[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for your splendid essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!

We certainly have had our share of "Second Reality" correspondents over the years. The replies we get are often completely irrelevant to the issues on the table. Debating someone who lives in a second reality is futile.

I strongly agree with your three "givens!"

But nobody seems interested in asking this question: If the motions of matter are not in some way "lawful," then how can they produce anything other than accidents? Or are we to think that Life and Mind are "accidents?" Maybe even "accidents" in need of "correcting?"

Well and truly said. Indeed, for an atheist to deny God, he cannot permit a final cause in his Second Reality - and he must have the plenitude argument (anything that can happen, did) because whatever is can only be the result of accidents just as you say.

[betty boop]

...for an atheist to deny God, he cannot permit a final cause in his Second Reality — and he must have the plenitude argument (anything that can happen, did) because whatever is can only be the result of accidents just as you say.

Such a worldview strikes me as profoundly irrational. In such a world, meaning becomes impossible; for a series of accidents — even an "eternal" one — does not furnish universal criteria for distinguishing and judging. Human language could not have evolved under such conditions. Science itself would be impossible.

To me, the atheist worldview is profoundly false for these reasons among others.

Yet if a man wants to live in a Second Reality like this, it is his right to do so as matter of private conscience.

The public problem is: There are ideologists of this type who will not rest until their preferred Second Reality becomes mandatory for the rest of us.

Just some thoughts, dearest sister in Christ, FWTW. Thank you ever so much for writing, and for your kind words of support!