Author: VD

It occurs to me that when kicking around the concept of God as game designer, we’re still missing a few words required to properly consider the concept. The problem with the concept of omniscience is that it’s a weirdly binary notion, wherein the only options are a superficially illogical all-knowing and a definitively non-Biblical naught-knowing of nonexistence. But how would one describe the knowledge of the Game Designer God, who can know or not know any given thing depending solely on His will?

The concept of voliscience describes a Creator who knows whatever He wants, whenever He wants, to the extent that the concept of time is even relevant to such a being. Not only does this concept not limit God, but it has the additional benefit of being far more Biblically accurate than the traditional concept of an omniscient God. In fact, if one thinks about the matter for more than five seconds, one quickly realizes that the concept of voliscience is far less limiting than the use of the concept of omniscience has historically proven to be. One might also consider the concept of volipotence to be of some benefit in better conceiving a rationally sound and Scripturally precise nature of the Biblical God, but it’s probably less necessary since the key stumbling point for most Christians and atheists alike here is not related directly to omnipotence per se, but rather their inability to distinguish between the capacity of omnipotence and the action of omniderigence.

The fact that there is no possible logical conflict between voliscience and volipotence only adds to the rational appeal of the concept in my opinion, although I regard the nominal theodictic conflict between omnipotence and omniscience to reflect thinking so shallow as to border on stupidity anyhow. In an information society, one has to be fairly obtuse to fail to realize that because knowledge is power, absolute knowledge IS absolute power. There is no conflict because the two are one and the same.

But they’ll smell nicer this time:

I believe that for a very long time men have held up the world by both altruism and greed. I believe that the equilibrium that is gender equity has shifted, and now the onus of responsibility has fallen – not out of disrespect – to women.

I, for one, would love to see the U.S. governed by a female president, a female Supreme Court, and an entirely female House and Senate. Within twenty years, the White House would be issuing formal and very tasteful requests on Chinese-made paper to Germany, Russia and any surviving bastion of patriarchal white male culture to invade and enslave them. Pretty, pretty please!

The curse of women is their eternal desire for control, coupled with a total aversion to responsibility. Throw in the inevitable incompetence caused by bubbling irrationality on the steady low boil and you have a recipe for the primitive, short-lived life in grass huts that is the hallmark of the matriarchal society. Never fear to hand over authority to any woman who demands it. It’s amazing how fast she’ll hand it right back once you make it clear that you won’t make any decisions for her and that she’ll be held 100 percent accountable for her failures as well as her successes. And if she’s one of those rare Elizabethan birds who can handle the pressure of total responsibility and deliver genuine performance, even better!

On an individual level, this guy’s comment is the gold standard. Read it, grok it, live by it: “If I can never do anything right then your opinion is of no value to me.”

I’m somewhat torn tonight, of course, but in light of Liverpool’s defeat of Inter last night, I’d be very surprised if Arsenal doesn’t come roaring back from this weekend’s embarrassing FA Cup disaster and put the tokes to Milan tonight. I expect something on the order of 3-1 to the Arsenal.

Arsenal is always tops with me. I support Milan against literally every other team in the world, but never against the Gunners. Kaka’ is absolutely brilliant, but Arsenal’s slashing, full-throttle attack is the most beautiful in the beautiful game.

Anthony Sacramone publishes a very positive review of The Irrational Atheist at First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life:

Just when atheists thought it was safe to enter the public square, a book like this comes along. The Irrational Atheist by Vox Day is not a work of Christian apologetics. It is, instead, a merciless deconstruction of atheist thought—or what passes for thought. That’s the gimmick, if you will, of the book: Day does not accept a single assertion made by any one of the “Unholy Trinity”—Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens—without first pinning it to a sheet of wax as in a seventh-grade science class, dissecting it until there’s nothing left but a case for anti-vivisection legislation.

I’m delighted with the review, especially with the attention paid to what I’ve always felt was the more significant aspect of my rebuttal of the false religion-war link, namely, the near-complete silence of the classics. However, I should probably make three small clarifications. I made a mistake in the first print-run that’s already been corrected, because Harris doesn’t actually assert “that most suicide bombers are Muslims”, he instead claims that one can almost bet one’s life on the probability of a suicide bomber being Muslim. And this is indeed true, if you believe that it’s a reasonable bet to gamble your life on a 58.6 percent probability. Also, the relevant statement from Dawkins which led to my citation of the Goldilocks-calculating mathematician isn’t “any God capable of fine-tuning the universe”, (a statement Dawkins also made), but rather any God capable of making the calculations necessary to fine-tune the universe. The difference is small, but significant to my rebuttal of Dawkins’s argument.

As for God’s sovereignty, I don’t dispute it at all, I merely dispute the omniderigiste’s tortured interpretation of the word “sovereignty”. But I have no problem whatsoever with the many Christians who are skeptical of my theological speculations, that’s precisely why they are labeled as such in the book, and in any case, they are largely tangential to my case against the New Atheists.

Thanks to Chad the Elder of the good Fraters for letting me know about it. And congratulations to Richard Dawkins for choosing an excellent time to cash in before everyone realizes how completely his credibility has been shot. I don’t begrudge him the money in the least, after all, if his next book is worth $3.5 million, I figure I can make a pretty reasonable case that mine should be worth around five times that.

CodeMonkey Ramblings also posts a very nice review. I’m sure all those atheists terrified by Harris’s Extinction Equation will simply adore his metaphor:

For a book of its size, the Irrational Atheist manages to do a lot of damage to New Atheism. Think of it as the polemic equivalent of putting a city-killing nuclear bomb in a suitcase. If anything proves the intellectual weakness of the New Atheist movement, it’s the fact that a single book which is only about 300 pages, can manage to jump from one member of the leading clique after another and deftly annihilate them in such a small amount of space.

Tom Buffenbarger president of the machinists’ union (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) was the the latest in a string of Clinton junkyard dogs unleashed upon Obama. Prior to Hillary Clinton’s speech last night in Youngstown, Ohio, Buffenbarger delivered nothing short of an Obama diatribe….

But it was Obama supporters for whom Buffenbarger saved his most vitriolic contempt, and he proved that the Democratic Party’s coalition is nothing if not fragile. Channeling Howard Beale from the movie “Network,” he yelled into the microphone, “Give me a break! I’ve got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius- driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won’t last a round against the Republican attack machine. He’s a poet, not a fighter.”

That’s just not fair. I don’t see how you could possibly conclude that a man who survived a youth spent in an Indonesian madrassah isn’t tough enough to be the president of the United States.

Rod Dreher points out the secular left’s inability to face the reality that they have sown the seeds of their own demise:

This story from the new issue of the left-liberal magazine The Nation is a choice example of the left’s emotion-based denial of demographic winter. It’s a lengthy catalogue of Christian and cultural conservative individuals and groups who are trying to reverse Europe’s demographic decline. What’s fascinating about the essay is never does the writer actually examine the case these conservatives make about fertility decline and demographic winter; much like the right’s prima facie dismissal of the case for global warming, the thrust of this piece is that demographic winter can’t true because it would validate so many troglodytic teachings that modernity has vanquished. In other words, the case for demographic winter can’t be correct, because all the wrong people believe in it.

You can’t completely grasp the extent of Europe’s post-Christian decline until you walk through the ghost towns of Italy, populated by no more a dozen elderly women and one old man sleeping in the sun. It’s not something that any tourist is going to see in Florence, Venice or Rome, much less Milano, but go outside the tourist tombs and the desolation of demographic winter is impossible to miss. And the imported African hookers scattered along the truck routes in the countryside are hardly adequate compensation for what were once famously vibrant family units.

There’s a large and spectacular church on the outskirts of a town near which we like to wander. Its doors are only unlocked for an hour or so every month, because despite its gorgeous interior architecture and painted ceilings, there’s not only no one around to attend it, there’s not even anyone left to visit it.

Barack Obama cruised past a fading Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Wisconsin primary and Hawaii caucuses Tuesday night, gaining the upper hand in a Democratic presidential race for the ages. The twin triumphs made 10 straight for Obama, and left the former first lady in desperate need of a comeback in a race she long commanded as front-runner.

What an incredible story it would be if Hillary Rodham-Clinton, summoning hitherto unknown strength from that vast pool of goddessness deep within the core of her menopausal feminine essence, should fight back from the face of certain defeat and claim the Democratic nomination. Why, it would be a historic victory for women everywhere! And it would be all the proof she would ever need to show that she was tough enough for the job.

In case that doesn’t answer your question, yes, I am as confident that the the Lizard Queen will be Bush’s successor as I have been since I first declared that in 2003. It doesn’t look very likely at the moment, to be sure, but then it didn’t look very likely five years ago either. Since I merely observe the horse race and the Narrative rather instead of placing much significance upon them, I am untroubled by its various vicissitudes.

The Original Cyberpunk riffs on writing, the publishing industry, and the significance of being the the third angelfish from the left in the chorus line in “Disney’s Finding Nemo On Ice”:

Writing Rebel Moon was fun. Working with Vox was… fascinating. It was far more work than I’d bargained for, and I was deeply disappointed when the publisher saw the final manuscript, said, “It’s too long!,” and made us cut it down to 90,000 words. But on the whole, I enjoyed doing it.

What I hadn’t reckoned on is that everyone else in the publishing industry would look at that book, see the words, “Based on the Computer Game from Fenris Wolf” on the cover, and say, “Whoops. The Sophomore Curse has struck again. Bethke is reduced to doing books based on computer games.” And thereafter, the assumption was that I’d do anything, because I must have been out of ideas and desperate for money. So I got offers for book projects galore, and all of them for properties that I wouldn’t have touched with a ten-meter electric cattle prod.

Thank God the deal for Duke Nukem: Balls of Steel, fell through. They really wanted me to sign up to do that one.

There are two important literary differences between the OC and I. Three, actually. 1. He is a highly talented writer, whereas I am merely an intelligent individual who uses that intelligence to emulate genuine talent. The former produces much better results, but it can’t be turned on and off as easily. 2. The OC is a real writer with a writing career. I am a dilettante who occasionally scribbles and doesn’t give that much of a damn beyond what happens to be of interest to me at the moment. Hence my willingness to engage in hostilities with petty publishing principalities like the Tor Witch and her Thin Gay Consort; if I ever want to get published by Tor, I’ll just have to buy it off Holtzbrinck. 3. The OC would never write the lyrics for a low-budget graphics novel trilogy, while I had a great time doing Archangels: The Fall.

One of the burdens of genuine talent is the feeling that you must do something important with that talent. Lacking any such talent and knowing that I’m just not cut out to be the next Lewis or Eco, I’m free to write whatever I want, whether that ends up being The Leadership Secrets of Satanas Rex, Principia Posthumanica or a black horror-comedy about a certain educational facility. Although, since I have a contract for Summa Elvetica on offer, I should probably wrap that up first.

So while I envy the OC his talent, I’m quite happy with my lot. It’s rather like being Corin to his Cor… although we are nevertheless in complete accord in thinking that we really should have left the aliens for Rising. And, of course, blown up the doggone Death Star!

Scientistry is demonstrably far more dangerous to science than religion:

The conventional narrative holds that, as the advantages of pooling knowledge became obvious, all scientists adopted the Royal Society’s conventions: now, scientific papers are published freely. But that’s not quite true. Actually, scientific journals are as closed as the Royal Society once was. The gatekeeper is “peer review”: that is, papers are screened by experts, who judge if the experiments the manuscripts describe are credible.

But how, without having actually witnessed the experiments, can experts determine that? Reviewers have to trust the authors to have told the truth. Consequently, the most important part of a paper is the name at the top. If a well-known scientist submits a paper, it will probably be accepted; if an unknown submits one, it will probably be rejected. Science is still a closed club – partly to ensure that only accurate papers are published, but largely to prevent fraud.

But peer review carries dangers. First, it allows dunderheads to block unexpected ideas. Everybody within the scientific community knows of researchers such as Barbara McClintock, who won the Nobel Prize in 1983 for discovering gene jumping, a process by which scraps of DNA move about the genome. She was forced to publish her findings informally, in the annual reports of the Carnegie Institution, because she could not persuade peer reviewers to accept them…. Peer review was always an illusion, providing a deceptive imprimatur of objective truth.

Peer review is a total joke. It’s little more than the scientific version of union thuggery.

Yes, Washington really is run primarily for the benefit of bankers:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has sponsored an unusual provision at the urging of the nation’s banks granting them immunity against an active patent lawsuit, potentially saving them billions of dollars. Adopted with little fanfare, the amendment would prevent a small Texas company called DataTreasury from collecting damages from banks for infringing on its patented method for digitally scanning, sending and archiving checks. The patents were upheld last summer by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after they were challenged.

The provision, passed without dissent by the Senate Judiciary Committee in July and inserted into legislation scheduled for a vote by the full Senate this month, is a rare attempt by Congress to intervene in ongoing litigation, congressional experts say.

Hey, if eminent domain works for real property, as the Republican-appointed Supreme Court decided in Kelo, then there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for imaginary property that is created by Washington in the first place. I note that this little piece of Congressionally-abetted theft is sponsored by Republicans as well, just one more reason why I’ll be celebrating their inevitable defeat to the other forces of darkness this November.

There is no lesser evil. As with pregnancy, political evil is merely a matter of progressive stages.