Author: VD

New Atheists certainly appear to be frightened little people. They keep trying to pretend they’ve read what they clearly have not:

Also, this guy can’t even step outside his religiosity enough to see that in the world of reason, where Atheist and their ilk tend to reside, there is not an “Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens”. Man, Christians love their trinities. There are, however, the 4 Horseman of the Apocalypse,(you know, to reveal) with the 3 named “Unholies” and the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett. I can almost guess why he wasn’t included in the group though. Dawkins IS a bulldog (and a lovely, well mannered man who I had the pleasure of meeting once). Hitchens is ferocious in his indictment of religion (in a charming Dean Martin sort of way). Sam Harris is, well, dry and unassuming in his persona (he IS a SCIENTIST, you know), especially when he is making all those Brilliant points (backed up by said science) against Islam and Christianity (really Religion in general) and the people who surrender logic to take part in those religions that are on paths to domination and Human destruction. But… how do you attack Dan Dennett? It would be like attacking a kindly Grandfather. NO! It would be like attacking a smart, insightful, brilliant, Grandfather, who had the ability to explain the most mind-shattering truth’s and the most complex science in terms the simplest of us could understand. A man who is as kind , as he is Brilliant. Yeah… I could see not including in the attack one of the worlds foremost philosophers.

If I was an atheist, I would be deeply embarrassed at the lies that my fellow atheists are so willing to go out of their way to tell simply because they’re terrified of having their icons confronted and exposed. If this guy had read THE ENTIRE CHAPTER DEVOTED TO DANIEL DENNETT, then perhaps he might understand why Dennett wasn’t included. But perhaps not, anyone who can’t figure out the concept of reading a book before reviewing it can’t have too much going on upstairs.

And… doesn’t he mean the Four Horsemen of the Bukkakelypse?

George Bush places a wet and sloppy one on John McCain:

John McCain is a “true conservative,” President Bush says, although the likely Republican presidential nominee may have to work harder to convince other conservatives that he is one of their own. McCain “is very strong on national defense,” Bush said in an interview taped for airing on “Fox News Sunday.” “He is tough fiscally. He believes the tax cuts ought to be permanent. He is pro-life. His principles are sound and solid as far as I’m concerned.”

But when asked about criticism of McCain by conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, the president said, “I think that if John is the nominee, he has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative and I’ll be glad to help him if he is the nominee.”

That sound you heard earlier today is millions of conservatives shifting in their chairs, turning their heads and trying to count the number of daggers in the backs bearing the White House seal. And then thinking, “yeah, right, like YOU, of all people, would know.”

Well, the second of four, anyhow. I was pleased to learn that Seavey, who happens to be an atheist, found The Irrational Atheist to be “a better book” than Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto, which was the first book he reviewed in his “Month Without God”. It was interesting to see – interesting from a Voxcentric perspective, anyhow – that he also wrote a brief profile of me based on his reading of the book, which, unlike a surprising number of his fellow atheist critics, he actually troubled to read in its entirety:

One of the first things likely to strike an atheist reader is that Day sounds young, smart, hip, and funny, so one can’t simply dismiss him as a crusty old man repeating tired dogma instead of making thoughtful arguments. I think he gets into some unproductive semantic knots but scores many useful points, as I’ll explain tomorrow. Speaking of scoring points, though, it’s interesting how much Day’s background as a videogame designer — not a theologian — influences his philosophical arguments, usually in very positive ways.

As for Mr. Seavey’s lengthy review proper, I’ve posted it in the TIA forums and I’ll have my response to a few of his specific criticisms there later today.

If there’s nothing to atheism proper except an absence, why do these people have to go on about it so much? Day has decided to fight back. He is annoyed by, as he puts it (in words that I must confess have come almost verbatim out of my own mouth at times), Harris-style atheists’ claim “that Man is on the verge of vanishing in nuclear fire unless billions of idiots can be forcibly stripped of their belief in nonexistent sky fairies.”

After some initial insulting of atheists, Day makes some powerful, damning points about the stats on people murdered by atheists vs. people murdered by religion. One’s impression of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris — who rely on claims of religion’s murderous tendencies more than I realized — must be diminished….. Day does us all a service by exposing as false some of the glib slogans of atheism….

He makes the interesting point, for instance, that if the possibility of nuclear war with Iran (or nuclear terrorism) is one of the chief pieces of evidence that religion is dangerous, surely those dangers could be used as arguments against science as well. Religion has existed for thousands of years without destroying the planet, observes Day, yet science risks killing us all after a mere three centuries on the scene. (This argument is not so different from the concessions I make to cautious Luddites in my article on nanotech in the March issue of Reason.)

Now that TIA has eviscerated the Euthyphro Dilemma once and for all, RL suggests that we have a look at dissecting Epicurus as well:

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this:

The following was written by the Greek Philosopher Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

Apparently Epicurus is trying to do a complete covering, using all four possibilities of the tautology, i.e.

a = will and b == power and c == eradicate evil and d == good

a + NOT b –> NOT b (nothing about d)
b + NOT a –> NOT d (assumes b)
a + b –> c, but NOT c in the world implies either a or b or both are wrong
NOT a + NOT b –> NOT d and (NOT a and NOT b)

I believe that Epicurus was trying to argue this way:

1. We see evil, but apparently God is not omnipotent enough to stop it

2. But if some object and say that God is omnipotent and can stop evil, then we rejoin and say, “okay , then God must be malevolent, because He won’t stop it then.”

3. if some object to that and say “well, God is able and willing to stop evil” then we say “well, then why is there all this evil in the world” ( why is God failing to act?) or is God is not able to stop evil nor willing to stop evil, then why even call Him (a good) God?

I think he was attempting to attack Chrisitianity (Jewry) with this argument that I’ve given above in a logic format, but here’s where I see the mistakes:

Not c does NOT imply NOT d, rather NOT c –> e (permission) e –> f (free will)

ie.
1. there is evil, but God is NOT stopping it.
2. this not stopping evil does NOT arise from lack of power but permission
3. does permitting evil mean that God is evil?

or does it rather mean that God has given us free will to do evil and that’s the real crux. I think the problem is in the subtle assertion that not c –> not d, i.e. evil implies not a good God, that the evil in the world is God’s fault, when it really is due to us, 100 percent.

To me, the entire argument has always been based on a category error, as based on the Biblical evidence, what God calls evil and what Man calls evil are only of superficial and occasional synchronicity. But I’ll take a closer look at the logic later, in the meantime, feel free to take a crack at it if you like.

Spacebunny has a theory that men are always proud of the wrong things. That may be, but in any case, I am EXTREMELY proud of the Alliance’s performance in my first opportunity to act as its Battleground Leader in Alterac. The previous battle, we’d had a BL who didn’t have any grasp on strategy, and although we fought all right there was little sense of purpose and we would up losing by 50 or so. I racked up something like 143 kills and got nipped at the end for the most damage by another hunter, but it was obvious that it was going to be all for naught quite early on.

But today, as soon as I saw that I was BL, I immediately began haranguing everyone and explaining what we needed to to do win. I initially got mixed results, as only one of the nine I’d ordered to Stonehearth actually joined me there but most of the other thirty ignored Snowfall and went straight for Iceblood as I’d demanded. The two of us at Stonehearth got immediately overrun by a group and a half of Horde, of course, but the fact that I’d predicted this – and tore them a new one for stupidly allowing it to happen anyhow – inspired enough fighters to drop the extraneous silliness and take it back before it started pumping out live Horde. The shock of seeing we were actually nominally in the lead after 100 casualties for each side seemed to inspire them further, especially when I began berating by name the four idiots who were wasting their time fighting over Snowfall. The levels seemed pretty even, possibly even to their favor as I only saw two Hordes lower than 58 throughout the entire battle. But we fought very well; one night elf rogue was the absolute MVP, roaming all around the north, well away from the major action in the south, taking out single Hordies that were trying to steal isolated bunkers and towers. The bulk of our forces held onto Iceblood despite the constant onslaught from an increasingly desperate Horde, while the much smaller crew with me at Stonehearth beat back three furious attempts to take the graveyard there, as well as five or six opportunistic attempts on the nearby bunkers and Balinda.

Despite the initial indiscipline, the warband held together amazingly well throughout the endgame, resisting the temptation to go after Galv until we’d taken and burned the two southern towers. Everything went so smoothly and methodically that I only had 8 kills and dealt out insignificant damage despite the fact that we utterly destroyed the cursed Frostwolves, 321-0. That’s a 371-point turnaround in a 600-point game. And yes, I am indeed extremely proud of that.

The moral of the story: strategy matters.

Justin Raimondo considers the recent spate of cable-cutting “accidents”:

In a piece headlined “Cable cutter nutters chase conspiracy theories,” The Register goes out of its way to laugh off the prospect that what we are witnessing is a military operation, or the prelude to one, sniffing “there’s little more than suspicions to work with” since we’ve yet to reach the damaged cables. Yet, given the sort of government we are dealing with – a regime that lied us into one war, and is not-so-subtly trying to finagle us into yet another one – why shouldn’t we be suspicious? We’d have to be crazy not to be.

The Economist follows suit, sneering at “internet conspiracy theories” and denouncing the whole brouhaha as an “online frenzy” that is “way out of line.” Yet one has to wonder: four cable cuts in the past week?

I have only two things to say on the matter. 1) Conspiracy theory is the only theory of history that holds up to historical analysis. Only the stupid and profoundly ignorant can dismiss anything on the basis of it being conspiracy theory. This does not, of course, mean that all conspiracy theories are correct, that would be impossible. 2) Four accidents in a week in a potential war zone is neither a coincidence nor a series of accidents.

What part of the concept of “information war” do these people not understand?

It’s not merely about Ron Paul. It never was, and it won’t be in the future:

Whoa! What a year this has been. And what achievements we have had. If I may quote Trotsky of all people, this Revolution is permanent. It will not end at the Republican convention. It will not end in November. It will not end until we have won the great battle on which we have embarked. Not because of me, but because of you. Millions of Americans — and friends in many other countries — have dedicated themselves to the principles of liberty: to free enterprise, limited government, sound money, no income tax, and peace. We will not falter so long as there is one restriction on our persons, our property, our civil liberties. How much I owe you. I can never possibly repay your generous donations, hard work, whole-hearted dedication and love of freedom. How blessed I am to be associated with you. Carol, of course, sends her love as well.

Let me tell you my thoughts. With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties — just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican….

I have plans to continue fighting for our ideas in politics and education that I will share with you when I can, for I will need you at my side. In the meantime, onward and upward! The neocons, the warmongers, the socialists, the advocates of inflation will be hearing much from you and me.

As I have stated from the very beginning, Ron Paul always had the proverbial snowball’s chance in Hell to win the Republican nomination. His campaign wasn’t, and isn’t, about that. That’s why he will formally stay in the race rather than lining up behind McCain like Romney and the others. Paul knows very well what the future is likely to bring – I’ve been expecting it since 2003 – and he knows that an organizational core is needed to help the nation recover from the economic and political chaos that lies ahead. That core now exists and millions of people now know about the alternative to the rescue-by-bigger government that is the solution that is now and will continue to be on offer.

No doubt some of you will be disappointed. Others will be angry. You shouldn’t be. The national debate has shifted because of Ron Paul and it will continue to shift further as the bankrupcty of the big government Republicans and the haplessness of the bigger government Democrats becomes ever more clear. Remember, Goldwater had to lose that Reagan might one day rise. As Paul is better than Goldwater, so too can we hope that the future Reagan will be better than the Great Communicator himself.

In the meantime, since my formal endorsement was rejected by the campaign due to my dangerous controversiality, I really do need to find a new candidate for the 2008 election… and while I wish our own David Caldwell the very best of luck, I’m currently leaning towards this guy.

If the scientific media consensus flips again to global cooling, I have a long, long list of people, especially scientists, that I am going to mercilessly mock.

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles. To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better “eyes” with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth’s climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And they’re worried about global cooling, not warming.

I’m so sick of scientists being “worried”. It’s inevitably a sign of irresponsible science journalists or science whores looking for their next government trick. Thus far, the undeniable evidence – admittedly non-scientific, but historical – is that the planet has survived 100 percent of the previous “worries” raised.

Fouad Ajami rethinks Sam Huntington’s clash of civilizations concept:

In Huntington’s unsparing view, culture is underpinned and defined by power. The West had once been pre-eminent and militarily dominant, and the first generation of third-world nationalists had sought to fashion their world in the image of the West. But Western dominion had cracked, Huntington said. Demography best told the story: where more than 40 percent of the world population was “under the political control” of Western civilization in the year 1900, that share had declined to about 15 percent in 1990, and is set to come down to 10 percent by the year 2025. Conversely, Islam’s share had risen from 4 percent in 1900 to 13 percent in 1990, and could be as high as 19 percent by 2025.

It is not pretty at the frontiers between societies with dwindling populations — Western Europe being one example, Russia another — and those with young people making claims on the world. Huntington saw this gathering storm…. Shortly after the appearance of the article that seeded the book, Foreign Affairs magazine called upon a group of writers to respond to Huntington’s thesis. I was assigned the lead critique. I wrote my response with appreciation, but I wagered on modernization, on the system the West had put in place. “The things and ways that the West took to ‘the rest,’” I wrote, “have become the ways of the world.

It will probably not surprise you to know that I have long been a fan of the late Huntington. The choice Europe faces, between the Cross and the Crescent, is not a new one. Modernization – being a euphemism for secular society – is proving to be a cultural non-starter and a demographic dead-end, just as GK Chesterton, CS Lewis, and Sam Huntington predicted..