Category: Uncategorized

Mailvox: The evidence for God

I really fail to understand why so many Christian apologists have such a difficult time answering such easy questions:

Don’t know if you’ve ever seen this before.  In my opinion this little kid embarrassed Eric Hovind. Eric may even have a valid point he’s trying to make but I’m not sure exactly what it is. I know its hard to present a coherent summary of evidence for God very quickly (your debate with Dominic has really given me some food for thought when thinking about evidence for the existence of a deity) but what would you give as a very short, snappy answer to someone who asked “What is your evidence for God?”

I don’t know who Hovind is, but I tend to agree.  I stopped watching after Hovind said “without God, you can’t know anything.”  Even if that is perfectly true, it’s an incredibly stupid answer.  One might as reasonably answer “without oxygen, you can’t know anything”, and to as little effect.

The correct answer concerning the evidence for God is precisely the same as it is for practically everything else in the historical record, which is to say the copious documentary evidence available.  We can no more reasonably doubt the existence of God than we can doubt the existence of Alexander the Great, Abraham Lincoln, or any other human being who existed before the invention of audio and video recording and for whom there are physical artifacts that support the documentary evidence.

Can skeptics produce plausible explanations for why so much false documentary evidence of God exists if He does not?  Sure.  Just as I can plausibly explain that the myth of George Washington was invented in order to provide Americans with founding Romulus-style figure of reverence in order to compensate for their lack of kings and common history.  I mean, there were no cherry trees in Virginia.  And isn’t it ludicrous to take literally the myth of Washington’s rjection of the proffered crown when the story is a patently a straightforward imitation of the Roman dictator Cincinnatus.

As for the other part of the question, where the boy declares that communication with God is simply a part of one’s brain talking to him, I would have asked the kid how he was able to distinguish between one part of my brain talking to me and an alien transmission from Alpha Centauri.  I would have also asked him precisely what part of my brain was doing the talking, and to what, precisely?  I would have pressed him until it became obvious that he knew nothing of neuroscience, was simply parroting something he’d been told, and that his assertion was actually less credible than the God hypothesis.

It’s one thing to claim that your brain must be talking to itself when you’re the only one who hears it.  It’s another when other people hear it too.

Most modern Christian apologists are incompetent because they approach the discourse as a chance to explicate theology rather than understanding that it is a form of intellectual combat where the goal is to discredit the interlocutor.  So, like Hovind, they explicate a little theology that looks like an irrelevant evasion while simultaneously managing to get intellectually discredited by young boys.  Frankly, I’d be surprised and a little disappointed if I didn’t have the kid in tears and questioning his faith in science within minutes after asking such a pair of stupid questions.

First things first.  Destroy the interlocutor.  Answer every question directly, on his terms, and then go after the vulnerabilities they reveal with a flamethrower.  Only then, when you are standing upon whatever quivering ashes remain, can you explicate further if you wish.

Imagine what they’d find in New York

It sounds as if the Kabul Bank was an exemplary example of Western-style banking:

Afghan and American officials had for years promoted Kabul Bank as a prime example of how Western-style banking was transforming a war-ravaged economy. But the audit, prepared this year for Afghanistan’s central bank by the Kroll investigative firm, gives new details of how the bank instead was institutionalizing fraud that reached into the hundreds of millions of dollars and obliterated Afghans’ trust after regulators finally seized the bank in August 2010 and the theft was revealed.

Going further than previous reports, the audit asserts that Kabul Bank had little reason to exist other than to allow a narrow clique tied to President Hamid Karzai’s government to siphon riches from depositors, who were the bank’s only substantial source of revenue.

At one point, Kroll’s investigators found 114 rubber stamps for fake companies used to give forged documents a more legitimate look. And the auditing firms used by the bank never took issue with loan books that were “almost entirely fraudulent,” Kroll found, recommending that the Afghan government explore suing the last such auditor, A.F. Ferguson & Co., a private Pakistani firm with a franchise under PricewaterhouseCoopers.

What, one wonders, is the Federal Reserve’s reason to exist other than to allow a narrow clique to siphon riches from the American people?  Given the observable facts in evidence, it certainly can’t be the stated purpose of guaranteeing stable prices, much less the ex post facto rationale of assuring full employment.

At least the Kabul Bank had external audits, however fraudulent they were.  The Federal Reserve can’t even claim as much.

Mortality

You know you’ve officially reached middle age when people you knew in your youth start dying of adult things like heart attacks and cancer.  I got an email from a friend today; a man who’d graduated with him, with whom I’d ridden to school from 7th through 9th grade, died recently of cancer.

He wasn’t a friend and I never really knew him, even though we were sitting next to each other practically every day for three years.  (In other words, there is absolutely no need for expressing any condolences.)  I didn’t dislike him, but I didn’t like him either.  I can’t say I’d even thought about him one single time since he graduated the year before me more than 25 years ago.  But, by all accounts, he turned out to be a good man, a good Christian, and a good father.

And yet, it seems impossible that he could be in his forties, lead alone dead.  When I think of him now, I still picture a slightly overweight blond guy, 17 years old and of average height, wearing a t-shirt that is a little too tight and an air of calm superiority.  Of course, when I look in the mirror, I wonder who that weary-eyed Lovecraftian monster staring back at me could be. 

Our time here is short.  Make the most of it, in the knowledge that one day you’ll be accountable for it.

WND column

The Liberty Curve

Most people instinctively understand the truth underlying the concept of the Laffer Curve. It articulates the elasticity of taxable income, which is to say, it shows how the amount of taxable income tends to change in response to changes in the income tax rate.  This is because most people understand that they modify their behavior in response to positive and negative stimuli.

VPFL 2012 week 11

51 Moundsview Meerkats (8-3)
42 Greenfield Grizzlies (4-7)

84 Bane Sidhe (7-4)
63 RR Redbeards (5-6)

84 Luna City Gamma Rays (5-6)
48 Bailout Banksters (6-5)

67 D.C. Hangmen (3-8)
46 Fromundah Cheezheads (8-3)

77 Suburban Churchians (2-9)
52 ’63Mercury Marauders (7-4)

After a fast start, Fromundah has been pulled back to the pack and five teams appear to be in contention for the four playoff spots, although it’s too soon to count out the Gamma Rays or Redbeards entirely.  This is the weekly open NFL thread.

The Laffer Curve at work

An Instapundit reader illustrates both the perils of blindly raising income tax rates and the financial pointlessness of many married women working:

After the election, my wife and I are going partial Galt. We’re in
California, so our state income tax went up in addition to what’s sure
to come out of Washington.

My wife quit her job last week. I increased my participation in a
tax deferment plan offered by my employer to bring my taxable income as
close to $250K as possible. We’ll be cutting back a little, but the
government is going to getting a whole lot less.

My wife’s entire salary barely covered our tax bill – she was 100%
slave to the government, while I was a 10% slave. Now she is 100% free,
and I’ll be a ~35% slave As a couple, 17.5% of our time is slaving on
the government plantation from an astounding 55% previously.

My wife is deliriously happy, our children are delighted to have mom
home, the dog gets more walks, and I find not spending money rapturously
satisfying. 

Statist theoreticians and bureaucrats never seem to understand that humans always modify their behavior in response to prospective stimuli.  And when they finally do, after failing to achieve the results expected, they usually make the mistake of attempting to forcibly limit human options, thereby falling into exactly the same trap.  And the smarter and more productive the individual, the more his contributions are required, the more likely it is that he will figure out a way to refuse to participate.

Here is a trivially easy prediction.  California will collect less tax revenue than estimated in 2013 despite its newly raised rates that theoretically will cause it to collect more.  Moreover, it will probably collect less than it did in 2012, and its budget deficit will rise.

Preorder period ending

In Selenoth, the race of Man is on the
ascendant. The ancient dragons sleep. The ghastly Witchkings are
no
more; their evil power destroyed by the courage of Men and the
fearsome magic of the Elves. The Dwarves have retreated to the
kingdoms of the Underdeep, the trolls hide in their mountains, and
even the savage orc tribes have learned to dread the iron
discipline
of Amorr’s mighty legions. But after four hundred years of mutual
suspicion, the rivalry between two of the Houses Martial that rule
the Amorran Senate threatens to turn violent, and unrest sparks
rebellion throughout the imperial provinces. In the north, the
barbarian reavers who have long plagued the coasts of the White
Sea
beg for the royal protection of the King of Savondir, as they flee
a vicious race of wolf-demons. In the east, the war drums
echo throughout the mountains as orcs and goblins gather in great
numbers, summoned by their bestial gods.

And when the Most Holy and Sanctified
Father is found dead in his bed, leaving the Ivory Throne of the
Apostles unclaimed, the temptation to seize the Sacred College and
wield Holy Mother Church as a weapon is more than some fallen
souls
can resist.

We’re working hard on getting the ebook out on December 1st.  The hardcover won’t ship for about two weeks after that, so if anyone spots any errata of any kind in the ebook, be it typos, grammar, or continuity, please don’t hesitate to email them to me immediately and we’ll get them corrected.  We will, of course, be providing updated ebooks to those who have purchased them.  This is a little unusual, but then, the book is a hefty monster that is going to run around 900 pages in the 6×9 format and given that you guys managed to find over 100 errors in each of the three EW novels published and line-edited by Pocket, I have no doubt we’ll miss a few howlers here.

Marcher Lord also asked me to remind those who are interested in buying the hardcover, but have not yet preordered it that the preorder discount offer will end on Monday, November 26th.  Remember that in addition to the discounted price, those who have preordered the hardcover will receive the ebook when it comes out.  Thanks to all of you who have preordered already.

Secession enters the mainstream

The New York Times publishes a remarkably balanced article on the topic of Texas secession:

In Texas, talk of secession in recent years has steadily shifted to the
center from the fringe right. It has emerged as an echo of the state
Republican leadership’s anti-Washington, pro-Texas-sovereignty mantra on
a variety of issues, including health care and environmental
regulations. For some Texans, the renewed interest in the subject serves
simply as comic relief after a crushing election defeat. 
But for other proponents of secession and its sister ideology, Texas
nationalism — a focus of the Texas Nationalist Movement and other groups
that want the state to become an independent nation, as it was in the
1830s and 1840s — it is a far more serious matter. 
The official in East Texas, Peter Morrison, the treasurer of the Hardin
County Republican Party, said in a statement that he had received
overwhelming support from conservative Texans and overwhelming
opposition from liberals outside the state in response to his comments
in his newsletter. He said that it may take time for “people to
appreciate that the fundamental cultural differences between Texas and
other parts of the United States may be best addressed by an amicable
divorce, a peaceful separation.” 
For the record, I am in favor of self-determination.  That is the key, I think, for secession supporters to win liberal/progressive support.  American liberals, for all their ability to double-think, simply cannot permit themselves to oppose self-determination, since it is one of the foundations of their perspective on foreign policy.  While some of them will be able to concoct a convoluted conceptual structure that allows them to vehemently support foreign self-determination while denying it to Americans, most of them will not.  It is too integral to their view of the world.
And for the record, I am entirely in favor of self-determination for Texans as well as the other American states.  Liberals like to point out that the “Democratic” states subsidize the “Republican” states; a fact which omits one extremely relevant point which I shall point out and walk through the math in a future post.  Secession advocates should use this fact and the self-determination argument relentlessly, as encouraging the left to declare “good riddance” will be key to winning their support for the eventual, and inevitable, secession of several American States.

He doesn’t care and here is why

John Scalzi proves he doesn’t care what people think about him by writing yet another post explaining his opinion
concerning what people think about his position on the socio-sexual
hierarchy and why he is not insulted by being identified as a “beta
male”:

I think they are less
concerned about insulting me than they are reassuring themselves that
there is no possible way they could ever be beta males, whatever their
definition of ‘beta male’ is. By all indications their definition is
something along the lines of “a man who sees women as something other
than a mute dispensary of sandwiches and boobies” and/or “a man who does
not live in fear of everyone else not continually affirming his
internal assessment of personal status,” gussied up in language that
allows them not to have to deal with these essential facts of their own
nature. But inasmuch as insulting me is part of the mechanism of
reassuring themselves, I am offered the insult.

I’m not insulted because, a) I consider the source, b) I don’t mind
being seen as someone who does not view women through a tangled bramble
of fear, ignorance and desire, c) when I step into a room, I don’t
neurotically spend my time tallying up who in the room has higher status
than I do, and who doesn’t. I am a grown-up, for God’s sake. Paranoid
status anxiety is tiring. 

One has to wonder how John knows that paranoid status anxiety is so exhausting considering that he cares so little about what others think of him.  In any event, I take a more in-depth look at what his response tells us about his socio-sexual status at Alpha Game.

Feminism ends in the brothel

Back in 2006, I think it was, I wrote about how the combination of feminism,  immigration, and post-Christianity would lead inevitably towards reducing women’s choices to the brothel or the burqah.  That point is rapidly arriving in both Holland and the UK:

Anything-goes Amsterdam has long been hailed as a sex mecca. The red-light district attracts thousands of customers, many of them tourists, who walk through alleys where half-naked prostitutes prance in the windows of some 300 brothels illuminated with scarlet bulbs.

A century ago, the brothels were banned to stop the exploitation of women by criminal gangs of Dutch men. But gradually the sex establishments crept back, with the authorities turning a blind eye.

In 2000, after pressure from prostitutes (demanding recognition as sex workers with employment rights) and Holland’s liberal intelligentsia (championing the choice of women to do what they wished with their bodies), the brothels were legalised. The working girls got permits, medical care, and now there are 5,000 in the red-light district.

But things went badly wrong. Holland’s newly legal sex industry was quickly infiltrated by street-grooming gangs with one target: the under-age girl virgin who can be sold for sex.

The men in the gangs are dubbed — incongruously — ‘lover boys’, because of their distinct modus operandi of making girls fall in love with them before forcing them into prostitution at private flats or houses all over Holland, and in the window brothels. The lover boy phenomenon has appalled Dutch society, not least because of the sheer numbers of girls involved.

Holland hopes the rot will be halted. Last year, 242 lover boy crimes were investigated by police, half of them involving the forced prostitution of girls under 18. Campaigner Anita de Wit says this is a fraction — ‘one per cent’ — of the true number. ‘There are thousands of girls being preyed on by male gangs in Holland,’ she says.  Anita visits schools to warn girls exactly what a lover boy looks like, and makes no bones of the fact that most of the gangs are operated by Dutch-born Moroccan and Turkish men.

‘I am not politically correct. I am not afraid of being called a racist, which would be untrue. I tell the girls that lover boys are young, dark-skinned and very good looking. They will have lots of money and bling as well as a big car. They will give out cigarettes and vodka. They will tell a girl that she is beautiful.

‘The gangs know who to pick out: the girl with the confidence problems, with the glasses, or who looks overweight. They flatter her and seem like the “knight in shining armour”. She is drawn to her new boyfriend like a magnet.’

There has never been a society that survived the loss of its religion and its children.  The end game for secularism, equalitarianism, and multiculturalism is not the shiny, sexy, It’s A Small World scientopia of post-religious dreams, it is what is already being witnessed in present-day Amsterdam.  This is not progress, this is a return to the pagan world that was defeated with the passing of Julian the Apostate and Diocletian.

The problem isn’t that the feminist revolution “backfired’, the problem is that it was a revolution of 180 degrees that marked a return to ancient societal patterns.