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Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left. And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, and saying, “Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.”

Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, “He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.'”

The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is to say, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, “This man calleth for Elias.” And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink. The rest said, “Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.”

Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
– Matthew 27:38-50

BL suggests a theory as to why internet discourse takes place at such a low level today:

I wish to comment on books and reading. My observation is that most people don’t read books; those that claim to usually don’t finish them or skim the book, read the forward, and carry on as if they,ve read it confident that next person they encounter on the subject has done the same thing or less. This I find to be predominant among younger liberals who operate behind an intellectual facade. They then seem to be convinced that they have actually read the book! This is clearly evident in the response to TIA – an excellent and valuable book which I like to give as a gift to students.

I find it remarkable how many individuals on both sides of numerous debates – not just the atheism/religion one – operate in almost complete ignorance of not only the material on the other side, but of the material on their own side! Just as it’s readily apparent that the average individual who brings up Hume, Epictetus, or Plato have never read their works, it’s seldom hard to detect that a significant percentage of those who claim they have read the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, or Homer have actually done so.

The conflation of having heard of something with knowing it is a widespread disease, and tools like Wikipedia and other Internet reference sites only make it worse. But reading a single famous quote from a work is not tantamount to reading the work itself, and citing a summary on Wikipedia is not indicative of actually understanding anything about that which is being summarized.

Most people read only to have their prejudices confirmed. So, if you want to have a significant advantage over most people, always read as much as you can about your subject from every perspective. I don’t particularly enjoy wallowing in jargon-filled Communist literature, logically challenged atheist philosophy or mindless neo-monetarism with a Keynesian twist, but I do it because I cannot understand the full scope of the discourse if I don’t.

I very seldom agree with Cisbio – and mama mia is he in for a spanking when I finally get around to replying to his last critique – but one thing he was absolutely right to do was to call me on my not having read a book that I cited based on a third-party reference. In general, it’s always wise to either read a book so that you know what you’re talking about, or just keep your mouth shut about it.

Here’s a belated link to Nate’s damning thoughts on the business school mentality:

You want to know whats to blame for your current economic crisis? Greed you say? Harvard Business School says I. Its that theory.. thay wretched buzzword style catch phrase… so often repeated… its impregnated every fascit of american economics. Its a deplorable, loathesome, and ultimate suicidal business theory. Its one that eventually damns and destroys everyone and everything that adopts it… from a business, to a school, to a city or town. But why? Why is it so destructive?

Several different ways actually.. and I’m going to provide some fairly varied examples from completely different, and seemingly unrelated, areas to demonstrate them.

Nate provides examples from NASCAR to the housing market in illustrating how a mindless focus on revenue growth leads to an abbreviated financial lifespan. A few months ago, I saw a newly hired technology executive fired, quite justifiably, because his “plan” for the company he had recently been hired to run was – surprise, surprise – to focus on the short term, goose the sales numbers, and sell the company as fast as possible based on “the ramp”.

He got canned almost immediately after presenting that plan… mostly because he was the third or fourth straight executive who had come up with precisely the same “strategy”.

There’s no question that some will benefit greatly from the knowledge economy. But the idea that education will permit every laborer to transform himself into a productive knowledge worker is growing increasingly dubious, which means that a new form of economic quasi-feudalism may be more or less inevitable:

You can now watch the liquidation of the American Dream in real time. Any given week, the guts of a whole factory are auctioned off. Its contents are sold piece by piece and taken away for scrap or antiques or resale to foreign companies. Men with blowtorches and trucks haul off tool-and-die machines, aluminum siding, hoists, drinking fountains, salt and pepper shakers, anything that might be of some value. It is the removal of the country’s mechanical heart right before your eyes. It is breathtaking.

The reality is that most office workers are unnecessary, being inherently unproductive. Many are engaged in little more than transferring information from point A to point B, and will become redundant as information transfer technology continues to improve. Just to give one example, I have created a technology design that will render 95 percent of all university professors surplus to requirements; the only reason that they are required now is that the present means of information transfer at the universities still operate in a wildly outdated and inefficient manner due to the present limits of technology.

But what will the professors at every petty state and local university do when everyone around the world can attend the exactly the same course at Oxford with precisely the same – if not superior – level of quality presently being provided to those who attend college classes there? Obviously, those elite professors tapping into a much larger revenue stream will be much better off, as will Oxford University and I, being in control of the technology.

The rest of the universities and professors will not be better off and they will either have to find some other service to provide or go extinct. This is just one of many examples; as efficiency in information transfer improves, the information-tranferring employee will become as unnecessary as the craftsman became once the concept of the division of labor allowed unskilled workers to produce physical goods of similar quality in greater quantities at lower cost.

I suspect that recognition of this ongoing economic transformation may, in part, lie behind the unconcern of the elite with regards to demographic decline and their apparent determination to construct a new social structure that is more similar to the historical pyramid of many past societies.

This immigration idiocy isn’t exactly shocking:

While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday…. Opponents of legalization legislation were incredulous at the idea that Mr. Obama would take on immigration when economic pain for Americans is so widespread.

With unemployment rising and real wages still lower than 1973, it’s obviously the worst possible time to consider legitimizing and importing yet more unskilled, uncivilized Third Worlders. The idea sounds utterly mad to sane Western minds, but because Obama is a Third Worlder and not a Westerner himself, his dream inherited from his non-American father is to transform the twitching corpse of Western America into the same sort of barbaric Southern morass that exists throughout most of the non-European world, and from which he hails.

As you know, I was already certain that America was toast long before Obama got elected. However, his actions appear likely to increase the rate of decline as the country heads towards demise, and hopefully, devolution. This should be an interesting political battle, though, as it will be fascinating to see if having Obama on the Cherry Blossom Throne rather than Bush will cause the Republican elite to turn against the very migration they supported during the last amnesty attemptpush for immigration “reform”. And don’t forget, Republicans, it was first Reagan, then Bush, who did the advance work for Obama’s actions here.

It should be comical to learn what justification for importing more of these unwanted and unneeded masses is offered by Obama. I’m assuming he’s not dumb enough to come right out and declare that he requires a different electorate, but in light of his first two months, that’s not outside the realm of possibility. It’s not impossible that this could mark Obama’s inevitable HillaryCare moment.

UPDATE – In case you’re not completely convinced that the USA is beyond saving, consider the following poll results:

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

I’m sure importing and giving the right to vote to masses of Mexicans, South Americans, and Somalis, all of whom are well-accustomed to socialist rule, will drive that 53 percent figure into a minority before too long. And then it won’t take long to transform the former land of the free and the home of the brave into America the Third World Hellhole.

That effort to unseat Hussein is looking more and more worthwhile every day, isn’t it, Republicans?

Just one example of why I enjoy the religion/atheism discourse:

VD: “This [move from “error theory” to “compartmental “theory”] hasn’t yet made its way down to the run-of-the-mill internet atheists, whose primary form of “debate” still consists of calling people stupid despite the fact that all of the available evidence demonstrates rather conclusively that the objects of their ridicule are, as a point of fact, rather more intelligent than the atheist himself.”

Skepdude: “Personally from what’ I’ve seen, atheist bloggers mainly go after specific behaviors rather than people.”

Skepdude’s commenter: “Vox Day is a complete idiot. Don’t even waste time or typing on him.”

I suppose this is the point where, if I was an atheist or a left-liberal, I would be expected to make use of that silly, self-aggrandizing, overused, and oft-unjustified metaphor: “the X, it burns”. But it doesn’t, you know, it’s just moderately amusing. Note that I didn’t refer solely to “atheist bloggers”, but rather “internet atheists”, which of course includes both commenters and bloggers.

Anyhow, enough about that. This would probably be as good time as any to inform you that TIA will be published in paperback next year in the USA, the UK, and a number of overseas markets. I don’t know which languages yet, but I’m most interested in seeing an Italian edition published, for obvious reasons. I plan to do a moderate revision of the structure, which, as many of you noted, takes about two chapters too long to get to the heart of the matter. I also hope to fill in some of the bits I feel I’ve missed and shore up any perceived weak spots. So, in order to accomplish the latter, I’d be most appreciative if the Ilk would remind me of any common atheist arguments I happened to miss in Chapter XIV, Occam’s Chainsaw. I already know that “Extraordinary Claims” and “Burden of Proof” need to be added, while the “Argument from Evidence” could use the inclusion of a dictionary definition or two, but if anything else needs to be there – or if any atheist reading this feels he’s got a particularly effective argument even if it doesn’t happen to be one of the common ones – just let me know.

I’ll have other requests as I go along with the revisions, but at this point, I’d just like to make sure that all of the relevant arguments are included. I should probably mention that I’m also writing that other book I’d previously mentioned, which will appear before the TIA paperback, so forgive me if I don’t always readily respond to your suggestions.

The Magic Negro or your lying eyes?

The White House is denying that the president bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at a G-20 meeting in London, a scene that drew criticism on the right and praise from some Arab outlets. “It wasn’t a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he’s taller than King Abdullah,” said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The hilarious thing is that this statement just undercut all of the Obamatons who have been defending this, um, nonexistent bow as being totally appropriate.

“I have no doubt that if Obama had refused to bow to the King he would have been criticized for cultural insensitivity.”

“Bowing is showing respect. Our prez calling for an end to nuclear weapons and showing respect to Muslim leaders? These are things that I could only have dreamed about the past 8 years.”

“Obama is one of the brightest minds to enter the White House in a very long time. He was on a multi-country tour with so many new people to meet and the best you can do is come up with a video of him trying to be respectful.”

It’s hard to stay on track when the conductor keeps changing the beat on you.

All right, we’ll call it a draw:

First, Mr. Vox wants to take a shot at my challenge of his claim that they (religious) are more intelligent than us (atheists). While it is quite ridiculous to make that statement for any group in relation to any other group, nevertheless he clearly means to say that religious people are smarter than the atheists.

Read it again, o valiant black knight of atheism. The fact that I have repeatedly explained, both in TIA and on this blog, why atheists are more intelligent on average than theists, is sufficient to demolish your attempt to construct this demonstrable strawman.

Basically Vox thinks that “I think so” should be considered good evidence. Well, personally I would expect something a little more firm such as say, at the very least, an article in a major wold newspaper, referring to some survey/study with a title of something like, oh I don’t know “Intelligent people ‘less likely to believe in God” perhaps? Or this one maybe? Now that is what I would consider as evidence, but Vox’s word, unfortunately does not count. Sorry Vox but that’s just the way it is and it doesn’t matter how much you deny it, evidence will never be defined as one person’s word in any dictionary!…

No Mr Day, having strict standards for evidence is not a shortcoming of skeptics and atheists as you would like to suggest, at the contrary it is a virtue. Some very intelligent men have said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and is there a more extraordinary claim than God? Vox uses the typical strategy of most anti-scientists, more specifically trying to use the everyday use definitions of certain words in an effort to minimize or avoid the more rigorous requirements that a scientific approach demands.

Vox thinks absolutely nothing of the kind. I’ve already pointed out that, as per the usual First Law Fandango, Skepdude doesn’t even understand what I wrote in the first place. Now he’s quibbling with the dictionary definition of evidence. Again, that’s fairly par for the course when dealing with a run-of-the-mill internet atheist. An atheist can reasonably attempt to argue that there is no “scientific evidence” for God. An atheist who attempts to argue that there is no “evidence” for God is not only an ignorant and maleducated fool, he is very easily shown to be an incorrect, ignorant, and maleducated fool. No one is permitted to completely redefine standard, well-defined words in the interest of supporting their arguments.

So did he make an assertion that atheism has been around for a long time? Sure he did. But did he not also call all atheists fools? See it is right there, in the middle of the second sentence. He is paraphrasing the Bible, but it is clear, I think, that this is a statement that he agrees with. How do I know he accepts what the Bible says on the issue? Because he is using that paraphrased verse to support his statement, namely that “Atheism will always exist”. You don’t use an untrue statement to support your own claim now do you? So I don’t know why Vox is embarrassing himself implying that he doesn’t think we’re all fools over here. I don’t know what Vox is thinking. Pointing at claim/statement #1 does not negate that you made claim/statement #2.

It is entirely obvious that Skepdude doesn’t know what Vox is thinking; one of his problems is that he keeps claiming, incorrectly, that he does. The veritable farrago of First Law Fandangos raises the question if he is even potentially capable of understanding what Vox is writing, let alone thinking. A single “claim/statement” is obviously not the same thing as “a primary form of debate” so it’s not possible to even begin build a theoretical case for hypocrisy here, let alone present a convincing one. As for the request for evidence of comparative intelligences, I respectfully submit that this pair of exchanges should more than suffice even without the previous compendium of readily available documentary evidence in support of the same conclusion. One final note – on what internet do atheists only describe theistic beliefs as stupid rather than the theists themselves?

UPDATE: Skepdude simply can’t figure it out:

How is it that you think that atheist are on average smarter than theists, but then turn around that the internet atheists are less intelligent than the theists?

Because internet atheists are a small subset of all atheists, and the theists they make a habit of calling stupid – the specific objects of ridicule listed were Alister McGrath, Dinesh D’Souza, and me – are an extremely small subset of theists.

As for the “challenge”, Skepdude’s argument(s) clearly qualified for Strawman under step 1 of the Wikipedia definition. He repeatedly presented “a misrepresentation of the opponent’s position” because, among other things, he failed to understand who I was describing when I wrote “the objects of their ridicule”. I even provided three examples, which made it clear that I was not talking about all of the nearly 6 billion theists on the planet, but rather a specific subset of theists who have written responses to the New Atheists. Consider what we already know about all three theists specifically mentioned: they are all authors who have been published at least six times apiece and their books clearly indicate a level of intelligence that ranges somewhere between +2 and +4SD above the norm. All three attended elite universities and have the track record of tangible success expected of highly intelligent individuals. One is even confirmed at least a +2SD IQ due to the Mensa requirements….

On the other hand, the inability of run-of-the-mill internet atheists to demonstrate even basic reading comprehension skills, combined with their predilection for spelling, grammatical, and logical errors as well as their easily verifiable ignorance of basic dictionary terms, indicates intelligence levels ranging from -1SD to +2SD. While we don’t have absolute proof that Skepdude or any of the Internet atheists he mentioned don’t have 175+ IQs or that McGrath doesn’t have an 85 IQ – for that we’d need to collect the confirmed IQ results for everyone concerned – we do possess a rather large body of documentary evidence that permits one to reach the logical conclusion that I did: run-of-the-mill internet atheists regularly describe certain theists who are observably more intelligent than they are as stupid. Now, Skepdude may not be guilty of explicitly engaging in this practice, but, as I pointed out, his commenters clearly are. Skepdude even implicitly indulges in this practice himself, as the idea that I, or anyone else with a confirmed 132 IQ or better, require further education in order to understand something as simple as a strawman argument would be insulting if it wasn’t so ludicrous.

I already explained this in my first post, but it seems that some people require it to be spelled out for them. Which is not a problem, but, it should be noted, also tends to support my original point. Skepdude could have easily saved himself a considerable amount of Strawman construction had he simply elected to ask “specifically what do you mean by objects of ridicule” rather than leaping at the perceived opportunity to hurl charges of error and hypocrisy. But, this is the internet, and would-be critics seldom look before they leap.

And yes, I am now officially bored with the subject. No doubt you are too.

In which all Minnesota residents are cordially invited to enumerate their reasons for why the Star Tribune should not be saved. These can be posted in the comments there or emailed to me; ideally I’d like to post a new one every day. There’s really a whole host of reasons, but let’s face it, at the end of the day, this is the news organization that voluntarily inflicted Nick Coleman’s column on Minnesotans for years.

Bankruptcy is too kind a fate.

Minnesota bloggers who would like to be listed on the Kill the Strib blogroll should send me the name and URL of their blog. And don’t forget to vote!

I wonder how many more of these cases will happen before it occurs to womens’ rights advocates that perhaps stacking the deck in favor of female divorcees may not actually be in the best interests of women. A house, full custody, and an oversized child-support subsidy isn’t worth much to a dead woman:

A man facing a divorce trial shot and killed his estranged wife, their teenage daughter and two other relatives in rural north Alabama before returning to his home in a nearby town and killing himself, authorities said Tuesday. Kevin Garner’s body was found Tuesday afternoon near his Priceville home, which burned to the ground overnight. His divorce trial was to start Wednesday.

The current system of assigning the maximum possible blame and financial responsibility to the male half of the divorcing couple is pure madness. It simply has to end before it tears civil society into shreds. I was in a fantasy football league – not the VPFL – with one man whose ex-wife was a useless and unemployed mother less capable of raising children than the average wolf. She wanted out of the marriage in order to pursue the fun that she felt she’d missed out on in her younger days, and was initially happy to accept a reasonably equitable joint-custody arrangment that gave the man plenty of time with his kids.

However, once the ex-wife belatedly realized that the gravy train was over, she went out of her way to provoke a confrontation at his house after surreptitiously arranging to send the potential witness away by lying about one of her ex-relations. She called the police because he yelled at her for violating the custody order and trespassing in his house, the man got slapped with a restraining order, had his custody suspended, and couldn’t see his kids without supervision for a few weeks. The Family Court judge was completely uninterested in hearing any testimony about her provable deceit, or indeed, hearing any testimony about her at all. Fortunately, the woman was ultimately unsuccessful in her attempt to reduce his custody or increase his forced contribution to her lifestyle. But if she’d succeeded, I wouldn’t have found it impossible to understand if he elected to respond by blowing the bitch’s head off.

When the courts will not give justice, the Devil is always pleased to proffer revenge.