Seculars are seriously insane

Datechguy simultaneously sums up the inherent lunacy of the “evolution in the schools” debate and illustrates the insanity of the secular science fetishists:

My friend is an educated man in his 40′s. Both he and his father owned small business and are longtime republicans. We were going through the potential GOP nominees when he declared he was afraid of Rick Perry because of his fundamentalist belief in the Bible (specifically on evolution). He argued that if he doesn’t believe in Evolution what OTHER science does he not believe in?

I’ve already said something in my gut doesn’t care for Rick Perry but this caused me to do a double take; I answered:

“Unemployment is 9.1%, the economy is in the tank and you’re worried about a candidate’s position on how old the planet is?”

It is instructional to see how secularist Americans are attempting to construct the very walls they once condemned. Whereas they still complain that there was a time when belief in God was an essential societal requirement, now they are simply substituting a different religious dogma to serve as a litmus test. Their concerns can’t possibly be about science, as there probably aren’t more than one or two Senators who could pass a college level physics test or more than ten who could pass an economics one. I’d be surprised if any of the candidates other than Ron Paul or Mitt Romney could even tell you what something as simple as marginal utility or a reserve requirement is.

I don’t like Rick Perry either, nor would I vote for him, but his opinion on the age of the planet and the origin of the species is probably somewhere around number 345,732 on my list of concerns about the man.

The irony is that the same people who believe that fiscal stimulus ends economic contractions and FDR’s New Deal ended the Great Depression will tell you, with a straight face, that you are ignorant and should not be permitted to hold office if you don’t believe that all cats and dogs are the descendants of a single catdog 42 million years ago. Because, you know, that’s so much more relevant to the main political issues of the day than economic and geopolitical rationality.

The truth is that all cats and dogs are descended from a male calico catdog named Fluffy Leghumper who was born on May 17th, 41,997,010 BC. His two kitten-pups, fathered on different female catdogs, were Patches and Happy Sniffbottom. And thus cats and dogs evolved. True science fact. And if you don’t believe in Fluffy Leghumper, you’re just ignorant and you know nothing about science.

Can one dodge a dodger?

One wonders how anyone could conclude JD is running and hiding from PZ Myers, when the Fowl Atheist is already fully occupied with running and hiding from me? I attempt to explain the situation to a pair of rather dim-witted Pharyngulans who are having a hard time understanding why those who are not Ann Coulter feel no responsibility to debate PZ concerning what Ann Coulter wrote in one of her books.

Mhich: “I’ve been looking into Vox Day’s blog and he indeed knows nothing about science. Even a fifth grader knows more about science than Vox Day’s. And another thing: the only person I see that is dodging the challenge is you. If you know so much about evolution and consider Coulter’s book to be accurate, accept the Myer’s challenge. What do you have to lose?”

Reynold: “Myers mopped the floor with one of you people who supposedly knew something about science, and I posted a link to where Myers shows that Vox is ignorant as hell about science. Now, how about taking Myers up on his challenge? this is my THIRD ATTEMPT to get you to do that. Or are you still going to dodge?”

Messrs. Reynold and Mhich, why should JD, or anyone else for that matter, answer Myers’s challenge for someone other than Ann Coulter to defend Ann Coulter’s opinion, especially considering that the individual he is accused of “dodging” is known for doing some dodging of his own? Only Ann Coulter has the responsibility to answer for her own words, the same responsibility that PZ Myers has to answer for his. JD can no more argue with PZ on her behalf than he can argue with me on PZ’s. Would you seriously consider it meaningful, or even remotely relevant, if JD were to debate me on PZ’s behalf, even if he relied entirely upon PZ’s written words?

The claim that JD is “dodging” this nonsensical “challenge” is more than a little ironic considering that PZ Myers is a confirmed coward who has twice dodged public challenges to debate me. The first time, he ran from the Northern Alliance’s invitation to debate me after complaining that he had never been presented any intelligent arguments for the existence of gods. Perhaps if he stopped running away to avoid them, he might find one. He followed that up by running and hiding from an invitation to engage in a written debate concerning the scientific evidence for evolution which specifically addressed his justifications for evading the previous challenge.

As for your claim that Myers showed I am “ignorant as hell about science”, my response to the error-filled post you cited suffices to demonstrate that he did nothing of the kind.

What you clearly do not understand is that, by his own admission, PZ relies heavily upon emotional arguments rather than logical ones when he cannot simply appeal to an established scientific consensus. “I’ll also cop to the obvious fact that, knowing that reason will not get through their skills, I’m happy to use emotional arguments as well. Passion is persuasive.” His tendency to rely upon emotional rhetoric and passion rather than reason is precisely why he is afraid to debate people who rely primarily upon logic, because his ability to present reason-based arguments is relatively low. His ability to utilize reason is simply not equal to the skill of others who make use of it more effectively. PZ is without question an effective preacher to the godless choir of science fetishists, but he is remarkably unskilled at presenting convincing arguments, let alone conclusive ones, to those who do not already agree with him. Unlike you, he knows he is not an effective evangelist.

With regards to the applicability of economics, as Michael Shermer has pointed out in The Mind of the Market, there are far more similarities between economics and evolution than most people realize, dating back to the singular influence of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand on Darwin’s subsequent articulation of his theory of natural selection. Moreover, erroneous theories tend to have much in common, especially when they have become mainstream dogma. As one who has played a small role in demonstrating the critical flaws in Neo-Keynesian/Neo-Classical economic models, I am actually rather well-equipped to identify similar flaws in the Neo-Darwinian conceptual model. For example, I correctly identified that the natural selection component of the mechanism was a philosophical one, not a scientific one, and therefore potentially scientifically flawed, long before most believers in the Cult of Darwin became aware of the lack of genuine scientific evidence for it and the need to present various epicyclesalternative mechanisms.

I don’t pretend to know anywhere nearly as much about biology as PZ, but it is always a mistake to assume that an individual with a smaller set of facts at his disposal must therefore be less correct regarding the subject. Aristotelian dialectic may not always be a reliable substitute for science, but it is reliably more effective, more accurate, and more convincing to rational and unbiased observers than science-flavored, emotion-based rhetorical arguments.

It is more than a little embarrassing to the Pharyngulan community that the object of their regard doesn’t believe he can successfully win a debate with what they believe to be the equivalent of a fourth-grade elementary school student, especially when he continues to take the occasional potshot in my direction from the safety of his blog. They can manufacture all the excuses and rationalizations for him they like, but the dodging, it is observed.

VPFL Draft Day

The VPFL Draft begins in about 5 hours and fifteen minutes. Everyone has their keepers in, which are as follows:

Reverends – none, none, none
Meerkats – Arian Foster, Aaron Rodgers, Michael Turner
Banksters – Jamaal Charles, Larry Fitzgerald, Roddy White
Marauders – Philip Rivers, none, none
Redbeards – Chris Johnson, Tom Brady, none
Quixotes – Rashard Mendenhall, Vincent Jackson, none
Rhyneaux – Ray Rice, Drew Brees, Peyton Hillis
Grizzlies – LeSean McCoy, Greg Jennings, Dwayne Bowe
Sidhe – Adrian Peterson, Calvin Johnson
Swamp Spartans – Andre Johnson, MJD, Tony Romo

This is the draft order for the first round and all subsequent odd rounds. The order is reversed for even rounds, in which the Swamp Spartans pick first and the Reverends last.

UPDATE – That’s right, I went there. I drafted THE TARVARIS JACKSON EXPERIMENT to back up Aaron Rodgers. Because THIS IS HIS YEAR!

I wish I’d done a little more research before picking Crabtree over Edwards, though.

Mailvox: concerning the questions

MD has a few follow-up questions:

Enjoyed reading your answers to NYT ‘questioning’ If nothing else, I think you exhibit the (admirable) virtue of honesty. As you can probably imagine, a couple of points I need to raise:

1a) firstly, and most importantly, there is absolutely no way that evolution is ‘a minor aspect of biological science’! I wonder which professor of biological sciences you are quoting? Evolution is the central and unifying concept of modern biology & medicine. When you say you are skeptical of evolution, I’m not sure you are clear about on what level you disagree. I too (as a holder of 2 1st class BSc. s. & an MSc. in the biological sciences, you could say I am skeptical about some aspects of some hypotheses of evolutionary theory. However, Do you :

1b) believe that the Judeo-Christian literal creationist hypotheses are equally likely to be objectively true as the theories of modern evolutionary science?

1c) On what level do you NOT believe in evolution? I’ve never met anyone that says that the gene pool of one generation is IDENTICAL to the next. The basic premiss of evolutionary theory is that there is a difference (ie a CHANGE in the gene pool).

1d) From what basis do you say that mainstream scientific theory shouldn’t be taught in public schools?!

2) I agree that America could be described as a ‘Christian Nation’ as the majority of it’s citizen’s consistently describe themselves as such in all respectable polls that I have seen. [of course we shouldn’t forget that the reason that America is a Christian nation is because the Christians got rid of all the pagans! ]

However, I feel it is a bit disingenuous of an educated American to say that it was founded by Christians; the founding fathers were clearly a mixture of Christians and deists and agnostics. In the official words of John Adams : ‘As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion . . . ‘

3) on the issue of teachers leading students in prayers, I myself have no problem with this. I did have an issue with my daughter being forced to pray at school – which has now been resolved. She has decided not to, but sits amongst her peers as a time of reflection during prayer. (actually, she switches between praying and not praying – which is, from my perspective, is how it should be.) For me, the most important thing is for my children to be free to form their own beliefs.

Lastly, I think it’s important for Christians to realise that the reason that I don’t describe myself as a Christian is because the overwhelming majority of THEM have excluded ME (not the other way around), because I happen to believe that Jesus didn’t have magical powers like Harry potter, despite thinking that he was highly likely to have been an admirable and remarkable man in his times.

1a. Evolution is not the central and unifying concept of modern biology and medicine. It is almost completely irrelevant to both. No doctor, and few biologists, need know anything about evolution at all in order to perform their various medical and scientific duties. Even if you subscribe fully to whatever the Cult of Darwin’s latest dogma happens to be, this is akin to saying that the Greek Classics are the central and unifying concept of economics and plumbing. The fact that there may be some intellectual relationship, even a direct causal one, doesn’t necessarily make it the least bit relevant today. Men – religious men, ironically enough – managed to figure out both artificial selection and genetics without any help from evolutionary theory; even if true, it’s almost completely useless. True or not, evolution’s only significance is philosophical, which is why its advocates invariably sound more like cultists than scientists.

1b. There are too many hypotheses on both sides for me to possibly say. I can only say that I believe some form of Creator is far more likely to be objectively true than either abiogenesis or any form of Darwinian evolution. It may be my technological bias, but I see genes as being more akin to the primitives of a programming language than to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle gradually assembled over time by the processes of natural selection, biased mutation, genetic drift, gene flow, or any other epicyclical mechanism the Darwinian cultists can conceive. This implies both the creator of the language as well as a programmer or two.

1c. The level on which I am skeptical of evolution – I do not entirely rule out the possibility – is that any of the various evolutionary mechanisms proposed are sufficient to modify the gene pool to such an extent as to create new and entirely different species regardless of the amount of time involved.

1d. There is zero utility in attempting to teach science to schoolchildren who can’t read, can’t do math, and will never be scientists. They can’t understand it, aren’t interested in it, and have no use for it. It makes no difference if you’re trying to teach them mainstream scientific theory, iambic tetrameter, or running the 100m dash in five seconds. It isn’t ever going to happen. My return question: how can you justify teaching public schoolchildren mainstream scientific theory and not teaching them basic personal economics like how to balance a checkbook or calculate compound interest or basic physical fitness?

2. The “mixture of Christians and deists and agnostics” among the Founding Fathers was on the order of 99% to 1%. It would not merely be disingenuous, it is flat out wrong to state that America was NOT founded by Christians. There were more Founding Fathers with theological degrees than deists and atheists combined; there were more Founding Fathers who personally translated the Bible than there were deists and atheists combined. This is why even intelligent, educated atheists often find themselves inadvertently looking very historically illiterate, as they tend to be maleducated in certain areas. Unfortunately, the reason many are maleducated on this particular issue is due to an all too typical atheist dishonesty with regards to standard word definitions; in this case, whoever constructed the atheist talking point attempted to revise the term “Founding Fathers” to mean a very small number of men, as few as seven “key” Founding Fathers. This is blatantly incorrect, as there have always been two groups of Founding Fathers, the Signers and the Framers. In both cases, nearly all of the men involved were Christians.

In fact, the maleducated atheist opinion doesn’t even rise to the level of Wikipedia: “Of the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 49 were Protestants, and three were Roman Catholics.” And more detailed information is readily available.

3. Admiration, even belief, is not worship. Even belief in Jesus Christ’s “magical powers” would not be sufficient to make a Christian. Even the demons believe, but they do not worship. No man can exclude a man from the body of Christ except that man himself.

An optimistic metaphor

Joseph Lozito, husband, father, and American badass:

It turns out that Maksim Gelman wasn’t just any nutjob riding pantless on the Subway – he was a bona-fide spree killer in the middle of a 28 hour stabbing rampage that had left four people dead and five more wounded across the boroughs of New York City. Earlier in the weekend, Gelman had done a shitload of crack and murdered his stepfather and his girlfriend’s mom with a knife, stabbed his girlfriend 11 times, ran over a dude with a car, slashed another motorist, and carjacked an unsuspecting couple, stabbing both of them in the process. He was a career criminal who had completely lost his fucking shit, and now he was swinging a goddamned machete around a crowded Subway train filled with women, children, and more innocent bystanders than a superhero comic. And now he’s coming straight for Joseph Lozito, and there isn’t a hell of a lot this Pennsylvania native can do to avoid the confrontation. It’s like a bad 80s movie about gang violence on the Subway, only this was rush hour traffic, real life, and Gelman is definitely not wearing an awesome headband or listening to rad jams blasting from the tape deck on his boombox.

But Joseph Lozito isn’t just any chump on his way to work, and he sure as shit isn’t about to sit there and let some psychotic madman knife him to death without putting up a fight. This guy is a life-long MMA fan who took his love of the sport to super-fan levels – he’d been to UFC 1 in 1993, never missed a pay-per-view, and celebrated his friggin’ wedding anniversary by taking his wife to see the Ultimate Fighting Championship live.

He’s also fucking gigantic – standing 6’2″ and weighing in at 260 pounds. Gelman wasn’t going to know what the fuck hit him…. As Gelman approaches, Lozito does the last thing the knife-wielding maniac expected – he attacks.

That’s the best line in the article: “he attacks”. As my sensei always taught us, “when you go, you go!” In other words, once the moment for action arrives, commit 100 percent. Lozito appears to have had little idea what he was doing – a simple arm bar and break would have been significantly safer than a takedown – but that only emphasizes his courage and heroism.

It’s easy to be pessimistic about Americans. They tolerate one of the smartest, most predatory political classes in the history of the world. They pretty much don’t want to do anything except go to work, eat, drink beer, and watch television as their country is overrun by Mexican gangs, Somali jihadists, and people with names like Maksim.

The country is broke and heading for collapse, but there is still hope for what comes after. Because despite all its many flaws, America is still the place where MMA was invented, where paintball was invented, and men like Joseph Lozito not only fight when they’re forced to fight, but fight to win. New York City and Washington DC and Hollywood and San Francisco and Maksim Gelman aren’t America, they’re all tumors indicative of the imported cancer will eventually kill the United States. The real America is where a man isn’t trying to rule the world or live as a parasite, but merely wants to do his job, do his own thing, and kick your ass if you won’t leave him alone.

And where were the cops that Gelman confronted first? New York’s Finest where you’d expect them to be, hiding like little girls and waiting for it to be over: “Two transit cops locked themselves in the train’s front room with the conductor and didn’t immediately open the door when straphangers called for help, because they thought the madman had a gun.”

Krugman laments a lack of inflation

He also doesn’t anticipate QE3 from Jackson Hole:

in 2000 an economist named Ben Bernanke offered a number of proposals for policy at the “zero lower bound.” True, the paper was focused on policy in Japan, not the United States. But America is now very much in a Japan-type economic trap, only more acute. So we learn a lot by asking why Ben Bernanke 2011 isn’t taking the advice of Ben Bernanke 2000.

Back then, Mr. Bernanke suggested that the Bank of Japan could get Japan’s economy moving with a variety of unconventional policies. These could include: purchases of long-term government debt (to push interest rates, and hence private borrowing costs, down); an announcement that short-term interest rates would stay near zero for an extended period, to further reduce long-term rates; an announcement that the bank was seeking moderate inflation, “setting a target in the 3-4% range for inflation, to be maintained for a number of years,” which would encourage borrowing and discourage people from hoarding cash; and “an attempt to achieve substantial depreciation of the yen,” that is, to reduce the yen’s value in terms of other currencies.

Was Mr. Bernanke on the right track? I think so — as well I should, since his paper was partly based on my own earlier work. So why isn’t the Fed pursuing the agenda its own chairman once recommended for Japan?

We’ll see what Ben Shalom has to say soon enough. But I note that gold buyers would have to be salivating at the idea that the Fed would target a 4% inflation rate. I just wonder why Krugman doesn’t go all the way and call for electronic currency that actually degrades in face value over time.

And give Rick Perry some credit, if firing that public shot across Bernanke’s bow was sufficient to intimidate him. And we would be remiss to fail to note another downward revision to GDP.

Gross domestic product growth rose at annual rate of 1.0 percent the Commerce Department said, a downward revision of its prior estimate of 1.3 percent.

Don’t worry, they’ll revise it into negative territory long after the fact, just like they did for 2008.

UPDATE – “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank still has tools to stimulate the economy without providing details or signaling when or whether policy makers might deploy them.”

Translation: No QE3 until after the autumn round of market crashes.

AGW/CC exploded

Those pesky Swiss just cut the legs out from under the global warming fascists:

The first results from the lab’s CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets”) experiment published in Nature today confirm that cosmic rays spur the formation of clouds through ion-induced nucleation. Current thinking posits that half of the Earth’s clouds are formed through nucleation. The paper is entitled Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation.

This has significant implications for climate science because water vapour and clouds play a large role in determining global temperatures. Tiny changes in overall cloud cover can result in relatively large temperature changes.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a politically sensitive topic, as it provides support for a “heliocentric” rather than “anthropogenic” approach to climate change: the sun plays a large role in modulating the quantity of cosmic rays reaching the upper atmosphere of the Earth….

Climate models will have to be revised, confirms CERN in supporting literature: “[I]t is clear that the treatment of aerosol formation in climate models will need to be substantially revised, since all models assume that nucleation is caused by these vapours [sulphuric acid and ammonia] and water alone.”

So the globalists will be expected to provide substantially revised versions of models that already didn’t work in the first place. Is that the familiar spinning sound of scientific epicycles that I hear off in the distance?

Answering the NYT questions

I’m not a candidate, but Bill Keller’s questions are interesting and it would be informative if the candidates would actually answer them:

1. Is it fair to question presidential candidates about details of their faith?

Absolutely.

2. Is it fair to question candidates about controversial remarks made by their pastors, mentors, close associates or thinkers whose books they recommend?

It’s fair, but don’t be surprised when the candidates don’t agree. I respected my pastors, but I never completely agreed with any of them. No one who has ever been to a Bible Study believes that Christians don’t think for themselves.

3. (a) Do you agree with those religious leaders who say that America is a “Christian nation” or “Judeo-Christian nation?” (b) What does that mean in practice?

Of course America is a Christian nation. It was founded by Christians on predominantly Christian concepts and most of its citizens are Christians. No other nation is described by virtue of what its constitution says about religion or anything else, so why would we describe America that way?

4. If you encounter a conflict between your faith and the Constitution and laws of the United States, how would you resolve it? Has that happened, in your experience?

Work towards changing the Constitution and the laws. Isn’t that what elected leaders do? Isn’t passing new laws pretty much all that Congress does?

5. (a) Would you have any hesitation about appointing a Muslim to the federal bench? (b) What about an atheist?

Yes. Sharia is intrinsically incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. Depends on the atheist.

6. Are Mormons Christians, in your view? Should the fact that Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons influence how we think of them as candidates?

They can be, but being a Mormon doesn’t make one a Christian any more than being a Catholic does. Group identity is not a perfectly reliable guide to religious faith. That being said, I do think their Mormonism should influence how we think of Captain and Lieutenant Underoos.

7. What do you think of the evangelical Christian movement known as Dominionism and the idea that Christians, and only Christians, should hold dominion over the secular institutions of the earth?

Nothing. It’s more fringe than the Mormons or the atheists and it’s inept theology. Satan holds dominion over the Earth until Jesus comes back. And nobody gets a vote on that.

8. (a) What is your attitude toward the theory of evolution? (b) Do you believe it should be taught in public schools?

Skeptical. Of course it shouldn’t be taught in public schools. Worry about teaching an minor aspect of biological science AFTER you are able to successfully teach reading, personal economics, and math, which is not presently the case.

9. Do you believe it is proper for teachers to lead students in prayer in public schools?

Of course. A public school isn’t Congress and a prayer isn’t a law. Even under the mostly fictional “separation of church and state” doctrine, this is perfectly permissible. If either the kids or the parents don’t like it, let them pull their kids out and homeschool them.

Corruption USA

This is unsurprising, but seriously bad news even so:

Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices, according to people briefed on discussions about the deal.

In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement, said the people briefed on the talks….

Not surprising, the large banks, which are eager to reach a settlement, have grown increasingly frustrated with Mr. Schneiderman. Bank officials recently discussed asking Mr. Donovan for help in changing the attorney general’s mind, according to a person briefed on those talks. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Donovan defended his discussions with the attorney general, saying they were motivated by a desire to speed up help for troubled homeowners.

In other words, the White House is attempting to shut down the joint 50-state investigation in order to whitewash literally years of massive criminal wrongdoing by the mortgage banks, then change the laws after the fact so that all of the titles they shredded in MERS are magically returned to the banks. Their problem is that they need to get the 50 state attorney generals to sign off on the deal. Obviously, most of these champions of the law have already agreed to be bought, so they’re leaning on the last few holdouts now.

This clearly demonstrates that there is not only no law in the USA anymore, there is barely a pretense at it. Instead of shutting down the criminal organizations and imprisoning the executives responsible, they will agree upon a small fine and cover up their crimes, which include but are not limited to stealing thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of houses from homebuyers.

And the reason they need to get a deal done and let the banks off the hook? To help homeowners. Seriously. That’s the line they’re selling.

Beware the Nones of September

Germany is indicating a potential disinclination to play the Fed game:

“I regard the huge buy-up of bonds of individual states by the ECB as legally and politically questionable. Article 123 of the Treaty on the EU’s workings prohibits the ECB from directly purchasing debt instruments, in order to safeguard the central bank’s independence,” [German President Christian Wulff] said….

The blistering attack follows equally harsh words by the Bundesbank in its monthly report. The bank slammed the ECB’s bond purchases and also warned that the EU’s broader bail-out machinery violates EU treaties and lacks “democratic legitimacy”.

The combined attacks come just two weeks before the German constitutional court rules on the legality of the various bailout policies. The verdict is expected on September 7.

It’s hard to imagine that the German court won’t just rubber stamp the blatantly unconstitutional, overtly illegal actions of the EU and ECB in the same way that the U.S. Supreme Court has seen no evil in the illegal actions of the U.S. Congress and the Federal Reserve.

However, the Germans aren’t always predictable, they do tend to be sticklers for the letter of the law, and there is no question that if the letter of the law is respected, the bailouts will be pronounced illegal. The possibility the court will do so may explain this recent market development:

Insurance on the debt of several major European banks has now hit historic levels, higher even than those recorded during financial crisis caused by the US financial group’s implosion nearly three years ago. Credit default swaps on the bonds of Royal Bank of Scotland, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Intesa Sanpaolo, among others, flashed warning signals on Wednesday.

Interesting times, interesting times….