The yardstick always was around, a long whip like piece of wood. In some houses, I am told, this served as a means for corporeal punishment, those were the bad old days. Thankfully in my house, the yardstick just measured things that were around a yard long, bigger than a ruler, smaller than “too big for us to measure.” When I was a boy, the yardstick was mostly a sword, just the right length, and when a yardstick became small, then one knew one was growing up. There came to be meter sticks, rumor reports, but just as they might have become popular, we began to measure things with our phones and other devices.
The trouble with our yardstick is that laying around as it did, the ends would become worn, the wood warped. I am not sure that after a few months of sword fights, the yardstick was a yardstick. It was a “sort of a yardstick” or “just about a yardstick.” That was fine given the needs we had to measure things. We did not need to know done to the half-inch if this was a yard, since we were doing “good-enough-for-government” work.
One can have a tool, good enough for use, that is also not good enough for other things: a yardstick.
Once I did a science experiment in school and reported results to the hundredths/thousandths of a centimeter. My teacher rightly rebuked me as my ruler would not allow such precision. My claim to precision was false, because the tool I used could not go so far. So it would be if I had a “good enough” tool for some work that I then used for other tasks. If I have a ruler, then there are some things I can do, but other tasks I cannot. The tool is not precise enough.
A child’s plastic sword is jolly good fun, but not much good against orcs. A tool can be good for one thing, yet useless for another.
Recently I have been in a discussion with a non-theist, who suggested that he has defeated Plato. How? He thinks that if one owns a plastic sword, or a yardstick, then one must own Excalibur or a laser measuring tool:
I have responded previously, fatally IMO, although you may need clarification.1) if you can judge anything at all (you seem to say yes) then one has something of a yardstick2) if one cannot judge then you do not know god is good.
I do have something of a yardstick when it comes to morality in this cosmos. One should not, for example, throw battery acid into the ocean for fun. This is not much, but it is something. All moral issues, especially hard moral issues, cannot be solved by this yardstick, but I am glad I have it. The argument is bad, very bad, that says that if I can judge generally, I must be able to judge more specifically. My moral yardstick is pretty crude, but useful for somethings.
Now imagine that if I could not judge at all. Could I know that God is good? I could if God was good, had made me to be good, and then I simply affirmed Him to be good. I do not think this is the actual situation. We were made this way, tossed it away long ago, and now can only generally judge. Still, one could be unable to “judge,” but still be correct if one lived in a cosmos where there was nothing to judge. We do not live in that cosmos, but I could know the truth without being able to “judge” the truth.
After all, if the truth is unquestionable, unquestioned, and known, then there is never a call to judgment!
Instead, we live where the yardsticks are imprecise for now, but the reality is very precise. We are judged on what we can know, not on what we cannot know or a precision we should not claim. This is mercy!
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In