Vox Popoli

The third invasion has been called off, even if a proxy can be found to start it:

A senior U.S. strategic analyst says the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, sent Israel an unequivocal message stating that Israel does not have a “green light” from the U.S. to attack Iranian nuclear facilities….

Mullen spoke after returning from a visit to Israel, during which he met with Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and other senior IDF officers. Cordesman said Mullen came to Israel to deliver a message that Israel did not have a green light to attack Iran and that it would not receive U.S. support for such a move.

I don’t see how there could ever be any need to attack Iran over nuclear weapons anyhow. Since we are reliably informed that religion prevents scientific development, there’s obviously no way that the Islamic Republic could ever develop modern weaponry. QED.

Here’s a surprisingly nice pair of reviews. First, Jordan Richardson for Blog Critics:

I didn’t want to like this book….Day plays the same game as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and others. He does not claim to do otherwise. This is not a book that presents a substitute premise to the claims of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. It is, fundamentally, a volume unmistakably designed around the initiative of simply proving them wrong….

If an intelligent and well-written evaluation of the New Atheists’ core arguments is an attractive notion, Vox Day’s The Irrational Atheist is one of the most precise works available to date.

And while Bethyada isn’t in complete accord with everything in the book, he seems to have enjoyed it nonetheless. I will point out, however, that despite its lack of utility in a broader sense, the fractal intelligence rebuttal is correct in the particular context of the “Ultimate 747” argument given Dawkins’s very poor definition of complexity as nothing more than sheer quantity of information:

Vox is witty. He is both very clever and very funny…. What is useful in this foray into the New Atheist territory is that Vox lets them choose the battlefield and the weapons. And while Vox has no hesitancy in demolishing the arguments with his opponents’ swords, he frequently just sharpens them before handing them back leaving the New Atheists to eviscerate themselves!

Daniel Finklestein explains the existence of some of the more bizarre arguments of the New Atheists, among many other things:

It is commonly thought that we have theories and that they are tested by the facts. The opposite is true. We have theories and then we strive mightily to fit the facts into them, ignoring those that don’t quite work or reinterpreting them if we have to. The more we have at stake emotionally, the more pressing this task becomes.

And now, for an extraordinary example of this cognitive contortion in action, consider this attempt by the Teapot Atheist to turn around the damning body count observation that has produced more spectacular atheist twists and tumbles than any other aspect of the ongoing debate.

So, at its very highest, atheists have caused almost a whopping 100 million deaths throughout world history. This is about 1/20th the casualties caused by the morally depraved theists who have dominated history. Given that statistically about 16% of the world is non-religious but only about 5% of total world military/genocidal violence has been caused by atheism, we can safely add one more piece of evidence that theists have proven themselves to be far and away more morally depraved, violent, aggressive, brutally selfish, and downright nasty to each other than us infidels.

Bear with me as I point out the logical errors of this argument without even bothering to dispute any of the extremely dubious “facts” that he asserts.

1. We are often told that “non-religious” cannot be equated with “atheist”, especially by atheists troubled by the prison statistics that show how the non-religious are overrepresented in the criminal population. This is a typical atheist deceit, counting the non-religious as atheists when it suits them, denying that they are atheists when it doesn’t.

2. Even if the religious affiliation statistics are correct for today, this does not mean they were correct 10 years ago, let alone 1,000.

3. By what standard does this individual label anyone, or any action, “morally depraved”?

4. There have been approximately 89 atheist leaders throughout world history. By the Teapot Atheist’s own admission, those 89 atheists have accounted for 1/20th the FATALITIES – casualties include but usually don’t imply deaths – so if there have been more than 1,780 theistic leaders who have, as the Teapot Atheist declares, dominated recorded world history, then atheists are clearly the more lethally inclined.

5. Curiously enough, I calculated a conservative estimate of 1,781 Christian leaders of Byzantium from 392 to 1453 and Christendom from 800 to the present. Multiplying this figure by 5 to account for Africa, Asia, North America, South America and the South Pacific, and then again by 5 to account for previous historical epochs counted by the Teapot Atheist, we get a very conservative figure of approximately 44,525 historical theistic leaders. This is far, far too low, of course, since our recent reading of The History of the Peloponnesian War shows that there were hundreds of city-states where now there are simply the two nation-states of Greece and Italy, but even so, it suffices to demonstrate that atheist leaders are at least 25x more inclined to behave in a murderous fashion than theist leaders according to the Teapot Atheist’s own statistical measure!

If atheists were truly rational and guided by objective evidence as they claim rather than simple loyalty to their preconceived notions as Finklestein asserts most men are, they would accept the legitimacy of the historical body count argument against atheism and attempt to understand why so many of their co-non-religionists are inordinately inclined to commit mass murder once they find themselves in a position that enables them to do so. Instead, they repeatedly humiliate themselves in public by attempting to deny the undeniable in defense of the indefensible.

It’s also clear that most atheists should stay far, very far, away from statistics and probability when arguing about religion. There is an increasing body of evidence demonstrating that from the Archbishop of Oxford on down, they simply don’t understand either.

Apparently someone in the government is under the opinion that American travellers aren’t so much passengers, but pets:

The Electronic ID Bracelet, as it’s referred to, would be worn by every traveler “until they disembark the flight at their destination.” Yes, you read that correctly. Every airline passenger would be tracked by a government-funded GPS, containing personal, private and confidential information, and would shock the customer worse than an electronic dog collar if the passenger got out of line.

If the TSA, two-hour pre-flight arrivals and the rising price of oil don’t kill off the airline industry, this should do the trick. I think I can safely guarantee that neither I nor any member of my family will ever fly on an airplane again for any reason should this brainstorm ever be forced upon the airlines. I can’t imagine any possibility for abuse of this little piece of technological innovation, can you?

Hey, why not just go all the way and make it a collar? Sure, the concept sounds wildly insane, even for federal bureaucrats, but given what’s happened in the last eight years, can you really be so sure that this won’t be crammed down the throats of those dwelling in the land of the free and the home of the brave? I wait with an almost unholy glee to hear the lapdogs of the conservative commentariat defending this federal brainstorm. Because if Americans don’t wear shock collars, then we’ve surrendered in Iraq, Israel will be destroyed by Iran and the terrorists have won.

Isn’t that what all the hysterical neocons tell us whata specific timetable for withdrawal is?

Iraq’s national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.

The comments by Mouwaffak al-Rubaie were the strongest yet by an Iraqi official about the deal now under negotiation with U.S. officials. They came a day after Iraq’s prime minister first said publicly that he expects the pending troop deal with the United States to have some type of timetable for withdrawal.

Forget the timetable. Get out at year’s end. The stability of Iraq is not a legitimate American concern. If Washington is worried about democratic legitimacy, they should be drawing up plans for the invasion of Brussels and Paris about now… and come to think of it, I’m sure they can find more than a few jihadists to fight there while they’re at it.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say that she glances at a topographical map of it and claims to have reached the summit on that basis. Rather like Richard Dawkins’s absurd claims to have somehow refuted the massive Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas in less than three paltry pages, Kelly doesn’t even make a half-hearted attempt at addressing the issues raised in the fourth chapter of The Irrational Atheist:

Reason is a Religion… with none of the defining characteristics of a religion. It is because Vox Day says so in Chapter 4, entitled “The Religion of Reason.” Aside from the humorous comparison between an atheist politician and a “toothless, illiterate, homosexual Afro-Hispanic crack whore with a peg-leg,” his opening salvo misses the point when he adds in the footnote that “it appears that telling people how evil and stupid they are may not be the best way of convincing them….” (p. 61) The reason that atheists are distrusted and, in some cases, despised is not because of intellectual elitism and snobbery—it’s because atheism has been caricatured and stigmatized as a pseudo-Satanic cult in most popular media. It is still not socially acceptable to be as open with one’s non-belief as those who believe are. Walking or driving around with merchandise that announces one’s lack of superstitious belief still draws glares or snide remarks mixed in with the head shaking and sympathetic looks. Meanwhile, almost nobody looks askance at people wearing jewelry depicting crosses and dead crucified men, and Jesus fish are practically ubiquitous. Nonetheless, atheists are unpopular—just not for that reason.

I always enjoy unpopular people attempting to explain to me the real reason they are unpopular, don’t you? Because, after all, they should know, right? In this one paragraph, Kelly sheds a great deal of light on how she managed to become that rare bird, the female militant atheist. If she had even a smidgeon of the social awareness that God gives the average computer programmer, she’d understand that the reason no one looks askance at Christian accoutrements is that the Christian who makes a public statement is making statement about himself and his own beliefs. Atheists, on the other hand, are making a statement about everyone else and everyone else’s beliefs. Unsurprisingly, everyone else tends to look on this askance.

Let me see if I can explain this in sufficiently simple terms. If I wear a shirt that says “I like chocolate”, this does not offend anyone who prefers strawberry or vanilla. It is merely providing you with information about me. If, on the other hand, I wear a shirt that says “Vanilla is evil and everyone who likes it is stupid and bad”, then I should not be surprised when those who happen to like vanilla are not favorably disposed towards me. It is not only providing you with information about me, it is providing you with information about my negative attitude towards you. And to those atheists who are so narcissistic as to believe that another individual’s religion is a statement that somehow concerns them, I merely say: Get over yourself! Life, the universe and everything are not about you!

Most non-socially autistic individuals are aware that their actions don’t take place in a vaccuum. By announcing “I am an atheist”, one is also announcing to the world “There is a high probability that I possess a lot of the same fundamental personality defects that the annoying snot-nosed loser you hated at college did.” Christians understand that they are lumped in with annoying doorknockers and sanctimonious Biblethumpers, which is why they often behave in a manner intended to put at ease those who find such behaviors annoying. If atheists don’t like being regarded as annoying atheists, then they should stop behaving in an annoying manner and make it very clear from the start that they have no problem whatsoever with whatever religious absurdity the other person happens to believe. It’s really not that hard… if you’re not myopically self-obsessed.

Vox relies on many non-scientific studies done by news organizations to prove his points in this chapter, which is fine as they can be a legitimate gauge of popular culture, but one must be careful to remember that these surveys are subject to many confounding factors that limit their usefulness—the most obvious being selection bias and lack of randomization. When a person chooses to call in to a place and voluntarily take a survey about an issue, they tend to have very strong feelings about the issue. People who don’t find religion to be an issue are not likely to waste their time.

Surprise, surprise, Kelly not only doesn’t believe in God, she doesn’t believe the efficacy of polling when she doesn’t like the results. At least, unlike the New Atheists for the most part, I actually made use of relevant and legitimate data produced by reputable organizations as well as noting the fundamental flaws related to religion-related polls in an earlier chapter. Now, how, precisely, would one produce “scientific studies” of the popularity or unpopularity of atheists anyhow?

With that out of the way, he claims that people use the religion of a politician to have confirmation of their personal morality. Given the fact that within Christendom, people’s morality can vary widely even on issues such as abortion, capital punishment, and war, it wouldn’t seem to be a very accurate or reliable tool. With our current president displaying extreme bellicosity and having the honor of putting more people to death than any other during his gubernatorial term in Texas, his conversations with Jesus don’t appear to have had any effect. Life is precious and sacred—until it comes out of a vagina. After that, fuck turning the other cheek. Is anybody else confused? What happened to praying for those who persecute you and giving the thief your shirt after he steals your jacket? It seems that people are talking to lots of different Jesuses. Or the Jesus they are talking to suffers from dissociative identity disorder.

As Richard Dawkins pointed out in The Blind Watchmaker, some information is better than none. Like a number of Internet atheists, Kelly has averred that a person’s atheism says nothing about that individual except their position on the existence of God, so she shouldn’t find it difficult to understand that people seldom like the idea of electing a complete tabula rasa, Barack Obama’s current popularity notwithstanding.

Day admits that these moral boundaries are theoretical, and thus nullifies his own argument. We have already figured out that religiosity is no guide to an individual’s behavior, whether they are engaged in politics or not. The Jimmy Bakkers and Ted Haggards of the world only confirm the hypocrisy that is evident in the actions of most every believer. Given these facts, perhaps we need a better moral determinant. Maybe we could try some less nebulous ways of getting this information—such as asking them? I know, it’s a radical change from assuming that they hold to a set of beliefs handed down to fictional characters millennia ago, but it just might offer more insight into the personal morality of our leaders.

The fact that the moral boundaries are abstract is hardly irrelevant given the important role that perception plays in democratic elections, especially at the national level where most of the voters will never meet or lay eyes upon the candidate. The fact that a man may not abide perfectly by the moral standard indicated by his professed religion is not synonymous with a complete absence of information about his morals and beliefs. Kelly is simply bab
bling here, she’s in over her head again and she doesn’t realize it. I wonder if she realizes that she is seriously suggesting that the electorate should ask politicians to publicly define their personal moralities. Can anyone spot the small logical flaw in that brilliant plan?

Day then uses the absence of defining characteristics of atheism, aside from lack of god-belief, to bolster his argument that there is no way for a person to know what particular pursuits will be undertaken by the politician with no religion. While I agree that this is the case, it seems ironic that he (admittedly) reverses his opinion in this circumstance. Isn’t this chapter called “The Religion of Reason?” If it is in fact a religion, then there would surely be some tenets and guidelines.

Like most social autists, Kelly has trouble recognizing metaphor and other non-literal forms of communication. Reason is more precisely described as a fetish (any object eliciting unquestioning reverence, respect, or devotion) for most atheists, although they honor it primarily in absentia.

Moreover, he proceeds to go on and claim that, by and large, atheists “parasitically” adopt the morality of their “hosts”, AKA the religious people around us. Could it not be the case that the similarities in ethical belief systems lie in the evolutionary origins of morality? Humans have been selected for traits such as reciprocal altruism and empathy, and while the details may vary over time and cultures, the tendencies that lead one to believe that some standards must be adhered to have been hard-wired into the brains of those most successful at reproduction. The specific indulgences, such as premarital sex, prohibited by religion are just as easily discarded by the religious as the non-religious. It is not random, as he asserts, but rather based in our nature as social creatures dependant on one another and the maintenance of stable societies. Religion may have played a role in the establishment and development of these groups, but we have moved past the point where punishment from sky-daddys is necessary. That’s what the justice system is for, and if that isn’t enough of a deterrent, neither is god.

Could it be the case? Perhaps. Is it the case? Almost surely not, given the historical evidence of the difference between Christian morality and the pagan moralities that preceded and followed it. Ethical belief systems are far less similar than atheists would usually have one think, of course, an atheist attempting to compare ethical systems is rather like a deaf man attempting to distinguish between Mozart and Vivaldi.

As he again conflates atheism with communist fascism as proof of the willingness of atheists to kill, need I remind anybody of the violence inspired by religion throughout history? Oh wait, that only applies to atheists. When it’s religious people doing the killing, they’re merely power-hungry humans lying about their religious belief to attain the trust of the populace. It has nothing to do with religion. And leaders who claim a religious affiliation are still more trustworthy, despite all of that. Special pleading, anybody?

And incredibly, Kelly makes yet another lame attempt to claim that militant atheists were No True Atheists because they also happened to belong to a certain political party. It appears she hasn’t made it to Chapter XIII yet. The relevant point isn’t that religious people don’t ever kill – all are fallen – but that religious people are ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE less likely than atheists to kill when they are in positions that enable them to do so. I suppose it should be expected that Kelly would find this statistical reality to be an incredible coincidence, though, since her entire worldview is founded on a series of incredible improbabilities occurring for no reason at all. Life must be interesting for the atheist, coming as it does in a series of totally unexpected, completely unconnected surprises.

While this may be what passes for “well-reasoned” by an atheist, it isn’t a rebuttal and it doesn’t even rise to the level of a genuine critique. Kelly must be able to do better than this; she should be embarrassed to be presenting this shallow, stream-of-consciousness drivel with a straight face. Wakarimasu ka?

The recently deceased Thomas Disch was a fine and underappreciated literary talent laboring primarily in the SF literary ghetto. Like all too many creative talents, he was used, abused, and cast aside by the sharks in suits who sustain themselves upon such prey; The Lion King is reportedly based upon a treatment he submitted to Disney although he apparently never saw any benefit from its blockbuster success. (Today’s Lesson: never work with Hollywood in any of its guises.)

I couldn’t help but feel that his sad and self-inflicted end could reasonably be described as unexpected, however, given the attitude expressed in this 2001 interview with Strange Horizons:

DH: Was it a struggle to establish your career? What was the science fiction field like in the early ’60s?

TD: Wide open, for me. I quickly got pretty good, to the degree that it sent out warning signals to some people. Even the dislike of those who didn’t like me was a kind of compliment, in the form that it took. Algis Budrys talked of me as a “nihilist.” That’s the word people use when they want to say, “this is our enemy. He believes nothing.” Meaning, he believes nothing that we believe in (and we believe a lot of crap). So you have the advantage over them that way, even in their enmity.

DH: Were you trying to do something different–

TD: I didn’t have to try. If I just followed my vision, that was different. There were lots of people my own age and generation and background who were writing similarly to me, and so I was scarcely alone — I was part of the “New Wave,” which meant: college-educated smartypants. The old kind of smartass writer had only had a high school education. Science fiction in the ’30s and ’40s was a working class literature, like the detective pulps. The whole country gradually was becoming more educated, and I was part of that whole transition.

DH: How much of this was also a product of, or influenced by, the cultural and social changes going on in the ’60s?

TD: Well, we were the cultural and social change going on. We were part of it, we reflected it in our own lives, we mirrored it, and we stimulated it by our writings and other vehicles. It was mutually reinforcing. It’s nice to have been part of history that way.

DH: Did you have a sense at the time that you and your colleagues were doing something different and new?

TD: Oh, sure, we knew it. It was rather a glorious sensation. We knew we were kicking ass. And that was fun.

DH: So the reception was positive at the time, within the field, within fandom as it existed then?

TD: Well, it was positive and negative. Always, the older generation that’s being shoved aside isn’t too happy about that. The older ones had a choice — they could join us, or they could try and fight back. It was really a case of which ones were going to decide to be fuddy-duddies, and which ones were going to move along.

There was one generation right on the cusp — Brian Aldiss, Phil Dick, people in that generation — that had the choice of becoming New Wave with us, and taking advantage of all of the liberties of writing — the adult-rated language, and situations, and comedy. You could finally write for grown-ups! That was wonderful! For lots of the older writers, it was catnip to them, and they had a rebirth; Damon Knight was one of them. But there were a few stick-in-the muds who just couldn’t move with the times, like Algis Budrys, and Ray Bradbury, and I think they sort of stayed back in the Paleolithic.

Every generation believes it is something new, something different and unique. Every generation believes it is immortal and imagines that for the first time in history, time will stop and stand still in order to bask in the marvel of this glorious, self-confident New Youth. Every generation sneers at the hard-earned wisdom of the elders and scorns the democracy of the dead.

“Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.” And eventually, the nihilist comes to understand the arrogance and certainty of youth fades with its beauty and there is nothing new under the sun.

Still, Disch had the courage to write the world as he saw it rather than the way he wished it to be. One must honor him for that, even if one regrets his dearth of hope.

The quiz covering the events of Book Seven, which took place during the eighteenth and nineteenth years of the war can be taken here.

The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.1 to 1.115.

The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.116 to 2.46.

The History of the Peloponnesian War 2.47 to 2.103.

The History of the Peloponnesian War 3.1 to 3.116.

The History of the Peloponnesian War 4.1 to 4.135.

The History of the Peloponnesian War 5.1 to 5.116.

The History of the Peloponnesian War 6.1 to 6.105

This is where it all comes to a climax; it’s fascinating to see the way in which Athenian strengths and weaknesses are all brought into highlight by the stresses of war.

Miss Lucas takes vociferous objection to a few of the developments I noted in today’s WND column:

It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad, the way Britain is bending over, thanking Islam for the abuse, and asking for more please. The stories just keep coming, and honestly, it’s starting to piss me off on a personal level. My grandfather, and many of yours, are dead because they felt Britain and the rest of conquered Europe worthy enough to help defend. I begin to doubt why they bothered, as it seems their efforts merely put off the destruction of that civilization by about 70 years.

The thing that I find remarkable about all of this is the degree to which many people of all creeds are genuinely surprised to discover that taking Christ out of the historical Christendom is turning out to have a variety of major cultural effects on the inhabitants of that particular land mass over time. Societies have inertia and these sorts of cultural and religious changes require generations to achieve their full impact. I have yet to see anyone make a serious case that these changes are likely to be for the better in the long run.

Ah well. You can take the Norman out of Normandy, but ….

Dittoheads are better informed than NPRniks:

Limbaugh’s audience is often underestimated by critics who don’t listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identify themselves as “liberal,” according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of “news knowledge questions,” Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience — scored higher than NPR listeners. The study found that “readers of newsmagazines, political magazines and business magazines, listeners of Rush Limbaugh and NPR and viewers of the Daily Show and C-SPAN are also much more likely than the average person to have a college degree.”

I don’t know why this comes as such a surprise to people. No one actually listens to NPR for information, they listen to NPR in order to FEEL smart. Tuning out while someone blathers on and on about hand-woven dolls made from dried out swamp weeds in Zambia or some forgotten jazz artist that no one has listened to in forty years doesn’t actually teach you anything, but it does let you pretend that you’ve learned something. For all that his political analysis is often imperfect, Rush does at least expect his listeners to pay attention to what he’s saying.

I would love to see the results of an NPR audience tested one week after listening to their favorite shows. I’ll bet they couldn’t even name most of the general subjects to which they supposedly listened, much less recall any of the details. It’s designed to go in one ear and out the other, much like most modern college educations.