Now that everyone is getting ready for the final, it’s time to go ahead and start kicking around possibilities for the next book study. Here’s my initial thoughts on the subject, but feel free to argue the case for your favored candidate:
The Aeneid: Pros – new translation is pretty good. Cons – I’ve never actually been able to finish it.
Liberal Fascism: Pros – likely relevant to the new administration, nice segue from Rothbard’s AGD. Cons – no free texts available.
Herodotus: Pros – Lovely Landmark edition. Cons – are we really ready for another history already?
The Wealth of Nations: Pros – Classic economics text. Cons – More econ?
I attended the debate tonight, and I have to honestly say that PZ lost… badly.
He basically decided to dismiss the agreed topic of debate and then proceeded to lecture on Hox genes. If the topic of debate was really evolution vs Intelligent Design he certainly would have won on the issue of genetics, but still would have lost on the issue of overall rationale.
In the end, his conclusion was that he couldn’t argue the agreed-upon question because it wasn’t his area of expertise and they should have gotten someone else.
PZ is so incompetent and historically ignorant that I doubt he could win a debate that remained solidly within his area of expertise. There’s a reason he’s still a community college professor, after all. Have a look through the blog at every single exchange that’s ever taken place between us; you’ll see that painfully lame ad hominem is the very best that he can ever do. It doesn’t sound like Durston was much of a debater himself, but that doesn’t prevent PZ from whining about him. That’s pathetic, since nothing is easier than slashing apart someone who is attempting to play fast and loose with the facts. They do your job for you.
PZ was completely wrong when he attempted to claim that Hitler was a Christian. (PZ’s opponent was also wrong, as Hitler was not an atheist although he was a science fetishist.) The OSS reports released in 2001, with which PZ is obviously unfamiliar, make it clear that while the man was, like Dawkins and Hitchens, raised within a church tradition, he abandoned it and sought to destroy both the Protestant and Catholic churches as an adult.
As for those who completely dismiss the legitimacy of the Testimonium Flavianum, I would merely inquire by what evidence they do so. I completely agree that the text doesn’t sound like Josephus, but then, that’s hardly conclusive proof of it being a post-facto addition. Moreover, the Testimonium Flavianum is not the only reference to Jesus in the Antiquities, it’s merely the only one whose legitimacy is seriously questioned.
NAR EXPERTS’ 2008 FORECAST: “Existing-home prices are expected to… hold essentially even in 2008 at $218,300.”
VOX: Instead of $218k, I’m expecting a decline that would project to $175k or less by the end of the year.
THE VERDICT: “The median price crashed 15.3% year over year in December, to just $175,400.”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am entirely unconcerned with whatever the expert scientific consensus of the moment happens to be. Intelligence and logic will usually – not always, but usually – trump expertise and consensus. Consider the track record: 2008 housing prices, check. Embryonic stem cell research, check. Dark matter, check. Global warming, check. Evolution, okay, jury’s still out.
And I am an expert in precisely none of those things. Now, if you’re still not convinced, what more would it take to convince you?
While atheists are quite understandably reluctant to embrace “their” responsibility for the mass murders committed by their godless brethren, what they consistently fail to understand is that pinning the responsibility on the godless murderer is not about implying that the average atheist today is inclined to commit mass murder, but rather demonstrating the complete absurdity of the oft-made case that historical crimes committed by those of vaguely similar belief somehow justify advocating legal or social restrictions on individuals who have not committed any such crimes.
Atheists aren’t the only ones guilty of such cross-temporal guilt assignations. Medieval Christians certainly did so, and some of the more foolish Jews do the same thing today, forgetting that if it is right to judge today’s Christians for the historical crimes of medieval Christians who persecuted Jews, then those medieval Christians were entirely justified in persecuting medieval Jews for the crimes of ancient Jews who persecuted Christians. Responsibility must either be assigned individually or collectively. If the former, then no Christian today can be held responsible for the First Crusade, no atheist today can be held responsible for the Holodomor, and no Jew today can be held responsible for killing Jesus Christ or any of his followers. If the latter, then Christians, atheists, and Jews are all justified in engaging a war of all against all, in which case one would probably be wise to bet on the Muslims.
But with regards to the mass slaughters of the previous century, there is simply no way to escape the established fact that individual atheists have been among mankind’s very worst killers. This doesn’t mean that the average atheist is any more likely to be homicidally inclined than anyone else, it does, however, cast serious doubt on the common atheist assertion that a godless society will be a peaceful one. The significant question has never been if atheism causes political leaders to kill in large quantities, it is why political leaders who happen to be atheist have been inordinately inclined to kill in large quantities.
As I wrote in TIA, the answer is probably to be found in the fact that atheists who have committed great historical crimes are almost exclusively left-wing atheists with utopian visions of restructuring human society; Ayn Rand atheists aren’t exactly known for attempting to violently restructure societal order. This is why atheists like Bertrand Russell, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and especially Michel Onfray are far more dangerous than those more akin to Daniel Dennett and even Richard Dawkins.
I think I’ve identified the qualities in B.J.’s work that distinguish his badness from other kinds of badness: It exhibits unearned contempt. Both a self-righteous contempt for others and the self-approbation and self-congratulation that is contempt’s backside, so to speak. Most frequently a contempt for the supposed phoniness or inauthenticity of other people as opposed to the rock-solid authenticity of our B.J….
He thinks people can’t stand him because he dresses wrong or doesn’t look right.
Billy Joel, they can’t stand you because of your music; because of your stupid, smug attitude; because of the way you ripped off your betters to produce music that rarely reaches the level even of mediocrity. You could dress completely au courant and people would still loathe your lame lyrics.
It’s not that they dislike anything exterior about you. They dislike you because of who you really are inside. They dislike you for being you. At a certain point, consistent, aggressive badness justifies profound hostility. They hate you just the way you are.
Far be it from me to dispute the idea that Billy Joel sucks with all the force of a thousand desperate, impoverished strippers chasing a Vivid contract. But I have to admit that I never contemplated the possibility that it was his lyrics behind the monstrous black hole of his despicable suckitude; I always thought it was the music itself that was so ear-bleedingly awful. Fortunately, I never listened to enough of his steaming stinkocity to even be passingly familiar with the greater part of his dreadful ouevre, but if I had to pick just one song as the nadir of the lot, it would be “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. Or maybe “Uptown Girl”…. Wow, it is really hard to choose just one… no, it’s got to be “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, because if you’re choosing between two equally bad songs, the list song has to be worst by virtue of its intrinsically annoying format.
Although I will confess that since my first exposure to rock music was “In a Gadda Da Vida” and my first record album was “Back in Black”, I had absolutely no idea what the hell Billy Joel was going on about in “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”. Is this supposed to be rock or something? Really? Sounds a lot more like a Debby Boone/Sean Cassidy thing to me. Wait a minute, don’t tell me the freaking Monkees are supposed to be rock and roll?
Speaking of “Back in Black”, has there ever been an album or CD that has TWO songs that begin better than “Hells Bells” and “Back in Black”? I don’t think so. My favorite song on the album, however, has always been “Shoot to Thrill”.
This, friends, is the final week of The Ranting Room. Come Saturday, January 31, this site will be going dark. The content will remain online for some unspecified time to come, but after four years of doing this blog, it’s time for me to hang the ‘Closed’ sign in the window and move on to other things….
I want to thank everyone who has contributed to making The Ranting Room the sort of underground cult-classic semi-success it is today; it’s you, the community, who really make this thing work. I especially want to thank everyone who has contributed a guest column in the past year. I did give a lot of thought to the idea of changing the rules, opening up the posting permissions, and expanding The Ranting Room to be more like an online magazine. But in the end, I came to the conclusion that this blog is just too personal and idiosyncratic to be opened up in that way, and it would be better to bring it to an end and begin something new.
So, the news is not all bad – indeed, for fans of the OC’s fiction, it’s downright good news – and denizens of The Ranting Room will no doubt be pleased to know that their community will live on, in an even more open and flexible form, at its appointed successor site. I congratulate the OC for The Ranting Room’s successful run of four years, and I hope to see many familiar Ranting Roomers at the new blog in the future.
This is the final chapter; a 25-question final covering the entire book will be posted next Saturday. If you have any questions about any of the various concepts involved, this would be the right time to ask them. And on a tangential note, Mark Cuban explains inflationary credit expansion in action:
With the credit market on the fritz, the other option was to add investors and just pay cash. However, if we were going to pay cash, I was not going to bid anywhere near 1 Billion dollars for the assets.
Easy credit doesn’t change the inherent value of an asset being purchased with it, it merely increases the monetary price.
John IV solves the primary problem of modern biology:
Daniel Dennett illogically tried to argue that we should trust biologists because physicists get amazingly accurate results.
I know what the problem is and its solution. I propose a new adjunct to the theory of the tree of life: “Dark Life”. Just like quantum physics, there MUST exist an invisible, undetectable SOMETHING that fills in all the holes and problems with every calculation and theory. This way, the biologists don’t have to admit that they have completely wasted their whole lives, AND continue to draw funding from the taxpayer to continue their “studies”.
A brilliant solution, thus permitting biologists to obtain results that are every bit as accurate as physicists once the Dark Life variable is either added in, subtracted, or multiplied, as needed. I must say, I’m a little disappointed in myself for not coming up with this theory considering that I was the first scientist to discover Dark Vapor; obviously I’m a better physicist than biologist.
