Category: Uncategorized

After reading Christopher Hitchens’ convincing impression of a dead armadillo flattened by a semi in what passed for his “debate” with Doug Wilson, I found it difficult to believe his book would be positively reviewed. Naturally, the New York Times managed to find someone whose brain is even more pickled than Hitchens to talk it up:

Religious leaders from all the major faiths, who disagree on some of the most fundamental questions, managed to put aside their differences to agree that Rushdie had it coming. (Elsewhere, Hitchens notes tartly that if any one of the major faiths is true, then the others must be false in important respects — an obvious point often forgotten in the warm haze of ecumenism.

Really? All the major faiths? I don’t recall hearing about the Pope’s call for Cardinals Ximinez, Biggles and Fang to start heating their irons on Rushdie’s account, or the Dalai Lama urging his monks to fling Rushdie from a Himalayan peak. And the Rev. Ted Haggard was obviously too busy with the crank and the rentboys to bother whipping Evangelicals up into a lynch mob.

And no doubt it’s because Christians are so prone to forgetting that Jesus Christ claimed to be The Way, the hard and narrow path, the only way to the Father, that atheists are always accusing us of being too bloody tolerant.

UPDATE: Charles H. Darwin on a popsicle stick! I was wondering who could have possibly written this steaming pile of handicapablist drivel and it turns out to be MICHAEL KINSLEY. Now that’s mordantly funny and more than a little sad, as I wrote that pickled brain comment before knowing that the review was written by a man suffering from Parkinson’s Disease.

Except, of course, when it’s all about democracy:

“I fear that attempts are being made to purposefully subvert the public understanding of the nature of science in order to achieve political goals,” he [physicist James Wanliss] wrote in an e-mail. “Science is not about consensus, and to invoke this raises the hackles of scientists such as myself. The lure of politics and publicity is no doubt seductive, but it nevertheless amazes me that so many scientists have jumped on the bandwagon of consensus science, apparently forgetting or ignoring the sad history of consensus science.”

This is why we need to differentiate between scientody and scientistry. The method has nothing to do with the profession, which like every other profession, guild and union in history, is full of no-talent hacks and posers who are primarily in it for the guild benefits.

Noted with more amusement than comment:

The Academy of Management’s study showed that nearly half of all graduate students on average, in such fields as law, engineering and education, cheated at one time or other in pursuit of their degrees.

Constructing the portrait of a student-molester:

Nan Stein, a senior researcher at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College, said she has developed a profile of a typical male teacher who preys on his students. Men, she said, typically teach subjects such as “drama, music and photography,” classes that require “one-on-one time, where a surrogate mentor relationship” can develop.

They also tend to own Pet Shop Boys CDs, have mustaches and subscribe to the Advocate. Other than that, there was no commonality that our intrepid researchers were able to discover.

I’m attempting to summarize the Harris-Dawkins case for religion causing war. Does this sound correct? If not, please suggest a correction:

1.Religion causes division between people.

2.Religion provides the dominent label by which divided groups of people identify each other.

3.Wars are fought between divided groups of people with different labels.

4.Therefore, religion is the root cause of war.

I’m also looking to create an analogy for it to demonstrate its silliness to the non-logical. If you have any ideas, fire away. I constructed one about birds eating fish, but something isn’t quite right about it and I’m not sure what.

Brent demonstrates that atheists aren’t all humorless literalists:

How many atheists does it take to change a light bulb?

One. He unscrews the dead bulb, and screws in the new one.

That’s almost as good as my favorite feminist joke:

How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?

That’s not funny!

I thought Andrew Sullivan did an absolutely pathetic job throughout the bulk of his debate with Sam Harris – I could stop Harris in his tracks and make him look like the ignorant fraud that he is by simply forcing him to answer five questions – but I thought he redeemed himself in the end with this bit, which reveals a greater understanding of the core of the Christian faith than I often see in most of my fellow fundamentalists:

The relevant categories are therefore not, I would submit, faith and reason. The categories are those who rely on reason alone, those who use faith to trump reason in all respects, and those who understand that human life is inherently a balance between the two. Your faith-free world is not a human one; and it is not in that sense a rational one. My response is a balance, a triangulation of sorts. And a triangulation is not a contradiction.

In trying to address the global crisis we agree upon, I have two responses. The first is classical liberalism, as expressed in the American constitution, and constructed by Hobbes, Locke and their Enlightenment successors. That is my first political response, and it is central to my book on political conservatism. (My Oakeshottian politics amounts to a contingent and conservative defense of Anglo-American liberal constitutionalism.)

But the second and deeper response is Christianity itself, at the core of which is a radical refusal to force anyone to do anything.

Andrew Sullivan is a sinner. He knows it. I know it. But then, so am I. The only difference between the two of us in this regard is that he publicly identifies himself by one of his sins whereas I don’t advertise mine with a big shining disco ball rotating to the tune of the Pet Shop Boys. (Although I suppose one might reasonably argue that my arrogance is even more glaringly apparent than his homosexuality.) Anyhow, the highlighted phrase is absolutely integral to understanding Christianity… if you don’t grok that, you can’t even begin to discuss it rationally. Well done.

And Sullivan might have been retroactively embarrassed by his uncharacteristically forthright confession of his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but despite being a fairly vicious critic who has never particularly liked Sullivan nor hesitated to slam him for his advocation of various absurdities, I unexpectedly found myself feeling rather proud of him as a brother in the Christian faith.

But next time, Andrew, for the love of all that’s genetically replicated and naturally selected, do kick him in the teeth for me.

A Blog From Hell considers the case against science I presented in a column a few weeks ago:

Just what meaning of “science” is Vox Day talking about? There is no one meaning to this word “science,” especially when coming out of the mouth of a Christian libertarian who writes for World Net Daily. Science is knowledge gained by testing ideas against reality. Is Vox Day really against that? Or will the meaning of science shift through a half dozen shades of meaning and metaphors?

I’m perfectly aware of the multiple meanings of the word science, which is why, with Dr. PZ Myer’s assistance, I coined the words scientage, scientistry and scientody to differentiate between science as body of knowledge, science as profession and science as method. I note with some amusement that atheists and scientists never seem to get their panties in a bunch about precisely what science they are talking about when they accuse Christians or Republicans or whoever of making war against it.

Is he talking about the anti-capitalist, anti-libertarian Soviet Union who beat us into space and started a space race that got us investing more government money in science and inspiring President Kennedy to announce the goal of landing a man on the Moon?

Yes, that Soviet Union. If ABFH really wants to get into a debate about whether the religious, capitalist West was more technologically advanced than the atheist, Communist Soviet Union prior to its unlamented expiration, that’s just fine with me. I propose that we settle the matter by a car race… I’ll drive my GT3, ABFH can get behind the wheel of the final word in Soviet automotive technology, the Volga GAZ-24.

I note that the USA finished that space race by getting to the Moon … and the Soviet Union fell apart before they managed to do likewise.

I thought Robert Noyce, who invented the silicon chip, was a physics major at Grinnell College as well as an electrical engineer. Isn’t physics science?

Science, invention and business are far more intertwined than Vox Day wants you to believe. Technological change and the underlying body of growing scientific knowledge upon which it draws are so deeply interconnected that it’s impossible to draw such clear lines between them and Vox Day’s notions of a clear separation don’t even qualify for the 17th century.

They may not even qualify for Archimedes, an ancient Greek who did pure science and invention before Christianity was born.

And once again, we’re back to defining engineers as scientists when it suits the defenders of science and denying that they’re scientists when it doesn’t. Which is it? Pick one, I don’t care which. Just keep in mind that the broader the definition of science, the more damning it is regarding science’s responsibility for causing war, death and destruction.

And I’m perfectly aware of this crossover, which is why I customarily address Dr. PZ Myers and Dr. Richard Dawkins as my fellow scientists. Here’s the choice: you can either grant me my recognition as a scientist in good standing or admit that technological development is not science.

Is this the “science” that Vox Day objects to? He’s certainly proved he doesn’t understand it.

Now watch him shift definitions:

Sciencists (those who believe in science as a basis for dictating human behavior, as opposed to scientists, who merely engage in the method),…

Excuse me? Did the definition of science just shift? And what scientist is dictating human behavior? Where does that even come from? Is this behavior we’re dictating merely our objecting to having restraints on stem cell research or something? Are Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett forcing Vox Day to become an atheist?

ABFH is having some problems with reading comprehension here. The definition of science did not shift, I was distinguishing between genuine professional scientists who practice scientody and contribute to scientage as opposed to those individuals like Sam Harris who neither contributes to the body of knowledge, works as a professional scientist nor makes use of the scientific method but nevertheless advocates the use of scientody as a basis for dictating what humans are allowed to do and believe.

For example, Richard Dawkins has stated his belief that religion is child abuse. There are laws against child abuse. So, either Richard Dawkins supports the legalization of child abuse or he believes that religious parents should be prosecuted for the crime of raising their children with religious beliefs. His advocacy is a clear attempt to dictate – use government force – to modify human behavior.

So, what exactly is the choice here? To move forward and learn what kind of universe we live in or to run away from scientific knowledge and live in stagnation until those societies that aren’t afraid of scientific truth decide we’ll make great cattle? I guess Vox Day would rather be an Eloi than a Morlock.

According to Sam Harris and other atheists, humanity is at dire risk of extinction. The causes of those risks, be they anthropogenic global warming or nuclear weapons, can be directly traced to science. It is obviously not religion that poses these deadly dangers; eliminating all religion from the planet would only reduce the total risk of war by approximately 7 percent, and would not reduce the risk of global warming at all. Therefore, if these dangers are to be taken seriously, then it is clear that it is the very concepts of science as body of knowledge and science as method which must be reconsidered and potentially rejected as a lethal threat to humanity, not religion.

I have to confess, it was a bit more detail than I was expecting:

This has got to be the best Pharyngula post ever. It should be in a book.

Not in its entirety, unless Dr. Myers grants me permission, of course, but I think his list of Christianity’s sins against science is an intriguing one. He put together a nice list in response to an email I sent to Brent of Unscrewing the Inscrutable – Brent put together an interesting response too, even if it required some minor modifications once he realized that I wasn’t bearbaiting for once – and the ironic thing is that I don’t even necessarily disagree with some of the points raised by PZ or his readers.

The reason I asked the question of Brent wasn’t to misquote anyone or play j’accuse with the Hellbound, but simply because I was curious if my impression that the offense Christianity causes the scientific community and its emanations and penumbras in the populace is primarily environmental in cause rather than specific. I think both Brent and PZ’s responses tend to support this notion, after all, who really cares about opposition to federal funding for stem cell research, that’s really a political issue that an atheist scientist might reasonably oppose even more vigorously than an illiterate Bible-thumper, not a scientific one.

As Brent has correctly surmised, I’m not interested in writing a pure polemic. Oh, of course I’ll hose a few folks down with the rhetorical flamethrower, that’s what I do, after all. (Especially Sam Harris, although I’m shocked to discover how much I tend to agree with Daniel Dennett after reading four of his books.) But for the book to be genuinely interesting, it can’t just be a flamefest, it has to be substantive and it has to be reasonable. And one of the best ways to accomplish that is to do people the courtesy of asking them what they think and accepting their answers without putting a spin on them. And in order to make sure I’m doing that, each chapter I’m writing has two people checking it out and poking holes in it, one atheist and one theist, a different pair for each chapter.

So, if you’re an atheist or agnostic who is interested, just email you and I’ll put you on the list, I’ve still got a few spots left. Maybe you don’t like me, you don’t like my opinions and you may not like my conclusions, but that’s fine. All I care is that you tear apart the logic, if you can.

Anyhow, I’m glad to be of some small utility in inspiring such an acclaimed post… and many thanks to Brent for helping me out as well.

I have to admit, I never thought of it this way. Although I imagine that the lessons of the failed Iraqi Occupation are making more than a few federal strategists think twice about the wisdom of trying to push the American people anywhere they don’t want to go:

At its peak the state department estimated 300,000 militia members nation wide.

Once again the State Department was impressed. We know they were impressed, because federal officers began reaching out to the militias. The ATF and FBI in particular were very friendly with the bigger militias in New Mexico and Montana. They were continually interviewing and meeting with the leaders… asking things like, “If another Waco happened… in another state… you’d really pack up and go there?”

The best answer I heard to that question came from a militia leader in New Mexico. He said, “Hell no. Why would we? We’ve got plenty of you sum-bitches around here.”

The message varied state to state… but in the end it was received loud and clear. The militia movement viewed Waco as an act of war upon the American People by their government, and if it happened again… there would be a wide response… not a localized flash point response. It wouldn’t be one incident. It would be a series of incidents.

Now recall that Donald Rumsfeld estimated that there were 20,000 militants in Iraq prior to the Coalition forces, um, advancing back to their fortresses. The lesson of 4th Generation warfare, (if you want to call it that), is that large, well-armed, well-trained militaries can kill lots of less-armed, less-trained militants, but they cannot kill militants faster than they make new ones.

We should have learned it in Vietnam, but the NVA and our bizarre refusal to fight the organized military confused the issue. But the Soviets learned it after 10 years in Afghanistan. The Brits learned it after decades in Northern Ireland. We’re still learning it in Iraq.

What’s happening in Iraq is what the Bloggerblaster is pointing out here. The net effect of the Waco killings was to create more armed radicals than it killed, in this particular case, several orders of magnitude more.

We do appear to live in interesting times, unfortunately. I don’t think things are likely to go that way, though, as the globalists are achieving everything they want through their ever-expanding treaties and trade agreements, but you really never know.