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Mailvox: the falsifiability of moral parasitism

R meets with a preemptive objection to TIA:

A young friend of ours has, after my recommending he read “The Irrational Atheist”, said this:

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Day insist atheists are moral parasites? He says that atheists inherit their morality from a foundation already established by Christianity. The problem with this stance is that it is unfalsifyable. It suggests that a society lacking Christian influence would be incapable of developing a similar morality. Well we live in a world which has had religious influence (mostly Abrahamic faiths) permeated throughout it, so where can we test the notion? We cannot. The argument cannot be tested. It therefore holds little weight.

I will read this book, i promise you that as a friend, and we may or may not have a discussion about it. My concern with approaching the work is that it will be littered with similar logic. But like I said I will read it. We’ll see if my concerns are founded.”

It’s always so cute when young atheists attempt to construct logical arguments on the basis of foundations they don’t understand with reason they utilize improperly. There are numerous problems with this attempt to preemptively rebut my arguments without even reading them; I continue to find it astonishing how many atheists observably believe that it is possible to provide substantive criticism in complete and self-admitted ignorance.

First, my argument concerning moral parasitism is that atheists tend to inherit or absorb their moralities from the dominant society in which they dwell rather than reasoning them out from first principles or developing them from science as many of them claim to have done.  That is why it is meaningful to identify someone as a Catholic atheist, a Jewish atheist, or a Muslim atheist; their moral standards tend to be Catholic morality less whatever the atheist doesn’t like, Jewish morality less whatever the atheist doesn’t like, etc.

It is true that in the West, which was once known as Christendom, most atheists are Christian moral parasites. But this is considerably less true in other parts of the world, despite Christianity’s current global reach.

Second, the young atheist’s objection underlines my point about the remarkable atheist ignorance of history.  Where can we test the notion? My suggestion would be to look at pre-Christian societies and compare the differences between the moralities advocated by the atheists in those societies and those to which modern Christian atheists subscribe.  Is he truly unaware that we are privy to a considerable amount of ideas from philosophers untouched by the Abrahamic faiths? Alternatively, we could look at the moralities espoused by atheists raised in current religious traditions such as Islam, Judaism, the Chinese pagan folk religion, Buddhism, and the myriad of less popular religions.

We know, from history, that societies lacking Christian influence do not develop Christian morality.  In fact, we can go much farther, as we know that societies lacking Christian influence did not develop modern science.  It would be going too far to definitely claim that Christianity is a prerequisite for the development of scientody, but it cannot be denied that none of the hundreds of non-Christian societiesever independently developed the scientific method.

It is theoretically possible to claim my observation is incorrect, but it is not even remotely credible to claim that it is unfalsifiable. The fact that it has not been tested does not mean that it cannot be tested. As it happens, the hypothesis can be tested on an experimental basis with proper control groups; one wonders if the young atheist is consistent and rejects both evolution by natural selection and string theory on the same basis he has ventured here.  Based on the level of logic-mastery he has demonstrated here, I would tend to doubt it.

Racism in Israel

Thoughts on an attack by a Jewish mob:

I went to a demonstration led by MK Michael Ben-Ari two
days ago (Tuesday), and was joined by my girlfriend, Galina. Ben-Ari, a
Kahanist, was inciting the crowd against the African refugees in a
distinctly anti-Semitic manner, peppering his talk with incessant
references to excrement and urine. At some point, Galina couldn’t take
it any longer, and shouted something back.

Within minutes we were surrounded by an angry mob of about
20 people, composed mostly of women, who hurled curses at her. Someone
pulled out a tear gas canister and waved it at her face.

Racist and sexual slurs filled the air repeatedly. Time and time again,
people expressed the wish she would be raped by Sudanese, and asked her
if she was bedding them. A boy, between 10 and 11 years old, screamed at
her point blank that what she needs is a “nigger’s cock.” David Sheen videotaped much of it….

We tried to get out of the market. The mob was screaming with glee that
she was being arrested. More spitting and curses. A woman aimed a kick
at Galina’s head from behind her, I blocked the kick with a snarl. She
was smiling. On the way to the train station we were attacked,
physically, by a hoodlum, and as I was trying to get in between him and
Galina after he hit me in the back, I decided that if he attacks me
again, I’d take the metal part of the camera and smash it into his jaw,
and take my chances with the police later.

Perhaps someone should alert the Southern Poverty Law Council about this violently racist, anti-semitic hate mob.  I find it telling how differently many Jews feel when it is their own country that is a migratory destination for African refugees than when it is America or other countries in the West that are serving as the migratory destination.

Whatever happened to diversity being Israel’s strength, the importance of multiculturalism, and the manifold ways in which African and Arab immigrants will strengthen and enrich Israel? Whatever happened to the melting pot – a Jewish concept, not an American one, as it happens – to say nothing of the moral imperative of embracing the poor and downtrodden immigrants?

Do not the Sudanese refugees have precisely the same right to live in Israel that Jews do to live in America, Germany, France, England, and every other country into which they have migrated in the past?

Now, being a sovereign nation, Israel has the right to bar non-Jews from residing in their country. However, this necessarily requires that non-Jewish countries have the right to bar Jews from residing in their countries.

Gun control: the dichotomy

Obama wants to take Americans’ guns because Sandy Hook while distributing advanced weaponry to the Islamic jihad:

According to State Department and military sources,
dozens of highly armored vehicles called GMV’s, provided by the United
States, are now missing. The vehicles feature GPS navigation as well as
various sets of weapon mounts and can be outfitted with smoke-grenade
launchers. U.S. Special Forces undergo significant training to operate
these vehicles. Fox News is told the vehicles provided to the Libyans
are now gone.

Along with the GMV’s, hundreds of weapons are now
missing, including roughly 100 Glock pistols and more than 100 M4
rifles. More disturbing, according to the sources, is that it seems
almost every set of night-vision goggles has also been taken. This is
advanced technology that gives very few war fighters an advantage on the
battlefield.

Missing. Right. You know, Obama would probably be a lot more popular if he’d stick to giving out free Glocks and NV goggles to Americans.

Discernment and sexual perspectives

This is really an Alpha Game subject and I generally prefer to keep such things separate, but the concept has sufficiently broad implications that I thought it might be worth mentioning over here:

Think about the amount of discernment that is required for work in a
caring or nurturing capacity. Discernment is actually a negative; the
good doctor is not influenced by the personal merits of the person he is
treating. The good mother does not shower love and attention upon the
duly obedient child and withhold it from the unruly and disobedient one.
The feminine perspective, insofar as it is formed by maternal
responsibilities and nurturing instincts, is therefore intrinsically
anti-discernment.

 Read the rest at Alpha Game.

Mailvox: the dead horse quivers

SV digs up, from the past, a certain blast:

I read your Sept 6, 2004 review of Michele Malkin’s book supporting internment and I was wondering if you remember or noted where you found the information for this paragraph:

“In January 1942, prior to both Executive Order 9066 and the battle of Midway, the Imperial Japanese Navy possessed 717 carrier-borne planes and 176 ships, of which 15 were troop transports. The IJN’s troop-bearing capacity was about 42,000 men. Reinforcement and resupply required a roundtrip transit of 11,000 miles to a coastline only 1,359 miles long.”

Less important are the facts here, but just in case you have it:

“The Overlord invasion required 4,600 ships to travel 100 miles under the air cover of 12,000 planes to land 156,000 troops on a French coastline 3,437 miles long. Over the next three weeks, the Allies brought in another 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies.”

If I recall correctly, I worked out the IJN numbers from Tony Tully’s excellent The Imperial Japanese Navy Page.  I don’t remember where I looked up the statistics related to the invasion of Normandy, but they’re readily available.

It is a little amusing to look back and recall that some people actually took Me So Michelle’s book seriously at the time. It’s largely forgotten now, but it didn’t escaped my attention how she quickly stopped talking about it in public after I exposed her complete lack of research in support of her attempt to manufacture a retroactive military justification for the historical internment of Japanese-Americans.

One thing I didn’t mention in that article was that the former Marine Commandant’s first reaction, when asked about the viability of a Japanese invasion of the U.S. West Coast, was an instinctive snort of disdain. I mean, the hypothetical invasion is the sort of thing you have to be a complete military ignoramus to even contemplate for a millesecond. Forget Anzio. An IJN invasion of California would have made the Bay of Pigs invasion look sane and conservative by comparison.

The fundamental human right of self-defense

It is long past time for gun owners and human rights activists go on the offensive and proactively demand global recognition of the basic human right to own and carry firearms everywhere for self-defense:

After World War II, the “international community” determined that the most important goal of the new international system created for the post-war era would be the prevention of genocide. “Never again,” we were told, and nations signed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in large numbers.

Among the nations who signed were Cambodia (1950), the Congo (1962) and Rwanda (1975), though Rwanda was originally covered by Belgium’s agreement in 1952, when Rwanda was a Trust Territory administered by Belgium. These three nations, of course, went on to become the greatest sites of genocide in the second half of the 20th century. (China’s mass murders and starvation under Mao are more properly called “democide,” as they did not single out a particular group or culture.)

In every case, the “international community” stood aside while the genocide took place unimpeded by the parchment barriers of international agreement….

It seems to me that the human rights community has things exactly
backward. Given that the efforts of the international community to
prevent and punish genocide over the past several decades have been, to
put it politely, a dismal failure, perhaps it is time to try a new
approach. International human rights law is supposed to be a “living”
body of law that changes with the needs of the times in order to secure
important goals — chief among which is the prevention of genocide.
Given that the traditional approaches of conventions and tribunals have
failed miserably, the human rights community should be prepared to
endorse a new international human right: the right of law-abiding
citizens to be armed.

I didn’t realize who wrote this until I reached the bottom. It may be the single most important thing Instapundit has ever written. This is the difference between the conservative and the libertarian. The conservative is always on the defensive. The libertarian, on the other hand, is capable of proactively demanding the expansion of human liberty.

In this day of massive and intrusive government prone to false flags, global spying, and gargantuan financial fraud, it is a human rights campaign on par with the historical campaign against the slave trade. The right to bear arms isn’t only for Americans. Bearing arms is a basic human right.

A surrender of scientistry

Popular Science can’t take the dialectical heat and flees from open scientific discourse due to the inability of its writers to present arguments capable of standing up to public criticism:

Comments can be bad for science. That’s why, here at PopularScience.com, we’re shutting them off. It wasn’t a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter….

If you carry out those results to their logical end–commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded–you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the “off” switch. Even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader’s perception of a story.

A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to “debate” on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.

I found it amusing that below this article trying to justify its attempt to claim the right to be “championing science” without protest or criticism from its readers, the very first article listed is: “Republicans Block Proposal For National Science Laureate, Fearing Science”.  Whatever they are championing these days, it is not science.

It is wonderful news that some of the foremost defenders of scientistry are in full-blown retreat from the skeptics and scientodists. Their inability to defend their “bedrock scientific doctrine” and “popular consensus” is the direct result of their abandonment of scientody for ideological dogma and invented doctrine cloaked in an increasingly thin veil of faux science.

Comments aren’t bad for science. Comments are bad for those who are stubbornly clinging to outdated scientific paradigms that are showing obvious cracks.

Science badly needs a cleansing baptism of intellectual fire to burn away all the professional and academic scientistic barnacles that have affixed themselves to the ship of science and are now threatening to sink its credibility entirely. Genuine scientists, as opposed to the posers championed by the likes of Popular Science, may not be able to defend themselves rhetorically, but they have no need to do so.  Science is neither democracy nor holy doctrine, and it is the right of every thinking individual to accept or reject the declarations of scientists as he sees fit.

A foretaste of Hell

Tom Simon draws attention to an important Dorothy Sayers quote:

If we refuse assent to reality: if we rebel against
the nature of things and choose to think that what we at the moment want
is the centre of the universe to which everything else ought to
accommodate itself, the first effect on us will be that the whole
universe will seem to be filled with an inexplicable hostility. We shall
begin to feel that everything has a down on us, and that, being so
badly treated, we have a just grievance against things in general. That
is the knowledge of good and evil and the fall into illusion. If we
cherish and fondle that grievance, and would rather wallow in it and
vent our irritation in spite and malice than humbly admit we are in the
wrong and try to amend our behaviour so as to get back to reality, that
is, while it lasts, the deliberate choice, and a foretaste of the
experience of Hell.

—Dorothy L. Sayers, Introductory Papers on Dante

I leave it to the reader to decide to what sort of all-too-familiar figure Sayers is describing here.

Mailvox: a secular religion

MP emails an account of a woman quitting Teach for America and notices its similarities to a religion… or a cult:

This is a fascinating account of the religion that is Teach for America and the women that inhabit it.  This passage was particularly interesting because it shows the religious nature of the TFA girls:

“I am shifting my weight uncomfortably in a plastic classroom chair on an Atlanta summer afternoon. Our adviser interrupts lunch by asking us to pause to spend a few minutes reflecting on what brought us to TFA in the first place. After the requisite reflection time, and after turning off the room’s lights, Alicia begins to share a story about growing up with a single mother, culminating in an emotional appeal to do whatever we can to help “our kids” in the future. Although I have always found Alicia to be rather stoic, she suddenly begins sobbing when relaying this story. After regaining composure, she makes it clear that we are meant to follow suit. One by one, until the 12th person has spoken, we deliver either tearful accounts of personal hardship or awkward, halting stories recounted by people uncomfortable with the level of intimacy. While talking to other TFA teachers from different schools over dinner, I learn that other groups had nearly identical sessions.”

This is the classic “testifying” step in poor fundamentalist Christian church services  in which the various converted sinners are invited to testify about their sinful past and how low they were before they “came to Jesus”.  They recount all the bad things in their past and how it all changed when they “came to Jesus”.  Each person who is testifying get kudos and respect for how deeply they had fallen and therefore how much farther Jesus raised them from sin and degradation before they were redeemed. Lots of weeping and wailing, and “Praise Jesus!”, particularly by the women in the congregations.

It reminded me of accounts I’ve read of both Womyn’s Studies classes and Maoist reedcuation sessions. You really have to read the whole thing. It is like music to the ears of those of us who anticipate the collapse of the public school system; one would feel bad for the young women being so perfectly set up to fail if they weren’t such a poisonously destructive collection of mindlessly self-perpetuating leftbots.

The Feynman Lectures online

For those who are interested in scientody rather than scientistry, the famous Feynman Lectures on physics are now online. “The Feynman Lectures on Physics was based on a two-year introductory physics course that Richard Feynman taught at Caltech from 1961 to 1963; it was published in three volumes during the years 1963 to 1965, and used as the introductory physics textbook at Caltech for nearly two decades.” In reading them, it’s not hard to understand why he is quite rightly revered as a minor secular saint of Science:

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an
approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far
as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of
approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws
as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or,
more likely, to be corrected.
The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following:
The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the
sole judge of scientific “truth.” But what is the source of
knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from?
Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it
gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from
these hints the great generalizations—to guess at the wonderful,
simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to
experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess. This
imagining process is so difficult that there is a division of labor in
physics: there are theoretical physicists who imagine, deduce,
and guess at new laws, but do not experiment; and then there are
experimental physicists who experiment, imagine, deduce, and
guess.
We said that the laws of nature are approximate: that we first find the
“wrong” ones, and then we find the “right” ones. Now, how can an
experiment be “wrong”? First, in a trivial way: if something is wrong
with the apparatus that you did not notice. But these things are easily
fixed, and checked back and forth. So without snatching at such minor
things, how can the results of an experiment be wrong.
Only by
being inaccurate. For example, the mass of an object never seems to
change: a spinning top has the same weight as a still one. So a “law”
was invented: mass is constant, independent of speed. That “law” is
now found to be incorrect. Mass is found to increase with velocity, but
appreciable increases require velocities near that of light. A
true law is: if an object moves with a speed of less than one
hundred miles a second the mass is constant to within one part in a
million. In some such approximate form this is a correct law. So in
practice one might think that the new law makes no significant
difference. Well, yes and no. For ordinary speeds we can certainly
forget it and use the simple constant-mass law as a good approximation.
But for high speeds we are wrong, and the higher the speed, the more
wrong we are.
Finally, and most interesting, philosophically we are completely
wrong with the approximate law. Our entire picture of the world has to
be altered even though the mass changes only by a little bit. This is a
very peculiar thing about the philosophy, or the ideas, behind the laws.
Even a very small effect sometimes requires profound changes in our
ideas.

It’s always fascinating to see how far a cult departs from the ideas of its inspirations. I think Richard Feynman would be even more disappointed to see how far today’s science fetishists have drifted from scientody in favor of scientistry that Jesus Christ would be to see the grotesqueries and abominations that are so often justified in his name. Jesus knew Man was hellbound of his own volition; Feynman was usually a bit more of an optimist.