Mailvox: hit me with your best shot

Agnosticon hasn’t delved deeply enough into the archives to understand why things work the way they do:

If a blog is purposed for argument and not just banal discussion, then opposing views are essential for its content. Of course, this would also depend on quality of opposition, and most regulars here will immediately begin insulting self-proclaimed atheists, so it can be concluded that this blog doesn’t really value argument. I think many here are here to socialize with like-minded others. It’s possible that true argument might not be possible due to asymmetry of opinion, although that isn’t necessarily a disqualifier. Conventionally, a “troll” is not just someone who shows up only for argument, rather a person who shows up to derail argument. It would appear that Vox means to argue, since his posts are so often provocative, yet when engaged he often seems too ready just to score a couple points, declare victory, and get out. There are other people here who seem genuinely interested in argument.

Agnosticon first fails to distinguish between legitimate and substantive arguments versus those that are obviously stupid and fallacious in considering whether the Dread Ilk are interested in arguments in general. He seems to be unaware that I have written a book in which dozens of popular atheist arguments are conclusively demolished and have addressed many more on this blog over the past four years, so when yet another clueless college kid shows up and starts spouting off half-understood atheist pablum that everyone has seen before, it is hardly a mystery that he meets with nothing but ridicule, especially when he presents his outdated arguments in an obnoxious and confrontational manner. And why would they be ever be interested in taking such interlocutors seriously, especially when over the last eight years, we have seen this sort of individual lie, move the goalposts, refuse to admit when they are conclusively proved wrong, and otherwise behave in an intellectually unserious manner?

In the very thread in which Agnosticon commented, we have the example of Dan, who cannot understand that utilitarian philosophy is not “a rational basis in fact”. Does he honestly recommend that such an individual be taken seriously? And if so, how?

The second thing that Agnosticon fails to recognize is that there is substantial proof right here on this blog that I am genuinely interested in argument of a sufficiently high quality. I have zero interest in arguing for the sake of arguing, much less wasting my time on people who are insufficiently intelligent to say anything new or interesting. It’s not a case of scoring a couple of points, declaring victory, and getting out, it is simply about qualifying potential opponents. If a person is incapable of avoiding very basic logical and factual errors, or if it is apparent that they rely upon the usual chicanery such as redefining basic terms and so forth, then there is absolutely no chance they are going to present an argument that I can’t shred with ease. But rather than refusing to give everyone a shot, I prefer to permit anyone one or two opportunities to say something interesting or effective. If they want to waste that opportunity on a trivial drive-by comment or two, that’s their choice.

If they can’t deliver a substantive argument, or if I can identify their glaring mistakes – or worse, intellectual dishonesty – at first glance, then they’re done as far as I’m concerned. I already know how the prosecution will proceed and it’s all over but for the formalities even before it has begun. And really, considering the number of comments and emails I receive, that’s the only way it is possible to allow pretty much everyone who wants one a shot.

So don’t waste it on nonsensical blather if you wish me, or anyone else, to take you seriously. I’m quite willing to give Agnosticon the opportunity to present a case for his Singulatarianism, or what I described in The Irrational Atheist as apocalyptic techno-heresy, even though he has one strike against him for having demonstrated an inability to distinguish between logical and philosophical integrity and logical and philosophical necessity. But if he can’t present one, that’s hardly reflective of my unwillingness to engage in substantive argument.

It’s pretty simple. Right now I owe Dominic my next entry in our ongoing debate on the existence of God. Once that concludes, whenever that may be, I’m sure I’ll engage someone else in a substantive and detailed debate. Debt deflation might be a good one. But I’m simply not going to focus any time or attention on commenters who publicly demonstrate that they have neither the intelligence nor the intellectual integrity to present a challenge that is both substantive and interesting. Of course, the primary purpose of this blog is for me to amuse myself. Everything else is secondary; I’m pleased that some of you find it worth reading on a regular basis, but that’s not its raison d’etre.

Throwing in the towel

Even Michael Yon has reluctantly concluded that it is time to get out of Afghanistan:

This war is going to turn out badly. We are wasting lives and resources while the United States decays and other threats emerge. We led the horse to water.

Importantly, there is no value in pretending that Pakistan is an ally. We should wish the best of luck to the Afghans, and the many peaceful Pakistanis, and accelerate our withdrawal of our main battle force. The US never has been serious about Afghanistan. Under General Petraeus we were starting to gain ground, but the current trajectory will land us in the mud.

The enemies will never beat us in Afghanistan. Force on force, the Taliban are weak by comparison. Yet this is their home. There is only so much we can do at this extreme cost for the many good Afghan people. We must reduce our main effort and concentrate on other matters. Time to come home.

Sincerely,

Michael Yon

It’s ten years late in my opinion, but nevertheless, he’s correct. Tim Lynch concurs:

There it is; Afghanistan is toast, and what the last 10 years has taught us is we cannot afford to deploy American ground forces. Two billion dollars a week (that’s billion with a B) has bought what? Every year we stay to “bring security to the people,” the security situation for the people gets worse and worse, deteriorating by orders of magnitude. Now the boy genius has announced a “new strategy”. A strategy that is identical to the “strategy” that resulted in a hollow ground force getting its ass kicked by North Korea in 1950; a mere five years after we had ascended to the most dominant military the world had ever known.

As usual, the culprit is historical ignorance and the “this time it’s different” crowd. Seriously, every time someone claims that “this time it’s different” or “today’s youth [fill-in-the-blank], they should be fitted with shock collars and zapped. Anyone who knows anything about military history or who has ever played a strategic wargame knows that it is much harder to hold onto territory than it is to grab it in the first place.

Vox’s first rule of war: if you don’t colonize, don’t occupy.

The United States has been utilizing what may prove to be the most historically inept strategy in the entire history of warfare, in which the enemy nations are occupied while allowing its own territory to be colonized.

Post-Christian nirvana awaits

You would think that the realization of what will fill the post-Christian void is significantly more intrinsically anti-atheistic religion would serve as a check on the atheist hatred for Christianity. But that would require atheists to be rational, and as I have demonstrated in some detail, that simply isn’t the case:

31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting “God does not exist” on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault….

Atheism is a violation of Indonesian law under the founding principles of the country. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, recognises the right to practice six religions in total: Islam, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhism and Confucianism. Atheism is, however, illegal. According to Indonesian criminal law, anyone who tries to stop others believing in a faith could face up to five years in jail for blasphemy.

Atheists point to the inevitable triumph of atheism because a few very small European countries with birth rates below the replacement level now have statistically significant atheist minorities. (None have an atheist majority). Meanwhile, Islamic nations with populations nearly equal to the entire European Union with birth rates nearly twice those of Sweden, France, and other European countries are, unlike historic Christianity, actively prosecuting atheists.

And from this evidence, the atheist somehow manages to conclude that he is not only winning, but that the triumph of atheism is inevitable. It would appear that the godless must subscribe to the Charlie Sheen school of data analysis. It is little wonder their arguments against the existence of God are so uniformly inept.

WND column

The Debt Still Lingers

As the media and political world continue to occupy themselves with the Republican horse race, the elected representatives of both the Republican and Democratic parties are quietly continuing to spend the nation deeper into the debt abyss. While the amusingly misnamed Budget Control Act of 2011 was supposed to settle the debt-ceiling discussion until after the presidential election this November by increasing the amount of permissible debt by at least $2.1 trillion – a mere 14 percent of American GDP – the speed at which the Congress and the administration have been whipping out the government credit card means that there is a reasonable chance that they will burn through that additional debt in barely one year.

RIP Joe Paterno

Thus endeth the saga:

Joseph Vincent Paterno, the winningest coach in Division I football history — a title that will likely endure given the transient nature of today’s relationships between school and coach — was 85. His death came two months after it was revealed he was being treated for lung cancer.

It is to be regretted that a sick old man spent his last three months living in public shame due to a single moral failure of the sort that many, if not most, men in similar positions of authority have made on one or more occasions. If overlooking the transgressions of a colleague is to be considered tantamount to committing the transgression itself, every single member of the police forces across the country should be in jail, if this is the yardstick applied.

On the other hand, the sad last chapter to Paterno’s life is an object lesson that one mistake, of the wrong kind and at the wrong time, is all that it takes to ruin a reputation built up over decades. Barack Obama, no great thinker he, once said that his daughters shouldn’t be “punished” for the rest of their lives for making a single mistake. Setting aside the dubious assertion of whether or not having children is a punishment, many lives are altered in the blink of an eye by a single mistake. Simply failing to look both ways before crossing the road can end a life and affect a dozen others, just to give one example.

So, it’s fair to remember that Joe Paterno wasn’t a saint. But it is not right to pretend that he was some sort of monster, rather than a decent and much-loved man who once failed to live up to his ideals at precisely the wrong time and place.

Conference Championship Day

It seems astonishing that it was only two years ago that the Vikings were going into the Superdome and I was reasonably confident that they would walk out having taken another step towards for a very winnable Super Bowl. We all know how that ended up, thanks to the usual voodoo.

In the AFC game, I think the Patriots will beat the Ravens without too much trouble. Although they’re playing well, the Ravens defense is getting older, they don’t match up well with Hernandez and Gronkowski, and Belichick+Brady > Harbaugh+Flacco. I thought Houston actually looked like the better team last week and likely would have won without that dreadful decision by Jacoby Jones to try to field a punt better left untouched.

On the NFC side, it feels like the 1980s again. But the 49ers don’t have Montana or Young and I think the Giants will beat the 49ers in a more competitive game than the AFC championship. The 49ers defense is fearsome and hard-hitting, but the Giants offense isn’t a high-precision machine and won’t be disrupted as easily. He may look stupid, but Eli Manning’s apparent inability to recognize pressure becomes a big plus in the playoffs. He takes Barry Sanders’s “act like you’ve been there before” philosophy to new heights; when everyone else is celebrating a big, timely touchdown, he’s looking as if he’s wondering what the fuss is all about.

And looking at it from the conspiratorial angle, you have to think that the league would love to push the REVENGE angle with a Patriots-Giants Super Bowl. It was pretty obvious that the Packers were supposed to make it, but their meltdown was so complete that not even blatant assistance from the referees made any difference.

Last week 3-1. For the playoffs, 6-2.

UPDATE: Make that 8-2.

Too much engineering

I suppose I may be overdoing the B3 a little. A military helicopter passed by in front of me today and my immediate reaction was to slide sideways towards the brick wall of the nearby building. My first conscious thought was to try to remember if my loadout was SMAW or Stinger.

My second thought was that I should probably get back to playing recon….

A portrait in godless courage

Unsurprisingly, British atheists are discovering that snark and striking a superior pose happens to be less effective against some religions than others:

A student Muslim group is demanding the ‘offensive’ image of Jesus and Mo having a drink at the bar, taken from an online satirical sketch, be removed from the social networking site. The president of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society at the prestigious University College London (UCL), Robbie Yellon, has stepped down over the controversy….

Secretary for the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, Michael Paynter,said: ‘Robbie stepped aside because he signed up as president to organise events and run a student society.

‘He did not appreciate the stress he would be under when dealing with a controversy like this, so he wanted to make way for someone else.’

I’ll bet he didn’t. It would appear that being an antagonistic little prick isn’t quite as much fun when the targets are inclined to hit back with vigor. I wonder how long it will take before the more intelligent European atheists begin taking the long view and arguing on behalf of re-establishing Christendom. By now, it must be fairly clear to even the most optimistic atheist that the shiny secular scientific society of their dreams isn’t in the cards and they have leaped from the frying pan into the fire.

Christians may not always succeed in loving their enemies, but they have been remarkably tolerant by historical standards. Now the atheists of the West are beginning to discover what real intolerance looks like.

The evil of Apple

The technocancer is metastasizing post-Jobs:

I have never seen a EULA as mind-bogglingly greedy and evil as Apple’s EULA for its new ebook authoring program. Dan Wineman calls it “unprecedented audacity” on Apple’s part. For people like me, who write and sell books, access to multiple markets is essential. But that’s prohibited:

“Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.”

Exactly: Imagine if Microsoft said you had to pay them 30% of your speaking fees if you used a PowerPoint deck in a speech.

I’ve downloaded the software and had a chance to skim the EULA. Much of it is boilerplate, but I’ve read and re-read Section 2B, and it does indeed go far beyond any license agreement I’ve ever seen:

“B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.”

And then the next paragraph is bold-faced, just so you don’t miss it:

“Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.”

The nightmare scenario under this agreement? You create a great work of staggering literary genius that you think you can sell for 5 or 10 bucks per copy. You craft it carefully in iBooks Author. You submit it to Apple. They reject it. Under this license agreement, you are out of luck. They won’t sell it, and you can’t legally sell it elsewhere. You can give it away, but you can’t sell it.

Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. This isn’t so much a walled garden as a concentration camp for the creative. When your actions are being compared disfavorably with Microsoft’s, then the dot is a line to you.

If they fail biology, it’s probably my fault

“Daddy, what animal are you most scared of?”

“The platypus.”

“The platypus? I thought you were scared of meerkats.”

“Everyone is scared of meerkats.”

“They are? But they’re so cute!”

“That’s just what the meerkats want you to think. They don’t call them the Piranha of the Serengeti for nothing, you know. Even lions are scared of them. They can strip a grown lion to bones in just two minutes.”

“I bet meerkats would be scared of the real piranha, though, in the rivers.”

“Sure. On the land, the meerkats would win. In the water, the piranha would. But the platypus would beat them both, by land, sea, or air.”

“PLATYPUS CAN FLY?”

“Sure, that’s why they’re so scary. They have little jets in their hind legs.”

“But they’re so fat!”

“It’s all muscle.”