There are any number of common phrases that rub me up the wrong way, and among them is “sexual jealousy”. Usually the term is applied to some poor sod who either hasn’t got his (and it’s usually a guy) wick wet in a while, or harbours a resentment towards people who have a sex life.
Why is this a problem? Envy is when you harbour a desire for something you don’t have. Jealousy is when you harbour a desire for something that has been taken away from you.
Even if it’s over an ex sexual partner, it shouldn’t be called “sexual jealousy” because neither one’s ex-partner, nor their sex, is something for another person to own. They own themselves and they own their sexuality, and they grant access as they see fit. Nobody’s taking anything.
The only way sex can be taken away from someone is when one’s own sexuality is impaired by an external force – say chemical castration or a particularly nasty accident that leaves one physiologically unable to engage sexually. But this kind of thing isn’t usually what is on one’s mind when they say “sexual jealousy”.
So for a start, let’s begin by calling what we are talking about by the term “sexual envy“.
I find people who manage their sexual envy poorly particularly irritating at times. And so do a lot of people. The negative consequences of poorly managed sexual envy can be anywhere between someone being a bit of a jerk, to being a sex offender.
I’ve been meaning to post on this as a “people who shit me” post for a while now (it’s been an issue of annoyance for years and years of living amongst geeks), but I think I’ll play it a bit less rhetorical this time.
Feeling entitled to something nobody is entitled to
It becomes a lot more obvious when you appreciate that sexual envy finds its foundation in sexual entitlement – “I should have that”. Sexual envy isn’t just a melancholy over not having one’s desires met. Furthermore, sexual entitlement, if true, would necessitate sexual obligation on the part of some other sexual partner irrespective of consent.
Sex is a private matter. Not necessarily private in that we shouldn’t hear about it in public, but private in that it is in no part whatsoever a part of the commons. Consent via a private social contract is therefore necessary and thus entitlement to a sexual partner is impossible. People who seek to appease their own sexual desires by avoiding these contracts are what we call sex offenders.
The first and foremost thing that the sexually envious have to come to terms with is that they aren’t entitled to a partner, and therefore there is no justification for their envy – just explanations. They don’t have a reason to be envious, just reasons that they are.
It’s not always a serious problem
To a small extent, this is understandable and can be tolerated.
To cite a different instance of akrasia from my own life, I have moments of anger over a number of tragic deaths that have occurred amongst friends and family. I’m not entitled to have my friends enjoy immortality, or for them to be immune to risk. Death happens.
I don’t think it too much to expect that I get a bit of consideration around these kind of events, that I’m not going to be able to be entirely reasonable. But I still have to come to terms with, and properly manage this anger as best I can so that it doesn’t consume me, or become a problem for other people. When the shit isn’t hitting the fan, I think I do pretty well.
Similarly, I think we can afford to tolerate the occasional “all the good guys are either taken of gay”, or “I won’t be getting any tonight” by the sex-starved. This much is just harmless venting. A minor akrasia with the implicit, stoic recognition that things are what they are.
But there are plenty of ways in which poorly managed sexual envy, short of motivating sex offences and other, more disturbing phenomena, can still be the basis for antisocial behaviour.
Plans and pick-up lines
“I’m planning to get laid tonight!” says the young guy who has no idea who he is “planning” to have sex with. Given that consent is required, plans shouldn’t be made in the absence of the other, prospective partner. “I want to get laid tonight” is far more appropriate. If you do, you do. If you don’t, you don’t. And it’s not just rhetoric this. How many young men (and it’s usually men) go out for a night on the town with expectations (i.e. sense of entitlement, predicated on the obligation of a stranger) of getting laid, only to wind up in a fight? Or looking stupid (which they probably deserve)?
At the very least, this kind of attitude shows a premeditated disposition of bad faith towards potential sexual partners. It’s the kind of motivation that lay behind many a rehearsal of pick-up lines, which largely fail for this reason – if not the pathetic desperation, the inept attempt at manipulation is the ultimate turn off. The object of affection is left in the position of accepting the advance at the expense of their self-respect – “I actually slept with him after he used that line?”
For anyone to say “yes” to this kind of approach is to humiliate one’s self. “If I told you that you had a nice body, would you hold it against me?” Seriously, does anyone seriously expect another human being to abandon their self-respect just to get into the sack with someone spouting this kind of rubbish?
The plans and rehearsals are predicated upon a lack of respect, a failure to fully appreciate the concept of consent and again, as sense of entitlement. And it doesn’t go unnoticed – which is why it doesn’t work, except with the most sad and desperate and most willing to humiliate themselves.
Envy as ulterior motive
You’ve probably seen this oodles of times. People who go around critiquing other people’s relationships in instrumentally misleading fashion.
“She’s not good enough for him”. “He doesn’t treat her right”.
Either through gossip about how Ms X was a tramp, or how Mr Y doesn’t pay proper attention to his partner, it’s pretty much the same formula at its roots. Feign genuine concern for the welfare of the object of desire, cook up charges against the competition and naturally it (conveniently) follows that one’s self is the best candidate as lover.
It’s about as obvious to everyone as plans and bad pick-up lines. Everyone except perhaps the person performing the mental gymnastics. And again, it is predicated upon a lack of respect for the person desired, a failure to fully appreciate the concept of consent and yet again, a sense of entitlement.
Do you really think that she’d let her boyfriend talk to her like that? Do you really think she has so little self respect? Could it just be that they are having a bit of a joke? Do you really think so little over her to think that she actually needs your critical analysis?
Do you really think that just because they let you into a part of their lives, that they’ve invited you into the most personal aspects of their relationship? Did they consent to you being there?
What makes you think that you’re even a candidate for replacing the existing partner, even if she does give him the flick? What a sense of entitlement!
Emotional fallout
When there is a stoicism involved, with the implication that there is no entitlement, the emotional fallout from a friend with a lousy sex life is one of those things that friends just put up with. When the problem is amplified by depression, or anxiety, support should be able to be found from the appropriate health care professional – such support in my view, unlike sex itself, being a part of the commons. (Indeed, I think that those of the sexually envious denied a nationally funded mental health care scheme when they need it, have grounds to be angry – on this count they are entitled.)
But when it gets to the point that entitlement is surreptitiously assumed, as is the case when the sexually envious think their envy is justified, and people start to be treated in bad faith, that’s when tolerance can quite reasonably be wound back.
“Take me out with you so I can get laid as well!”
No.
For one, and healthy minded outing doesn’t treat sexuality as some kind of hunt. Sex just happens. A healthy sex life is a function of a healthy social life and a “hunt” isn’t healthy.
If your friends are getting laid, and they’re not hooking up in dubious arrangements, odds on they’re not “hunting” . Odds on they’re just treating people right.
And seriously, do you think the guys or gals or guys and gals want to go out for a night on the town, with someone who views the outing as a “hunt”? Someone with a penchant for “she’s not good enough for him”, or “he doesn’t treat her right”?
The only sexual entitlement is for one’s sex life to be free of coercion from outside of one’s mutually informed and consenting partnership. Being cock-blocked by the sexually envious, constitutes such a form of coercion. Sure, the guys and girls may have not been out on the hunt, but if they hook up in good faith, who is the sexually envious to get in the way?
Entitlement squared
The emotional fallout can be hard on people having to deal with the sexually envious and putting up with it, when entitlement is assumed, is really an act of charity. People don’t have to put up with behaviours motivated in bad faith, not even from their friends.
I’ll say it again – it’s charity. And I mean “charity” with a specific meaning.
Welfare can come from the commons, in which case people have an entitlement and should expect it (within the limits of the tragedy) from a civilised society. Welfare can come from charity, which is not a part of the commons, which therefore people don’t have an entitlement to.
When sexual envy dominates a certain kind of private social interaction, to the extent of motivating behaviour in bad faith, the sexually envious remain within the private social setting from the charity of the other parties. They aren’t entitled to get laid on a night out on the town, and they aren’t entitled to being taken out on a night on the town by their friends if they’re going to behave like that.
I think this is true in a broader range of social settings, if not all social settings.
If the sexually envious insinuate themselves closer to someone else’s partner at a social gathering, they can expect to be ejected from it. They can expect to be ejected from their network of friends altogether. In a workplace setting they can expect their due warnings, then to be fired.
The sexually envious aren’t entitled to sex, and they aren’t entitled to having their sense of entitlement entertained.
After an extended period of this kind of behaviour, or if after due warnings, the sexually envious need to realise just how much their relationships are an act of charity on the part of other, private citizens. Charity that can be repealed with out further warning.
The sexually envious really need to take responsibility to stop it getting this far in the first place.
Diminished capacity
It can be argued that sexual envy is in some cases at in part pathological. At least I don’t intend to prejudice this.
But all the same, unless those having a problem dealing with sexual envy are institutionalised or in a prison for sex offences, the odds are that they still have other faculties in tact. It’s just that for the sake of their particular weakness, they lean very heavily upon their social network.
This reasonably comes with a cost and the cost is control.
If the sexually envious acknowledge that they have diminished capacity in managing something that has consequences for others, it falls to the capacity of others to deal with it. In any effective deferral of such capacity comes the deferral of some form of decision making.
This is reinforced by the realisation that one’s social network are within their rights to abandon someone treating them in bad faith. They have an entitlement to say no to private social interaction just the way that a potential partner can say no to sex.
I don’t think this ultimatum is one made in bad faith – the diminished capacity is in itself a kind of ultimatum in the way it limits choices, and having this foisted upon a social network is what drives the ultimatum in the first place. The sexually envious with diminished capacity had an ultimatum hanging over their heads in the first place. There’s no loss of freedom in this arrangement, just accounting.
So when the sexually envious pleads to their social network that they can’t control themselves properly, they are inviting the social network to take control for them. They are inviting the social network to set boundaries for them anywhere between minor considerations to total exclusion. The members of the social network have the right to protect themselves from the full array of antisocial behaviours stemming from sexual envy.
The sexually envious need to realise that this extends to discussion of control. Like it or lump it, the sexually envious need to realise that boundaries preventing discussion of matters of control in bad faith, can include boundaries preventing discussion of control altogether. Negotiation isn’t an option unless given by way of charity.
Ultimately, the sexually envious who plead diminished capacity can reasonably be excepted to accept the terms their social networks give them, or can reasonably be excepted to leave their social networks altogether. And before they whine about being emotionally exploited – their obedience in return for emotional needs being met – they should consider their track record amongst their cohort.
The fact that they are still in the cohort in the first place, with no conditions made before the plea of diminished capacity, shows the good faith and grace they have already been shown – to deny this would be disrespectful. If the seriously sexually envious individual has a cohort willing to take them on board, warts and all, they should be happy and grateful, not spiteful and selfish.
What the sexually envious (from the benign to the malicious) need to really get their heads around
- Not having a sex life is not pleasant and is clearly sub-ideal, but it is not a problem necessitating a solution. To require a solution would first require an entitlement to be unmet, but there is no sexual entitlement to be met or unmet in the first place.
- The problem (if any) necessitating a solution in the first place is the treatment of sex as an entitlement, which necessarily presupposes sexual obligation from others. Which is wrong.
- If they treat sex as an entitlement, it’s probably a good thing they aren’t getting it. People so selfish don’t deserve the intimate trust of others.
- When they aren’t getting sex because they treat potential partners in bad faith, it’s because self-respecting potential partners are turned off by this. And being turned down in these cases is a good thing because it preserves the self-respect of the person being approached for sex, while costing the suitor nothing worthwhile that they possessed in the first place.
- Trying to not see sex as an entitlement, to try and get laid, is not a solution. The goal of getting laid, from an envious perspective, presupposes entitlement and is thus doomed to fail if overcoming entitlement is the primary goal. Which it should be.
- The sexually envious are entitled to medical assistance for depression, anxiety and any other medical reason making things worse. They aren’t entitled to the charity of having their friends deal with acts of bad faith – and in cases of chronic bad faith, aren’t even entitled to the friends they treat this way. Psychiatrists, social workers and others are paid for that and it’s for the sexually envious, not their friends, to pick up the slack.
- The sexually envious who manage their emotions so poorly as to regularly engage with their cohort in bad faith, can’t expect their cohort to keep them around without conditions being met. Nor can they expect their cohort to be open to negotiation on these conditions.
- Being sex-starved but keeping your sexual envy well managed, is a better state to be in than being sex starved and rabidly envious. Sex shouldn’t be the goal. Getting over envy should.
- And finally, because it warrants repeating – there is no sexual entitlement on which to base sexual expectations. Sexual entitlement, not lack of sex, is the problem.
~ Bruce
P.S. I’ll proof this post over the next few days. It’s been a long night!
(Image Source: LogicDude)
Via formspring: Kant and a priori synthetic judgements – why are they necessary for the possibility of experience?
Currently in my formspring inbox (along with two other questions I’ll answer in due course)…
“Kant claims that a priori synthetic judgments are necessary for the possibility of experience. What does he mean by this?”
Here we go!
Some terms and some history
Prior to Kant’s arrival on the Enlightenment scene, judgements were divided into two categories – a priori and a posteriori. A priori judgements were made via pure reason (it is an a priori truth that A=A), whereas a posteriori judgements are derived from experience, therefore being unreliable in their specific application (it is an a posteriori truth that some swans are white – but some aren’t, as you can see in my title bar above).
Put as an oversimplification the Enlightenment rationalists were all about a priori judgements and the Enlightenment empiricists were all about a posteriori. (Which is why I get a bit miffed when people who are all about the empirical evidence call themselves “rationalists” – but that’s another story*). Suffice to say, this left the empiricists with all the practical application (i.e. evidence based), while the rationalists got all the reliability (i.e. A will never, can never equal not-A – it will always equal A).
In an attempt to resolve this schism, Immanuel Kant went further, identifying another similar distinction overlaid upon the old one; the analytic/synthetic distinction.
Analytic judgements are those where the predicates are entirely contained in the subject of the judgement, e.g. all killers have taken a life, all squares have four sides*.
Synthetic judgements are those where the predicates are distinct from the subject of the judgement, being linked through relation to another subject – e.g. the Earth orbits the sun, that piece of halibut looks good enough for Jehovah.
When overlaid, you end up with four categories of judgements.
- Analytic a priori – uncontroversial truths by definition – e.g. a triangle has three sides.
- Analytic a posteriori – a meaningless category because the predicates, being already contained in the subject, do not require empirical verification. E.g. to point at a real material triangle and claim “that triangle has three sides” is both rationally and empirically true – it necessarily has three sides by definition, and empirically it appears to have three sides. The rational truth is necessarily true, but the empirical truth, being empirical knowledge, is never utterly reliable and in this (and every other analytic a posteriori) case, redundant.
- Synthetic a priori (the point of this post) – judgements that are necessarily (a priori) true that have predicates derived through relations between subjects. I’ll get back to this.
- Synthetic a posteriori – everyday, empirical facts e.g. homoeopathy is just a placebo, thermonuclear devices work through a combination of fusion and fission, and Coldplay are boring.
Ignore for the purposes of this post, that my tutor at Uni who got me into Kant, had an example of a judgement that was both analytic and synthetic.
Why are synthetic a priori truths are necessary for the possibility of experience?
Here are some (modern) examples of what Kant would probably have considered synthetic a priori judgements.
- Non-Euclidean geometry.
- The evolutionary algorithm (if variant, if hereditary, if selected then evolution must occur).
- Graph theory.
None of the predicates within either of these reside just within the subject (e.g. hereditary status requires two subjects at least – a parent and a child), but all by definition are true. Their synthetic nature providing the practical justification previously only the province of empirical a posteriori judgements, while retaining the logical necessity afforded by their a priori status – a reliability previously only the province of Enlightenment rationalism.
All three of these synthetic a priori truths form the practical, logically consistent underpinnings of (scientific) experience; general relativity has non-Euclidean geometry as a logical underpinning; evolutionary biology has the evolutionary algorithm as a logical underpinning; a nice swath of computer science has graph theory as a logical underpinning.
Analytic a priori truths are too divorced from the practical, material reality to support any of these ventures. Synthetic a posteriori truths are the ventures themselves, not their logical underpinnings, and are insufficient in their logical necessity to reliably imply universality.
Analytic a posteriori judgements are meaningless, which leaves (in Kant’s scheme) synthetic a priori judgements – which as the examples demonstrate, do the job of logically underpinning experience just nicely (practical and by definition logically necessary) .
I hope that answers the question adequately. If all else fails, remember the four categories and the three that aren’t up to the task!
~ Bruce
UPDATE: Oh, and prior to Kant, where was also the fact-value distinction, which is outside the scope of the post – but worth knowing about.
* “God has existence” is not an example of this, because not only isn’t existence a predicate contained in the subject, it’s not a predicate at all. This is not a linguistic argument, it’s epistemological! Arrgh! (Pet peeve – sorry).
Oh, and on a related note – common wisdom and public mythologies about participants in the discussion of religion.
I’ve been enjoying a little trick of late, that I may formulate into a questionnaire of sorts.
Basically, I’ve been taking the work of religious writers, either stripping them of identifying details or presenting them to unfamiliar audiences, providing sources for the quotes they make and then prompting feedback. I’ve been doing much the same thing with chunks of text written by Dawkins, Hitchens et. al.
The people I’ve been presenting this material to have been those that identify as moderate-tolerant – either atheist or theist. Either shying away from ostentatious conversation, or subscribing to various tropes about vocal atheists being intolerant, purely engaging in ad-hominem, etc. etc. I’m an atheist, but… or I don’t subscribe to fundamentalism, but…
Interestingly, the Hitchens and Dawkins quotes have been well received (“I don’t mind this kind of atheism, but…”), while the religious quotes have largely been damned as fundamentalist.
The fact that the Hitchens and Dawkins quotes seem to be viewed as more reasonable than the work of Hitchens and Dawkins (principle of non-contradiction!), is only half as interesting as the way the religious texts (specifically, obvious misquotes of atheists) are being received. Specifically, they are being written off as fundamentalist, right-wing, “not like mainstream Christians”, or otherwise allegedly different to moderate Christianity.
So far nobody has sniffed at the end of one of these dismissals – although I live in hope.
The irony lies in the fact that I’m using religious texts by popular, well-respected, progressive, supposedly moderate, mainstream Christian authors! Alister McGrath, Madeleine Bunting and so on. I’ve even sometimes felt the need to defend these authors in the process when the condemnation has got a bit overzealous – “you know, the author actually isn’t right-wing”, or “no, no, they criticised the Pope for that!”
It’s all anecdotal of course. Not a controlled study. But it’s still interesting all the same.
I wonder what a proper study into perception-of-author-versus-perception-of-the-text would show! Maybe someone else has already done the research. Better get checking!
~ Bruce
I’ve got an email sitting in my in-box in response to my last post, and as it was so abrupt as to be largely devoid of tone (and from someone I don’t know), I can’t tell what spirit it’s written in. Hence, unless I’m given reason to think otherwise, I’ll assume it isn’t hate mail and therefore won’t publish the author’s name.
At any rate, their statement was in response to this line in my last post:
“I’m willing to help subvert the term until it’s rendered as meaningless and non-controversial as “afairyist”, or until I’m dead.”
(Me, Then.)
To which they asked “certain?” – and that’s all.
Before I get to the task of answering this question, I’m going to ramble on a bit about a discussion last night on Twitter. Like it, lump it or leave – you’re in charge of what you read.
Accusations of certitude
I suspect, but don’t know, that whoever our friend is, he’s probably been following last night’s Twitter conversation on the topic of atheists and certainty – where Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins were nominated as examples of atheists exhibiting certitude. 140 chars isn’t much, and people were a bit tired so I didn’t labour the point that Hitchens is on record as stating that Victor Stenger is too confident in God’s non-existence (and even then I wouldn’t call Stenger certain*), and Hitchens has explicitly stated many times (and in The God Delusion) that his disbelief isn’t certain, what it would take for him to change his mind, and that certainty isn’t a good thing for scientists.
Certitude is an absolute. And while it isn’t easy to detect – because let’s face it, people can hide their certitude and passing yourself off as stubborn isn’t the best debating tactic – when certitude rears its head it’s really bloody obvious. The willingness to disregard evidence because it contradicts a presupposed, mystically obtained belief, is certitude. Claiming a 100% confidence interval with no room for human error, ever, is certitude.
Certitude isn’t a personality trait or a rhetorical disposition. It’s an epistemological facet. Being overbearing, loud mouthed and obnoxious, doesn’t make you certain. Being a bit of a curmudgeon doesn’t signify absolute confidence.
And that’s another thing – confidence isn’t certitude either unless it’s absolute. A hypothesis confirmed or denied at a 99% confidence level is pretty damn confident, but it isn’t certitude because by necessary implication, there is a small probability that the results are wrong.
So when someone is brash, pig-headed and confident, or you otherwise take exception to their personality, that’s no reason to accuse them of certainty. That’s not what certitude is.
If you think they are over confident, say so and then provide some evidence to back up your claim (or expect to be dismissed). If you find their personality obnoxious, which is a subjective thing, say so and give some examples (or expect to be dismissed). Even if you do present evidence and examples, expect them to be scrutinised. Especially when talking to someone who knows their shit!
The other thing that strikes me – relating specifically to the matter of the downgrading of evidence in lieu of mythology – is that in seeing these myths prosecuted in the past few weeks, I’ve repeatedly encountered the “accusation first – I’ll send you a link later”, phenomena. I know people are busy, and can be tired, and they can forget and so on and so forth. I’m not making an accusation here, much less about specific instances – it’s just that it’s happened a lot of late, which as a trend is a bit worrying.
Put more simply – I’ve been enquiring into people’s perceptions of atheists – not to recount in the book I’ve got planned**, but instead to test my own perceptions before going ahead with the project – and this is the list of the evidence and examples I’ve been given in the past few weeks.
- …
That’s. It.
In all instances, I had counter-evidence at the ready (I’ve got quite a long list of sources available at my desk here), but didn’t get to deploy them as discussion was in most cases side-tracked or shut-down for various reasons of convenience (I’m sure most were genuine, but I can’t honestly assert that all were – and I don’t know which were or weren’t). Whatever spirit these discussions were undertaken in, I don’t think anyone could rightly complain if I dismiss these assertions on the grounds of a lack of rigor.
It is an added irony, that the certitude trope is one that climate change denialists level against climate science – their “evidence” ranging from non-existent to ephemeral tropes about “The Green Religion”; their consideration of counter-evidence, such as statements of (non-100%) confidence by the IPCC, not undertaken. But none of the people levelling the certitude trope against atheists were climate change denialists as far as I could tell (and I did check and to some extent found the contrary – that they respected climate science).
None in as far as I have reason to suspect, would be duped by the allegation that the IPCC operates in certitude – which is smart and correct – but it renders their use of the trope elsewhere a double-standard. If, considering the evidence, these people wouldn’t be likely to call the IPCC “certain” – then why not consider the evidence that Hitchens and Dawkins aren’t certain and indeed, warn against certainty? (Or am I wrong in my estimation? Would these people be duped by the bare assertion that the IPCC is certain about matters of climate change? Would they fall for this denialist trope?)
Further to this, none of them are fans of Andrew Bolt – who could in as far as accusations and evidence are concerned, tell you a thing or two about the need for due care for the truth (i.e. rigor when making accusations). I’m quite confident about them not being impressed by Bolt’s defamation of Popovic, and a recognising that published allegations require evidence to accompany them. Even if you aren’t going to be sued, it’s the right thing to do.
I think in future I may add “#TweetLikeAndrewBolt” to re-tweets of these sort tweets in future***. If things don’t change. 
Perceptions of personalities are readily formed by our own psychologies and I think we would all do well to realise that. Not only welcoming challenges to these perceptions from others, but actively challenging our own perceptions through the seeking and consideration of non-confirmatory evidence. Call it a safe-guard against prejudice. Or a bulwark against certainty about other people’s certainty.
Importantly I consider all of these people to be in general, reasonable people. But largely reasonable people can believe unreasonable things. Perhaps you thought I was talking about fundamentalists? I wasn’t.
Back to the quote
Was I exhibiting certainty in my statement “I’m willing to help subvert the term until it’s rendered as meaningless and non-controversial as “afairyist”, or until I’m dead.”?
It’s a comment about my current emotional position – “I’m willing”. It doesn’t prejudice a change of opinion down the road by saying something like “I’ll never be unwilling…”
I find it unlikely that I’ll be unwilling to change my stance on this matter until the stated conditions are met – that theists cut back their use of the term “atheist” as an invective, at least to roughly the same level as non-theists. (Some non-theists use “atheist” as a pejorative, it should be noted.)
Maybe my conditions will change over time – and although I can’t foresee myself becoming a theist, I suspect that I’d still support the Out Campaign with the “Scarlet A” even if I did “join the other side”.
This is confidence. This isn’t certitude.
I do wish an appreciation of this distinction were more widespread.
~ Bruce
* In The New Atheism, Stenger concedes that some God hypothesis are outside the realms of scientific analysis. Not that he’s stating that there are better ways to “know God”, just that there are things currently, and by definition perpetually, outside human reliable analysis - this is hardly a statement of certitude about God!
** If I were using any of these examples as content in a book, I’d have made a disclosure and presented a release form up-front. Not that I have to.
*** If you don’t find this even vaguely amusing, then I think you’re being too serious. Chill out. Take the comment in the spirit that it’s given. I’m kidding. I think. I’m not certain. Maybe I’m not. Kidding.
