Vox Popoli

Feminists decide they aren’t so keen on that whole evolution thing after all:

Note that his child is valuable because she loves him unconditionally and because she is genetically close to him. In other words, her value as a human being is contingent on him. And that’s exactly why his wife doesn’t matter as much.

That’s a incorrect characterization. The child is more valuable to the father because she possesses his genetics, this says nothing about relative values as human beings. This is precisely as it should be according to the Selfish Gene theory popularized by Richard Dawkins. On what possible grounds can Feministe object to any of this, given that it’s merely evolutionary biology in action?

And I give full credit to the man for telling his wife that if she aborted his child, he would divorce her. I certainly wouldn’t remain married to such a monster myself, any more than I’d stay with a psychopath who crept out at night to torture and kill puppies and kittens.

Women who pay others to kill their unborn children are evil, inhuman monsters, more disgusting and contemptible than any National Socialist death camp worker or Maoist Red Guard.

Calling a feminist a feminazi is an insult to the German National Socialist Workers Party.

Attention all feminists who wish to threaten not to marry or have sex with Mr. Day, the line forms on the right. Those wishing to express gratitude that they are not married to Mr. Day, please line up on the left. Those who find themselves nauseous or faint-headed should retire to the parlor where various buckets and couches have been prepared for your convenience.

Mr. Day shall strive to do his utmost to survive his disappointment at his limited marital and sexual prospects.

And so we see what was always clear from the start, Cosmos simply doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about and is lurching wildly about due to his intellectual foundation of historical ignorance. This ignorance really isn’t his fault, most people are astonishingly so these days and it’s hard to know what you don’t know when you know nothing.

However, only a fool persists in continually demonstrating his ignorance rather than choosing to learn from those who demonstrably possess the knowledge that he lacks.

No, I don’t thnk the lethality of the inquistion is irrelevent. If only 2 people died or suffered as a result it would never have been recorded.

But what results from an organized attempt at killing, torture and the imposition of suffering and persecutioin is significant?

You seem to know what level would make it insignificant. I’d be curious to know what level you think makes it significant.

For me, I’ll go with 10,000 deaths at the hand of a torturing christian makes it “significant”.

I quote myself: “The 763-page report states that approximately 1,250 sentences of death were meted out, around one percent of the 125,000 heresy trials, over a period of 356 years. Accounting for population differences, it was thus about one-half as deadly on an annual basis as children’s bicycles in the United States. (This is about one-quarter of the 6,000 deaths usually estimated by academic historians, however the larger number refers to the entire [set of] Inquisition[s], not only the Spanish.)”

True, 3.51 deaths per year are more than two, but arguably not enough more to put the Spanish Inquisition on par with the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Killing Fields or the Great Leap Forward. The myth of the dread Inquisitor owes more to Dostoevsky and “The Brothers Karamazov” than to any historical documentation; it should not be necessary to point out that basing one’s view of history on a piece of fiction, however classic, is unlikely to yield particularly accurate results.

Uneducated little boys
Should stick to playing with their toys,
Lest they show how history
Remains to them a mystery.

For by his own open admission,
The nature of the Inquisition
Was not at all significant,
Which means once more he’ll have to front.

Little though it will avail,
We have all seen right through his veil.
And so the puppy slinks away
Wet and wearing Eau Vox Day.

A campfire song for those few children not being abused who will be attending Vacation Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life Camp this summer.

I have decided to follow Darwin
I have decided to follow Darwin
I have decided to follow Darwin
No turning back, no turning back

No God above me, I’m just a monkey
No Hell below me, I’m a damn monkey
I think I’ll hit that junk in the trunkee
No turning back, that’s bloody whack

Though none go with me, still I will follow
There is no good no evil or sorrow
Morality we’ll just have to borrow
So watch out Jack, don’t turn your back

I have decided to follow Darwin
I have decided to follow Darwin
I have decided to follow Darwin
Don’t turn your back, monkeys attack

The highlight of the camp is the big Tug of Natural Selection at the end of the week, after which the winners take turns distributing their selfish genes among the girls on the losing side.

Fun is had by all!

Normally, I’d be very tempted to call BS on this story, as all of the so-called Satanic sex abuse cases in the States were concocted by child care bureaucrats. However, in this case, the reported filming of the alleged abuse forces one maintain an open mind for the time being:

Three women teachers were among six people arrested yesterday accused of sedating and sexually abusing children as young as 3 at a school near Rome.

The teachers — two of whom are grandmothers who had taught at the school and at Sunday school for decades — are said to have part in the repeated abuse of 15 children aged 3 and 5 for a year, filming them in sexual acts with satanic overtones at the teachers’ homes and in a wood.

The others arrested were a female caretaker, a former producer of children’s programmes for the state television station RAI, and a local petrol pump attendant. The television producer is married to one of the arrested teachers.

The alleged abuse — in the town of Rignano Flaminio, 25 miles (40km) north of Rome — came to light when some of the children began describing their “games” to their parents. They drew pictures of a “man in black” who wore a hood and drank his own blood, and said they had played a game in which “a wolf chases a squirrel and eats it”.

Color me skeptical for the time being. But if it turns out to be true, we may see a revival of witch burnings and justly so.

What I can’t figure out is why people are always so surprised when it turns out that it’s the teachers and coaches who are abusing the kids. It’s Nature 101. Predators always go where the prey is. I assume that anyone who is tremendously enthusiastic about spending lots of time with kids has something wrong with them, especially if it’s a man with no children of his own.

And yet people wonder why we don’t just blindly trust everything that anyone who claims to be a scientist says:

The current debate about global warming is “completely irrational,” and people need to start taking a different approach, say two Ottawa scientists.

Carleton University science professor Tim Patterson said global warming will not bring about the downfall of life on the planet.

Patterson said much of the up-to-date research indicates that “changes in the brightness of the sun” are almost certainly the primary cause of the warming trend since the end of the “Little Ice Age” in the late 19th century. Huan emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas of concern in most plans to curb climate change, appear to have little effect on global climate, he said.

“I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are saying, (is) we’re about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere,” said Patterson. “The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it’s not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles.”

The underlying reason for the global warming hysteria is closely connected to the distinction that I’ve been demonstrating exists between atheism and science… and not even atheism proper but rather the neomateriosophers and scientists. Since Materiosophy is dedicated to nothing but the perfecting of Man, it is perfectly content to hijack science or religion at any time, depending upon what is more suitable at the moment.

Of late, that has happened to be climate science, but as soon as scientists satisfy themselves that global warming is not anthropogenic, they will come under the same sort of savage attack that is customarily directed towards the religious faithful. We’re already seeing that happen, which is a sign that the high point of the global warming scare has already passed.

And of course the debate is irrational. How could it possibly be anything else, considering that the driving force behind it are the most irrational atheists of all, the false ones.

Given the way in which Pindar manages to completely fail not only Analogy 101, but also Reading Comprehension:

Comparing Evangelical Christians to Gottfried Leibniz, a man of the highest intellectual ability is absolutely absurd. Evangelical Christians, on the whole, along with the “New Atheists” have absolutely no intellectual weight to go along with their arguments in comparison to Leibniz. So Vox and Sam Harris and other mental lightweights are Leibniz and Spinoza now? Wow. How standards have changed. When has Beale and Dawkins et. al are equally unlearned in each other’s fields, equally arrogant and equally ignorant of history. The history of science, the history of religion. Comparing yourself to Leibniz is like comparing Britney Spears to Maria Callas.

People wonder at times why I constantly mock the reading comprehension of many of my critics, when the answer is pretty obvious. Some of these critics are just rather stupid and therefore incapable of understanding anything that lacks pictures, of course, but the majority of them are simply so eager to go on the attack that they start scribbling madly before stopping to confirm that they indeed read what they thought they read.

Pindar likely falls in the latter category, as he manages to not only miss the point but also gets the analogy precisely backward. I didn’t compare any individual to any other historical individual, nor compare myself to Newton, (much less Leibniz), but rather noted that the intellectual motivation and fundamental worldview which fuels the New Atheists’ evangelism is the same optimistic materialist spirit that inspired Leibniz, whereas Newton’s essential pessimism and eschatonic expectations are clearly recognizable in modern evangelical Christians.

(To make it very simple for Pindar: I compared the Christians to NEWTON, as everyone but you understood. Now, go brush up on Dick and Jane and leave the adults to their discussion.)

The most important difference between Newton and Leibniz is not that one’s calculus is geometric and the other’s theoretical, but rather the latter’s belief in the improvability of Man and the former’s skepticism regarding the same. It’s interesting to note that this basic difference may have informed their approach to the calculus, as Newton’s approach – like the Christian’s approach to Man – is essentially empirical, whereas the Leibnizian/New Atheist arguments are primarily theory-based.

Where the analogy fails, of course, is that Leibniz’s theories corresponded very well indeed with Newtown’s geometric empiricism, whereas New Atheist theory – or New Natural Philosopher theory as it would be more properly named – is contradicted by the observable evidence at nearly every turn.

Even their simplest, most well-known claims are easily dismissed. Some of them I have already publicly dismantled, others will be addressed in the book. But the key is to understand that the New Atheists are not scientists and that they have no genuine interest in or commitment to scientage or scientody in their own rights.

Auguste requests evidence:

Until someone makes even the slightest attempt to reconcile Vox’s discussion and promoting of his own books in this very space with the position you’re taking here, I don’t see any more point in arguing this.

This is more than a little ironic, considering the complaints made at Pandagon and other places that I had NOT divulged my identity when WND interviewed me in my fiction-writing capacity some years ago. I kept my two writing hats largely separate until after numerous attempts to “out” me had already taken place, and I still do to a certain extent. True, it may be pointless within the blogosphere, but then the blogosphere is but a tiny fraction of the population. In any case, proof of a malicious intent to out isn’t all hard to determine considering the references to a “dirty little secret” and statements such as: “turns out WorldNetDaily’s Vox Day has a real name after all” and “his site tells us nothing about who he actually is”.

I note that Auguste hasn’t admitted that the Wikipedia entry – which I did not create – was created after most of the attempted outings. Indeed, if you look at the original entry, it’s clear that the initial Wikipedia entry was little more than an attempt to out itself. Despite that, I still prefer to leave my personal life and that of my family members out of the public discussion. Obviously, it’s not always possible, but that’s my preference and I appreciate that most of my critics, even some of the more persistently aggressive ones, respect my preference in the matter. I attempt to afford them the same courtesy in return.

I don’t consider myself a public figure, and except when it suits them to argue otherwise, I rather doubt that any my critics truly think that I’m well-known enough to be considered one either. And it was interesting to note how critics quickly latched onto one family story they hoped would make me look bad, while completely ignoring the much more publicized story that tended put me in a rather better light.

Now, I never had any expectation of privacy under this pen name, which the sufficiently intelligent have always known from the start given the very nature of the name. In fact, I regularly publish under another name which perhaps three people who read this blog – and none of my critics – happen to know. It’s no big secret either, it’s just that particular publishing arena doesn’t happen to have any malicious people attempting to harm others by publicly revealing their identities. And you know, there just may be one or two others too….

My position has always been that it is usually both obnoxious and malicious to purposefully reveal an identity behind a pen name, regardless of the lengths to which the individual goes or does not go to maintain his anonymity.

Meanwhile, I note that Devious Diva should perhaps be arguing with Jeff Fecke, not Michael:

Well,excuse me for being naive when I started writing but I never imagined what would happen a few years down the line. Forgive me for not being psychic?

Now I’m angry because you don’t know what it is like to be threatened. I do and it is not about being funny or clever and calling someone a “cowardly pussy”

You would be hard pushed to find me saying anything bad about anyone ( that’ll take a few days of your time) but really… I make an exception… fuck you.

You have NO idea

That’s an interesting defense, considering that Mr. Fecke of the Blog of the Moderate Left has built his case around the idea that a single post made in a gaming newsgroup five years before I began writing about politics is sufficient cause to permit all subsequent “outings”. Perhaps Mr. Fecke would like to address her here and explain to her why her position is incorrect.

It’s possible that Michael doesn’t know what it’s like to be threatened, but I certainly do. It happens from time to time, whether it’s Jews threatening to have the JDL harass me, feminists threatening to castrate me or have their boyfriends rape me, or CAIR running a mass email campaign against me and complaining about me in the Star Tribune. But they’re only words, after all… interestingly enough, the volume of such threats dropped about 90 percent right after that “flaming sword” picture was posted in an interview. It seems people realized that the whole martial arts/gym/guns thing wasn’t just a pose.

As if any of them could even take Spacebunny’s dog. Some days, I’m not even sure I could handle her dainty little flower.

Anyhow, it’s pretty simple. Either you consistently refer to people by their pen names or by their real identities. I contend that the former is much more courteous. But if you vary your behavior depending upon whether you like the person or not, you’re just a malicious jerk, and if you criticize others for revealing the identities of those you like while revealing the identities of those you don’t, then you’re a malicious jerk and a hypocrite to boot.

One of them, anyhow, is with its definition. Scott Adams accurately pokes the concept of falsifiability with a sharp stick:

Infotainment questions for the day:

1. Do we have the technology to seed that planet with life?

2. How do we know the Gliese 581 Csians didn’t seed life on Earth?

It seems to me that we now have a falsifiable hypothesis for Intelligent Design on Earth. My hypothesis is that it came from Gliese 581 C. I call that science. We should teach it in schools.

1. Assuming we can hit something that far away, yes.

2. We don’t, actually, but it will certainly be amusing to ask Richard Dawkins to explain why he is sure it almost certainly didn’t happen thanks to Natural Selection multiplied by a whole lot of time.

This is the bit from Quicksilver, the first novel in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, that got me thinking about the way in which the clash between the New Atheists and evangelical Christians is a continuation of the fundamental dichotomy between the worldview of Leibniz and the worldview of Newton:

“Rude and stupid, I know, but it is my duty to make conversation. You are saying it should be the goal of all Natural Philosophers to restore peace and harmony to the world of men. This I cannot dispute.”

The above quote is Daniel Waterhouse speaking to Leibniz.

Justin doesn’t understand the difference between morality and legality, or between the personal and the political:

After a week or two of browsing, it doesn’t appear Vox has any understanding of Libertarian political philosophy whatsoever–and neither do the people who are commenting.

Then you need to read a lot more, Justin, and a lot more carefully, because your assertion is demonstrably ludicrous. You’re confusing two things, one individual’s opinion on various, mostly non-political matters and advocacy of the full force of government-imposed law. No matter how deeply you search the archives, I’ll bet you can’t find more than three things that I have advocated that contradict the Libertarian political philosophy, and I have previously made the case for all three of those things being more properly libertarian than the Libertarian position.

As someone else has already pointed out, Confucius was significantly more influential in Chinese culture than Lao Tzu. This should be rather obvious, as only Russia and Japan have cultural traditions less respectful of the individual than China. It’s like complaining that I left out Solzhenitsyn and only took Lenin’s philosophy into account when writing about the Soviet Union.

Justin’s quixotic assertion reminds me of the Libertarian Politics radio guy who is supporting Giuliani for the presidency. It’s almost hard to respond to them because you’re so occupied with wondering precisely what planet they happen to be orbiting.

UPDATE – Out of curiousity, specifically which parts of the Libertarian political philosophy am I missing, Justin? I mean, I can completely understand how my total opposition to NAFTA could be honestly misconstrued as favoring government intervention in the economy, but I’ve been pretty specific regarding why I think a few of the Libertarian stances are demonstrably anti-libertarian.