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Without it, how would you learn who to kill?

A professor at North Idaho College says it’s all right to talk about executing “anyone who’s ever voted Republican” as long as it’s said with a smile. The belief was expressed by instructor Jessica Bryan when her comments were challenged by a student, Linda Cook, who served as an aide to the late U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, and is a longtime supporter of the Republican Party….

Among the allegations: Bryan reported President George W. Bush won the election “because people … can’t read,” and, regarding the death penalty: “First we line up everyone who can’t think and right behind them, anyone who’s ever voted Republican.”

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that anyone would take it seriously,” Bryan, who doesn’t deny making the statements, told the newspaper. “They were always said with a smile.”

She said the comments were an attempt “to get my students to think.”

Cook’s request to NIC Vice President Barbara Hanson is for a refund of the $379 she paid for the course. Officials said the school will review the situation.

Bryan said she thought Cook had enjoyed the “debate” of the classroom, but Cook said she chose not to confront the teacher during class time. “If someone’s suggesting you just be killed you don’t sit down and say ‘let’s talk,'” Cook said.

Bryan’s perception is that she was the one who was hurt.

“I do see it as an insult, personally and professionally,” she said. Bryan told the Sentinel she believes Cook is making a “mountain out of a molehill.”

The department syllabus notes that English 102 teaches “critical thinking” as well as essay and persuasive writing.

I don’t mind so-called hate speech, but I do think that the college might want to think twice about whether the execution of political opponents is a fit matter for a basic English course. I mean, it would at least be relevant to the material if she was having students diagram sentences like “The Negro is an inferior breed of animal” and “Everyone who has ever voted Republican should be hanged with rope made from recycled Wall Street Journals”.

I’m not sure that listening to a lunatic educator rant about anyone or anything is a particularly effective means of learning how to write effectly, though. Even if she is smiling… actually, I tend to find that it’s the smiling lunatics who are the most alarming.

I have successfully demonstrated that religion does not, as atheists claim, cause war. I have successfully demonstrated that if science is not held responsible for various evils it makes possible, it cannot be held responsible for various goods it likewise makes possible. And I have successfully demonstrated that IF one rejects religion’s right to a respected place in modern society, THEN one has an even greater reason to reject science’s right to one.

The truth of these assertions can be seen in the most common response, which shows the position to which the sciencists have been forced to retreat. Shalini offers a typical such defense, so I shall quote her as being representative of the bunch:

I don’t blame religion itself responsible; instead, I blame the people responsible. What Vox Day refuses to understand is that science itself does not lead to bombings and wars. It is the fault of the people who use science for their own personal and evil goals.

What I find wrong about religion is that it claims to provide humanity with a hard-and-fast ethical guide, but it fails to do so in the real world. On the other hand, science does not claim to provide an ethical or a moral worldview. Therefore, Vox’s gripe that science does not provide ethical guidelines is a invalid as science never claimed to provide any ethical guidelines whatsoever.

The reader will no doubt note that this is a massive retreat from the aggressive atheist position maintained by Harris and Dawkins. But it is still an indefensible one, as I shall demonstrate. and religion does provide Man with a hard-and-fast ethical guide in the real world, in fact, it provides Man with several competing guides. Shalini’s statement is in error.

It is true that Science, the body of knowledge, does not claim to provide an ethical or moral worldview in itself. It cannot, any more than a catalog can tell you exactly what to buy. Nor can science as process, except in that its focus on materialism could be interpreted as the beginnings of a Nietzschean existential ethic, but we shall ignore that tangent since the process does not directly claim one.

However, science as profession ABSOLUTELY claims to provide not only ethical guidelines, but ethical imperatives. By way of example, I cite the recent Global Warming study wherein 9 out of 10 scientists surveyed recommended Dentyne… or rather, that 90 percent of global warming caused by Man.

Now, if scientists were content to leave it at that, the sciencists might have a genuine defense. But they don’t. Because scientists not only advocate certain actions, they claim them as a ethical necessity. After all, a warmer Earth is simply a warmer Earth, there is no ideal planetary temperature in any ethical system of which I have ever heard.

Moreover, the body of knowledge can contain elements which provide the justification for certain actions, as directly or in some cases even more directly than the Bible does. After all, belief in the possibility that God could speak to you and order you to kill Canaanites is not tantamount to the belief that God IS talking to you and ordering you to kill Canaanites, much less that God will be happy if you hunt down Canaanites and kill them on your own initiative.

And the fact that evils committed by individuals not only take place through the applied use of science, but are often committed expressly in the name of science condemns science as thoroughly as anyone could possibly condemn religion. Hitler was inspired to breed his perfect Aryans by St. Darwin and Science, just as Margaret Sanger sought to eliminate the darkies and mental defectives. And scientific theories have certainly lead directly to war, for example, the Lebensraum concept that sparked World War II was not merely a political slogan, it was a hypothesis that “was adapted from Darwinian and other scientific ideas of the day about how ecological niches are filled.”

The fact that scientists today reject Lebensraum as properly belonging to the body of knowledge does not change the fact that some of them once believed it was rightful part of it, or that the German invasions were based and justified on the imperative posed by this scientific priniciple.

Especially atheists or agnostics. If you’re willing to hit a chapter hard and ID the holes, email me. I’m NOT looking for a debate here nor will I waste any time on one.

Email me if you’re SERIOUSLY interested, I intend to give a single chapter to each odd couple as they come. Put TIA in the subject.

Logic from Hell rather conspicuously fails to grok:

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 use PZ Myers definition. Science as a three-in-one, body of knowledge, process and profession. Am I really against that? Against what? In one sentence, BFH says there is no one meaning, in the next, he says it is but a subset of the dynamic body of knowledge. And yet he accuses me of shifting meanings!

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, the scientific backwardness of which vis-a-vis the West is not seriously disputed by anyone of whom I am aware. Except, apparently, BFH. Their success in stealing German and US technology and making big rockets that didn’t quite blow up notwithstanding.

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?

Yes, it is. But studying physics does not make one a physicist any more than studying China makes one Chinese. Am I an economist? I have a degree in it. I refer him to the “astrophysicist” once cited as proof of feminists in hard science, while she did indeed have a degree in astrophysics, she was teaching a Women’s Studies class about lesbians in Indian film. My father is an EE from MIT, I’ve never heard him or anyone else refer to him as a scientist.

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?

No, it did not. It even fits BFH’s silly and suboptimal definition of science. What scientist is dictating human behavior? Oh, I don’t know, there seem to be a few who are rather forcefully telling people to stop doing things they believe are making the planet warmer, among other things. Of course, that “global warming” thing is pretty obscure, so perhaps BFH hasn’t heard of it before.

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are doing nothing but making it disreputable to be an atheist. Or perhaps I should say, even MORE disreputable. They have no idea what is going to hit them, and I’m not just referring to my own book here.

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 wonder if he means those societies that are rather conspicuously failing to reproduce themselves? If BFH paid any attention to demographics, he’d know that the social groups most devoted to “scientific” values just happen to be the most, shall we say, evolutionarily challenged.

It’s tremendously amusing how this fan of Dawkins doesn’t recognize Dawkins own arguments in the column. But then, that’s par for the course, isn’t it.

Richard Dawkins demonstrates the accuracy of my definition of the distinction between agnostic and atheist:

“Many of the questioners announced themselves as either students or faculty from Liberty, rather than from Randolph Macon which was my host institution. One by one they tried to trip me up, and one by one their failure to do so was applauded by the audience. Finally, I said that my advice to all Liberty students was to resign immediately and apply to a proper university instead. That received thunderous applause, so that I almost began to feel slightly sorry for the Liberty people.

If anyone is feeling ambitious, I’d appreciate a transcript of the Q&A. I can’t quite stomach sitting through it myself, after a steady diet of the supercilious jerk’s books over the last two weeks. He’s not entirely unlikable as an author, and can be downright charming when he’s writing about something that he enjoys as in Unweaving the Rainbow but the smugness starts to get a bit irritating after a while, especially when he is adroitly avoiding all of the tough questions and skillfully evading any inaccurate assertions that will prove too embarrassing while writing little passive-aggressive implications to serve as a substitute.

(This is in contrast to Sam Harris, of course, who gleefully jams his foot all the way down into his lower intestine. Dawkins greatest weakness may be his ghastly foolishness in trusting Harris’s research enough to quote him. I’m looking forward to reading some of his excuses… “It’s not my fault, I’m British after all, how would I know?”)

So I am looking forward to the day when his questioners will be rather better armed. And it would be interesting, of course, to learn if he actually dealt with the questions asked or was merely playing to the crowd.

What’s downright unlikeable is his self-congratulatory tone in hailing his stunning accomplishment in effectively dealing with questions from college students. I can’t help but contrast the way he describes his treatment of them with the gentle and helpful way in which I once saw Umberto Eco deal with an incredibly dumb question from a college girl. You could see the man was a born teacher… Dawkins appears to be more of an instinctive propagandist.

I think I’d like both an oral debate and a written debate with Dawkins. But with Harris, I want both plus a cage match. Best two of three wins… and I’ll throw one of the debates just to make sure we get to the cage.

This doesn’t exactly strike me as news:

Gordon Brown, likely to be the next prime minister, will deliver a speech calling for a “new world order” to combat global warming on Monday. According to excerpts released by the finance ministry, Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown will also say the United Nations should make the fight against global warming a core “pillar” of its international mission.

I always thought that the entire point of the “global warming” panic was to give those who seek a new world order an excuse to install it.

A fellow scientist writes:

I just read your current and previous articles on science.

As a scientist (chemistry) who no longer practices, I, too, am appalled at the near-complete scientific ignorance of our culture. Non-scientists have no idea what science is. This should surprise no one. Scientists, apparently, don’t remember the scientific method, either.

Like raising the gilded idol of some ancient religion, the mere mention of the word “science” today is intended to compel the compliant and fearful into averting their gaze and prostrating themselves before it. It has become the very thing it could never be: the demand for blind obedience through intimidation — absent of truth and reason.

I have concluded that science and religion are not only alike, but they are now both living under the roof of the greatest threat to both religion and science: politics. If anyone has an ear, let them hear. If anyone has eyes, let them see. When science, religion, and politics move in together, no creature can be secure.

Years ago, one of the names I suggested to Paul for our new techno band was Priests of the New Technology. I didn’t have an articulated understanding of the transition of the term “scientist” from process follower to priest, nor was I even a Christian at the time, but I find it interesting to look back and see that I must have recognized on some level that this transition had taken place.

And in the event that Science should eventually win out over Religion, I would encourage the victorious scientists to keep in mind that in the end, they’ll be playing Pompey, not Caesar.

Thus spake Vox Crassus.

Kunshalini is a self-proclaimed ‘atheistic evolutionist missionary’ who thinks of herself as a voice of rationality in a dark, gloomy world. She also thinks she can match wits with a real scientist:

Vox phrases his claim in a way that suggests that scientists claim that scientific facts are exactly like how religious goons claim that their god specifically said that the earth is 6,000 years old. This is his misrepresentation of science and has no bearing on reality.

Vox does nothing of the sort. Vox has never asserted nor suggested that science’s claim to truth via the scientific method is identical to religion’s claim to the truth via Divine fiat, nor does anyone religious, not even a Young Earth Creationist, claim that God specifically said that the earth is 6,000 years old. Implication by extrapolation and addition != “specifically said”.

The claim of science to be truthful based on its self-correcting nature has been made by Richard Dawkins, among many, many others. This not only has a bearing on reality, it is an empirical and easily verified fact. Kunshalini would know this if she had ever read Unweaving the Rainbow wherein Richard Dawkins praises science because it “progresses by correcting its mistakes” and relates an anecdote about him and his fellow students “clapping their hands red” in praise of an elderly scientist who gracefully announced that his life’s work had been based on error.

Neither I, nor anyone else, has ever claimed that truth by divine revelation is self-correcting. I would dispute the idea that it even COULD be self-correcting.

He conveniently forgets to mention that all the ‘honest mistakes, not-so-honest mistakes and outright lies’ were exposed by scientists themselves. When was the last time we heard of religious frauds being exposed by someone in the fold? It’s usually the skeptics who point out the ever-spreading rot in religion..

This is not true, regarding either Science or Religion. The Chicago Tribune, not the National Institute of Health, was responsible for exposing Robert Gallo’s discovery of the AIDS virus. Journalists also exposed the fake Stone Age Tasaday tribe in the Phillippines. Meanwhile, Jim Bakker’s downfall was the result of investigators and auditors hired by Jerry Falwell.

As with everything else, it’s those who are closest to the frauds who are in the best position to expose them. To the credit of scientists and the religious faithful alike, someone usually does. Science does, of course, have the advantage of a system that is theoretically conceived to aid in such fraud-detection, religion usually doesn’t… and yet when it has attempted to do precisely that, people like Kunshalini have tended to disapprove of such Inquisitions.

So why exactly has he not moved into a cave and lived a primitive existence? You secretly love science, don’t you, Vox?

Because science =| technology. Ironically, for all her missionary atheist zeal, it’s apparent that Shalini harbors an open fascination with Kali. Furthermore, I note that there are many people who would like to live in one form of “primitive existence” or another. Unfortunately, the advocates of science will not permit them to do so in peace.

What is the definition of ‘superior’? Who makes the distinction? Vox simply expects an answer without an actual question in the first place. He just shows that he doesn’t understand science at all.

Kunshalini apparently does not understand the difference between a general question relating to what is an entire field of scientific research and a specific hypothesis. She just shows that she doesn’t understand the English language. She might as meaningfully quibble with the definition of “is” to demonstrate how I don’t understand science.

Scientists came up with the technology to build weapons, but were nations bombed ‘in the name of science’ as opposed to ‘in the name of god’? Was it the scientists, in an attempt to convert other people to scientific thought, the ones who dropped the bombs? I don’t think so.

We are all familiar with religious terrorism, but who on earth has heard of scientific terrorism? Vox is again not making any sense.

Again, the “in the name of” nonsense. First, every evil of socialism has been performed in “the name of science”, namely, “scientific socialism”. Don’t even think of trying to run a No True Scotsman evasion here. And yes, a scientist did indeed drop the bomb, William Parsons of the Manhattan Project, to be precise. It doesn’t matter if you kill someone in the name of science, God or for the contents of their wallet, you are still responsible for killing them.

This oft-repeated “defense” of science confuses action with motive. The two are not the same. But then, as we’ve already demonstrated, Kunshalini’s grasp of the language is sub-optimal.

Is Vox really claiming that accidental deaths during moral procedures are equivalent to intentional killing in the name of an imaginary god? As he previously stated that it’s perfectly moral and good to kill babies if ‘god said so’, I may accept that he’s genuinely muddled up.

[Sarcasm] Scientists must be so evil! Because of them, there are antibiotics and vaccinations! How immoral! Faith healing is the god-approved way!

One death is an accident, 783,000 deaths per year smack of carelessness. Again, the sciencyst logic is bizarre; because of scientists there are chemical weapons and nuclear missiles, but that’s not their fault because they (usually) don’t personally use them on anyone “in the name of science”. But antibiotics and vaccines are cited as supposed proof of the goodness of scientists, even though they don’t give them to anyone “in the name of science”.

Man has been ready to move beyond religion for ages. It’s the utter stupidity of people like Vox Day that’s hindering humans from moving on. The ‘eternal damnation’ fear-mongers take no less credit for the blame.

Yes, I murdered six scientists just yesterday, and tomorrow I’m planning to steal all of the funding for research into women’s breast cancer. I’m kind of a criminal savant. And “for ages”, really? Was it during the Bronze Age or the Iron Age that Man demonstrated his readiness to move beyond religion?

This is another insight into the lunatic religious mind. To them, knowledge is bad just because awareness kills childish fantasies and progress shatters the very foundations of their faith. He trumpets ignorance over knowledge, superstition over science, and claims that humans would fare better. He actually thinks that it’s a good thing to slide back 2000 years; back to the time where people actually believed that the earth was flat. It’s a good thing that Vox is not the supreme dictator of the earth, or I might have to kill myself just to die in dignity.

Actually, Kunshalini’s post indicates that it’s a bit late for her to die in dignity now. But I’m sure we’re all eagerly awaiting the publication of her patent on long distance mind-reading, even if I am enraged by her untimely revelation of my secret intentions of returning the Purple Faction to its destined place of sporting primacy through the Empire.

Ave! Ostrinum aeternitas! Ave!

One of the reasons I like John Scalzi, our numerous differences notwithstanding:

Incidentally, this is one of those places where my thinking has changed over the years. Back in my college years and early 20s I was pretty anti-gun and wouldn’t have minded a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw them. In time I realized I didn’t trust the government all that much, and certainly the last six years have solidified that idea pretty damn well. I still don’t like guns, and I still don’t buy into the various shibboleths like “an armed society is a polite society.” I don’t think an armed society is a polite society; I think an armed society is just as rude and obnoxious as any other, and the only difference is that your more crazed members of it will shoot at you rather than, say, beat you to death with a lead pipe or kick you in the kidneys until you’re pissing blood. But I recognize now that my personal dislike of firearms does not rise to the level of Constitutional revision.

It’s not that he agrees with me, it’s that he’s open-minded enough to consider the actual issue instead remaining stuck on how he feels about the issue. The understanding that the personal is not, in fact, the political is a major step forward in anyone’s intellectual maturing. Unfortunately, the majority of adults today never seem to quite reach that point.

Of course, the fact that the Founding Fathers, a group of men engaged in violent armed rebellion against their legal government, would have wanted only the government’s soldiers and policemen to be legally armed is so deeply and willfully stupid that it still boggles my mind that anyone brain-dead enough to make that argument can remain conscious long enough to articulate it.