User:MonkeeSage

Who is MonkeeSage?

MonkeeSage was once used for NASA testing

I am a creation, made in the image of God, fallen in Adam, redeemed in Christ. I am a male, aged 26 years, and currently stored in South-Eastern Texas, USA. I attend a local Presbyterian church (OPC). My real name is Jordan Callicoat.

My nickname is derived from the fact that I like monkeys and when I'm not controlled by the noetic effects of sin, I consider myself a sage in a sense (viz., I like reading and learning and discussing issues).

My interests are philosophy, apologetics, theology, writing, photography and art. I consider myself a Van Tillian presuppositionalist, epistemological representationalist, ontological realist (whew!).

That's about it! Feel free to leave me a message on my talk page.

Here is a page about some Bible verse templates I've created.

A Curse Upon Vandals

Here is an ancient Germanic curse upon wiki-vandals, which I just made up:

Die Flöhe auf Zehntausend verärgerten Kamels läuft innen Ihrer Unterwäsche!

The Fifty-Third Calypso

Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a Chinese dentist,
And a British queen—
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice very nice—
So many different people
In the same device.

Kurt Vonnegut, "[Bokonon's] Fifty-third Calypso", in Cat's Cradle, p. 2.

Lawn mowing machine

I love visiting with Grandma and Grandpa, and writing letters to parents, and pushing lawn mowing machine so Grandpa’s hyena don’t get disturbed.

Long Duk Dong from the 80's movie Sixteen Candles.

Programming and Scripting Skills

I am a fairly proficient HTML/XHTML/XML/XUL/CSS user. Same with JavaScript, perl, Ruby, Python, C# and PHP. I can get by in shell script and awk, but I don't like them very much except for trivial tasks ("one-liners"). I have also fooled around with XSLT, but it was too much of a pain to be bothered with (Xpath is cool though), since I can do the same transforms in one of the aforementioned scripting languages which have Apache modules. I tinkered with C++ a few years ago, but didn't stick with it. I've recently been playing with D, and learning Haskell and O'Caml (Haskell is fun). Most recently my favorite tinker-toy is Vala--which is a preprocessor that turns a language with almost the exact same syntax and semantics as C# 2.0, into standard C code using GLib / GObject for its object system, and produces native binaries.

Free / Open-Source Projects I've Contributed To

K-Meleon web browser (minor backend bug-fixes and updates, chrome and extension hacking).
Mozilla Firefox (created 8 or so 3rd-party browser extensions, io.js module featured on XULPlanet.com).
Last-Exit (some aesthetic patches and added playing /remaining time display).
Mono (couple of patches for BackgroundWorker).
Others I may have forgotten about.

Quotes I Like

Behold what is written about the Evil Inclination. You should know that it will always exist in human beings until that time, of which it is written: "and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26).

Midrash Hane'elam in Zohar, vol. 6, §23, ¶ 314.

The attempt to by-pass or exclude metaphysics will often be found to involve a concealed metaphysical assumption, an unavowed theory of being. In other words, the theory that scientific advance pushes metaphysics out of the picture is mistaken. Metaphysics simply reappears in the form of concealed assumptions.

Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 8, p.120.

These scientific games are without genuine epistemological content unless we superimpose on them some sort of metaphysical principle which will say that the game, as specified by the methodology, gives us the best chance of approaching the truth.

Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Reseach Programmes (Cambridge: the University Press, 1980), p. 122.

The complaint will he heard that, if we are arguing over whether God exists and has final authority, we may not take that authority for granted while we are arguing about it. But the complaint is reversible, is it not? The Christian can reply: "If we are arguing about whether God exists and has final authority, we may not take for granted that He is not the final authority; the attempt to authorize (substantiate) His authority by some other standard would amount to the ruling that whatever authority He has it cannot be final." A Person's presuppositions are (as such) presupposed even when someone is discussing or arguing about them. For example, philosophers who argue for the truth or validity of the laws of logic do not put aside logic while arguing for it.

Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1998), p. 92, n. 8.

The very nature of an ultimate presupposition is that it is held with certainty. An ultimate presupposition is an ultimate criterion of truth, and therefore it is a criterion by which all other alleged certainties are tested. There is no higher criterion by which the certainty of such a presupposition can be called into question. Thus by its very nature, such a presupposition is the most certain thing that we know. And the certainty that belongs to presuppositions also belongs to their implications and applications. Implications and applications constitute the meaning of a presupposition; how can the presupposition be certain if its meaning is uncertain? If "thou shalt not steal" is a certain command of revelation, then "Thou shalt not embezzle"—an applicatory exegesis of that command—is no less certain. Both are the commands of God. And since, in one sense (see (4) above), all knowledge can be seen as an application of our presupposition, it is possible to say that all of our knowledge is certain. We do not, however, always feel certain. . . . Progress in theology, then, involves extending the certainty we have about such "fundamental" doctrines to the whole teaching of Scripture. Certainty, therefore, considered as a psychological state, rises and falls for various reasons. Christians, however, have a right to be certain. Scripture encourages Christians to be certain, and every Christian, merely by virtue of his faith, has achieved certainty in some measure. But does that emphasis on certainty mean that there is no role for probability in theology? I think that there is such a role. As we have seen, because of the weakness of our faith, our certainty is not always perfect. To the degree that we lack certainty, all we have is probability. Furthermore, there are such matters that, in the nature of the case, are matters of probability. Even if our faith were perfect, there would still be some matters relevant to theology about which, because of our finitude, we could have only probable knowledge. . . . Butler was right when he said that many of our decisions in life are based on probability rather than absolute certainty. And it is also true, as he said, that we have a moral obligation, when we do not have absolute certainty, to accept the most probable possibility. . . . Where Butler went wrong was in saying that our belief in Jesus Christ for salvation is only a matter of probability and that that probability can be ascertained through "neutral" rational methods, apart from the presupposition of Scripture.

John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987), 5.A.(8), (8).c., pp. 135-136.

Already in the possibility of the knowledge of good and evil Christian ethics discerns a falling away from the origin. Man at his origin knows only one thing: God. It is only in the unity of his knowledge of God that he knows other men, of things, and of himself. He knows all things only in God, and God in all things. The knowledge of good and evil shows that he is no longer at one with his origin. [. . .] Man as the image of God draws his life from the origin of God, but the man who has become like God draws his life from his own origin. In appropriating the origin to himself man took to himself a secret of God which proved his undoing. The Bible describes this event with the eating of the forbidden fruit. Man now knows good and evil. This does not mean that he has acquired new knowledge in addition to what he knew before, but the knowledge of good and evil signifies the complete reversal of man's knowledge, which hitherto had been solely knowledge of God as his origin.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1995), pp. 21, 22.

Man had originally been made perfect. He had then in Adam broken the covenant that God had made with him (Rom 12). He was now a covenant-breaker and, as such, subject to the wrath of God. Having such a view of the nature of man Paul did not merely plead for a "complete system," for the recognition of the "spiritual dimension" as well as the material. He did not want merely to add the idea of the personal confrontation with Jesus Christ to that of the impersonal study of the laws of nature. In short, he did not ask for the privilege of erecting an altar to the living God, Creator of heaven and earth, next to the altars to gods that have been born of human minds. He pleaded for, and in the name of his Lord required of men, a complete reversal of their point of view in every dimension of life.

Cornelius Van Til, The Intellectual Challange of the Gospel (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1950), Introduction.

There is no alternative but that of theonomy and autonomy.

Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theistic Ethics: In defense of Biblical Christianity (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980 edt.), p. 134.

The Son of God became like unto men in all things, sin excepted. So the question of identification becomes at once important. Who is the Christ? Is it this man Jesus of Nazareth? But he does not seem to differ greatly from other men.

How can he be identified as the Son of God as well as the son of Mary? Can there be identification unless there be complete or exhaustive description? How is he, if he is wholly unique, to be indicated for what he is to those who are wholly different from him? Or, if he is not wholly different, if he is like them and yet also unlike them, where is the boundry line between likeness and difference? When we can only recognize him at the point where he is like us or identical in nature with us, we can not recognize him where he is different from us.

The upshot of such considerations is that the identification of Jesus Christ must be by his own authority. Without authoritative identification, the Christ is lost in the ocean of relativity.

Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1969), p. 26.

No one, therefore, can know God unless he apprehends the Son; for the Son is the wisdom by whose instrumentality all things have been created; and these created objects declare this wisdom, and God is recognised in the wisdom. But the wisdom of God is not anything similar to the wisdom which man possesses, but it is the perfect wisdom which proceeds from the perfect God, and abides for ever, not like the thought of man, which passes from him in the word that is spoken and (straightway) ceases to be. Wherefore it is not wisdom only, but also God; nor is it Word only, but also Son. And whether, then, one discerns God through creation, or is taught to know Him by the Holy Scriptures, it is impossible either to apprehend Him or to learn of Him apart from His wisdom.

Gregory Thaumaturgus (of Pontus), A Sectional Confession of Faith, §3.2-8.

I need not prove by arguments what God Himself proves by His own words. When we read that God says He perpetually sees the entire earth, we prove thereby that He does see it because He Himself says He sees it. When we read that He rules all things He has created, we prove thereby that He rules, since He testifies that He rules. When we read that He ordains all things by His immediate judgment, it becomes evident by this very fact, since He confirms that He passes judgment. All other statements, said by men, require proofs and witnesses. God’s word is His own witness, because whatever uncorrupted Truth says must be the undefiled testimony to truth.

Salvian the Presbyter, The Governance of God, bk. 3, §1, in Fathers of the Church (New York: CIMA Publishing Co., Inc., 1947), vol. 3, pp. 68-69.

[The attributes of God] comprise the characteristics of God which distinguish him as God. It is precisely in the sum total of his attributes that his essence finds expression. With them he is distinguished as God from all other entities. Without them, either collectively or singly, he would simply cease to be God.

Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville, Tenn.; Thomas Nelson), p. 161.

God is Himself the author of the instruments He employs for communication of His messages to men and has framed them into precisely the instruments He desired fpr the exact communication of His message. There is just ground for the expectation that He will use all the instruments He employs according to their natures; intelligent therefore as intelligent beings, moral agents as moral agents...If God wished to give His people a series of letters like Paul's, He prepared a Paul to write them, and the Paul He brought to the task was a Paul who spontaniously would write just such letters.

B. B. Warfield, The Biblical Idea of Revelation, in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (Baker, 1991 edt.), vol. 1, pp. 92-93.

[T]he knowledge of God is the only dogma, the sole content of the entire field of Dogmatics. All doctrines treated in Dogmatics — whether in regard to the universe, man, Christ, etc. — are but the explication of the central dogma of the knowledge of God. Everything is treated with God as center and starting-point. Under him all things are subsumed. To him all things are traced back. It is ever God and God alone whose glory in creation and redemption, in nature and in grace, in the world and in the church, it must meditate on and describe. It is the knowledge of him, of him alone, which it must display and show forth.

Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1979), William Hendriksen tr., ch. 1, §1(B), p. 13.

O Lord, I sing with lips and heart,
Joy of my soul, to Thee;
To earth Thy knowledge I impart
As it is known to me.

O Lord, I Sing With Lips and Heart

Paul Gerhardt

Disclaimer

Some information regarding pictures on this page is meant to be purely comedic, not factual. Please don't sue me or do me bodily harm if you were fooled into thinking the information was being presented as factual. Beware, I am a trained Jedi knight!