Vox Popoli

One of these days, I’m going to write a more in-depth post on how I regard Brent Rasmussen’s assertion that there is nothing more to atheism than an individual’s non-belief in a deity to be both a) completely correct, and, b) somewhat beside the point.

But not today. Although I have to note that Brent is likely more correct than those who see a fundamental congruence between atheism and science, considering this sort of recent history.

It’s also worth noting that while Catholic Church put the Father of Modern Physics on trial, the atheists of the French Revolution cut off the Father of Modern Chemistry’s head, declaring that they had no need for scientists.

So not only is the link between atheism and science less solid than most might think, it’s demonstrably less complimentary than the one between Christianity and science.

It’s interesting how American liberals are always happy to bandy moral imperatives about, so long as they are in direct opposition to traditional Judeo-Christian morality:

The news that Gov. Eliot Spitzer will soon introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage — what he calls “a simple moral imperative” — is welcome and could give new national momentum to this important cause….

It should be clear that these religious institutions have the right to refuse to marry anyone within their own religious houses. But they should not be allowed to dictate who can and cannot be married by the state.

What is the basis for this so-called “simple moral imperative” and why, exactly, is it imperative? Why is this morality any more acceptable than the morality which demands honor killings for promiscuous young women? And given that no such institution has ever existed in the history of Mankind, why is it an “important cause”.

In any case, calling the legal union of two men a “marriage” doesn’t make it one no matter how many laws declaring this to be so are passed; Spitzer might as well pass a law declaring that any collection of six fish are henceforth to be known as a “marriage”.

This, conservatives, is the inevitable result of attempting to use state power to define social standards. Live by the state, die by the state. If you don’t bring the state into it in the first place, its power can’t be turned and used against you.

The answer to my first question, of course, can be found in the following sentence. Emphasis added:

The majority leader, Joseph Bruno, has made it clear that he is against same-sex marriage, but he is also a pragmatist whose views on these issues have evolved and become more humane over the years.

I note that once again, we see that pragmatism is merely another word for an absence of principle.

It’s not Private Lynch’s fault that those pushing female service in the military used her to concoct a myth of the American Amazon:

Former Pvt. Jessica Lynch leveled similar criticism today at the hearing about the initial accounts given by the Army of her capture in Iraq. Ms. Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital in dramatic fashion by American troops after she suffered serious injuries and was captured in an ambush of her truck convoy in March 2003.

In her testimony this morning, she said she did not understand why the Army put out a story that she went down firing at the enemy.

“I’m confused why they lied,” she said.

Mr. Tillman and Ms. Lynch appeared at a hearing called to examine why “inaccurate accounts of these two incidents” were put out by the administration. Today’s session was part of the Democratically-controlled Congress’s effort to hold the Bush Administration accountable for its conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other issues.

Ms. Lynch said she could not know why she was depicted as a “Rambo from West Virginia,” when in fact she was riding in a truck, not fighting, when she was injured.

She might be confused. I’m not.

Never mind that it’s becoming increasingly obvious how worthless those college educations for which they sacrificed their children is:

A third of women graduates will never have children, research has concluded. The number of highly educated women who are starting families has plummeted in the past decade, according to findings that provide the most detailed insight yet into education and fertility.

While some women are making a conscious decision not to have children, others are simply leaving it too late after taking years to build their careers, buy a home and find the right partner.

If the low birth rate trend continues, then the eventual rate of childlessness among graduates now aged in their twenties is likely to be even higher than a third.

The findings come from a ground-breaking study into more than 5,000 women born in 1970 and tracked throughout their lives by researchers at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, based at the Institute of Education in London.

Seriously, how smart do you actually expect other people to consider you to be if you can’t tell time on something as simple as a biological clock?

It’s fortunate that feminism is an evolutionary dead-end, here’s hoping it will die out before it’s stoned to death by sharia.

This isn’t due to any fears of the inevitable Cho copycats, but rather the fact that you can’t get even a halfway decent education there anymore with doing all the work yourself:

Just 15 of 70 institutions studied require English majors to take a course on Shakespeare, says a report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Washington-based group that promotes academic quality. At least six of those schools dropped or weakened requirements since 1996, when the group did a similar study….

The Bard is required by only one Ivy League school, Harvard.

One might say that it’s ironic that the government is spending more money to send more people to college than ever before while the educations they are receiving have never been worse. Except it isn’t, this is merely education inflation in operation.

No wonder there’s so many “college-educated” morons out there. They’ve been to college, they have the sheepskin, they just don’t realize that they never received an actual education.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I can attest that I am personally acquainted with an economics major who graduated from a Big 10 university and had never heard of either John Maynard Keynes or Adam Smith.

It seems The Onion reached a similar conclusion when considering the related problems of Evil and Free Will:

“Is this all there is?” asked Snake, hiding in a storage locker while two masked guards searched for him in the hold of a cargo ship. “Is this why I was created? To suffer? Will I ever escape this endless loop of grueling labor followed by violent death?”

Snake was then discovered by the guards and cut down in a hail of gunfire.

Snake, who has been fatally shot 2,143 times in the past six months, said he does not know why God deems it necessary for him to endlessly repeat his mission, which involves sneaking aboard a hijacked military ship and discovering who stole the walking nuclear-equipped battle tank known as Metal Gear Ray.

“Why will the Lord not grant me my final rest?” asked a reincarnated Snake, crawling underneath a lifeboat on the ship’s weather deck. “Certainly there must be a greater purpose for me than to kill dozens and eventually be killed myself.”

Added Snake: “As Goethe said, ‘Man must strive, and in striving he must err.'”

Pitching himself over the ship’s railing to avoid a trio of patrol guards, Snake pondered the notion of self-determination, wondering aloud whether he had any control over his own destiny. Before he could draw any conclusions, however, he lost his grip, falling into the sea and drowning.

Cosmos is prepared to debate one he describes as a simpleton:

It should be clear by now that I’m willing to debate any issue you choose to raise on your blog. I’m just waiting for something of substance and wondering if you have something of substance to offer rather than the lifeless claims you offer up to support the simple views of atheists that you can’t seem to get beyond.

But I do have faith you’ll keep trying, just no expectation you’ll actually step up.

Well, at least we both agree that the views of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are simple. But interestingly enough, Cosmos also sees a connection between VTU shooter Cho and Christianity that I truly don’t:

I guess we can expect to see christians adopted a picture of Cho as their symbol.

Perfect, there’s our subject for debate right there. You have the position that Cho is a reasonable symbol for Christians, I shall oppose it. You may proceed with the first argument, if it’s too long to easily post here in the comments then simply email it to me and I shall post it here in its unedited entirety.

And then I shall respond to it.

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, Cosmos backs down, claiming that he was only being sarcastic, implying therefore that his statement about the connection between Cho and Christianity should not be taken seriously. (Never mind that others are raising precisely the same point based on the Christianity of most Korean immigrants and the religious faith of Cho’s mother.) Of course, this also contradicts his previous statement that he was willing to debate “any issue”.

This should demonstrate to everyone’s satisfaction that Cosmos is simply yet another loudmouth lightweight with an excess of bark and a dearth of bite. I note that I offered him his choice of subjects, which he declined, then suggested a subject which he himself had brought up, which then he again declined. Let him be henceforth known as “Michelle” in honor of another famous master debater.

Anyhow, perhaps someone else would prefer to debate me on a subject of rather more interest to me, which is my notion that the current debate between Christianity and the “new” atheism is a logical extension of the trans-Channel hostility between the Newtonian and Leibnizian calculus camps.

Regular readers may recall that after the team from the next level at our club took all of the eight-year olds early last year, we faced a rebuilding process that was complicated by the fact that everything had to be explained to the kids instead of them being able to see the older boys putting the ideas into practice.

With the exception of two tournaments that we couldn’t reasonably skip, we basically took nine months out of the tournament cycle in order to let the kids develop without getting hurt or having their confidence crushed. Today was their first tournament together as a team of eight-year olds, and they wasted no time in running completely amok.

Despite doing my best to rein them in, they averaged seven goals per game in their first five games, all shutouts, and in some of those cases it could have easily been 20-0. They ran out of steam or they would have won the last game too instead of tying 1-1, the combination of a silly defensive blunder and missing five straight easy chances at the end kept them from a perfect day. But I was proud of them for refusing to quit even when they found themselves unexpectedly behind halfway through the game.

The play of the day was a gorgeous backwards pass from our substitute center-mid, a Brazilian kid whose urge to display his one-on-one skills sometimes works to the detriment of the team. But in this case, he was boxed in by two defenders and flicking it across the field behind him with the bottom of his foot was the only option with any chance of success. Unfortunately, the shot he created for our striker was saved by the goalie, but it was fun to see the look of surprise on the faces of the people watching the game nevertheless.

There are few things more beautiful than seeing flawless execution in sports at any level. These kids have always known what to do, but they just weren’t physically capable of doing it before. Now that they’re strong enough to send a pass cutting all the way across the field, experienced enough to anticipate it and fast enough to run onto it, they’re doing exactly what I hoped they’d be able to do at this point.

I don’t know if these kids can imitate their predecessors and take out the professional feeder squads of Blue and Black, but at the very least, they’re definitely going to scare them.

And what’s kind of cool is that because of the success we’ve been having at the lowest two age levels, the club is adding a third team so the kids can stay with the program three years longer than before.

>Do your critics think that they’re really, really smart for figuring out your real name, Vox?

It’s pretty obvious that they’re just hoping to cause trouble for me somehow. “Outings” of names, home addresses and so forth are almost always done in an malicious manner by a critic. This can be seen in the way that the same individuals who make a habit of “innocently” outing their critics never seem to do the same regarding other individuals of whom they approve.

And it has caused the very occasional problem, or at least, what could theoretically be a problem if I was the sort of individual who didn’t possess any leverage in my day job. I suppose “the occasional discussion” would be a more accurate way to put it.

Of course, everyone always backtracks immediately when I respond to queries about my exotic ideology by asking them for a comprehensive list of what beliefs are acceptable to them and which beliefs are not. They usually begin apologizing profusely right after I ask them if they would like to receive my list in return.

Still, the fact that something isn’t a secret doesn’t absolve one of guilt for attempting to betray it. And what is the point of going out of one’s way to expose a name behind a pseudonym or a home address if one is not motivated by malice? Pandagonians, since Amynda doesn’t hide her IP address, her street address, her telephone number or her social security number, tell me, does this mean it is appropriate for me to post them here? If not, please do explain why not.

I note that by JF’s standard, once the information is out anywhere in any context, it is forever fair game. (I would think that the copyright page from Rebel Moon would have made for a better case than a decade-old archived newsnet post myself.) So, once Devious Diva’s information was released by the first individual, JF and those in agreement with him cannot reasonably condemn those who merely repeated what was at that point public information.

Auguste, fortunately, thinks twice before asserting irony:

One of two things has happened:

a) I’ve been banned – which would be ironic given the whole line of “complaining about something, and then doing the thing” and given the second comment above:

“Yeah, as spineless as her (their) removing non-conforming comments.”

So, nicely done.

Or, b), and since I’m charitable, I’ll just assume this is the answer, something’s going on with haloscan.

This isn’t Pandagon. You have to work pretty hard to even get a warning here, let alone a comment deleted. In four years of blog comments, only twelve people have been banned.