Category: Uncategorized

Chuck Norris is the very last man on Earth that needs me or anyone else to defend him. But this is simply ridiculous:

Saying he’s ‘kicking Chuck Norris where it hurts – his wallet,’ Ng explains he’s starting the boycott because Norris endorsed a presidential candidate and supports ideas “far out of the mainstream.” Ng singles out Norris’ endorsement of Huckabee – “a candidate who says that he does not believe in evolution,” and “who called for the isolation of AIDS patients – long after the Centers for Disease Control determined that the virus was not spread by casual contact.”

Ng is obviously using the media’s definition of the mainstream, which is “a small minority of people who believe things that we think everyone should believe.” Most Americans don’t believe in evolution, and more than two-thirds of those who believe in evolution believe that God made use of its mechanism of natural selection.

Now, you may not like that fact. You may think Americans are really stupid and therefore should be ruled by benevolent scientist-kings. But you may not reasonably argue that a disbelief in evolution is a view that is out of the mainstream. As for the historical proposal to isolate AIDS victims, no doubt thousands of AIDS victims today are deeply grateful that their predecessors were not isolated, thus allowing them to experience all of that glorious suffering of which Mother Theresa and others have spoken so highly.

I don’t support Mike Huckabee nor do I share Chuck Norris’s beliefs about his suitability for the presidency. But I’m not about to stop watching Walker: Texas Ranger over it….

If I failed to note that we just ripped past 100k visitors in a month for the first time. So, thanks for coming by and feel free to hang around as long as you like. As long as you don’t piss off the blonde, bring up Round One or inadvertantly summon the Bane, you should be fine.

And I’d also like to compliment Brent for his fine, fine work in adeptly distracting nearly the entire Ilk with a single deft mention of things that go bang. Holy cats, does he have your number! I’ve never seen so many people fail a saving throw against “Look, Gun!” Y’all should probably check your pockets to make sure you still have your wallets.

It must break Peggy Noonan’s heart to turn on that “Reaganesque” man she once adored:

On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party. It’s going to change it forever, be the end of it!”

This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.

The Republican party is broken… so naturally they’re pushing a bunch of men who are pledged to continue to increase spending and the size of government, continue the war and continue to maintain open immigration policies, just like the previous Bush administration.

You know, if professional wrestling looked this fake, no one would even watch it.

Brent Rasmussen of Unscrewing the Inscrutable reviews The Irrational Atheist:

This is my review of Vox Day’s new book called “The Irrational Atheist”. I’d like to make some things perfectly clear before I proceed with this review. I am still, and barring some pretty convincing evidence that I find personally credible, will most likely always be an atheist…

It was actually painful for me [to] read. This is due to the fact that that I really do respect Richard Dawkins and his scientific accomplishments, as well as Daniel Dennett’s heady forays into philosophical thought. I also absolutely love listening to Christopher Hitchens speak and debate. As for Michel Onfray and Sam Harris? Eh, not so much, but I do appreciate their ability to raise awareness and articulate some of the same things that I have thought about myself over the years and to put them into commercially successful books.

I am not going to go into a point by point review of the various arguments that Day addressed in TIA. Suffice it to say that by the end of the chapters dealing with the individual authors, I was happy that it was over. It was a thorough, detailed, dispassionate (with a little snarky levity thrown into the footnotes for flavor), and completely disheartening take-down of some of the best arguments that the godless have put into print – on their own terms, without using the Bible (in the first part of the book, that is), or any other sacred text to do it with. Amazing. And depressing. It is not my place to defend their books. I truly hope that they do find time to defend and clarify their books, specifically to the counter-arguments and claims made by Vox Day in TIA, though, because they really need to. Trust me, it wasn’t pretty….

My advice is to read this book – and then do your damnedest to find something in it that you can argue against. Something beyond “that’s stupid!” – which is what always seems to be the first-blush response from an atheist to a theist. (Fucking hell I’m tired of that shit.) I couldn’t do it. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did. I hope you do.

I strongly encourage Dr. Dawkins, Dr. Dennett, Hitch, Harris, and M’sieur Onfray to respond to TIA. It is not your run-of-the-mill “flea” book looking to make a quick buck riding on the coattails of The Amber Heard Fan Club*. It’s the real deal, it’s substantive, meticulously researched, it brings up real problems, and it addresses these problems without falling into the trap that other fleas have fallen into in the past.

Brent and I have certainly exchanged a fair amount of fire in the past, but I have never doubted that in addition to being a formidable opponent, he is a serious and intellectually honest man. I have no trouble believing him when he says that he scrutinized TIA twice over looking for any errors that might allow him to rip it apart, in fact, knowing that intelligent and competent critics like him would surely be doing just that forced me to write a stronger and better-documented book than I otherwise might have written.

The Mad Aussie simply can’t resist a chance to chaff the Chermans:

German 1: “What does he mean by hilarious?”

German 2: “They call it laughing, they laugh.”

German 1: “Laughing?”

German 2: “They use it to mock us.”

German 1: “They must die.”

German 2: “We must wait. Let them laugh. They can laugh. They will not laugh when we finish with our grand plan.”

German 1: “I do not like the laughing.”

That made me laugh, but it’s not the funniest thing I’ve ever read about Jamie, though. The funniest thing I ever read about Jamie wasn’t anything that he wrote, but when I received an email a few years ago from a critic to whose post I had responded and linked. Jamie had followed the link and posted a few of his characteristicly quixotic comments on the humor-impaired critic’s site, which led to the following email showing up in my Inbox: “Who is this guy Jamie? I can’t understand a single thing he writes. Is he crazy?”

To which I answered in the affirmative, of course. And since we’re talking about Jamie, I leave you with an item from his very useful and informative Global Report:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday the challenges facing Colombia will only get harder if a trade deal with Washington doesn’t pass, as she met with union members during a visit to try to revive the pact. The union members want regulations and restrictions in the USA removed from some of their goods, specifically, cocaine.

Agnostics are notorious for their shrug and let live philosophy. But as I pointed out in The Irrational Atheist, despite their admitted godlessness, they tend to regard theists with puzzled bemusement while viewing atheists, with whom they superficially appear to have far more in common, with a mix of embarrassment and unadulterated horror:

Mike Maier is impressed by the agnostic JQP’s heartfelt rant about the tiresome irrationalities and annoyingly illogical assertions of far too many atheists:

Screw it. This nonsense pisses me off to no end. It just isn’t enough that everyone has to deal with the arrogant self-smug pablum that constantly drips off their chin like a bad case of the clap; it’s that they pull this moronic mystic [vulgarity deleted] on top that really makes you want to put on some brass knuckles and [sexual practice deleted] them….

You Christians wanted proof of evolution? Right there. Right [sexual gerund deleted] there. That’s Darwin’s missing link standing there with their brain around their ankles [sexual act deleted] his corpse.

If the worst thing that can be said about you people here is that follow the moral code of some unprovable man whose most notable accomplishment was to get his corpse stolen then so be it. At least y’all understand science.

You really have to read the whole thing. It’s simply beautiful in its pure, unadulterated fury and contempt.

You wouldn’t understand…. This is absolutely hilarious, coming as it does courtesy of a gentleman hailing from the past and future Reich:

This morning, I stumbled upon a very popular blog (judging by the number of comments per post) titled Vox Popoli. The author, who calls himself Vox Day (bonus points for the pseudonym), refers to himself as “Christian Libertarian”.

I lol’d.

How can you be a Christian apologetic and a libertarian? Libertarianism is all about the non-aggression principle. Live and let live. Christianity, on the other hand, is all about telling people what to do and what not to do.

Where to start? First, libertarianism incorporates a non-aggression principle, but it is by no means all about non-aggression. In fact, it may actually require aggression because what it is actually all about is limiting government power to the bare minimum required by a society. Hence the focus on LIBERTY. Liberty, (let me explain to those unfamiliar with the concept), is when the government has neither the right nor the ability to kill large quantities of its resident religious minorities or seize children and take them away from their parents because it disapproves of their failure to be sufficiently brainwashed by the government’s propaganda factories.

Second, I’m not a Christian apologist, as almost every single book review of TIA that has appeared so far makes clear. I am a destroyer of disbelief,* as the “Atheism Delenda Est” on the back cover should make clear? Why would a libertarian want to destroy atheism? Probably because of the demonstrable historical link between atheism and the libertarian antithesis, totalitarianism. And yes, that link is documented in detail and its raison d’etre is explored in the book. Third, Christianity most definitely is NOT about telling people what to do or not do, quite the opposite, in fact. There is a certain parable about a log and and an eye that the adept Bible scholar may, perhaps, recall. Now, I admit that German Christianity may very well be all about telling people what to do, but I expect that has rather more to do with the German and rather less to do with the Christianity.

Reading an atheist German opine on Christian libertarianism is rather like watching a penguin attempt to explain the migratory patterns of the Lesser Cuckoo.

* by “disbelief” I mean the assertion of active belief in a negative inherent in atheism as opposed to the “how the Hell should I know” lack of belief better described as agnosticism.

“What, you were worried there wasn’t enough geek?” asked an incredulous Spacebunny upon hearing about the latest addition to the blog.

Hey, I have 6k PvP kills, more than 100 outside the battlegrounds, so let’s just say I’m not exactly worried about my screen cred. (You should have seen Spacebunny’s face when I told her my guild was planning to get together for an RL weekend, for a split-second, there was a look of wild panic in those storm-blue eyes. Apparently we WON’T be attending….) Anyhow, I have a new rule in life. If there’s a widget that lets you read Dilbert every day without even having to leave the blog, then you install the freaking widget.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I promised one of my envious dwarf friends that I’d show him my newly enchanted Ornate Greaves of Power with the 6-percent speed bonus…. you know, it’s probably going to kill Richard Dawkins to learn that he didn’t get his head handed to him by a respected public intellectual or a world-famous scientist, but a hardcore gamer who typed in the text in between poring over DVOA and killing Hordies in Alterac.

These are selected quotations from various reviews of The Irrational Atheist. To read a review in its entirety, please click on the link provided at the top of each quoted section.

– REVIEWS BY ATHEISTS –

“The Irrational Human” by Brent Rasmussen of Unscrewing the Inscrutable:

It was actually painful for me to read. This is due to the fact that that I really do respect Richard Dawkins and his scientific accomplishments, as well as Daniel Dennett’s heady forays into philosophical thought. I also absolutely love listening to Christopher Hitchens speak and debate. As for Michel Onfray and Sam Harris? Eh, not so much, but I do appreciate their ability to raise awareness and articulate some of the same things that I have thought about myself over the years and to put them into commercially successful books.

I am not going to go into a point by point review of the various arguments that Day addressed in TIA. Suffice it to say that by the end of the chapters dealing with the individual authors, I was happy that it was over. It was a thorough, detailed, dispassionate (with a little snarky levity thrown into the footnotes for flavor), and completely disheartening take-down of some of the best arguments that the godless have put into print – on their own terms, without using the Bible (in the first part of the book, that is), or any other sacred text to do it with. Amazing. And depressing. It is not my place to defend their books. I truly hope that they do find time to defend and clarify their books, specifically to the counter-arguments and claims made by Vox day in TIA, though, because they really need to. Trust me, it wasn’t pretty….

My advice is to read this book – and then do your damnedest to find something in it that you can argue against. Something beyond “that’s stupid!” – which is what always seems to be the first-blush response from an atheist to a theist. (Fucking hell I’m tired of that shit.) I couldn’t do it. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did. I hope you do.

I strongly encourage Dr. Dawkins, Dr. Dennett, Hitch, Harris, and M’sieur Onfray to respond to TIA. It is not your run-of-the-mill “flea” book looking to make a quick buck riding on the coattails of The Amber Heard Fan Club*. It’s the real deal, it’s substantive, meticulously researched, it brings up real problems, and it addresses these problems without falling into the trap that other fleas have fallen into in the past.

– REVIEWS BY CHRISTIANS –

Thoughts and Ideas is moved to pity the fallen.

A common mistake in this debate–or indeed any debate–is to argue exclusively from one’s own perspective. Quoting verses from the Bible is ultimately ineffective to someone who views it with the same amount of respective as one would regard the Weekly World News…. Vox steers clear of this trap and meets the atheist charges head on. The results are glorious to behold, though a tremor of pity may escape the human breast if one glances at the slain trinity. It’s not just that Vox is intellectually honest whereas Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens are not. Vox has clearly read books relating to the subject matter–his knowledge of history is especially keen–whereas it appears that his opponents have assembled books after a series of college bull sessions and limited research, probably involving Wikipedia.

Ian McCleod of the Clan McLeod declares a winner:

Vox Day’s new book raises the bar in the debate between Theists and Atheists. Rather than resort to traditional modes of debate favored by Christians, Vox Day plays by the rules of the opposition, and wins.

Vox’s arguments are exquisitely documented and impressively reasoned. His annihilation of the “Religion Causes War” myth ought to ruin any anti-religionist’s day (I find it the most convincing and potentially useful argument in the book, though your mileage may vary.) The Irrational Atheist attacks the three pillars of New Atheism, not by proving that there is a god, but by proving that their arguments are not the paragon of rationality they bill them to be.

Pretty Lady gives out a “Literary Award“:

Pretty Lady is shocked. She did not, truly, believe it to be possible.

But she must give credit where credit is due. Ladies and gentlemen, she gives you Vox Day, who in his recently released little tome, The Irrational Atheist, has proven himself a greater Master of the Footnote than David Foster Wallace himself!!!

Indeed. Vox plays his footnotes like a veritable fugue, striking an insouciant balance between formidable scholarship and a fey, swashbuckling sarcasm that never overbalances into the sort of ramble that makes a person seriously wonder if Mr. Wallace forgot to take his ADD meds today…. Incidentally, Vox has also left a smoking hole in the turf where Sammy Harris used to stand, whining, and for this, Pretty Lady is profoundly grateful.

Blonde Moment is down with living and letting live:

Day provides a valuable service to Christians, particularly those who are not capable of pulling apart arguments against God. I strongly recommend the book.

Bane paints “A Portrait of the Author as a Serial Killer:

And what a work of art it is…. It grabs you by the nose with velvet gloved fingers, pulls you around where it wants you to go…I am reminded of the Francis Dollarhyde character in Manhunter, when he is giving the slide show to the creep reporter Freddy Lounds, saying “Do you see?” as he takes Freddy from one scene of horror to the next.

The Responsible Puppet isn’t so keen on the attitude, but finds the book to be effective anyhow:

I must say I’m a bit torn on this one. But the tear doesn’t go down the middle of the page; the Good piece is bigger than the Bad…. It is my prayer, hope and expectation that this book will serve to make atheism less tenable in many minds.

Single Mind writes an extensive four-part review. 1. Why Vox? 2.What is an atheist? 3. Atheism and Science 4. Vox Day and the Game Designer Model: My $0.02:

No Christian apologist or theologian could have done what Vox Day has done to [High Church Atheists] in The Irrational Atheist. Whereas an apologist, philosopher, or theologian could easily dismantle HCAs–as HCAs have nothing new under the sun to offer–only a Vox Day could properly hoist them on their own petard.

Christian philosophers, theologians, and apologists are trained to think and reason within the sphere of theology, philosophy, and apologetics. They are trained to apply the exegesis of Scripture–using sound hermeneutics–to principles involving theology and philosophy to (a) make a case for the Christian faith, (b) demonstrate why certain ideas or frameworks are or are not compatible with Christianity, and (c) to logically challenge the veracity or efficacy of worldviews….

What did Vox do that an apologist or theologian would not have done? He applied the scientific method–using historical data–to test the as
sertions of the HCAs. The result is a smackdown of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens–and to a lesser extent, Dennett–that borders on cruel and unusual punishment.

“Killing Snakes with a Shovel” by Farmeruminator:

I’ve heard Christian friends and leaders say that it’s not possible to use reason, logic and facts to show the existence of God. While this may be true, Vox does an absolute masterful job of using those three things to eviscerate the arguments of D[awkins], H[arris] and H[itchens]….

A few disclaimers. Vox writes with a slash and burn style. A take no prisoners, blow them up and leave a smoking hole mentality. Some in the Christian community are going to be offended by this approach. I would remind them that our Lord said some rather harsh things to say to some of His critics. You don’t call someone a “generation of vipers”, “whited sepulchres”, and “fools” without having your targets tend to react unfavorably to these terms. Vox does not treat D[awkins], H[arris] and H[itchens] with kid gloves. It’s an in your face, put up or shut up, throw down.

– REVIEWS BY JEWS, AGNOSTICS AND VARIOUS OTHERS –

Dr. Helen Smith finds it to be a worthwhile way to spend an afternoon:

You might know Vox Day from his blog and interesting take on feminist issues–he always has something provocative to add to that particular conversation and his book proves to be just as stimulating in regards to religion and faith…. The book is definitely thought provoking and worth a read if you are interested in the topic!

If you have written a review of the book, please let me know and I’ll be happy to post a link to it here.

You know it’s getting bad when families are fleeing to IRAN in order to preserve their freedom of education:

A homeschooling father and mother from Germany have fled to Iran for the educational freedom found there, and now apparently are being sought by authorities for the offense of child kidnapping for taking their son with them, according to WND sources. And a new campaign has been launched by lawmakers to approve a provision in Germany that would allow authorities to simply take legal custody of children whose parents are trying to avoid the problems associated with the public school system there….

Numerous homeschooling families in Germany have run afoul of that nation’s Nazi-era law banning homeschooling, and being fined or otherwise penalized. In recent days, however, the threats against homeschooling parents frequently have included loss of custody of their children, and several families already have fled.

As Howard Stern says, the rest of the world should probably invade Germany and kick German ass every twenty years on principle. For as Winston Churchill correctly concluded, the Hun is either at your feet or at your throat. Remember, the last major round of problems in Germany were easily foreseen by the Austrian economists, who began leaving Germany and areas of probable German influence prior to 1933. It’s already clear to any serious student of history that the latest European flirtation with German fascism, the EU, is quite likely to end in a similarly ugly manner if it does not collapse under the weight of its own bureaucracy first.