Fun with atheists

It’s really remarkable to see how many atheists fail to understand what their “assume the other person is lying if he does not immediately present documentary evidence upon demand, which will of course be immediately dismissed for failing to meet the unexpressed demand for peer-reviewed and published scientific evidence” says about their personal integrity, or as is more precisely the case, their lack of it:

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
The reason most atheists trust fellow atheists less than anyone else is because they recognize their own lack of integrity and morality.

Paul D ‏@Lost_in_Formosa
Any evidence for that?

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Yes. Look it up.

Paul D ‏@Lost_in_Formosa
in other words, you just made it up, right?

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
No. You guys are so predictable. You assume lies. Why? Because you are an atheist and you readily lie.

Paul D ‏@Lost_in_Formosa
Why are you slandering a huge group of your fellow human beings?

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
You are lying. Truth cannot be slander by definition. You’re really not helping the case for atheist integrity here.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Vox: Atheists don’t trust other atheists because projection.

Atheist: Show me the evidence!

Vox: No.

Atheist: You lie!

Vox: Voila….

The amusing thing is that they still absolutely believe that they are the smart ones, the “bright” ones, because godless. It’s now gotten to the point that when I hear someone is an atheist, rather than an agnostic, I now assume aggressive midwittery.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And a refusal to provide freely available, readily accessible evidence on demand is not a reliable indication that the other party is lying. It could mean that, or it could simply indicate that the other party is aware that you are an intellectually overmatched and lazy little bastard who is going to quibble in a dishonest and self-serving manner about any evidence that is provided to you, no matter how reliable the sources.

UPDATE: Someone else linked the article to which I was referring. The good faith atheist’s response to incontrovertible proof that I was not, as he claimed, lying, slandering, and making things up?

Paul D ‏@Lost_in_Formosa
Read the comments to see how stupid the “research”. There are more believers in jail than atheists! How come?

Seriously, at this point, how do you still manage to doubt me? He didn’t even hesitate before trying to move the goal posts!

The problem of peer review

Peer review simply isn’t what it is advertised to be; it is not only little more than editing, most of the time it is not even competent editing:

As a scientist with a 15 year career behind me so far, I am afraid that my experiences reflect this. Peer review is excellent in theory but not in practice. Much of the time, the only vetting the papers get are two relatively junior people in a field (often grad students or postdocs) giving it a thumbs up or thumbs down. That is absolutely it. In theory, the editors should make the decisions with the recommendations of the reviewers, but the editors rarely have the time or the expertise to judge the papers and often automatically defer to reviewers. Also, the papers should be reviewed by luminaries of the field, but these folks rarely have the time, and either decline invitations or bounce the work to a student or another trainee. It’s not just bad papers that get through, but also good, rigorous, papers that are bounced by this system.

Many if not most of the people in academic science today, at least in biology (my field), are overwhelmed with the need to publish in such high volumes, few people with the needed expertise can afford the time to go over the results in detail. All this while, at the same time and for the same reason, the volume of papers that needs to be reviewed goes up. I’ve heard of (and had myself) papers havve lingered for 4+ months before they even went out for review.

And, in our rush to publish, we often don’t read this literature carefully ourselves but start citing papers anyway, which weaves these potentially weak or erroneous papers even more tightly into the fabric of their field.

It’s difficult to care a lot about the quality of your work when you know the extra effort often doesn’t help something go through this fickle review process, and when you know people will cite it without really reading it closely. There is little incentive to spend longer on a paper to make sure everything is right and the results are reproducible because there is very little accountability for errors and huge rewards for being prolific.

The ironic thing is that True Believers and the I Fucking Love Science crowd genuinely believe that “peer reviewed science” is the gold standard for evidence. But there is a reason scientific evidence is not automatically allowed in a court of law, let alone considered conclusive, and the more we learn about the defects of peer review, the better we understand that science’s credibility is limited.

We have a word for science that is trustworthy, and that word is engineering. Until science can be applied, it cannot be fully trusted to be correct.

All peer review is really designed to do is to reassure the reader that the information presented fits safely within the confines of the consensus status quo.

The price of speaking out

SJWs will always try to force you to pay for standing up to the Narrative and speaking out against it, lest others do likewise.

Never go full racist. A Tennessee congressional candidate learned that lesson this week after his campaign took out a billboard ad exhorting voters to “Make America white again.” From local ABC affiliate WTVC:

Rick Tyler told WTVC he owns Whitewater Grill in Ocoee, but in the coming months will transition to campaigning to represent Tennessee’s 3rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Tyler says his “Make America White Again” sign, which plays off of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, was taken down on Tuesday evening.

The decision to take the billboard down came after Tyler’s business became the target of a boycott.

As if his submission will be sufficient to permit him to be forgiven for the sin of speaking out against the New “America”. Is it not remarkable that those who claim to love America are so determined to wipe out literally every last vestige of it?

Whatever this multiracial empire is, it is not the same nation that for its first 130 years required all new citizens to be “of good character” and “white”. And it is remarkable how many people who lament the fall away from the U.S. Constitution, designed to benefit the Founders and their posterity, don’t make the connection between the abandonment of all three things.

The reality is that the only way to Make America Great Again is to Make America White Again. The two slogans are synonymous. The SJWs know it, which is why both slogans terrify them.

The Missionaries: a Marine’s review

The Dark Herald reviews Owen Stanley’s debut novel, The Missionaries:

This is a book that touched me more then I thought it would.  For most of my career in the Marine Corps, I was fighting nasty little low level insurgencies.  Honestly most of these had been going on before we showed up and continued after we left.  They were just run of the mill tribal conflicts that flared up and died down again of their accord when the world wasn’t looking.

But when the world was looking it was time to send in the Marines “Hoo-Rah!”  I didn’t mind overmuch.  It was a life of adventure and I was young enough and dumb enough to enjoy it.  It was why I joined the Corps in the first place.  And I am reasonably certain we did more good than harm.  The people we were dealing with understood, respected and even honored a warrior ethic.  We were comprehensible to them, even if the motives for our arrival looked pretty hazy to them

We made some effort to get to the know locals and listen to their problems and grievances.  Occasionally we would dig wells for them, which was usually appreciated.  Although they always wondered what it would cost them in the end.

Sadly what it would usually cost them was becoming a UN protectorate. 

The UN assessment teams that would follow on our heels…after we had settled things down naturally…were an inexplicable plague, the likes of which the poor bastards had never known. 

The best of the UN Poo-bahs had but one purpose and that was to make sure the UN got the credit for what we were doing.  The average ones would try to put us in UN Baby Blues, constantly lecture us on how to do our jobs and saddle us with insane Rules of Engagement, (bottom line don’t do anything gross like shoot back).  The worst of them would have had the colonial government of Leopold II reeling in horror.

The infuriating thing was sitting helplessly by and watching the UN get away with doing these things.  I have no idea why the United Nations still enjoys the kind of prestige that it does at that point.  It ranks as equal members first world democracies and third world kleptocrats.  It’s Human Rights Council is a by word for farce.  It’s a dumping ground for diplomats that couldn’t make it in their own countries diplomatic corps.  This is an oligarchy of bureaucrats with no one to answer to and yet, it pretends it’s the best that humanity has to offer.

As you may have guessed a book about United Nations high commissioners getting what they deserve is little short of porn to me…. I highly recommend it.

This is a particularly interesting review, because both the reviewer and the author definitely know very well whereof they write. And while it may strike those who have not yet read The Missionaries that I am perhaps overreacting to it or praising it too highly, all I can say is that you will simply have to read the book before reaching any such conclusion.

To put it plainly, no one writes books like this anymore. They don’t because they simply can’t; virtually none of today’s authors possess the necessary inside experience of the NGO world combined with an intrinsically skeptical outsider’s perspective on it. This is a unique snapshot of a specific point in time; just as Catch-22 could not have been written without Joseph Heller’s experience of war and all the madness of the military bureaucracy that goes with it, there is no one, besides Owen Stanley, who could have written this satirical take on the UN’s quixotic attempt to bring the modern world to the natives of Elephant Island.

UPDATE: Thank you all again, for making The Missionaries #1 in Satire. Not bad, considering that we are reliably informed that the editor doesn’t even know what it is. It is also #1 in Humor, and, I suspect those who have read it will agree, deservedly so.

 Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #509 Paid in Kindle Store
    #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Satire
    #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Satire
    #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Satire

Be prepared this summer

The attacking antifas ended up getting their asses handed to them despite having a 6-1 advantage when they attacked a small nationalist rally in Sacramento, but next time they might be better prepared. This is still pretty tame, as civic violence goes, but outside of the occasional inner city rioting, it is nearly unprecedented in the last 45 years.

Note how the attack quickly breaks down into skirmish mode; even a modicum of discipline would be sufficient to rout either side. If you’re going to a rally this summer, go in groups and have attack, defense, and retreat plans in mind. And if your friends don’t have your flanks or back, keep your head on a swivel!

Notice that the antifas attacked the media too.

Apparently everyone is a Nazi now; “voxday” is listed as #8208 in the TrumpenReich.

A lost faith

Even some of the EU’s most instinctive supporters are turning from it in disgust:

 I actually used to be a big proponent of the EU. I was aware of the obvious problems, but I thought the achievements (long-term peace in Europe, war between Germany and France having become unthinkable, EU aid helping make the likes of Spain and Ireland more prosperous, and EU-required reforms making Eastern European countries modernize) more than made up for the organization itself being notoriously undemocratic. Europe was for a long time peaceful and prosperous, and the EU seemed to be a contributing factor to that.

However, during the last 10 years it has become very clear that the EU is simply not working. Take the Euro for example. While it’s very convenient to able to use the same type of money in many different EU countries, forcing vastly different countries (ranging from Cyprus and Ireland to Slovakia and Germany) to share the same currency basically imposed a rigid one-size-fits-all model on economies that had very little in common. As a result of losing monetary sovereignty, Eurozone countries could (and did) struggle mightily economically while lacking many of the monetary options for stimulating their economies that countries with their own currencies have at their disposal – like cutting interest rates. Member states are instead at the mercy of the European Central Bank, and good luck exerting influence over that behemoth if you’re a small country!

But losing monetary sovereignty is peanuts compared to what has happened to EU member Greece – a country in crippling debt and with a broken economy that instead of getting vital debt relief, or being allowed to go bankrupt in a controlled fashion, has been forced through a torturous journey of repeatedly cutting spending and raising taxes in return for short-term loans that hardly even benefit the Greek people. Forget about the fact that Greece is NEVER going to be able to repay its debt, and that forcing it to continue to try doing so only prevents the Greek economy from growing and adds to economic uncertainty in the EU as a whole. Germany, under the leadership of Angela Merkel (who is also the de facto leader of the EU), demands that Greece keep destroying its economy and society, while impoverishing its people, in order to set a good example to the rest of Europe/be made an example out of. It’s a Sisyphean task if I ever saw one.

Germany’s dominance over the EU under Merkel has generally been a complete disaster – whether it comes to her insistence of perpetually prolonging the Greek Crisis, imposing excessive Austerity across the EU in the name of reigning in budget deficits, stifling job growth and economic growth in the process (never mind that Germany itself ran significant budget deficits to boost employment and get its economy growing again little more than a decade ago) or her borderline treasonous refugee policy, Merkel’s stubbornness and stupidity has done incalculable damage to Europe as a whole. And the EU has only served to enable and amplify her madness.

For example, instead of trying to prevent Merkel from flooding Europe with Muslim migrants, the EU is looking for ways to fine and otherwise punish poor Eastern European countries (the kind of member states the EU of old would be trying to support and develop) for not letting themselves be “culturally enriched” by 3rd world Muslims. Instead of letting the people have their say about how the Establishment’s policies are hurting all of Europe, the EU is leading the charge to Censor the internet, one of the last remaining bastions of free speech. And instead of trying gradually fix their multicultural mistakes, the EU Elites are pledging to prevent the “far right” (the only force in Europe actually willing to prevent Suicide by Muslim Immigration) from ever taking power.

As socionomics would have it, the EU is an artifact of the psychological mood that accompanies economic good times, the result of collective intoxication on the heady stimulant of a massive credit bubble. It should come as no surprise to anyone who is socionomically aware that the financial crisis of 2008 has, after eight years of increasing turmoil, led to the political crisis of 2016.

Since these events tend to follow a certain pattern, and they tend to pick up speed rather than slow down, we can reasonably anticipate that the political crisis of 2016 will lead to the political collapse of 2020, followed by the first war to take place in formerly EU territory in 2022.

So, I don’t think “reform” is an option for the EU anymore. It can be dismantled in an orderly fashion or in a violent and disorderly one, and considering the haughty, delusional self-importance of its unelected leaders, I anticipate their desperate attempts to hang onto power will bring about the latter.

After all, you can take the East German girl out of East Germany, but you can’t take the DDR out of her.

Angela Merkel says EU must act to stop countries “fleeing” EU.”

Perhaps she could build… a wall? (raises pinky to corner of mouth)

The Missionaries by Owen Stanley

The Missionaries is a story of the collision of three cultures. A
brilliant tale of ineptitude, self-righteousness, and human folly, it
combines the mordant wit of W. Somerset Maugham with a sense of humor
reminiscent of P.G. Wodehouse.

When Dr. Sydney Prout is named the head of the United Nations
mission to Elephant Island, he believes he is more than ready to meet
the challenge of guiding its primitive inhabitants into the
post-Colonial era, and eventually, full independence. But neither his
many academic credentials nor the Journal of Race Relations have
prepared Dr. Prout to reckon with the unrepentant bloody-mindedness of
the natives, or anticipate the inventive ways their tribal philosophers
will incorporate the most unlikely aspects of modern civilization into
their religious lore and traditional way of life.

Author Owen Stanley is an Australian explorer, a philosopher, and a
poet who speaks seven languages. He is at much at home in the remote
jungles of the South Pacific as flying his Staudacher aerobatic plane,
deep-sea diving, or translating the complete works of Charles Darwin
into Tok Pisin.

We release a book or two every month, up to five or six if you include print editions and audiobooks. And while I always put up posts here to let you know about them, I seldom play favorites or make a hard pitch for a particular book.

But if you read just one Castalia House book, The Missionaries is the one you really ought to read. It is, in the collective opinion of everyone at Castalia involved in the production, one of the two best books we have published to date, the other one being John C. Wright’s Awake in the Night Land, if not the best.


The Missionaries is not science fiction. It is not military strategy. It is neither history nor political philosophy, and while it does contain a single reference to gardening, it definitely isn’t anything an expert gardener such as David the Good would recommend. We didn’t even have an internal category in which to list the book except “fiction”. It’s the first purely literary novel we’ve published, and yet, it is exactly the sort of book Castalia House was created to publish in the first place, the kind of book that no other publisher would ever dare to touch. The Missionaries is a satirical novel in the vein of Evelyn Waugh or Joseph Heller and it is not an exaggeration to say it is capable of one day being considered a classic.

Owen Stanley’s debut novel is intelligent, it is erudite, it is educated, it is almost astonishingly offensive to delicate modern political sensibilities, and above all, it is funny. One would have to either be perfectly politically correct or totally devoid of any sense of humor to read this book without occasionally finding oneself laughing aloud, usually in disbelief. If you are a reader, then you must read this book. Seriously, it’s that good.

But you need not take my word for it. From the early reviews of The Missionaries:

  • The author, Owen Stanley, writes in a rich, flamboyant style that I
    associate with the best early to mid-20th century writers, but without
    overdoing it and spoiling the story with grandiose verbiage. 
  • The work at hand is strongly recommended as thought-provoking, crafted
    with tremendous skill and control, brilliant in its choice of targets,
    and uproariously absurd.
  •  The Missionaries is both a rollicking, rip-roaring, old-fashioned great white
    hunter adventure as well as a hilariously stinging modern satire.
  •  It’ll probably be the funniest book you read all year. 
  • This one is Castalia’s best yet.

UPDATE: Thank you! The Missionaries is now the #1 bestseller in Literary Satire.

     

    June Brainstorm

    If you’re a member, check your email for the registration information. We’ll be meeting tomorrow night at 7 PM EST. Author Nick Cole will be the guest, as we will be talking about some SIGNIFICANT new developments in the publishing world, how they relate to Castalia House and independent publishing, and how we plan to respond to them. I’ll also be providing an update on the progress of Big Fork.

    This is the monthly Members Only event. And speaking of email and Castalia House, those who are New Release subscribers should check your email tomorrow morning.

    If you’re not a member of Brainstorm and you want to take part as well as support the open events, information on how to join is on the left sidebar. It is not cheap, but the general consensus appears to be that it is well worth it.

    Gamma stalker fail

    Camestros Fellatrix is still butthurt over being depantsed in the midst of his attempt to pose as a master of Aristotelian rhetoric that he’s been commenting almost nonstop about me ever since. (shakes head) Gammas are nothing if not predictable. Anyhow, it’s more than a little amusing to see him try to figure out how he can try to figure out how to produce a justification for calling me stupid while simultaneously undermining the significance of IQ:

    In Vox Day’s case, his claim is this: the difference in IQ score between man-who-made-Vox-grumpy (MWMVG) and Vox is >50 IQ score points. If we assume the MWMVG is at least in the average range (90-109) Vox is claiming an IQ score of >140 and possibly >159. Note that the upper end of just ‘average’ IQ has Vox claiming to be pretty much at the limit of meaningful IQ scores on the most generous reading of IQ and even at the lower end well above the boundary which most reputable IQ test stop bothering to classify (around 130 IQ points). An informed (and presumably smart) person shouldn’t make a claim any more precise than ‘greater than 130’ – beyond that the figure as some sort of intrinsic property of a person that would be consistent across multiple methods of quantification doesn’t make sense EVEN ASSUMING IQ MAKES MUCH SENSE ANYWAY.

    Put let’s take that figure of 130. Let’s say Vox is taking a more grounded view of his own IQ and is seeing himself as 130. A 50 point difference would put the MWMVG at an IQ of below 80. For comparison, an IQ of below 70 is used diagnostically as evidence of intellectual disability. An IQ of 80 to 70 is likely to represent somebody who would struggle with school and many cognitive tasks (assuming the score was representative). Which would be an odd thing for Vox to claim – after he is attempting to write a point-by-point rebuttal of what the MWMVG and struggling to do so, claiming that he is struggling to counter an argument from a person with an IQ lower than 80 would be tantamount to claiming he really doesn’t know what he is talking about.

    Aaron doesn’t make me grumpy in the slightest. I find his determination, shared by a few similarly stupid File 770 headcases, to stake his reputation on my being wrong every single time in all circumstances, to be downright funny. It is always a pleasure to see one’s expectations met so reliably.

    Especially considering how his fixation led him to publicly conclude that LEEEROY JENKINS was the greatest battlefield commander in military history.

    Anyhow, Cammy has unnecessarily occupied himself with trying to assess “a more grounded view” of my IQ, in that its lower limit is a matter of public record. I was a member of Mensa, so obviously my IQ is above 132. More importantly, I was also a National Merit Finalist prior to the 1993 renorming of the PSAT, so it is equally apparent that my IQ must also be above 140. Therefore, the minimum estimated IQ for Aaron is 90, which is in the average range, and may actually be considered a little generous in light of the obvious silliness of his expressed position on tactical matters.

    And then, of course, there is the perhaps-not-entirely-irrelevant fact that I already posted it.

    We have now reached the point at which you should feel free to:

    • Explain why you reject IQ as a metric for intelligence. Preferably at length and with personal anecdotes.
    • Lecture us on the 34 different types of intelligence, as well as which ones are best.
    • Tell us how you were out partying the night before the SAT and you were totally hungover when you took it and besides you don’t care.
    • Brag about your 800 IQ.
    • Inform us of your Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy of Language from the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago!
    It’s totally going to fool everyone. I guarantee it. No one will ever be able to ascertain your true motivations. We’ve never seen or heard anyone do anything like it before.
    Anyhow, this is nothing more than Vox’s First Law in action: Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.

    Everybody else is racist!

    A cuckservative clucks an oft-heard theme:

     The norm throughout history has been that different peoples are different, and that one people would either replace another peoples culture, or even replace them outright genetically.  That is the default, and a default which is still the norm in this day and age throughout most of the world.  The great exception to this is the exceptionalism the embodies America.

    Ours is a civic heritage that transcends ethnicity and is not restricted by geographic extent.  And because that is so ingrained into the very essence of America, that there is a revulsion against the global and historical default to define a people by blood or land.

    And so, the not-so-great hullabaloo of the “cuckservative” flap reared its head.  The vast majority of conservatives, including the veritable Ace of Spades, the veritable Stacy McCain, Erick Erickson, the folks over at HotAir, and especially SooperMexican (who was subject to rac­ist insults), have outted the White supremacists who are pushing the term — though the term has had its defenders….

    These groups and individuals who used “cuckservative” to rage against racial marginalization are defaulting to the tribal norm that has held back humanity throughout the world and throughout history.  It is a rejection of American Exceptionalism, just as much as the Progressivism is a rejection of the same.

    But it is true that destroying Western Civilization and America more specifically is a goal of the Progressive Left in order to create a “blank slate” upon which they may paint their deluded pseudo-utopias.  Sweden is but one international example, but this drive towards eliminating White people eliminated in a “soft genocide” does exist and there are indeed those who would love to do exactly what many of the “anti-racism” crowd most fear.

    In conclusion: Would you prefer an America with the physical characteristics and beliefs of Thomas Sowell, or an America with the physical characteristics and beliefs of the Swedish Prime Minister?

    First, this is more of our friend Sarah’s ridiculous “born American in Portugal” nonsense. It isn’t historical, it isn’t true, and it isn’t intellectually honest. It’s just lofty, but nonsensical rhetoric meant to convince through evading one’s logical circuits by appealing directly to one’s emotions. The American civic heritage does not “transcend ethnicity”, as I, or any other American Indian, can tell you. And it is restricted by geographic extent. The Chinese, the Portuguese, the Swedes, and the British are not Americans.

    Second, a people are defined primarily by their blood, secondarily by their land, tertially by their religion. There are no other definitions. America is not a Proposition Nation, which is easily provable as no one has ever lost their American status for failing to abide by whatever these mythical propositions might be, or granted American status on the sole basis of claiming to accept those propositions.

    If you still claim that America is a Proposition Nation despite it having been conclusively proven that it was not and never was, you are worse than ignorant. You are either in denial or you are a deceiver.

    Third, the Alt-Right does reject American Exceptionalism. There is nothing exceptional about America except its superior founding stock and its geographic advantages, both of which are now significantly reduced. Indeed, in light of how rapidly America squandered its unique post-WWII military and economic superiority, one can quite reasonably argue that it is the least exceptional empire since the Austro-Hungarian.

    Fourth, I would absolutely prefer an America with the physical characteristics and beliefs of the Swedish Prime Minister to those of Thomas Sowell, especially after the Sweden Democrats take power. This is for three reasons:

    1. Genetic Reversion to the Mean.
    2. The MAOA-2R gene.
    3. Based on my personal interactions with him, Dr. Sowell is neither as smart nor is he as intellectually honest as most conservatives wish to believe.

    Fifth, an absolute priority of not being racist is neither a functional ideology nor a sound foundation for public policy. Regardless of one’s personal perspective, the historical reality is that racism is far closer to being the solution than it is to being the problem.