And the Scouts of Britain fall

I have little doubt this decision will mark the beginning of British scouting’s long decline into irrelevance:

The Scouts are to drop their historic rule that teenage recruits must declare religious belief, the movement’s leaders said yesterday. In future boys and girls who join the organisation will be allowed to declare themselves as atheists and make a pledge of honourable behaviour that makes no mention of God. The retreat from religion marks a break with a tradition begun in 1908 when the movement’s founder Robert Baden-Powell wrote a Scout Promise which required a vow to ‘do my duty to God’.

It’s really rather remarkable how many organizations are so willing to commit suicide in the name of inclusion and accommodation with the secular world.  Especially when it is so obviously unnecessary; membership in the Scouts had grown by nearly 17 percent in the last 12 years.

Perhaps the Scouts will prove different than all of the various mainstream churches that have declined into irrelevance by moving into the world and away from God.  But I doubt it.  Atheists will doubtless opine that they can’t see any possible reason why scouting should decline just because they are permitted entry, and yet, we see the same pattern play out again, and again, and again.

I’m certainly not sold

But perhaps we can hope this is the dreaded “vote of confidence” in Christian Ponder:

“Christian is our quarterback,” Frazier said, via Tom Powers of the Pioneer Press. “We are going to do all we can to help him have a good game against Chicago and to help our team go out and get a win.”

Frazier said that the game needs to be a learning experience for the young quarterback, something that makes sense given the team’s commitment to Ponder if not the idea that Joe Webb might have been able to help them win on this Sunday. Powers wondered if the rest of the Vikings would be thrilled to hear the team was sticking with the long-term goal of developing Ponder even if it comes at the expense of winning games now.

Considering that Andrew Luck and RG3 are much better than Ponder without the extra season of development, I am dubious that Mr. Play-Action Roll-Out and his five-yard completions are going to significantly improve.  Let him play out the rest of the season, fine.  But then get a real quarterback.  Wasting AD’s prime and his 200-yard games is borderline criminal.

To be honest, I’m increasingly of the opinion that both Ponder and Frazier are mediocre.  Neither is actually terrible, which occasionally leads to false hope.  But neither strike me as ever posing much of a threat to win a Super Bowl even if they weren’t Vikings.

WND column

An American Independence Party

In Spain, the two pro-Catalan independence parties now control a
majority of the regional parliament. While the Esquerra Republicana de
Catalunya is on the political left and the Convergència i Unió is on the
center-right, the one thing they can agree on is that Catalonia should
be independent.

In Great Britain, the Scottish National Party has all but eliminated
the Conservative Party north of the border and seats nearly twice as
many members as the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament. As for the
United Kingdom herself, the United Kingdom Independence Party, derided
by British Prime Minister David Cameron as a collection of “loonies,
fruitcakes and closet racists,” just handed the Tories their
Eton-educated heads in three by-elections that serve as a likely
harbinger of political upheaval to come; UKIP has already effectively
replaced the Liberal Democrats as the United Kingdom’s fourth most
influential political party after the Conservatives, Labour, and the
Scottish National Party.

Palestine is a recognized state

I’m sure the David Frum, Jon Podhoretz, and other advocates of open immigration will be eager to defend the right of the world’s newest nationals to freely immigrate to Jerusalem now:

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas Sunday promised someday the PA flag would
fly over “Jerusalem, eternal capital of the state of Palestine.” Thousands of people greeted Abbas rapturously upon his return from
the United Nations, where the General Assembly granted the PLO,
representing the PA, upgraded status as a nonmember observer state.

It seems strange that so many people are obtaining the right to self-determination around the world, with US support, with the noticeable exception of Americans.

VPFL 2012 week 12

81 Moundsview Meerkats (9-3-0)
73 RR Redbeards (5-7-0)

52 Greenfield Grizzlies (5-7-0)
36 Bailout Banksters (6-6-0)

81 D.C. Hangmen (4-8-0)
69 Fromundah Cheezheads (8-4-0)

64 ’63Mercury Marauders (8-4-0)
59 Suburban Churchians (2-10-0)

63 Bane Sidhe (7-4-1)
63 Luna City Gamma Rays (5-6-1)

The Piranha of the Serengeti took sweet revenge over their bete noire as Fromundah finally slumped its way out of first place for the first time all season.  Meanwhile, the Banksters and the Bane Sidhe look to be battling it out for the fourth and final playoff position.

Manning vs Brady

The Sports Guy considers the question posed by a reader:

“Two months from now, it’s very possible Tom Brady will have 3 NFL
MVPs, 6 Super Bowl appearances and 4 rings. Wouldn’t that clinch him as
the greatest QB of all time? It’s just as possible that two months from
now, Peyton Manning will have 5 NFL MVPs, 3 Super Bowl appearances, 2
rings (and may have even just beaten his brother in the long-awaited
Manning Bowl). That would pretty much lock Peyton up as the greatest QB
of all time, wouldn’t it? Has there ever been another season where the
Greatest of All Time title was up for grabs like this? For any position?
In any sport?”

For one thing, it’s neat that we’re even here after what Manning went through these past 18 months. When I wrote about the Manning-Brady rivalry in January of 2011,
right before the playoffs, their unofficial championship belt was
seemingly hinging on the events of that month … and within a year,
suddenly it seemed like Brady had a chance to grab the belt without any
resistance from Manning. Now it’s an argument again. I’d disagree with
Eric on one point: We’re not even close to resolving it. Quarterbacks
are like NBA players — we don’t have any idea how long their careers
will last anymore (especially now that all these rules are in place to
protect their safety). Could Brady play until he’s … 42? Forty-three?
Who knows? Could Kobe Bryant score 40,000 points? Who knows? I’m
prepared for anything this decade.

Anyway, I don’t think Brady or Manning can clinch anything yet other
than the “Who did the best job of antagonizing his loyal fans by wearing
hats of hated baseball teams and appearing in commercials that would
have earned real scorn had it been anyone else?” (Brady clinched this
years ago) and “Whose forehead can turn the reddest when he wears his
helmet too long?” battle (Manning clinched this during this first game).

As much as it pains me to say it, (because I loathed his team at the time), I don’t think either Brady or Manning is the greatest quarterback of all time.  I don’t think it is even close. I think the title clearly belongs to Joe Montana, who would have easily picked up a fifth Super Bowl ring in 1994 had Steve Young not been awarded the starting job by virtue of being more mobile and five years younger.  I’ve watched the game for more than 35 years now, and Montana is still the quarterback that I feared most as a Vikings fan.

Sure, having Jerry Rice helped, but what made Montana great was the way he always delivered the ball where Jerry Rice could continue running at full speed when he caught the ball.  Watching Christian Ponder repeatedly deliver balls where Percy Harvin can’t keep running in stride should be enough to convince anyone that Montana aided Rice more than Rice aided Montana.  (And yes, as a matter of fact, it is painful to watch Drew Brees and RG3 tear up the league while Ponder rolls out, can’t see anything if his first read is covered, and dumps the ball off to his outlet receiver for the 17th time in a row.  Thank you for asking.)

Concerning who is the better quarterback, it depends upon whether you are focused on the athlete as an individual performer or an athlete as a member of the team.  Peyton Manning is the superior individual performer, probably has a higher football IQ and modestly better physical talents, but Tom Brady is the better team leader and superior team player.  Between the two of them, if I was to choose one of the two quarterbacks in his prime around whom to build a team, it would be Brady.

47 years late and 55 trillion short

Larry Auster points out that conservatives never manage to conserve anything, not even the nation they supposedly love so dearly:

As long as there was a chance to stop the immigration and the resulting dispossession of Anglo-European America, the topic was forbidden.
But now that it’s happened, and there’s a sense that nothing can be
done about it, and therefore the identification of the fact that mass
nonwhite immigration is leading to the radical cultural and political
transformation of America does not logically require a call for restricting
that immigration, it’s become safe for Mark Steyn and all the other
despicable conservative cowards to come out from the shadows and say
bold-sounding things like, “Demographics is Destiny.” In the minds of
Steyn and the others, they are not issuing a warning against that transformation, as such a warning would make them racists; they are announcing the victory
of that transformation, combined with impotent little grumblings about
some of its negative effects. After all, what—other than impotent
grumbling—is conservatism about? 

Of course, just because it’s too late to do anything about it easily or peacefully doesn’t mean it’s actually too late for anything to be done about it.  And that is the real tragedy.

On the book front

It looks like we’re going to have to move the official release date for A THRONE OF BONES back two days until Monday.  I have the proof that’s being corrected for the hardcover; the book will be 950 pages and it looks really good.  However, the conversion to epub and the upload to Amazon is going to take a little time.  I’m sorry about the delay, but fortunately, it’s only going to be a brief one.

Mailvox: the ethics of hypocrisy

RE asks about the hypocrisy of the religious:

I am a longtime reader of your blog, which I have found to be very helpful over the years.  Also, your book the Irrational Atheist is a God send.   I hoping that you would give me your take on something.  I recently had “discussion” with my older brother on religion. My brother stated “religion is bullshit, its made up by man, its full of hypocrites.” He further explained the reason he doesn’t go church or practice his faith in anyway is because everyone that goes to church are hypocrites.

I am sure every church has its large share of “hypocrites”, but I feel he is being unreasonable.  I know it can be difficult to find the right place to fellowship with others, but I still find value in going to church, praying, and reading the Bible.  Can you please provide me another or your intelligent and witty rebuttals to his concern? 

First, relatively few of the religious, or anyone else for that matter, actually fits the proper description of hypocrisy, which is defined as follows:  a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.

Most people do not feign to having principles they do not really possess, but rather, fail to live up to the standards of those principles. What RE’s brother fails to realize, as do most people who regularly observe hypocrisy around them and make a meal of decrying it, is that professing ideals and failing to live up to them is not usually an indication that the profession is false, only that the professor has failed.  While it is possible for such failures to be a sign of the profession being false, it is far from being conclusive evidence of it.

Failure is not, in itself, necessarily indicative of hypocrisy.  Moreover, it makes no sense to accuse most Christians of hypocrisy, in that Christian theology expressly and specifically declares that all, without exception, are fallen.  No one is perfect.  No one is worthy.  One can more reasonably question if a self-righteous person is actually a Christian than to claim his self-righteousness is indicative of his hypocrisy being a consequence of his religion.

As for a rebuttal, I would suggest the following: the only reason you think they are hypocritical is because they have standards.  Why do you believe that a complete absence of standards is more indicative of good character than apparent hypocrisy? I mean, say what you like about the tenets of Christianity, dude, at least it’s an ethos.

Divine perfection

And the lack of Biblical evidence for it:

Is God perfect? You often hear philosophers describe “theism” as the
belief in a perfect being — a being whose attributes are said to include
being all-powerful, all-knowing, immutable, perfectly good, perfectly
simple, and necessarily existent (among others). And today, something
like this view is common among lay people as well.

There
are two famous problems with this view of God. The first is that it
appears to be impossible to make it coherent. For example, it seems
unlikely that God can be both perfectly powerful and perfectly good if
the world is filled (as it obviously is) with instances of terrible
injustice. Similarly, it’s hard to see how God can wield his infinite
power to instigate alteration and change in all things if he is flat-out
immutable. And there are more such contradictions where these came
from.

The second problem is that
while this “theist” view of God is supposed to be a description of the
God of the Bible, it’s hard to find any evidence that the prophets and
scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible (or “Old Testament”) thought of God
in this way at all. The God of Hebrew Scripture is not depicted as
immutable, but repeatedly changes his mind about things (for example, he
regrets having made man). He is not all-knowing, since he’s repeatedly
surprised by things (like the Israelites abandoning him for a statue of a
cow). He is not perfectly powerful either, in that he famously cannot
control Israel and get its people to do what he wants. And so on.

As those of you who have read TIA know, I do not subscribe to the concept of God as a “perfect” being, or even think that it is meaningful to describe Him as “good”, but rather, a tautology.  And given our intrinsically limited perspective, I think it is stupid to claim we have any means of distinguishing between omniscience and superhuman tantiscience or voliscience. But it is fascinating to see that the Aprevistan view appears to finally have penetrated mainstream thinking.