Where I might ask does Obama find his grant to give salvation collectively or otherwise? No earthly power can confer such, no matter what Marx and Engels have said. This “collective salvation” is not merely alien to the American compact signed and delivered in the American Constitution, but it is, if meant metaphysically, a grotesque lie, if not so meant, then the secularist should clarify himself, and since when, I might ask the empiricist, is the world according to him never perfect, anyway? For the empiricist the world never is nor could it ever be a possibility, but is always exact and perfect, as it perfectly exists by self-evident definition. Either or as they say, or should if they are honest. Can Darwin come out to play? Hmm, if possibility is never extant, as you cannot have your possibility and extantness too, then possibility is a metaphysical play, yes?

Well be that as it may, neither you, nor I, nor any may confer salvation upon anyone, nor more pertinently, is my salvation dependent upon you or anyone; you cannot share yours with me, confer yours upon me, or in anywise give me any part of any salvation you may have.

“Vergie, listening to him [a minister], was no longer Vergie Wrather of the Bottoms. She was an individual, a human being, precious in the sight of the Lord, a person from whom great things might come. She thought, I’m going back to school. Some way I’ll see it through.

“The decision was of the spirit (c.f. p. 74).”

The above is or rather was not so remarkable an idea or even concept that such a passage would be considered unusual or singularly profound. Such a passage would seem pedestrian, common during a previous era, as it is or at least was the common American understanding.

Or as Mr. Lincoln put it in a slightly different way:

Some time ago I mentioned that I was reading Dr. Zhivago, well I finished it some time ago. Superb novel, not perfect, but superb. And so Dr. Zhivago dies at the end, or at least near the end of the novel in an absurd setting, his friends and well-wishers come to mourn his death, celebrate his life, but the grand new society denies him a religious burial. No surprise, as we are in the midst of Lenin’s New Man world.

And what of Larisa his great romantic love?

And that’s it. Outside the collective she no longer existed. The state, the amoeba, had no use for her and therefore could not recognize her. She didn’t so much disappear, but for some select memories, she never was.

Riddle me this, when is man out of balance with nature according of course to the empiricist. Tick tock life is a clock, but whoever said “never” is the very clever knock off the old block. Because of course, “out of balance” is a possibility that can never be realized as nature is forbidden from transcending itself. And as Man is nature, so says the empiricist, then Man is always in balance and never out--Nature cannot transcend nature. Well so much for the Post-Moderns whether or no of a nominally professed spirituality or no.

Oh yes, I know, post-modernism is more resilient than that, too bad really, and I’m sure I’ve heard a couple of artful rebuttals, or so they seemed at the time, I think, too artful really to recall. But anyway as riddles go I have to admit Mr. Kant’s is far better.

So yes I do think it strange that Darwin had recourse, resorted to, a metaphysical concept for the linchpin of his theory, a scandal really, especially for the Neo-Darwinists. Now I’m not saying evolutionary theory is all wet or anything, but the metaphysical concept at its heart does change the dynamic a wee bit.

“Hey, what’s this, I thought we were talking about Kant’s riddle.”

So we are, so we are, but I guess I got a little ahead of myself, an evolutionary leap if you will. So where does this randomness reside? In what element or elements does it inhere? Of what property or properties does this randomness consist, are intrinsic to it if you will? Hmm, I can’t think any, can you? Nope. Well then what can we say of this randomness? Well for randomness to be random it must be unconditioned otherwise by definition it isn’t random, which is to say it can’t be conditioned by anything in the natural world (or we might ask where does the conditioning end), as such, perforce it is a metaphysical, transcendent, rather than any kind of natural or physical thing, force, what-have-you. So if it isn’t nothing whatsoever, whatever it possibly could be would be a metaphysical thing, property, whatever, transcendent of the natural world. Naturally there implications.

Now did Darwin know this when he presented his great theory? Who knows? But we do know that empiricists, atheists, secular mythio-traditionalist holders and whatever have hidden behind a seemingly innocuous word afraid of the either-or implications of their faith.

“You can’t say that!”