Author: VD

Mike boils down his critique to a single if-then regarding reason:

The fundamental problem of chapter three is that it contains a basic ambiguity, an ambiguity that founds much of the argumentation. The religion of reason leads to authoritarianism and violence. In order to support this position, VD must accept one of two positions. The first possibility is that reason as such leads to authoritarianism and violence. The second possibility is that there is a peculiarly atheist form of reason that produces these sins.

The first possibility, which I don’t think is VD’s likely position, necessarily says that if reason inevitably causes great harm, there must be something fundamentally wrong with reason.

Actually, I would agree, if it were true that reason inevitably caused great harm. However, it obviously doesn’t, so Mike is correct, this is not my position.

Exactly what “reason” is to VD is unclear, because he never gets around to actually explaining it. A catalogue of the acts of the reason-obsessed does not serve as a substitute.

Oh, I had no idea that this required definition. In general, I’m entirely content with the standard dictionary definition about the capacity to think in a logical manner, the logically correct formulation of conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or basic premises. With regards to the Enlightenment, I mean Diderot’s Reason.

If reason is fundamentally flawed, that VD cannot stack up his own reasoning techniques against the New Atheists. It doesn’t matter how careful VD’s reasoning is; he is eating the fruit of the poisoned tree. And VD has already declared he will not introduce any a-rational elements. Additionally, If there is something fundamentally wrong with reason, then the book’s very title becomes moot. The very real possibility that it is the New Atheist’s “irrationality” that will prevent the twin sins of authoritarianism and violence. Perhaps because the New Atheists are so (hypothetically) irrational, they have something valuable to say to us? I certainly don’t accept this position, but if one takes option 1 from above, you’re stuck here.

But we’re not, so no problem.

So the second possibility, which I’ve already implied is more likely to be VD’s position. There is something peculiar about the reasoning the New Atheists use. VD never gets around to suggesting exactly what this peculiarity might be. Atheism itself cannot be the peculiarity, because atheism is a conclusion or at best a framework – it is certainly not a method or an element of pure reason.

And here Mike makes his fatal blunder, not of logic but of perception. I am not saying all atheism is irrational, nor that all atheists are irrational. In fact, I list no less than three perfectly rational atheisms in the book and even name them. What Mike fails to comprehend is that the book is not an attack on all atheists or even atheism itself, it is merely what it purports to be, an attack on the specific arguments made by specific atheists that are often mindlessly echoed by the godless acolytes of the nominally New Atheism. There is no particular rhyme or reason to the various New Atheists’ errors. Hitchens seldom even bothers to attempt presenting a logically coherent point, he simply rambles on about some random guy he once met in Lower Boohooboostan in the hopes that it might prove something. Dawkins often doesn’t even present a case per se, but attempts to pass off tangential asides and trivia as conclusive arguments. Harris at least tries to make a logical case, but he often gets the basic facts wrong, and even when he doesn’t, he tends to reach an demonstrably incorrect conclusion. Only Dennett ever shows a halfway decent logical facility, but even he goes off the logical rails on more than one occasion.

The only thing they have in common besides their lack of belief in the existence of God – and even that varies somewhat if measured on the Dawkins scale – is a shared inability to make logically sound arguments. I don’t believe this is the result of their atheism, the sample size is too small for correlation to imply causation, but there’s no shortage of empirical evidence that this is indeed the case.

Continuing in his misapprehension, Mike writes:

There is a huge logical fallacy in this. It is an especially surprising fallacy, since I’ve seen VD call this on others on his blog. VD’s argument in this chapter is simply a reversal of the “No true Scotsmen” fallacy. “All true atheists are adherents of the religion of reason.” It doesn’t matter how many historical examples of atheists believing in a utopia of reason; it is a blatant logical fallacy to attribute this position to all atheists. The argument of the entire chapter rests on this fallacy, and the fallacy is trumpeted by the chapter’s title.

This is downright amusing. I totally agree, it would be a negative No True Scotsman argument to claim that because atheists who subscribe to the religion of reason are irrational, an atheist who does not must be irrational too. Insisting that Brent Rasmussen is irrational just because Richard Dawkins is would be a massive logical fallacy right up there with Daniel Dennett arguing that because physicists are empirically credible, evolutionary biologists are too… or Sam Harris arguing that because Islamic jihadists are dangerous, moderate Anglicans are too.

Mike’s problem is that I never make that case, nor do I believe it. Had he read further, he’d see that I do suggest an explanation for the empirical observation that atheist political leaders are inordinately likely to commit large-scale atrocities; it is an explanation that lets the overwhelming majority of atheists completely off the hook.

So to recap. If VD is attacking reason itself, then the whole project falls apart. If VD is trying to attack some particular form of reason used by atheists, then he is not attacking something that is constitutive of atheism.

Yes. No, because Mike is confusing the set with the sub-set and attempting to expand the scope of the book beyond its limits. What does not apply to the former in its entirety may well sapply to the latter. I do appreciate this sort of critique, though, as even when incorrect or misplaced, they offer substantive engagement. I still intend to get to his science points one of these days.

You know an atheist “review” is going to be little more than a shallow and baseless whining when they refuse to refer to the name on the cover of the book:

[Vox Day’s] arrogance, rudeness, and unending logical fallacies have brought nothing to the intellectual discussion between theists and atheists. Instead, he has brought only dishonor to himself. Unfortunately, there really is not much more to say.

No, “John” merely doesn’t have anything else to say, since he can’t actually manage to identify a single logical fallacy. And what is honor to an atheist? It’s not material, after all, and therefore it must be nonexistent. I always find it interesting that this sort of individual somehow never seems to refer to a certain Clinton Dawkins…. and speaking of rudeness, here’s Clinton himself discussing the matter with the Circle of Jerkdom:

we are offending people, but we are also telling them that they’re wrong to be offended.

Do his atheist fans seriously wonder why so many people, atheists included, consider him a premium grade asshole? But Hell, presumably being nonexistent, hath no fury like the atheist who has no rational argument to offer in defense of his exposed heroes.

It’s long been known that psychiatry is almost entirely unscientific. Now, it’s becoming evident that even the supposedly medical aspects of it are pseudo-medical as well:

Millions of people taking commonly prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac and Seroxat might as well be taking a placebo, according to the first study to include unpublished evidence. The new generation of antidepressant drugs work no better than a placebo for the majority of patients with mild or even severe depression, comprehensive research of clinical trials has found.

As I quoted the historian Daniel Boorstin, the chief obstacle to science has never been ignorance – the dramatic hysterics of the New Anti-Theists notwithstanding – but rather the illusion of knowledge. And there is no group so manifestly caught up in this illusion as the scientific community. Atheists such as Dawkins like to accuse the religious faithful of arrogance because they believe God cares about them. (It’s arrogant to believe someone loves you? That certainly explains Dawkins’s multiple marriages.) But even the self-centered religious individual accepts the concept of faith’s limited reach, the increasingly delusional scientific community accepts no such limits on the application of its favored methodology, all empirical evidence to the contrary.

It is because science is far more dangerous than all the religions of the world combined that it would behoove scientists to be careful in their investigations and humble in their claims. Instead, far too many of them view themselves as Man’s secular priesthood and blithely issue one nonsensical bull after another. But if they are a priesthood, it must be noted that history shows they bear far more resemblance to the bloody-handed priests of Technochtitlan than any other.

I have no objection to scientific knowledge or the scientific method. I mean, I’ve been busy for the last two days wrapping up a patent application that could conceivably be of some small use to a few scientists in the future. But it borders on inarguable that Mankind is in dire need of a scientific profession less prone to ideological, intellectual and pecuniary prostitution.

TL asks about games:

What are some good Turn Based Strategy games that don’t require endless micromanagement

My all-time favorite is Fantasy General, which you can find pretty easily around the Net. The graphics are quite crude by today’s standards, but it’s a great game with one of the best simple campaign aspects that I’ve ever played. There’s no resource management at all, but you can’t afford to be careless with your forces or you’ll find yourself hopelessly outmatched after a few battles. If I were ever to write a book on game design, Fantasy General would be one of my examples of game design greatness. Total War: Shogun and Total War: Medieval are both great turn-based games with real-time battles and mild resource management, but I was hugely disappointed by Total War: Rome.

As far as new games go, I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t played it yet, but I’d recommend at least checking out Supreme Commander. The designer is an old acquaintance of mine, and while I seem to recall that it’s real-time, he put a particular emphasis on including turn-based style strategics rather than the pure tactics of the conventional RTS.

I mentioned two possibilities behind the Sinclair accusations in my column today. Looks like it was the more probable of the two:

The Minnesota man who accused leading presidential candidate Barack Obama of cocaine use and having sex with him in the back of a limousine nine years ago has reportedly failed two polygraph tests administered by the website WhiteHouse.com.

Apparently it’s not enough that the federal government is permitting the civilian invasion of America by its neighbors, now it intends to permit open military invasion as well:

In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis. The agreement, defined as a Civil Assistance Plan, was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada in the event of a wide range of domestic civil disturbances ranging from violent storms, to health epidemics, to civil riots or terrorist attacks.

Somehow, I doubt the “domestic civil disturbances” they have in mind have anything to do with the ones mentioned, but rather refer to those Americans who tend to take their Constitutional inheritence from their revolutionary Founding Fathers a little too literally for an ironically named Washington’s taste.

Recovering Evangelical offers supporting evidence for my previous conclusion about him:

The point I made was that the problem is not peer review as a process, but that some scientists are shady. The idea that there’s something wrong with the practice of science because some people display favoritism in the process of peer review is, to use a term you applied to me, “moronic.” To call peer review “not science” for this reason is “idiocy.”

Perhaps, but RE has failed to grasp the relevant point, which is that favoritism in the process of peer review was not the problem I was discussing. Favoritism may be an issue, but it is not the fundamental problem, it is only a symptom of that problem. RE doesn’t seem to understand that the only thing about peer review that is even related to science is that it is a professional activity in which many scientists currently engage. It is no more inherently scientific than white lab coats, because it is merely a form of collective editing by scientists used as an anticompetitive barrier to entry. Peer review does not involve use of the scientific method, as no replication or experimentation is involved. Nor does peer review add anything to the body of knowledge in itself, it is specifically designed to remove potential additions to that body and can be confirmed to have been an inhibiting factor in the legitimate increase of scientage on numerous occasions. This latter fact cannot always be attributable to shady behavior of individual scientists, in fact, the shady behavior usually concerns attempts to pass peer review, not the peer review itself. If one prefers Popper’s definition of science to Myers’s, then note that peer review also has little connection to the falsifiability or unfalsifiability of a hypothesis.

To delete my initial comment, as you did, is “cowardice.” To claim that it’s because I am a troll, or the same poster who’s been banned before, is “bullshit.” Can’t you track IP addresses?

That’s absurd. RE was behaving in a similar manner and making arguments very remniscent of those made by a previous troll who had been banned eight times and regularly makes use of different names while hiding his IP address. It’s hardly incomprehensible that “Recovering Evangelical” could be confused with “Cosmos” aka “Why Christians Are Wrong”, especially when similarly nonsensical accusations are being thrown. Moreover, as soon as it became clear that RE was not Cosmos/Pintopolis/TCW etc, I apologized and allowed him to continue posting.

Aren’t you held up to be some kind of uber-computer nerd? I submit my e-mail address with every post! I’m sure you have the ability to find out, generally, who/where I am, or at least who I’m not, especially if you’ve banned this other person 8 times before.

Perhaps, if I’d kept track of Cosmos’s original IP and took the time to track down both physical addresses. I don’t bother wasting that kind of time and effort, though especially not when it’s someone who is so prone to slinging personal insults as you are. And if RE is determined to behave in a manner as tiresome and repetitive as Cosmos, I won’t hesitate to add him to the list of 20 or so people who have been banned over the last five years. His readiness to behave in an obnoxious manner doesn’t make me inclined to tolerate him for long.

In response to my contention that “I see this as another one of VD’s misrepresentations,” you say “That’s because you’re stupid.” This is hypocrisy, because you ridiculed “BD” for doing the same thing to you. In fact, you dedicated an entire front page post to it.

No, this is merely stating the obvious. BD’s statement was ridiculous because I am demonstrably not stupid. This is a matter of public knowledge. RE, on the other hand, has submitted a good deal of evidence demonstrating that he lacks the intellectual capacity to understand some fairly simple and straightforward concepts. What applies to RE does not necessarily apply to me.

So yes, you displayed cowardice when you deleted my initial comment, hypocrisy when you responded to it by claim that I was stupid, you lied when you painted me as another poster, and to claim that peer review isn’t science because some scientists display favoritism or other human faults, is “moronic.” Case made, charges stand. Please try and refute, my day has been slow so far and I could use some entertainment.

I didn’t say that peer review isn’t science because some scientists display favoritism. I said it is: “little more than the scientific version of union thuggery.” RE’s inability to comprehend what I wrote or understand why peer review is not science is why he can be reasonably be described as possessing sub-standard intelligence, which means that I am not a hypocrite. While I was mistaken about his identity, he has not shown any evidence that I knew he was not Cosmos, (there had been some previous speculation by several regulars that he was), so he has no grounds for claiming that I lied. My reposting of his argument and his nonsensical insults should suffice to belie the claim of cowardice.

The TIA downloads have picked up of late. 75 on Friday and 93 yesterday, compared to an average 25 the previous week. No idea why, but interesting nonetheless. And what is with the continued “strawman argument” claims from the dimmer “brights”? It’s bizarre, because I’m not only responding directly to the specific arguments laid out by the New Atheists in their books, in the case of Dawkins I actually quote in its entirety what he asserts is the central argument of The God Delusion. If I got any less “strawman”, I’d be plagiarizing.

I’m beginning to suspect that more than a few of my critics not only don’t comprehend what I’ve written, but that they don’t even understand the arguments that their heroes have made.

UPDATE – I did warn you that educators aren’t very bright:

If the author wrote the book for the three most often named Athiests, I could probably give him 4 or five stars, the 1 star is for the book as written, assuming that it was intended for mass market readership…. My objection to the book is not what it says, but how it says it. A book written in obvious attemt to “prove” a series of points should be written in a manner that will allow the majority of readers to understand the points being made. Unless the reader wants to sit down with an unabridged dictionary in one hand and the book in the other, he will not be able to tell if Mr Day really has some arguments or is just “blowing smoke”.

As a post script, I am not one of his Mensa idiots nor am I uneducated. I have a post graduate degree and taught in a major University for over 20 years.

It’s tragic, but I don’t mourn for the woman who demonstrated her remorse through action, I mourn for the two children in whose deaths she was complicit:

Emma Beck was found hanging at her home in Helston, Cornwall, on Feb 1 2007. Her suicide note read: “I told everyone I didn’t want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no-one else does.”

The abortion industry is a vampirish business sustained by the blood of murdered children and the emotional mutilation of women. It cannot be eliminated soon enough for me. History will judge the abortion culture as savagely as we judge National Socialist Germany, and rightly so. A society that fails to have children will not survive. A society that murders great quantities of its children does not deserve to.

Sam Leith of the Telegraph believes that Harry Potter will be appreciated as a classic 50 years from now:

Were this same survey to be conducted in another 50 years, our children will doubtless be bemused by the way an old classic like “Harry Potter” still has the power to top the list.

C S Lewis – it is fair to say – was the J K Rowling of his day.

I like Leith, but I think his conclusion here is utterly wrong. What makes Lewis memorable, and Rowling forgettable, is his ability to convey a sense of the transcendent to the youthful mind. But there is literally nothing memorable about the Harry Potter series except the gimmicks, which is why Rowling’s books will be no more well-regarded in 50 years than the Tom Brown books on which Harry Potter is in good part based are regarded now.

It takes a lot more than popularity to make a book a classic. Moreover, the very concept of “school” may well be an inexplicable one to most children of the future, since technology is rapidly eliminating the last justifications for learning en masse.