Thus, any object is at the same time essentially matter and essentially energy.

Sometimes an object presents itself to us in its aspect of matter, in which case it behaves like a particle; and sometimes it presents itself in its aspect of energy, in which case it behaves like a wave. Hence the particle-wave duality of all physical objects.

shame vs. guilt:
shame if your ideal is low or bad. e.g., if you felt that wallowing in filth like a pig (or drinking yourself into stupor) was a nice way to enjoy yourself, and then you realize that it is not, you feel shame at demeaning yourself this way
guilt if your ideal is good and you know it but you fail to conform to it.
thus,

an intemperate man will feel shame and
an incontinent man will feel guilt

but shame is more directly opposed to glory than guilt, hence intemperance is worse than incompetence.

And during an unrelated search on newadvent.org, I stumble on this very subtle and instructive discussion of incontinence vs intemperance: II-II, 156, 3. I say it again, the guy’s a miracle.

We see that numerous technical problems admit solutions. Where storytellers give us drama and tragedy, engineers and scientists grant us stuff that works and thus harmony and mutual profit. Avatar is, again, a movie made with utter disregard of the real world. It’s a ridiculous, if beautiful looking, fantasy, and there might have been a bunch of ways in which the war in it could have been avoided under more realistic circumstances.

If they were anything like humans, they would welcome a relief from the misery of primitive existence. They’d jump at the chance to improve their well-being. They would need the humans far more than the humans would need them. That’s not to say that negotiations would always proceed smoothly, but there’d be a chance of making everyone involved better off. In particular, the spectacular technology of the humans should be presumed by 2154 surely to have advanced to such a degree that mining “unobtainium” could be accomplished without destroying the Na’vi’s property. And indeed the forest in which the Na’vi lived ought by right to be considered their natural property. The violent spoliation depicted in the movie is from the libertarian point of view outrageous. In other words, mix in a bunch of implausible difficulties, and you have yourself an irresolvable tragic conflict.

At the same time this movie should not be considered environmentalist propaganda or a statement about war. It has instead an odd religious theme of monsters invading paradise. The recent computer game Dragon Age: Origins has similar lore: the mages of a long-gone empire decided to invade the Golden City, the Maker’s heaven, and as punishment for their hubris they were cast out and turned into monsters. Quite frankly, I don’t know what to make of this theology; it does not seem to be an idea expressed either by the Christian or any other faith.

Update. It could be an early attempt to create a distinctively environmentalist theology. We are, after all, living in an interesting time in which we are seeing an emergence of a new “environmental” religion.

Now the most obvious point in homosexual sex is the lack of the procreative third level. I contend moreover that there can be no genuine friendship and love between two homosexuals as between spouses. Thus, the only first level of sensual delight exists in a homosexual act. In this it is similar to straight promiscuity. A man and a woman engaging in “casual sex” are with regard to the second and third levels really not that different from two gay men sucking each other’s dicks. In a sense they are actually worse, because the gay men feel no interest in loving each other, while the straight couple will want to bond beyond mere sensual pleasure and actually reject the beginnings of love in them. There will be heartbreak for them which there would not be for the homosexuals. In addition, there is always the specter of conceiving a child and choosing to abort it or be forced to marry because of it or not marrying and dealing with a bastard child, all of which are admittedly pretty awful. At least gay sex is “safer” for the souls of all involved than straight promiscuous sex.

So, for the gays there’s nothing in the “relationship” but lust. Unfortunately, the homosexual 1st-level sensuality is corrupted, as well. It is a debased sensuality. Homosexual sex is really, “objectively” ugly, filthy. Most straight men who imagine two men banging each other in the ass are nauseated, disgusted. It’s genuine perversion of aesthetic sensibilities. A man ought to find women beautiful and be attracted to them. And he ought to find no interest in anal sex, say. Such things are ennobling, while gay attraction is demeaning. And then there is the effeminacy of gay men. It’s like “Deliverance” or “Pulp Fiction” in which we are shown scenes of homosexual rape. Men ought to be holy warriors; they cannot submit to being sodomized without losing all dignity. Of course, there can be a number of types of loving relationships between men which are great-making, such as between master and student, father and son, or colleagues, or fellow fighters.

In short, homosexual sex is absurd.

(1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being.
(2) The universe began to exist.
(3) Therefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being.

Craig needs to shore up the minor. He thinks it can be proven by reason alone; Aquinas rejects this view and holds that that the universe had a beginning is an article of faith. Who is right? Craig’s main argument is that you cannot traverse an actual infinite. If the universe had no beginning, than an infinite number of days or seconds must have elapsed in order to arrive at the present moment. And this is impossible. Hence the universe had a beginning.

Unfortunately for Craig, the situation is not as if there was a moment in time at which the universe began which is infinitely far away from the present moment. If there was such a moment, then indeed it would take an actually infinite number of days to get from it to the present moment. But there was no such moment! According to the objector, the universe never began to exist; hence there is no moment at which it did begin to exist which just happens to lie at an infinite distance from today in terms of time. Aquinas counters in a coup de grace in (ST, I, 46, 2, reply 6) that “Passage is always understood as being from term to term. Whatever bygone day we choose, from it to the present day there is a finite number of days which can be passed through.”

In this way there is no actual infinite but only a potential infinite, such that no matter how deeply we regress into the past, the distance between that point and now is finite. But that is not sufficient for kalam which is supposed to be natural and not revealed theology.

Look, the point is simple. I ask Craig, in order to accumulate the actual infinite, from what are we counting forward? I submit he can’t answer this quesion, and therefore, no actual infinite can be built. (He can’t say “from -∞,” because that symbol can indeed mean “actual infinity,” which begs the question. I mean, -∞ is not a date.)

We might define a beginingless universe as follows: for any moment in time there is or was a previous moment or there is time before it. Again, for any moment the distance from the moment previous to it to today is finite. This definition is of no help to Craig either.

The reason why the Democrats seek to destroy what remains of the free market in medicine and why the Republicans in their turn did not long ago propose what should be a radical reform to free an industry hopelessly tied up in red tape now becomes clear. The Democrats believe in socialism. The Republicans do not believe in anything, whether socialism or freedom; they are cynical to the core and believe in “conserving” the rule of the present power elite and looting the country to the max. If medical socialism comes to this country, the Republicans will very soon be counted on to protect those few people who will be benefiting from this monstrous “system.” We are caught between a rock and a hard place, and the fight for liberty must involve a real ideological change, such that the Democrats are rejected as foolish, and the Republicans are rejected as evil.

This is still more evidence that we are living in an interesting time when the USA is on the decline. I don’t believe the decline will be stopped.