The following is a summary of my views. This page is intended to be a catalog of some of my religious, social and political views.

Now, one may wonder why I am being so transparent about my views on a website that I also refer prospective employers to in my Curriculum Vitae. The reason is simple: It’s a simple way for readers, friends and family to know where I stand on certain issues. Moreover, I believe in the American ideal of being able to freely and respectfully express your social, religious and political views without fear of loss of life, limb or livelihood. I detest cancel culture and would like to contribute to an America where people, regardless of creed, should feel safe expressing their sociopolitical views (within reason, of course). Thus, by transparently and clearly communicating my views, many of which are currently not fashionable among the intelligentsia, I encourage others to do the same. Life is too short to be scared of what narrowminded and mean people may think of you if you respectfully but unapologetically share your views.

That being said, I would be remiss not to note that I also work in the relatively high-paying and ever-growing field of Cybersecurity, and am sufficiently advanced in my career such that I am not worried about being cancelled by an employer for my philosophical, religious or sociopolitical views. Furthermore, any employer or prospective employer who does not want to hire me for the relatively benign views laid out herein is not an employer I would like to work for anyways. All this being said, I never initiate discussion on philosophical, religious or sociopolitical issues in the workplace. But I am not afraid of honestly relating my views here to whomever asks.

My view is that all human persons, no matter the heights from which they have fallen, should be treated with dignity and respect. However, I do not think that the same applies to human beliefs. Human persons are thinking entities with thoughts, feelings, aspirations, etc. The beliefs that humans have, by contrast, are not people, and have no thoughts or feelings – they are intangible entities. Thus, talk of the necessity of and moral obligation to respect the beliefs of people strikes me as straightforwardly false. Humans are not beliefs. We have an obligation to respect other people, regardless of whether we strongly disagree with their beliefs. However, our obligation to respect human people does not extend to their beliefs. No one has a moral obligation to respect my beliefs, for example.

I can guarantee you that on this blog I will always express myself in a way that respects all people, regardless of their beliefs. And I can also guarantee you that on this blog I will unapologetically criticize some beliefs, regardless of their fashionability.

So, without further ado, here are some of my views:

Purpose of Life

The purpose of something is endowed to it by its minded creator. The purpose of a standard pencil is to write; but this is only the case because humans endowed the pencil with this purpose. A pencil-looking and pencil-functioning object assembled by mere happenstance would not have a purpose, as purpose is endowed by a creator. The same goes for us. If we have no creator, then there is no purpose to life. Thankfully, I believe that there are good reasons for thinking that we are in fact created. In fact, it is almost certainly the case that some very powerful deity exists and has created the world; so, atheism is almost certianly false. The world is definitely not here by mere happenstance. It is much less certain, though more probably true than false, that a maximally great being, otherwise known as God with a capital ‘G’, exists. To quote the luminary John Von Neumann: “There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t.”

Now, a maximally great being, qua perfect, did not need to create anything. But in choosing to so create He had to create the best types of entities, and the best types of entities happen to be persons who have free will and can shape their character into becoming saintly. I can’t think of better entities a perfect being could even possibly create. But remember: the purpose of something is given by its creator. So, our purpose in life is to become unconditionally loving Christ-like entities, or at the very least to asymptotically approach this ideal. In practice, this means that we must progressively and redemptively suffer in order to awake from our ethical slumbers and cultivate in our souls unconditional love and compassion for all rational beings. After death, our journeys of continuing to asymptotically approach this ideal will continue indefinitely. Though some are more spiritually advanced than others, one day all rational entities, no matter the heights from which they have fallen, will be “in heaven” and “God will be all in all.” That is, I am a universalist about human salvation. Life is frustratingly difficult – but be at peace: the best of all possible beings probably exists!

Happiness

Happiness is found in loving relationships. Whether this is because our creator is of essence a relational being (e.g., a Trinity) and fashioned us in His image, or whether this is because of our evolutionary history, or both – happiness is most fully found in relations to others. No man is an island unto himself. We are beings in relation. So, our flourishing is intimately to be found in relation to other rational beings. And since a maximally great being is, of necessity, personal, then our happiness is necessarily, in some way, perhaps beyond our understanding, also bound up with relationship with Him.

Religion

No religion is true; all religions are false.

Religion and state should be seperate.

Christianity is the best religion. Christianity in general, even if technically false, is beneficial for society and serves as a bullwark against far worse ideas (e.g., Communnism, Islam and woke Leftism).

Christians are the most persecuted religious group on Earth; and Christians facing religious persecution should be supported.

The coherence of the Incarnation and Trinity has not been shown, and such doctrines are likely incoherent or unintelligble.

There is significant evidence that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet who believed that he would return in the lifetime of his disciples. Nevertheless, his moral teachings are absolutely sublime and represent the best of religion, not to mention the pinnacle of human ethics.

The Old Testament or Tanakh contains barbaric commands attributed to God that no perfect being would command. Genesis does in fact teach that humans are only a few thousand years old, which contradicts the conclusions of modern science. Genesis also contains myths like the Tower of Babel story, as well as the myth that angels (i.e., the bene elohim) came down and had sex with beautiful human women.

Eternal hell does not exist. The concept of enternal punishment for finite and temporally limited crimes or sins commited by fairly ignorant human creatures runs afoul of the bedrock ethical prinicple of proportionality - viz., that a punishment should be proportional to a crime. Eternal hell is obviously disproportional to any crime that humans can commit in their few ignorant years on Earth. However, if God exists, then purgatory, which is basically a temporary hell or place of punishment, almost certainly exists.

“Islamophobia” is, to qoute an anonymous person on the internet, a term that was “invented by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons.” It is used by people to try to silence legitimate criticism of Islam, much in the same way that the accusation of antisemitism is used to try to silence any criticism of Israel, and how “homophobia” is used to silence any criticism of the LGBTQ movement.

The Qur’an is an unimpressive book that contains many errors. For example, borrowing from the pre-existing Syriac Alexander Legend, it erroneously teaches that Alexander the Great was a pious monotheist who built a wall to contain the peoples of Gog and Magog (Q 18:83-101). Furthermore, it erroneously teaches that Jews adore one ‘Uzair or Ezra as the son of God in a manner analogous to how to Christians adore Jesus as the son of God (Q 9:30). It absurdly claims that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, was prophesied in Christian scripture (Q 7:157).

Islam is a violent religion whose pernicious influence should be fought against. The Qur’an transparently enjoins upon Muslims to fight Jews and Christians because of their religious beliefs (Q 9:29) and until they become Muslims or pay a poll tax. If the oldest historical sources that we have of Muhammad are accurate, then he was a transparent moral reprobate – a brigand, torturer and rapist – someone who deserves no emulation.

Muslim immigration to traditionally Western countries should be severely curtailed.

Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qa’ida, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, etc., are not freedom-fighting organizations but transparent Islamic terrorist organizations that must be fought against.

The Iranian regime is a barbaric theocracy.

Many of the problems that have plauged the Middle East for centuries can be summed up in one word: Islam.

Ethics

Moral realism and objectivism are true; i.e., there are objective moral values and duties that exist independent of our thoughts and feelings.

Lying is probably always and everywhere immoral.

Just War Theory is a great framework for thinking about the ethics of war.

People have the right to defend themselves, and this plausibly includes the right to bear at least some form of arms in today’s day and age (e.g., handguns).

Torture is immoral.

Abortion is immoral.

Euthanasia is immoral.

Suicide is immoral.

The death penalty is rarely morally permissible in today’s day and age.

Smoking tobacco or weed is unhealthy and generally immoral.

Doing hard drugs is unhealthy and immoral.

Getting drunk is unhealthy and immoral.

Anal sex is unhealthy and immoral.

Marital infidelity, qua breaking a promise to be faithful, is immoral.

Sex before marriage is morally permissible in many cases. It is also morally impermissible in many cases (e.g., drunken hookup sex without protection.)

Pornography is, at least in many cases, morally permissible. As such, I oppose any legislation that would ban pornography tout court, as there can be no adequate secular justification for the view that it is always and everywhere impermissible. That being said, however, pornography creation and consumpton is morally impermissible in many cases, e.g., when some form of coercion, intimidation or exploitation is involved.

Masturbation is morally permissible.

Contraception is morally permissible.

The perverted faculty argument, advanced by Catholic theologians and natural law theorists, fails in securing a robustly conservative sexual ethic. For example, it fails to show that masturbation is morally impermissible.

Children do better growing up in biological single-parent households where the mother and father are commmitted to each other “till death do [them] part.

Declaring one’s pronouns is silly, as no one can change one’s sex; sex is not assigned at birth. Not only is declaring one’s pronouns silly, but one has a moral obligation not to use impromper pronouns when referring to someone, as doing so would be a disservice to truth and that individual’s flourishing. So, e.g., if a female were to one day say that she is a male, although no biological evidence of that is forthcoming, and the individual insisted on being referred to as a male, one has an obligation to continue referring to her with feminine pronouns. To do otherwise would be to perpetuate a delusion that would neither benefit her nor society at large.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a gravely evil terrorist action by the United States government at the time. As such, president Harry Truman, who ordered the bombs be dropped, should have been put on trial as a war criminal. Doing something that is intrinsically evil, like killing innocent people for the sake of a greater good, is always and everywhere impermissible.

Philosophy of Mind & Philosophy of Action

Thoughts are immaterial entities that are not numerically identical to brain events or components of the brain. The mind itself is also probably immaterial, in line with the teaching of most religions throughout the centuries.

We have significant freewill and are not determined by the conjunction of past events and the laws of nature to do what we do.

The immaterial mind or intellect probably survives bodily death. Some so-called near-death experiences (NDEs) and out-of-body experiences (OBEs), where people near-death allege observation of their operating rooms, are probably real.

Policing

Policing is a necessary aspect of a thriving and functional democractic polity. Any calls to defund the police are naive at best and dangerous at worst.

There are good cops and bad cops; the same is true of just about every imaginable profession.

Body-worn cameras should be mandatory for all patrol officers.

Qualified immunity for police officers has no constitutional basis and should be ended.

There should be oversight boards comprised of mostly civillians that provide oversight of police departments.

Constitutional Interpretation

The Constitution of the United States of America was far ahead of its time.

Originalism is the correct and commonsensical interpretation of laws and the Constitution. On Originalism, Obergefell v. Hodges was a clearly incorrectly decided case, as it is obvious that the Constitution says nothing whatsoever about homosexual marriage.

The judiciary is not the place for legislating one’s preferred sociopoltiical ideologies – that is the job of the Legislative, not the Judicial, branch of government.

Foriegn Policy

My position is America First. The United States government should be more concerned with domestic issues than with what happens abroad. We should not be getting into pointless and unjust wars in the Middle East (like, e.g., the Second Gulf War).

Foreign aid to countries abroad should be greatly curtailed. The United States is in a desperate economic position and we should not be sending tax dollars to aid foriegn countries before relieving the American taxpayer.

I have not studied the Israel-Palestine issue enough to comment much about it. The conflict is far older than myself, and a deep dive into the conflict, one that would do it justice, would involve reading a myriad number of books and articles on the issue. But what I do know is that what the terrorist group Hamas did on the October 7th, 2023 was morally henious and despicable. On the other hand, Israel’s disproportionate response also seems to be morally heinous and despicable. It should be obvious to any objective observer that there are maniacal bigots on both sides of the isle here.

Economics

I am fiscally agnostic. However, my views are probably consonant with the famous Catholic encyclical Rerum Novarum. Therefore, I am opposed to both communism and laissez-faire capitalism.

Given the United States’ dire economic condition, with annual interest on our debt exceeding our annual defense spending, this should be the number one issue for people in positions of power in our executive and legislative branches of government. It is imperative that government spending be limited.

I do not believe that there should be billionaires when there is so much economic misery in the world. No one needs to have more than a billion dollars to be incentivized to work. The existence of billionaires – when so many live in poverty – should be an indictment of any economic system.

Politics

The United States is one of the greatest countries on Earth, and I am proud to be an American.

Freedom of speech and expression is not only a right guaranteed by the Constitution, but it is a right guaranteed by Nature and Nature’s God. The State should not be in the position of policing speech. This may sound obvious to an American, but it is in no wise obvious to non-Americans, as even in Western countries like the United Kingdom, we are seeing a disgraceful attack on freedom of speech.

I believe that secular democracy, such as that we enjoy in the United States, is one of the best forms of government.

I am politically independent. I do not believe that Trump is fit to be president of the United States, and it saddens me to see the extent to which Trumpism has swept through the Republican party. That being said, at the same time, between him and Harris, I believe that he was the lesser of two evils. But, as a patriot, the president of the United States has my full support: May God grant him wisdom to make decisions that are in the best interests of the American people.

Privacy

Privacy is a fundamental human right. Just as we have a right to use the restroom without someone recording us, so too do we have a right to communicate without someone eavesdropping on us. By extension, citizens have the right to use secure and end-to-end encrypted messaging applications to protect their privacy. Any legislation that does not allow for this, or somewhow attempts to sabatoge secure end-to-end encrypted communication, should be vehemently opposed by constituents of the state.

The idea that secure-messaging application makers can somehow allow a backdoor for law enforcement while maintaining the security guarantees of the messaging application is mere fantasy and wishful thinking. You cannot make a secure messaging system that is both secure and not secure at the same time. If it is secure, then neither governments nor sophisticated non-state actors should be able to break the encryption; if they can break the encryption, then it is not secure. It is simply naive to believe that “only the good guys will use this backdoor.” There is no way to guarantee, for example, that this secret backdoor will not be discovered by a state-sponsored adversary and then used by said adversary to unjustly spy on people. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the same government that mandated that an application have a backdoor will not itself later turn rogue and use its backdoor access to unjustly spy on its citenzry. History is filled with apparently good goverments that later went rogue.

Contrary to anarchists, there is a legimate place for state-sponsored surveillance and law enforcement in any modern state. For example, the state is perfectly within its mandate to surveil suspected child predators and terrorists where there is probable cuase. However, banning secure end-to-end encrypted means of communication for everyone, as states like China and Iran have done, and which some European countries are doing, is violative of the fundamental right to privacy that all humans beings enjoy as a birthright. It is a sure path to an Orwellian Panopticon that is incompatible with our natural state of living.

Strong privacy-preserving data-protection laws, like the European GDPR, are also necessary. Corportations are ruled by the interests of their shareholders, and their interests aren’t necessarily consonant with the interests of the corporation’s customers. One excellent method to compel or incentivize corporations to care about the privacy of their consumers is to enact great data-privacy laws and, in effect, force corporations to comply witih bare minimum standards of protecting consumer privacy.

Cybersecurity

I am a huge supporter of open-source software for operating systems, password managers, browsers, email clients and end-to-end encrypted messaging applications. I believe that such open-source software, provided that it is sufficiently popular, is much more secure than closed-sourced software.

Linux is superior to Windows in just about every way.