16. f4 gxe5 17. fxg5 followed by O-O. 22. Rxf6?! 22. …Qxf6?! 22. …Kxf6 is better just in terms of material but this is playable. 22. Kxg2? This can wait. 22. Rd1 brings another piece into the fray. 29. Rd2? I like 29. h4 because the king can use h2 as an escape square, and the rook is going to be better at d3. 30. Qe4?? Losing. Advancing the h-pawn keeps the game alive. 30. …Bh3+ Mate to follow. Read more →
I Think I Could Turn and Live With Animals
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. — Walt Whitman Read more →
COVID Vaccines
At the start of 2020, when COVID first came to our shores, we didn’t know anything about it, we didn’t have a vaccine, and by the end of the year 400,000 Americans had died from the virus. By the start of 2021, we had a year of research and a vaccine. We’ve been vaccinating people for a year, and yet we have more COVID deaths under the Biden administration than under Trump, every day more vaccinated people are getting sick, so while the vaccine may keep you out of the hospital or the graveyard, it doesn’t provide immunity, it doesn’t stop the spread, I’m not sure it even slows the spread, given that we have more cases and deaths than ever. For a long time now, anyone saying “I don’t think vaccines are stopping the spread of COVID” or something similar have been persona non grata in public discourse. Is… Read more →
Let’s Go Brandon
I have a shirt that looks similar to the one in the photo. The shirt is a conversation starter and the conversation often goes like this: “I don’t like your shirt.” “Mmmm, I don’t really like yours either.” “Ha ha, you know what I mean.” “I think I do and I have to say that it concerns me like a whole lot of nothing at all.” Read more →
Never Retract, Never Apologize
I know you’ve never heard of Ilya Shapiro so first let me tell you that he is on administrative leave from Georgetown University Law Center while the school decides whether to retain him as executive director and senior lecturer for the school’s Center for the Constitution. The rest you can glean from this excerpt from a recent essay by Bari Weiss: I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few days about a tweet by a Georgetown professor. Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes. That tweet was written in 2018 by Georgetown professor Carol Christine Fair about Republican senators who supported Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Fair also writes a blog called Tenacious Hellpussy,… Read more →
Chess Game of the Day: Ruy Lopez
One of my online chess games. White had a significant advantage, squandered it, then misplayed a forced draw. Some annotations below . . . 3. Bb5 Ruy Lopez 3. Bxc6 Exchange Variation 5. …f6 Gligoric Variation 17. …c4? This opens up the b-file for White’s rook, although he ends up not using it. 20. a5? 20. Rb1 is better. 20. …Bxd3?? This looks like a losing move. I could have defused the king-side problems with 20. …b5. 21. Rxd3 21. axb6 was probably worth a try. 22. …b5 This is now a little late. 23. d4? White is still winning but 23. Rb1 Qd7 24. Nxb5! axb5 25. a6 was the way to go. 36. Rb6? At this point, White has pretty much defused his own attack. 36. Rd4, opening b6 for the queen, looks better. 37. e4? Don’t like it because Black can survive 37. …Rxe4 38. Qf7+, and… Read more →
I Wish You Peace
I wish you peace when times are hard A light to guide you through the dark And when storms are high and your, your dreams are low I wish you the strength to let love grow on, I wish you the strength to let love flow on, I wish you the strength to let love glow on I wish you the strength to let love go. — Bernie Leadon & Patti Davis, “I Wish You Peace” Read more →
The Natural Law Argument for God
The whole idea that natural laws imply a lawgiver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, in which way you may choose to behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because even supposing that there were, you are then faced with the question “Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others?” If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. If you say, as… Read more →