Category: Uncategorized

The failed apostle

Science is losing to Religion

In Dawkins’s view, there is a battle taking place in Britain between the forces of reason and religious fundamentalism and it is far from won. He is one of its most famous and prolific combatants – but the question might be whether he is among its most effective. The The God Delusion’s stated aim was to “convert” readers to atheism – but he admits that as a proselytising tool it has broadly failed….

Like most rationalists, Dawkins tends to invoke people’s innate intelligence, and attribute their flawed ways of thinking to ignorance rather than stupidity. “But I don’t have any evidence,” he concedes. “I could be wrong. It’s a kind of ideal. It’s a sort of bending over backwards.” People might just be stupid, I suggest. “They might be, yes,” he cautiously agrees. “But at least my saying that ignorance is no crime is my defence against the charge of arrogance. Because if you tell people they’re stupid, that certainly isn’t the way to win friends and influence people.”

Dawkins once described the British Airways employee dismissed for wearing a gold cross to work as having “the stupidest face”. Did he regret saying it?

A slightly naughty smile flickers over his face.

“Well … well … yes, I do really. Yes. That was an unguarded moment. Although I think I said stupid-­looking. Did you see the photograph of her? I think if you look up the story, and they’ve got the photograph … ” He checks himself, and stops. “But this is unkind.”

The reality is that most people, including Richard Dawkins, are idiots. They cannot be educated out of their idiocy and as a result they are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their historical antecedents over and over again. And everyone is observably irrational a significant portion of the time, so attempting to build a society on science and reason is not only a tried, tested, and failed concept, it is an inherently idiotic and irrational idea from the start. It’s not actually science that is losing to religion anyhow, it is merely the radical secularists who have falsely claimed that science is intrinsically on their side who find themselves in a bewildered retreat.

The fact that most people are idiots, however, does not excuse one who makes a habit of going out of his way, indeed, has downright made it a career, to baselessly assert that the great majority of the human race are idiots or ignoramuses solely because they do not share his disbelief in God. If Dawkins was not, like so many atheists, socially autistic, he would know that one must always convert the heart before one can begin to convert the mind. This can be done through love, it can be done through example, and it can be done through fear, but it cannot be done through a withering and completely unwarranted contempt.

People believe or don’t believe in the existence of God for a wide variety of reasons, but anyone who has read much of Richard Dawkins’s work will recognize that Dawkins doesn’t believe there is almost certainly no God due to either science or reason. Science has very little to say on that score, while I and many othere have pointed out the numerous flaws in Dawkins’s reason. And yet, he still clings stubbornly to his atheism. The inescapable conclusion is that Richard Dawkins doesn’t believe in God because of his own individual shortcomings, many of which fall in the area of his character.

California unter alles

The Golden State flirts with bankruptcy:

The state will suspend tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants and other payments owed to Californians starting Feb. 1, Controller John Chiang announced Friday…. California is projected to be $346 million short of the funds it needs to pay all its bills in February. By March, the state would be so far in the red that even continuing to suspend payments would not cover the shortfall. California would be insolvent, making the issuance of IOUs likely.

Perhaps they could encourage the immigration of more Mexicans. That should help solve the problem. We’re told they’re good for the economy, after all.

Zelebrate good times

Villful failure to zelebrate zee magical negritude ist strictly VERBOTEN:

“Inappropriate comments that may make other students, staff or families feel unwelcome or uncomfortable in school or on the bus will not be tolerated,” Superintendent Kevin Bright said in an e-mail sent to parents Monday, Jan. 12…. Jeff Schlaeger, Mason High School’s psychologist, said “inappropriate comments” occurred around election week when doctored pictures of Obama appeared at the school, including “derogatory caricatures” of him dressed like a terrorist and signs that read “Obama ’08/Biden ’09.”

As Spacebunny noted, it’s vital to teach them that freedom of speech doesn’t actually mean freedom of speech when they’re too young to notice the doublethink. One really can’t afford to have them learning to take their freedoms LITERALLY, after all.

WND: Epic Failures

The English people are being sold a whole herd of pigs in a poke, and they don’t even know what it will cost:

The Treasury has formally announced a scheme to allow banks to exchange cash or shares for a Government guarantee on their “toxic” debts, transferring any losses they suffer from the banks to the taxpayer. However, the Chancellor admitted he can’t estimate how much taxpayers’ money will needed in the latest bailout.

It will be interesting to see how many of the self-appointed financial whizzes I pointed out in today’s column, those who backed the first round of bailouts, will line up in favor of this one. Because there’s a pretty good chance that the banks will soon be pushing something like this on the American public.

UPDATE – Even Krugman is now pessimistic about the next round of bailouts:

I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect that taxpayers are about to get another raw deal — and that we’re about to get another financial rescue plan that fails to do the job.

NFL: Conference Championships

I like the Cardinals and the Steelers today. Which isn’t saying much, considering the way in which my picks were 1-3 last week. But I think the Arizona passing game is enough to outshoot a very beatable Eagles team, and while I might have chosen the Ravens if they were healthy, I think Pittsburgh’s offensive line has improved enough to give Roethlisberger time against the depleted Baltimore defense.

At the Black Gate

It always sounds self-serving, if not sour grapes, when an author points out that book sales are actually a very poor indicator of literary quality. The fact that Dan Brown and Tim LaHaye are among the best-selling authors in the world should suffice to conclusively prove the point, and yet some still cling to the notion that insignificant sales indicate an inferior writer.

I’m not bothered by this myself, especially since it tends to work in my favor – wrongly, as it happens – in other fields. But it does bother me when I see it applied to other writers whose books I very much admire. In today’s Black Gate post, I hail one overlooked gem of the recent past.

Rumpole lives

Even if John Mortimer has exited the premises:

John Mortimer, barrister, author, playwright and creator of Horace Rumpole, the cunning defender of the British criminal classes, died on Friday at his home in Oxfordshire, England. He was 85.

As with Wodehouse, one does not read John Mortimer expecting surprises, insight, or philosophy. One simply reads him for the absurd pleasure of wallowing in Rumpole. But underneath the humor, the writer’s eye was a keen one, especially when it came to chronicling the essential farce of the human condition.

“Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn’t ready to appear ridiculous.”

America’s Great Depression section XI


It is quite apparent to everyone by now that the Bush administration has very closely followed in the Hoover administration’s footsteps, and that the Obama administration is almost certainly going to continue doing so as well. But what even some of the more sophisticated observers may not realize is how even the Hoover-Roosevelt response to economic contraction was little more than an echo of much older attempts at economic stabilization by the central state.

“When Diocletian came to the throne in 284, he found three great problems before him… The third and hardest was mainly economic – to restore the dwindled agriculture, commerce, and population of the Empire. On this Diocletian and Constantine went wrong together. They not only failed to cure the evil, but greatly increased it. Not much was gained by remitting taxes that could not be paid, and settling barbarian colonists and barbarian serfs in the wasted provinces. Serious economic difficulties have moral causes, and there was no radical cure short of a complete change in the temper of society. Yet much might have been done by a permanent reduction of taxation and a reform of its incidence and of the methods of collection. Instead of this, the machinery of government (and its expense) was greatly increased. The army had to be held in check by courts of Oriental splendour and a vast establishment of corrupt officials. We can see the growth of officialism even in the language, if we compare the Latin words in Athanasius with those in the New Testament. So heavier taxes had to be levied from a smaller and poorer population. Taxation under the Empire had never been light ; in the third century it grew heavy, under Diocletian it was crushing, and in the later years of Constantine the burden was further increased by the enormous expenditure which built up the new capital like the city in a fairy tale. We are within sight of the time when the whole policy of the government was dictated by dire financial need.”
– The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I p. 20 (1911)

Immigration, higher taxes, larger government, vast public works, increased government spending, and even currency devaluations didn’t suffice to get the economy back on track in Constantine’s day. Depending upon your perspective, it’s either fascinating or depressing to note that central government’s response to economic crisis has changed so little in 1,700 years. The jargon and the justifications may differ, but the fundamental actions remain the same.

Chapter 12: The Close of the Hoover Term, for next week. A 25-question final covering the entire book will be posted the following week.

Ding-dong, the Strib is dead

Okay, so the corpse hasn’t actually quit twitching yet, but I, for one, anticipate bidding a cheerful “good riddance” to the Star & Sickle:

The Minneapolis Star Tribune filed for bankruptcy, becoming one of the biggest U.S. newspapers yet to financially flame out under a heavy debt load and a punishing decline in advertising revenue. The 15th-largest U.S. daily based on circulation, which McClatchy Co sold to private equity firm Avista Capital Partners for $530 million less than two years ago, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after missing payments to lenders, it said on Thursday.

I actually spoke with an editor at the Star Tribune about writing an electronic games column for them many years ago, but being clueless dinosaurs, they didn’t think anyone would be interested in reading about video games. The editor at the Pioneer Press, on the other hand, thought it was a great idea, which, among other things, eventually led to this blog.

That’s not why I have long disliked the paper, though. Its unique combination of clueless arrogance, incompetent economics coverage, and mindless cheerleading of all things Left was astonishing for a product of the Midwest. It was a paper produced by people who wanted to be living in either New York City or San Francisco, and it showed. The Red Star actually had a MORE annoying collection of Democratic columnists than the New York Times has ever managed to assemble.

This is, of course, tremendously amusing in light of all those people who used to try to give me a hard time for electing to write for an Internet site… which just happens to have a readership that is not only larger than the Star Tribune, but has continued to grow since I began writing there in 2001. I guess after the last newspaper dies, there won’t be any real opinion writers anymore, we’ll all just be bloggers posting away in our pajamas.

Second verse, same as the first

VU2 participants will no doubt wince upon recognizing yet another echo of depressions past;

A stimulus package may be a lifeline for the nation’s economy, but it could be a death sentence for a lot of cows. Lawmakers are looking for ways to use the forthcoming stimulus bill to help dairy farmers, and the number one priority is to dampen milk supplies and prop up prices. Translation: reduce the nation’s dairy herd. Exactly how Congress will accomplish that remains uncertain.

Reducing supply to prop up prices didn’t work when wheat was the issue. And it won’t work now.