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Hugo recommendations: Best Editor

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM

Liz Gorinsky, Tor Books: Jason Sanford says it’s hard to imagine Tor without Gorinsky. If she’s in any way responsible for the abominable Pink sewage they’ve been putting out for the last 20 years, she goes right to the bottom of the list. It’s remarkable that for all the Pink SF/F authors they’ve been relentlessly pushing over this time, their bestselling authors are still Orson Scott Card, Orson Scott Card and someone else, Robert Jordan, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, and Brandon Sanderson.

Lee Harris, Angry Robot:  I looked over their entire list of 2013 publications. Nice covers. Haven’t read a single book. Haven’t HEARD of a single book. I have heard of Wesley Chu; The Lives of Tao appears to be one of their best-regarded books. Tons of editorial reviews. 145 Amazon reviews averaging 4.2 rating. And #166,807 on Kindle. Translation: Hivemind hype.

Ginjer Buchanan, Ace: Retired after 30 years at Ace and Roc Books. Translation: a longtime gatekeeper and a nomination in lieu of a gold watch.

Sheila Gilbert, DAW Books: Sanford calls her “one of those people who helped shape the direction of our genre”. Translation: a longtime gatekeeper and likely responsible in part for the decline of the genre.

Toni Weiskopf: Baen Books: Published Larry Correia. Published our own Tom Kratman. Signed Brad Torgersen. The one mainstream editor willing to go against the grain and stand against the rising tide of Pink effluvience. She’s got my vote.

My vote for Best Editor, Long Form, and my suggestion to others, is Toni Weiskopf of Baen Books. My vote will go as follows:

  1. Toni Weiskopf
  2. Sheila Gilbert
  3. Ginjer Buchanan
  4. No Award

 I recommend leaving the other two editors off the ballot.

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM

I don’t know anything about the various editors nominated. I will vote No Award and leave the category otherwise blank.

OTHER HUGO AWARD RECOMMENDATIONS

Best Novel

The “declining” labor force

Readers here are aware that the reason the unemployment rates are relatively low is because the BLS is playing games with the size of the labor force in order to undercount the number of people who are unemployed. The four-percent decline in the Employment-Population Rate, which is less easily gamed than the Unemployment Rate, demonstrates this clearly. So, the Administration and neo-Keynesian apologists have come up with various reasons for why people are “leaving” the labor force in order to justify their statistical shenanigans.

However, this article on Zerohedge makes it clear that people are not leaving the labor force voluntarily. Quite to the contrary, they are clinging harder to their jobs than ever before; the biggest change between 2005 and 2010 was the decline from 36.5 to 25.9 percent employed among the 16-19 age group. In other words, these young adults, who are now 20-23, never found jobs and never formally entered the labor force.

The same pattern is true all the way up through the 45-54 age group, which indicates people losing their jobs due to a lack of seniority, then being unable to find work again. From age 55+, a higher percentage of people were employed than before. People aren’t “leaving the labor force”, they are merely unable to find any work for extended periods of time. They are unemployed by every definition of the term, except for the BLS’s misleading measure.

The holistic solution

Tom Kratman offers a prospective curative for America’s civilizational decline:

Right now we’re stuck in a self reinforcing cascade of civilizational decay. What is happening to the police and to civil-police relations is partly cause and partly symptom. It is unclear that there is anything we can do about that that we will do.

So as not to be seen as too negative, however, let me offer a somewhat holistic solution: Kill all the common law felons in custody. Round up and kill all the people ever convicted of a common law felony currently at large without clear and convincing evidence that they have amended their lives (job, wife, home, no further crimes of any kind). For us, that’s probably in the range of 6 million people. And then we need to round up the progressives and kill them too. (Why do we call them “progressives,” anyway? Their job isn’t progess; it’s decay.) And then use all the overmilitarized police and prison guards to round up and kill or deport illegals. Then put them on the border to our south, and on small patrol craft at sea. They’ll be happier, and so will the rest of us.

That’s all pretty harsh, right? Unjust? Horrid? Horrible? Unthinkable? Yeah, well, the collapse of civilization, which is where we’re heading, is going to be a lot worse, and to much more innocent people. Think little kids turning on spits over low coals.

The most shocking thing about Tom’s proposed solution is that he didn’t mention crucifixion. Apparently he’s going soft these days. It may be a ghastly neo-Roman solution, but unfortunately, any student of history knows the man is probably correct in both his diagnosis and his ultimate prescription. We’ve already seen open beheadings on the streets of London. What more needs to be witnessed before the barbarians are rooted out, root and branch? Children roasting on spits in the streets? Gang rapes in the city center shopping malls? Or is the fear of being accused of racism and insufficient political correctness genuinely worth the collapse of civilized society in the eyes of the great majority of the population?

I don’t think so. I think most Americans are some combination of genuine ignorance, willful ignorance, frightened paralysis, and wishful thinking. Both the government agencies and the observant citizenry find themselves in the position of two opponents standing in a spreading pool of gasoline, both armed with flamethrowers, but neither wishing to set himself alight. No one is eager for the civilizational conflagration, except for the short-sighted and the foolhardy.

Nevertheless, I would go so far to suggest that if you are not an extremist with regards to a) Jesus Christ and b) Western civilization, you are objectively part of the problem. If you are prone to temporizing on various elements such as sex, race, culture, sexual orientation, criminality, immigration, and the mass issuance of credit, then you are contributing to the collapse by providing intellectual cover to those who are actively, if often inadvertently, working to demolish Western civilization.

Read your history. Pagan societies are not very pleasant places in which to live. Science is not a magic self-sustaining enterprise. Technology is not a given and it does not grow naturally on trees. Culture is the result of a complex interweaving of nature and nurture, and it cannot survive when both are significantly altered. We are facing a situation where the societal supports have been methodically withdrawn, one after the other, and with each failure to immediately collapse, it is widely agreed by the elite and the unwashed alike that the support removed is thereby proven to have been unnecessary. This is not valid logic. What took centuries to build is taking decades to dismantle; the fact that the structure does not instantly collapse does not indicate that it remains sound.

Because the progressives were permitted to experiment with withdrawing various civilizational supports, the West will soon find its options constrained to a few scenarios, all of them ugly, if it is to survive in a recognizable form. And if you are prone to temporizing your defense of civilization now due to your fear that someone will criticize you, why do you think you will dare to lift a finger in its defense when the price of doing so will be considerably higher?

The new battle cry

Repatriation. Some of you may recall that I have predicted this for some time now:

Lynes’s growing group of protestors in Murrieta has been organizing and plans to continue their protests until something is done. Their message is support Border Patrol, stop illegal immigration, enforce existing U.S. laws at the border, and repatriate those here in the U.S. illegally to their home countries.

They’re focused on illegals now. But, just as we’ve seen in the larger immigration debate, the shift from illegal immigrants to all immigrants will take place soon. It’s already happened in most European countries. Because it’s not about the legality of the entry, it’s about who is where.

This is a literal invasion of the country. And given the growing indications that the Executive Branch helped it take place, it is without question an impeachable offense.

Hugo recommendations: Best Novel

I see people are starting to make their Hugo Award voting recommendations, so I shall begin mine. I’ll do individual posts on the major categories, then provide a summary of all of them when I am done. Let’s start with the award for best Novel, where I intentionally chose from among the worst Amazon reviews for each book in order to highlight the weaknesses of the various nominees:

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. 286 reviews. 4.3 average rating. The Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke winner, and the prospective first three-award winner in SF history. It must be something truly incredible, right? No, it’s just the usual pinkshirts talking up the usual Pink SF/F sewage, albeit with the innovative concept of playing games with pronouns, which was a new and exciting idea back in 1971 when Robert Silverberg did it in his Nebula-winning A Time of Changes. A recent puff piece on Leckie asked the question: Is Ann Leckie the Next Big Thing in Science Fiction? On the evidence of this first novel, the answer is a resounding “no”.

Amazon review: Characterization is non-existent: the main character never changes or
learns, and the author only pays lip service to the AI going from
hundreds of individuals under its control to one. That could be enough
for its own story right there, but it’s wasted. Instead, we have the
main character taking on two different big goals or quests. Her reasons
for the first are totally unexplained, and she even asks herself every
so often why she’s doing it. But there’s never an answer or even any
exploration of this. She just asks herself a few times and that’s it.
It has no effect on the story whatsoever.

The second is literally
pointless. We know this because she tells us that completion will make
zero difference. So why do we care? I suppose it’s just as well since
there’s no real universe to speak of. The culture of her society is
vague and bland, and doesn’t really do anything new. Oh, their language
doesn’t have gender-specific pronouns, meaning the main character uses
“he” and “she” interchangeably. It’s not done as a way to demonstrate
how her own language works, either, as she admits that she can’t tell
people’s genders a lot of the time. We’re supposed to believe that an
AI that is thousands of years old and capable of carrying on hundreds of
conversations simultaneously can’t figure out whether a person is male
or female? Meanwhile a space station’s AI at one point is so sensitive
she’s afraid it will figure out her motivations just from observing her.

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. 2,358 reviews, 4.2 average rating. I’ve only read the first five or so books in the series. I’m not reading any more. Other than the length, the one notable thing about the books is that it introduces the most irritating protagonist in the history of epic fantasy, Rand al’Thor. The one way I might be able to force myself to read SFWA Grand Master’s epic torture-rape extravaganza, Hogg, is if I did a word replacement in Sigil that substituted “Rand al’Thor” for all the little kiddies that Delany fantasizes about raping, torturing, and killing in various excruciating ways. That’s how much I hate the whiny little bastard.

Amazon review:  The best word to describe his writing is “trite”. Everything about the book, aside from the world-building, is trite beyond words; this is juvenile, unimaginative, amateurish writing. In over 30 years of pretty much continuous reading, this is unquestionably the worst-written novel I’ve ever seen published.

The characters are shallow beyond words; the ridiculous and incredibly irritating Nynaeve (don’t ask me how that’s supposed to be pronounced), for example, has a permanent scowl on her face, and never varies her tone at all; every sentence that comes out of her is negative, angry, and sour, and she almost never says anything without an exclamation mark at the end. She’s as one-dimensional as a character can be, and she ends up being nothing more than a caricature. The rest are almost as bad.

Warbound by Larry Correia. 120 reviews. 4.7 average rating. I very much like The Grimnoir Chronicles and Warbound is a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. It’s more intelligently developed than X-Men, its use of history is more sophisticated than the casual observer will realize, and it incorporates Japanese warrior culture in a manner that is both interesting and respectful. Those who focus obsessively on the functional style of the writing are completely missing both the point as well as a smart action story.

Amazon review: Enjobale read – great end to series. Like the end – surprise for me Wonder what he will do next

Don’t look at me. THAT is the only one-star review of the 120 reviews on Amazon. And the two 2-star ratings are similarly complimentary.

Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross. 119 reviews. 4.2 average rating. Orbit didn’t bother to include the novel in the packet. If the publisher doesn’t give a damn, why should anyone else? Charlie lost his fastball a few years ago anyhow. That being said, I would have considered one of his Bob Howard novels, those are still pretty good. Not this one.

Amazon review: I am a longtime and ardent fan of Charles Stross books. I’ve read nearly every one and I look forward to new ones. I am not, however, a fan of Neptune’s Brood. The premise was sound – great potential for some funny bits, a good launching pad for sniping at convention. And all that’s in there. But what one has to slog through to get there simply isn’t worth it. Mr. Stross, I imagine you have a pretty intelligent audience overall – you don’t need to explain, then explain again, then needlessly overexplain yet again throughout the book. We get it. I was determined to finish the book in spite of the feeling that I was wasting my time after just having gotten through a third of it. And I did – to no avail.
 
Bottom line: I recommend each and every one of his books… except this one. 

Parasite by Mira Grant. 179 reviews. 3.7 average rating. Orbit didn’t bother to include the novel in the packet. If the publisher doesn’t give a damn, why should anyone else?

Amazon review: The concept for the story seemed appealing and I was excited to read it.
Unfortunately the writer couldn’t manage to move past how the main
character felt about the prolific minutiae of her daily life, to
actually tell the story. Another thing I found disappointing about this
unquestionably boring attempt is, the writer spent the entire length of
the story building up to what I’m sure she thought was a profound
revelation. Only this revelation was glaringly obvious within the first
few paragraphs. This book was not completely devoid of interest and had
several fleeting moments of watered down intrigue that kept me
soldiering on to the end. The ending “shocker” that was sadly
predictable was followed by “to be continued” which to me is a let down
squared. Overall this book is like an expensive meal served cold with
poor and clumsy service. I will not be reading the next installment in
this series as well as anything else written by Mira Grant.

My vote for Best Novel, and my suggestion to others, is Warbound by Larry Correia. My vote will go as follows:

  1. Warbound
  2. No Award
  3. The Wheel of Time

I recommend leaving the three Orbit books off the ballot.

Eastasia has always been the hottest month

Anthony Watts busts The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fiddling the historical data again:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, criticized for manipulating temperature records to create a warming trend, has now been caught warming the past and cooling the present.

July 2012 became the hottest month on record in the U.S. during a summer that was declared “too hot to handle” by NASA scientists. That summer more than half the country was experiencing drought and wildfires had scorched more than 1.3 million acres of land, according to NASA.

According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in 2012, the “average temperature for the contiguous U.S. during July was 77.6°F, 3.3°F above the 20th century average, marking the warmest July and all-time warmest month on record for the nation in a period of record that dates back to 1895.”

“The previous warmest July for the nation was July 1936, when the average U.S. temperature was 77.4°F,” NOAA said in 2012.

This statement by NOAA was still available on their website when checked by The Daily Caller News Foundation. But when meteorologist and climate blogger Anthony Watts went to check the NOAA data on Sunday he found that the science agency had quietly reinstated July 1936 as the hottest month on record in the U.S.

If you still buy into the “global warming” myth being pushed by these proven, documented, confirmed liars and self-interested charlatans, at this point, you’re just an idiot.

Notice how the Left always attempts to avoid owning up to its own history? Even when they’re blatantly caught out, they just quietly correct their misinformation and try to pretend it never happened.

The Age of Men is over

John Scalzi @scalzi Jun 30
Let it be known that my daughter can lift more than I do. Because she’s on her school’s weightlifting team, and also because she’s awesome.

It’s hard to decide what is funnier:

  1. John Scalzi proudly and publicly announcing that his daughter can lift more weight than he can.
  2. John Scalzi’s apparent surprise at the fact that he is mocked and considered less than a man for this fact.
  3. John Scalzi promptly attempting to hide behind his daughter.
  4. The reactions of the rabbits rushing to assuage his wounded feelings.

John Scalzi @scalzi Jul 1
ME: Some dudes online are making fun of me because you lift more than I can. DAUGHTER: That’s because they’re pathetic losers, dad. #point

Bo Bolander ‏@BBolander
@scalzi I’ll bet she could snap them over her knee like so much kindling.

Jonathan Sick ‏@jonathansick
@scalzi Parenting #win

Michael Jewell ‏@MichaelJewell78
@scalzi two points for good parenting!

Rafe B. ‏@etcet
@scalzi *fistbump of strength prowess for the young one*

Scott S ‏@QkslvrSailor
@scalzi wait the point is to be able to lift more than others. Here I thought it was to be healthy.. My mistake

@scalzi Silly gamma rabbit, don’t you know that your entire worth as an alpha male is directly proportional to your bench press?

@scalzi How ever will you be able to provide for your family without being able to lift massive weights in extremely artificial situations?

Christina D ‏@akasha111182
@scalzi Parenting: you’re doing it right.

Catherine Coffman ‏@thinkingcatblog
@scalzi parenting win all around!

Jim Schmidt ‏@zaren
@scalzi My daughter outran me in a 5k last month. No big. She’s had actual training, and that whole “springiness of youth” thing.

A.B. ‏@ballewal
@scalzi Good kid. Good parenting.

Kelly Sedinger ‏@Jaquandor
@scalzi Ha ha, you’re weak AND you’re seeking emotional validation from your kid! 🙂

Erik Noble ‏@CrossbowROoF
@scalzi She probably lifts more than they do too.

Nick Lester Bell ‏@lebkin
@scalzi You’ve raises a very smart daughter. Be proud.

raphael ‏@shun_geki_satsu 16h
@scalzi proof that it is not only muscular force that is strong in @AScalzi98

@scalzi the fastest runner at my nephew’s school is a girl. She has shirt that says “I run like a girl. Try to keep up.” Love it!

What’s not funny is the way in which the male Gamma delusion perpetuates itself and is propagated through the women. The little gamma’s automatic reaction to social disapprobation is still to seek reassurance from his Mommy substitutes. As one “pathetic loser” observed:

Puzzle Privateer ‏@PuzzlePrivateer
@scalzi Just like the popular kids in high school didn’t invite him to their parties because they were jealous

Notice how there are multiple references to “parenting” and none at all to fatherhood. This is not a coincidence. Scalzi, having been raised without a father and being without sons, has no functional conception of what it is to be a man or a paterfamilias. And he has consciously rejected the masculine model in favor of the feminine one with which he is more familiar and comfortable. But such rejections always come at a price.

As for me, I’ve got to go with option (3). Because I don’t think that being unable to lift more weight than one’s daughter NECESSARILY makes one less of a man. That’s just not a fair assumption. There are alternative explanations. After all, one might have simply happened to marry an orc.

Half-Orcs

These orc–human crossbreeds can be found in either orc or human society (where their status varies according to local sentiments), or in communities of their own. Half-orcs usually inherit a good blend of the physical characteristics of their parents. They are as tall as humans and a little heavier, thanks to their muscle.

    +2 Strength, –2 Intelligence, –2 Charisma.

For, as you surely know, no particular reason at all.

Switzerland v Argentina

The Swiss have never beaten Argentina, and Shaqiri is no Messi, the hat trick in the group stage notwithstanding. So an upset here would be even more unlikely than for the USA against Belgium.

Two serious underdogs, but both capable of pulling off an upset. Both games should be entertaining.

FIRST HALF 0-0. Switzerland could easily be up 2-0, but a great save and a poor shot leave it tied. Argentina definitely has the edge on talent, but the Swiss have been the better team so far. The defenders are living on the edge, however, by repeatedly attempting to dribble the ball out under pressure rather than simply clearing the ball from the top of the box.

SECOND HALF 0-0. Argentina took over the game and had several decent chances, but tough defending and a great pair of saves in succession by Bernaglio kept Switzerland in the game.

It’s interesting to be watching the game with little girls.

Little Girl 1: Who is the guy with the green shirt?

Me: He’s the assistant referee.

Little Girl 1: He runs up and down a lot.

Me: He has to stay even with the ball. It’s his job to watch for offsides.

Little Girl 1: What’s offsides?

Little Girl 2: It’s when the ball goes off the side of the TV.

Little Girl 1: Oh, okay. (In a tone indicating “that makes sense”)

Me: (nods

EXTRA TIME: Argentina 1 Switzerland 0. Looked like it was going to penalties, but Lichtsteiner got careless, Messi pulled the Swiss defense to him, and laid a perfect pass to Di Maria, who finished nicely. Di Maria deserved the goal, as he was the only player on either team that was actually trying to win the game for the second extra period. Switzerland then hit the post on a corner in extra injury time, but that was as close as they got.

USA v Belgium

FIRST HALF 0-0. Shaky start for Team USA, but they settle down and finally begin counterattacking. They gradually take control and start getting great runs down the right side, but just don’t have the technical ability to finish off the chances they’re creating. Belgium owns its own right side; DaMarcus Beasley is working hard but he’s a bit overmatched. Belgium is the more skilled side, but contra the pre-match reports, the US is more than matching their athleticism.

The challenge will be when the players start to tire; that’s when the more skilled team usually starts taking advantage of the extra time and space created. Johnson went out with a hamstring, but his replacement has been more than adequate, and remarkably, is even more attack-oriented.

SECOND HALF 0-0. Belgium wins 16 corners, but ferocious US defense and outstanding goaltending by Howard keeps the USA in the game. Yedlin, the right back, is somehow the entire US attack. Dempsey has two opportunities to send someone through, but he’s got tunnel vision and takes two nothing shots instead.

Belgium is controlling the game and the USA looks beat, but they manage to make it to extra time with a little help from the Belgian attackers shooting wide.

EXTRA TIME: Belgium scores once quickly, then again near the end to seemingly put the game away. But a great drop-in by Bradley puts the US back in it. USA wins a lot of respect for refusing to quit and go quietly, but they just don’t have the technical ability to match their spirit. 2-1 Belgium.

Portrait of a predator

This article about a brush with Rolf Harris caught my attention because I have been told (although I have no direct knowledge myself) that this description of Harris’s behavior more closely fits that of an affable, well-known science fiction figure than most people would be inclined to believe.

Until I met Harris personally, I was a massive fan. I’d seen him doing Two Little Boys at his first Glastonbury and, like most of the audience, had shed a tear for my lost childhood. So when the chance came to interview him around the time he was doing Animal Hospital, I could scarcely wait to meet my hero.

That “Jekyll & Hyde” personality that was mentioned in the court case: this was exactly the impression I got. Before the interview, I’d seen him on camera being sweet as pie. But once the camera was off, he was cold and prickly and remote.

He didn’t want to talk about his time compering the Beatles (for 16 nights in 1963, after befriending George Martin who produced his early records), nor about playing didgeridoo on Kate Bush’s The Dreaming, nor about any of the other things he had done in his extraordinary career. There was no joy, no enthusiasm, no warmth, just an empty husk with a familiar beard.

But I’m sure I said nice things about him when I wrote up the interview all the same. It’s how these bastards get away with it. 

I’ve spent a fair amount of time around a sociopath for more than two decades, which may be why I have a reasonably developed sense for spotting them in much the same way that some straight individuals have high-functioning gaydar. There is something about the false effect they broadcast for general consumption that I pick up on as not being quite normal.

What I notice most often is that predators are always watching people, always scanning, and always testing people’s reactions to their every word and action. They are hyperaware, which state is often mistaken for intense personal interest by normal people. They perform, and often the performances are entirely convincing to those who can’t see the artificiality of the movements. And they react very, very badly to being watched themselves; one of my red flags is when someone overreacts to discovering that I am dispassionately watching them.

It’s important to understand that predators come on a spectrum. Most are not criminally inclined. But criminal or not, they all exhibit certain similar patterns of behavior. Anyone who wears a physical mask is going to show signs of it, and those who wear false emotional and psychological masks do as well.

Now, it’s entirely possible that a Jekyll & Hyde personality is merely an ambitious suck-up who has no time for his lessers because he is too occupied with trying to find another posterior to smooch. But any time you encounter a false effect of the sort described in the case of Harris, there is a reasonable chance you’re dealing with a predator.

One simple test is to allow them to catch you staring at them. If they overreact, or worse, if they go cold and expressionless, you’ll have a pretty good idea you’ve identified one.

Atheism and authority

Theos considers the history of atheism:

Nick Spencer is research director of the (excellent) “religion and society think tank” Theos, and so he views the subject with a quiet Christian scepticism. But it is not his purpose to attack atheism. Instead, he wants to tell its history as it has developed, chiefly in Europe, in the past 500 years.

He points out that atheism often starts in disputes about authority. In a thoroughly Christian society – and indeed, in some Muslim societies today – rejection of God was seen as a threat to public order. Quite recently, a British judge said that the law of England has nothing to do with Christianity. He may wish that to be true, but, historically, it isn’t….

Gradually, “atheisms” – there was never a single form – advanced to challenge authority. Some arose from questioning Scripture (“a heap of Copie confusedly taken”, wrote one brave man at the end of the 16th century). Some, often stemming from priests who had seen appalling abuses themselves, concentrated on the wickedness of church power rather than on metaphysics.

Other non-believers, usually among the grandest in society, saw themselves as bathed in the light of reason. David Hume wrote of “the deepest Stupidity, Christianity and Ignorance”. Percy Bysshe Shelley linked atheism with intellectual superiority: “Let this horrid Galilean [Jesus] rule the Canaille [the rabble]… The reflecting part of the community… do not require his morality.” In the current era of Richard Dawkins and the New Atheism, many atheists call themselves the “Brights”, pleased to make the rest of us out as dullards.

Some atheists – Dawkins, Sigmund Freud, AJ Ayer – resemble, in essence, that clever young schoolboy. They believe they have brilliantly proved religion to be a load of hogwash. In their minds, it seems an advantage that their creed does not appeal as much to women or the poor and ignorant. Indeed, Friedrich Nietzsche saw more deeply how European society’s moral order would collapse with the destruction of faith – but welcomed it. Christianity was a “slave morality”, he said, celebrating weakness and preserving “too much of what should have perished”. People such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler took up such thoughts with deadly enthusiasm.

But precisely because religion, though theologically grounded, is much deeper than an intellectual theory, it tends to regenerate when attacked. The author quotes one Soviet persecutor of Christianity: “Religion is like a nail, the harder you hit, the deeper it goes in.” Spencer believes that the New Atheism is an expression of anger at the curious phenomenon that all over the world, except among white Westerners, God is back.

I find it informative to observe that Western society is visibly collapsing, by a wide variety of objective metrics, even prior to the proclaimed triumph of atheist secularism and the advent of post-Christianity. One of the primary assumptions of atheist thought – the Enlightenment idea that Western civilization did not depend upon Christianity, but was inhibited by it – is rapidly being understood to be as false as the Christian apologists warned it was two centuries ago.

The choice cannot actually be reduced to: if you want to keep your flush toilets, refrigerators, and television, go to church. But that’s more or less what it amounts to in the end.

UPDATE: For those atheists too slow to follow the logic, perhaps this illustration might help:

A Nigerian man has been sent to a mental institute in Kano state after he declared that he did not believe in God, according to a humanist charity. Mubarak Bala was being held against his will at the hospital after his Muslim family took him there, it said…. Kano is a mainly Muslim state and adopted Islamic law in 2000. 

In fairness to Kano, there is genuine scientific evidence that atheists are neurologically atypical, if not necessarily “mentally ill” per se.