Intro:

It appears I've been on vacation from blogging for about a month and I have yet to contribute a post to the "Planet Atheism" blog roll.  I have been doing a bit of worthwhile commenting around the blogosphere so I will be reposting those exchanges over the course of the next few days. 

Fletch_F_Fletch (FFF) came up with a list of ten arguments from the New Atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Sam Harris (SH) that seemed the most worthy of further consideration amongst fellow Christian thinkers.  FFF said he was focusing on objection six at the time I got started, so I thought I would give my input on just that one to keep things simpler.  So far, four more Christians got involved in the conversation (in addition to Travis, who is FFF) and so I'll be going at it with all of them. 

Basically, SH notes that Christians claim to know more than scientists do about the what the universe is for based on faith all the while criticizing the science establishment for being arrogant about its own claims.  Vox Day (VD), the author of "The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, And Hitchens" sets up the argument below.  Basically he tries to divert attention to other verses advocating humility in order to cancel out the prerequisite epistemic overconfidence.   

---

Vox Day (link):

Travis requests responses to what he considers to be five of the New Atheists' most effective arguments:

That is a very stupid statement on Harris's part and serves to demonstrate his ignorance of the Christian religion, among others. First, on what basis does Sam Harris claim that arrogance is reprehensible? Second, what evidence does Sam Harris actually offer of any religious claims explaining why the universe exists? In contradiction, I note that in both the Old and the New Testament, the Bible is very clear that Man CANNOT understand God's reasoning or His purposes in Creation.

Job 36:26: "How great is God—beyond our understanding!"

Corinthians 13:12: "For now we see through a glass, darkly."

On the other hand, many atheists, including Sam Harris, deny nihilism even as they claim there is no basis for any belief in purpose in life. This is both philosophically incoherent and, to the extent that one knows it is philosophically incoherent but pretends otherwise, inherently dishonest. I further note that one should always be suspicious that Sam Harris doesn't know what he's talking about and is simply making something up when he writes "in fact".

Now, as for the remark about arrogance, this appears to be psychological projection as well as a good example of the deceitful atheist predilection for redefining words. Arrogance means "offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride." Synonyms: haughtiness, insolence, disdain. Antonyms: humility, modesty, diffidence. How, one wonders, is the Christian worldview an offensive display of superiority or self-importance? Indeed, there is no religion that places more explicit importance on humbling oneself before God or more completely stresses that all are fallen, including the believer. And are very few things more haughty, insolent, and disdainful, very few more ostentatious and overt displays of claimed superiority, than the New Atheist insistence that every religious, agnostic, or atheistic criticism of their reliably incorrect assertions is based on stupidity, evil, or ignorance. This is why I am forced to distinguish between atheists and New Atheists, as any neutral observer must admit that the New Douchebags would have been an equally fitting title for the latter.

Should one accept the least amount of beliefs that cannot be provided with sufficient evidence? Why? Parsimony is for scientific logic, not belief. No one, including the New Atheists believes anything this way; as one who is well-read in both economics and military history, I can easily demonstrate that each of the New Atheists and virtually every single atheist is badly guilty of harboring beliefs in direct contrast to all of the available evidence. To single out Christians and Creationists while letting millions of Labourites and Democrats off the hook for refusing to accept the Law of Supply and Demand, the logical impossibility of central planning, or the failure of public education is a reprehensible double-standard. #6 isn't just a spurious and baseless argument, it is one that is damning to the New Atheist, not the religious believer.

---

I responded:

Greetings all,

Travis asked me to comment.

In regards to number 6, VD's answer amounts to misdirection. It's understandable misdirection, since humility before God is the doctrinal highway most Christian minds frequent and readily acknowledge. However, as an outsider, we readily see that this humility is predicated on the not-so-humble defense of the unknown. In other words, you can't have one without the other, and pointing to the humility part doesn't magically cancel out the epistemic arrogance part necessarily.

To support the misdirection, VD quotes some Bible verses that talk up the ignorance and humility factor, but fails to address other Bible claims such as that the heavens declare the glory of God. Obviously most Christians believe that everything that happens is all about God's glory, so it naturally follows the universe exists for that purpose and SH's claim is accurate. The book of Hebrews also seems to directly say that everything was created by, through, and for Jesus and therefore the Christian salvation scheme. To avoid/ignore that conclusion is outright blasphemy, if I'm not mistaken.  Continue reading →

Intro:

I love TMS animation (link).  Their episodes in American television are beautifully drawn and animated.  In my teens, whenever I was able to recognize they'd done an episode of Batman The Animated Series, Superman The Animated Series, Spider-man or whatever, I knew I was in for a treat.  iTunes recently uploaded the first season (link) of the 1994 cartoon version of Spider-man (link), and I promptly purchased the TMS episodes.  I realized it'd be great to sample the artwork with screen shots, and thought I would share. 

So far I have shots from "Night of the Lizard."

---

First up, bloopers!

My mouf!  Some people can throw their voice and apparently Peter Parker can throw his lip lines.  hahahahahaha  There are all sorts of coloring errors throughout the episode where small sections of clothing get colored the same color as adjacent regions for a single frame.  Those are boring.  And there are other issues where a hand or foot that was behind something (and not drawn) is double framed (as with all animation) on a moving background so that we have a brief amputation.  Those are kind of fun.  But the above image is especially humorous given that his mouth is actually on camera on his neck!  haha

Peter Parker does look cool in spider-sense mode with his mouth intact, doesn't he?

And here we have a brief look at what Spiderman does in his free time.  Apparently he is into Xtreme tricycling in the rain off of neighborhood rooftops.  Only Spiderman would dare...   Continue reading →

Intro:

I thought I'd actually create a post so that the photoblog comments wouldn't keep getting cut off with word count limits.  Also, I got tired of updating the links on the previous versions.  Below is the argument map of my discussion with pychen, LSP1, musterion99, and oeshpdog2 (as I see it) that has been archived here.  You can click on any of the thumbnail images below the big one to see other tangent conversations that contributed to the map.  Also, see the research archive on 2 Thessalonians 2:11 here.

---

All of these are the same argument map, so don't get overwhelmed.  There are just numerous updates.  The biggest one is the current one.  Click on these to get the full resolution pics that can actually be read.

Intro:

The original conversation can be found over on pychen's site (link) and I also have an archive of it on my site (link).  Click on the large version below to see the full resolution argument map.  "Argunet," the software I'm using, doesn't allow me to create just any size image I want, so I've extended Map A off to the right with Map B.  Hopefully that is clear enough.  I'm open to corrections, spelling mistakes, and any organizational ideas to help the presentation be more clear.  Some of the mapping is a matter of interpretation of a very long and complicated conversation, but hopefully it properly represents the course of things. 

Please note the labels for each box if you want to submit new rebuttals.  Oh yeah, and btw, there is no "naturalistic logic argument map" yet (as it refers to in some of the purple squares).  That's forthcoming.

---

Intro:

It seems the Christian xangan, StrokeofThought (Philip) has adjusted his views a bit since we last went back and forth on things a long time ago.  He didn't seem very interested in the priority of evidence at the time, but appears that is perhaps a different story now.  And more power to him.  A month or so ago, he was most gracious in bringing to my attention how Jacob Kremer no longer holds to William Lane Craig's position on the historicity of the empty tomb of Jesus (which was a point of discrepancy in the Richard Carrier/William Lane Craig debate, link).  I'm not sure if Philip is aware of my follow up on that where I actually called in to the Infidel Guy's radio show to discuss the discrepancy with Richard Carrier (link).  Anyway, just recently, in response to SirNickDon's fideist position (link), Philip gave his critique (link), arguing that in fact the Bible advocates a more evidential perspective than fideists would acknowledge.  I believe Philip is mistaken (link), but in response he offered up some Bible verses that appear to contradict my understanding of early Christian methodology.  That's what I'll be addressing here. 

---

Philip says in response to me:  "And I do think the epistle writers did have such an integrated theology.  I of course do not need to refer you to passages in which they express their belief that knowledge of God comes through the Holy Spirit, or other such forms of direct revelation, but I will point to what I think represents the other side of the spectrum."

Even if I were to concede this was the case, the problem there is that we are allowing the Bible writers to mix bad methods with good methods.  There are mystics all over the world throughout history in many different religious traditions who likely mix their mystical presuppositions with a degree of reason.  Should we trust all of these divergent conclusions?  Probably not and it seems like special pleading to leave the door open for a handful of Jewish mystics 2,000 years ago.  We would need really good evidence that these mystics were miraculously pulling off a better balance of mysticism and science than any other in the history of mysticism.  I don't think we have that.  For instance I could imagine a really bizarre story about a bunch of tea leaf readers which could be entirely in step with logic and reason.  They'd just have to be willing to rigorously test the tea leaf reading mechanism and its conclusions.  I'm assuming most tea leaf readers are not willing or able to really go all the way with that since it is not currently a branch of science.  I suppose I could be mistaken.

Regardless, is it even the case?  Did the early Christians really care about evidence apart from mystical methods?  Philip points to the following verse:

John 14:11  "Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves."

It is true that certain characters in the Bible are given all sorts of evidence, but unfortunately the majority of such stories are FRAMED with anti-evidential tsk tsks for generations to come.  We can't just ignore that.  For instance:  

Matthew 12:39 "He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah."

So already it is not hard to see where this is going.  A character in a story gets oodles of evidence.  We get nearly nothing (other than ancient stories about it).  If we ask for it, we've been defined a priori as bad people.  Continue reading →

Intro: 

The following is a comment archive lifted from lynnjynh9315's xanga.  He describes himself in his profile as a moderate Christian who writes "gutsy" posts.  Recently he wrote a gutsy post titled, "Daughter of Jephthah: a Biblical Slasher story?"  Another Christian, nyclegodesi24 made some odd comments that I thought I would respond to.  Arnobius_of_Sicca is briefly in the mix there, too.  Enjoy.

---

lynnjynh9315 posted (excerpt): 

I have always found it very odd that Christians condemn the depravity of slasher-films and uber-violent video games like God of War while simultaneously praising such equally violent films like "The Passion of the Christ". It is not that I disagree with them, I also find slasher-films to be deplorable at best, but I feel that this issue deserves a fair evaluation: if Christians are to abhor such depictions of violence and avoid such works... wouldn't this also be good cause to avoid the Bible itself for the very same reasons?

---

nyclegodesi24 responded:

I think they're appropriate to read. They, unlike slasher movies, are not written with the intent of arousing feelings of patriotism or appealing to our desire to kill people. My pastor actually spoke on Jephthah a couple months ago in bible study. I think it's important to note that nowhere in this story does God call upon Jephthah to create any such vow, nor even specifically speak to him to fulfill it. He acted purely of his own will.

---

Arnobius_of_Sicca responded (excerpt):

Just because one does not understand the point of the story does not mean there isn't one.

One of the key points of Judges is the way it ends:  In Chapter 21:25, we see it say: "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes."

We aren't seeing Israel living according to the Law of Moses, but rather living in violation of it.  Jephthah violated the Law: (Lev 18:21; 20:2–5; Deut 12:31; 18:10; Mic 6:7) forbidding Human sacrifice and is considered to be a pagan practice.

---

I responded:

@nyclegodesi24 - You don't think a lot of the OT is geared toward inspiring a strong sense of patriotism?  We're not supposed to cheer when Samson annihilates thousands of Philistines?  hmm...I think I may have gotten the wrong idea...

@Lynnjynh9315 - I did a post on this a while ago.  Check it out if you want (link). 

@Arnobius_of_Sicca - Um...So you are saying one of the most bloodiest books of the Bible is suspiciously framed as "without a King" eh?  That almost sounds like advertisement for later theocracies, eh?

Ben

---

nyclegodesi24 responded:

@WAR_ON_ERROR - I think the OT's focus is different. OT writers definitely wrote with natural pride of Israel, but their coverage of events includes great numbers of slaughters in Israel, a lot of times they were run to the ground by their enemies. A writer seeking to pump up people to cheer for Israel wouldn't include stories about the ark of God being removed, about its bearers dying, about King David being shamed by a prophet. Even the psalms, which often include the king's boast of his kingdom, also includes his repentance of pride, saying that he knows nothing, that his goodness is nothing apart from that of God's. The focus of OT, I think, is not to rally support behind a people, but a merciful God. When they are triumphant in battle, it's entirely due to God's deliverance. More often than not, I think they've lost battles. That these writers detail all of that indicates to me that they're not trying to stir up any rightist vigor. A lot of their prophets, like Micah and Isaiah, repeatedly condemn Israel and its righteousness as "filthy rags." They even throw mud at the priests and the judges of Israel. I don't see evidence of patriotism here.

---

I responded: 

@nyclegodesi24 - A self-deprecating pride isn't hard to come by, especially when the stories all serve a religious ideological agenda.  This pattern is crystal clear:  Israel doesn't observe the religion, bad things happen.  Israel does...they find favor with God.  Good king, bad king, good king, bad king.  Good kings tear down the monuments to other gods.  Bad kings rebuild them.  Ad nauseum.  When the people seek favor with God, that serves the priesthood and those in political power.  In the story in Samuel they are "reluctantly" given a king.  The story serves to tell future generations *they asked for it* when they don't like being ruled over.  When everything is crazy in Judges because there is no king, that also serves the *same end* in just a different way. 

What's the theme?  Don't be a disobedient people.  Observe the laws of Yahweh.  That theme is extremely heavy especially in Exodus, but it doesn't stop there at all.  They continuously play it both ways for the same goal.  The people in charge have every interest in serving up the bad stuff *in a particular context* that justifies counter-intuitive ends from the standpoint of a "they'd only record the good stuff" mentality.  Anyway, it's almost too easy to read the OT that way. I even noted that theme when I was still a Christian long before I read anything like "The Bible Unearthed" which pulls together a bunch of archeology to support the conclusion that king Josiah molded the Biblical history to his own agenda.  It really does seem to show when you look at it through those eyes. 

That's the gist of my current perspective anyway.  I still have a lot to read on the topic. 

Ben  Continue reading →

Intro:

So does SirNickDon (link) want to argue with an atheist?  Not that he has to.  But if he wants to know what one might say...

---

SirNickDon:  But if I wanted to argue with atheists, I wouldn't argue about the existence of God.  I would argue about the whole prove-me-wrong thing.

Ben:  Is there something wrong with the "show me why something is correct" thing?

SirNickDon:  Because to play the prove-me-wrong game, you've got to get into objectivism, and that, rather than the conclusion that there is no (effective) god, is the problem.

Ben:  If effectively having no way to prove god exists is a problem then the underlying presupposition here seems to be that there has to be a way to conclude that God exists. What if there isn't a way?  Is that presupposition unchallengeable?  

SirNickDon:  Objectivism, on the other hand, is a worldview that makes truth into an inert entity, a mental substance, if you will, that exists "somewhere out there," that can be discovered and grasped by means of a detached method of learning, such as the scientific method.

Ben:  While I won't be defending objectivism, I will freely defend objectivity in a generic sense.  I don't think truth is something in and of itself.  Truth in my view is a relational concept where a mechanical brain checks and updates with sense experience versus its constructed mental model of affairs (whether internal or external). 

SirNickDon:  Objectivism, then, attempts to glean truth by freeing human understanding from all perspective that is rooted in particular times, places and tradition.  In short, it is an attempt to gain a view from nowhere in particular.

Ben:  You make it sound like there is a problem with a-centrically cross checking all traditions against everything you know from any starting position.  That's sad.  You won't be convincing me of anything any time soon.

SirNickDon:  And here is where I would argue with atheists, if I wanted to.  Here is where I would say, this is impossible.  God may or may not exist, and maybe we'll get to that later, but objectivism certainly does not exist.  Because there is no view from nowhere.  There is no neutral ground to stand on.  Continue reading →

Intro:

Since I'd like to start a new precedent when questions of Bible translations come up, this will be my first translation/commentary survey of a particular verse in question.  Basically it is a bit irritating when one Christian or another makes a contrary claim based on a translation.  Two red flags go up.  One, neither of us know Greek, probably, and things can get really stupid, really quick if either of us pretends to know what we are talking about if we have to duke it out on details.  Two, often questions of translation are heavily debated in Christian circles much less with unbelievers and it makes little sense to concede a point if the next conservative Christian who walks through my blog door asserts the opposite with equal confidence.  I want a universal argument and not one that just flip flops around.  So, to avoid the trust your favorite scholar game and other similar follies, when possible I'd like to buzz through all the online resources I can find and see what everyone is saying. 

Reprinted below are the brief volley of comments between myself and oeshpdog2, the translations I can find that support oeshpdog2's claim, all the online commentaries I can find, three that I scanned in from my own library, and then several online position papers.  To make skimming easier, I highlighted what seem to be the most critical words of each section of quotes.  I'll be using the A-F system I started laying out on my creation/evolution posts (link).  Grade C will be a neutrality.  B will be leaning for and D will be leaning against.  A will be definitely for and F will be definitely against.  Then we'll add them all up and give an overall grade.  The question is whether God is just "hands off" with sinners who turn away from him or whether he actually does something deliberate to twist the knife so to speak and force upon them further confusion.  The orientation will be A for God being a jerk, and F for God just living and let living.  This method I think helps disown a bit of personal bias regardless of what you believe about the verse.  It allows you to be more honest with what is the most plausible thing each author means and to help keep yourself from reading what you want into each section.  Just call it like it is, and move on.  Then add it up and see what happens. 

For those of you who do not know, 2 Thessalonians 2:11 says, "For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie."  That seems pretty straight forward that God is doing something specific so that people will be misled somehow, but this clashes with typical Christian ideology that would like to think God isn't responsible for any lying.  Sometimes, they are actually right, not just making up lame excuses, and some nuance gets smashed up in translation.  I don't think that's the case here.  But we'll see. 

Thinking about this brings to mind the hardening of Pharaoh's heart (which is yet another silly debate that Christians will go back and forth on with each other just as much) and the God who overtly proclaims himself a Jealous God (link) who we can only imagine is most compatible with this kind of behavior.  What do jealous gods do anyway?  Not act jealous?  This is just one verse of at least 6 others that indicates God really doesn't have a problem twisting the truth in people's minds for his own supposedly righteous ends.  While I'm not too concerned with Bible contradictions or an argument from evil here (though I will touch on that just a little bit), the Skeptic's Annotated Bible (link) has some verses to add to the mix in regards to the back and forth on whether God lies (albeit by proxy).  Those have been added to the argument map (see version 12) on whether Jesus might be righteously lying about eternal damnation (from which this conversation originated). 

I understand this is rather long and mainly for my own purposes.  I have no idea who out there is actually crazy enough to follow along.  I did try to make it pretty easy to breeze through if you have any idea where I'm coming from with this and I added some lolcat pics that I think might help get through it.  Though I'm not sure what the appeal might be to an average reader (assuming I have average readers), I would be delighted to find in the comment section any links to important position pieces from Christian apologetics that somehow managed to not get represented here.  I will add them.  The Online Parallel Bible (link) has been very helpful, though I've found other online commentaries (link).  If anyone else knows of any other online resources that would make future projects like this more efficient, I would be very grateful to know about them.

Please note at the bottom of each section in italics are my grades and brief commentary where applicable. 

---

The Contention Over 2 Thessalonians 2:11 

oeshpdog2 responded (link):

I wanted to go back an address rebuttal number 2 about the "strong delusion" being equated to a lie.  You have to go back and read 2 Thess. 2 in context to see that it is addressing the hardened sinner who rejects God and the truth and turns to follow "the lawless one."  It says "God will send them a strong delusion that they would believe a lie."  The lie in that passage is in reference to the lies the "lawless one" will perpetrate which are not lies coming from God.  The "send a strong delusion" is translated from "kai dia touto pempei autoiv o teov" which means "giving the wicked over to the evil they have chosen" which is adapted from Robertson's Word Studies of New Testament Greek.  The passage explains where the lie comes from and it is not from God.

F, since that's obviously what oeshpdog2 intends.

I responded (link):

@oeshpdog2 - Hey thanks!  That does sound plausible given the context of the chapter.  Not sure why God would have to give it an extra punch to send them on their way if it's just the way the sinners would want to go anyway.  But that is what it seems to say in just about every translation I'm looking at on BibleGateway.  Nineteen out of twenty have no indication of the translation you suggest.  Only the Worldwide English version (link) says anything like it.  I don't know Greek so I'm going to have to read around on different perspectives to see if I should concede that point.  It seems that there are some pretty firm Christian vs Christian perspectives on that.  If you have any suggested web articles either way, I'd appreciate the heads up.

B, since I allow for the possibility of being mistaken. 

---

Alternate Translations

(1 of 20 on BibleGateway)  Worldwide English (link) "That is why God lets them be fooled so that they will believe what is not true."

(1 of 15 on Online Parallel Bible) Bible in Basic English (link)  "And for this cause, God will give them up to the power of deceit and they will put their faith in what is false:"

B, since the overwhelming trend is to translate it in a positive sense that puts God in a place of responsibility.  There are two small exceptions (quoted above), so other ideas are at least possible.  Continue reading →

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Intro:

I recently finished listening to the unabridged audio book version of 1984.  My mother had recommended that I read this book ages ago and so finally at long last I’m familiar with the contents of it.  Overall, I enjoyed the book and can see why it has earned its place in the pantheon of pop-culture.  It is well written and reads like a precisely executed thought experiment that drags the reader over every nook and cranny of the first person humanistic experience of the main character from amoral start to finish.  From that standpoint every later homage is quite pale in comparison.  I assume there is no need to worry about "spoilers" with such an old book.   I didn’t even mind the unhappy ending, but I did have one significant complaint that I thought I would share. 

---

Perhaps 3/4ths of the way into the book, the main character, Winston, and his secret girlfriend, Julia, are solicited to join a rebellion by a secret agent of the thought police, O’brien.  They are asked a long list of the things they’d be willing to do in order to help the revolution against the infamous political entity, “Big Brother.”  Bizarrely they are willing to basically become terrorists.  They have no qualms about hurting innocent men, women, and children to achieve their goals.  Granted, I recognize this pays off later in the book when Winston is being “rehabilitated” and he is asked if he believes he is morally superior to the evil political party (they play the recording of this conversation back to him to remind him that he is just as bad as they are).  However, up until that point I had actually empathized with Winston and this sudden jaw dropping confession of his would have made continuing that theme the equivalent of cheer leading for Osama Bin Laden.  I could justify it as an extreme subjective human reaction in relation to their extreme life experiences under the tyranny of the thought police, but that turned the book into a pure anthropological exercise where it‘s just information about the fucked up things people do.  That’s not what I wanted.  I wanted to care about Winston and Julia, and from then on, I really couldn’t.  That was very disappointing and I was very close to not bothering to finish the book.  Yes, I get it that it ties into the theme of being completely lost to subjective limbo land, but it’s like going “full retard” as explained in the Ben Stiller comedy, Tropic Thunder (link).  You just don’t do that if you expect the audience to connect. 

I had another complaint but I double checked myself and realized I was mistaken.  O’brien gives Winston a copy of the scandalous revolutionary book supposedly written by the imaginary anti-Big Brother savior, Goldstein.  It’s a rather sterile description of the political and sociological circumstances of the era and how they came about that the evil party doesn’t want you to know about.  At first I thought Orwell has Winston read from the book and then re-read the same chapter from the book in its entirety, but it seems I jumped to conclusions.  He does re-read a 2 minute excerpt from chapter 1 (which is plenty of time to get angry when you don't have the ability to skip ahead easily with an audiobook), but not the entire chapter.  He skips to chapter three and reads that, then reads all of chapter 1 to Julia later.  Since there is so much reiterating in the book it is easy to let your mind wander, come back, and still have a pretty good idea of what is going on.  So it appears I just got confused.

In my opinion 1984 just isn’t even feasible.  It’s an over-developed hyperbolic metaphor for what direction to ultimately avoid.  It doesn’t mean you could ever  possibly actually get there even if you wanted to.  How in the world do you really control the orientation of every single neuron in a human population even when the most efficient part of your society is the thought police?  Reality does matter and just getting people to believe certain things is not enough. A good portion of the time it is easier to get people to believe things if those things are actually true!  It’s just impossible as though even our most collectivistic societies can accurately be described as a literal meta-organism.  That only goes so far no matter how China and North Korea may try.  It seems obvious such solipsistic dictatorships have serious conflicts with reality (that result in little oversights like chronic food crisis).  They are clearly dysfunctional and fundamentally at odds with the basic premise of the persistence of human ego.  They can test all the nukes they want, but otherwise they are rotten to the core in so many other ways, imploding is inevitable.  Winston struggled to articulate this point while being tortured in the book and was ridiculed by O'brien for it, but I highly doubt any country will ever be able to attain that brand of systemic perfection as Orwell envisioned it.

---

Outro:

Anyway, I do recommend the book despite my main objection above.  If you like any of the dystopian rip offs like THX-1138, Equilibrium (which I am  ashamed to even mention), V for Vendetta, and many others, you should probably check this classic out.

Ben