Vox Popoli

The definitive difference:

Agnostic: “I doubt there is a God. Because I haven’t seen the evidence.”

Atheist: “There is no God. Because I’m an asshole.”

No doubt Aardvark will soon have the t-shirts….

Just had my checkup and things look pretty good, all in all. The iris still isn’t fully recovered, but it’s much more functional than it was even two days ago and prospects are good for a complete recovery. There’s still some inflammation, but there’s no more excess blood, the pressure has returned to normal and the vision appears to be around 95 percent of what it was. You certainly won’t hear me complaining about it, anyhow.

It’s going to be eight days before I can work out again, although I can start biking tomorrow, and probably an additional week before I can return to the soccer field. Needless to say, I’ll be picking up a pair of lightly tinted shades – NOT those bizarre sports goggles – before then since I really don’t want to risk going through this again, however unlikely it might be. I was already in the habit of wearing shades during the daytime games anyhow, so this shouldn’t be as much of an annoyance for me as it might be for others.

Hey, it worked for Jim McMahon, right?

Over at Brent Rasmussen’s site, Jim Downey has a hard time understanding why most people would rather vote for a retarded Dachshund of questionable moral character and only three legs for President of the United States than a “generally well-qualified” atheist:

Yup. Bottom of the list. [Gallup Poll indicating 45 percent would vote for an atheist, 53 percent wouldn’t.] Now, someone tell me again how we’re such a threat to the religious.

I can give you three reasons right off the top of my head:

1. Everyone knows an annoying, smarmy atheist who likes nothing better than to tell people how stupid they are for believing whatever it is they believe, almost always without being asked for his opinion. Since most people believe in something weird and supernatural, whether it is the supposedly Christian Rapture or Tarot cards or that George Bush is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, this means that nearly everyone subconsciously equates “atheist” with “boorish asshole”. And this reasonable conclusion is very well supported indeed by most atheist blogs as well as the behavior of the best-known public atheists. At least the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons are polite… even the Muslims are more respectful when they’re not occupied with beheading people.

2. The world’s leading atheist has declared that providing religious instruction to children is akin to child abuse. Since most normal people, religious or non-religious, are vaguely aware that children have been receiving religious education for the entirety of world history, hearing this sort of thing makes them more likely to support atheists being put into psychiatric care than into any position of political power. Sweet Darwin, even Daniel C. Dennett confesses to fondly recalling his own childhood religious instruction! But I’m sure a lot of kids scarred by their childhood beatings and molestations feel the same way… you can easily make a better case against public school.

3. When it comes to mass slaughter, atheists are the Ted Williams of world history, batting .400 or thereabouts. Not every officially atheist government has committed astounding quantities of murder, and certainly plenty of non-atheist governments have committed terrible atrocities, but despite the relatively small number of atheist governments recorded, they account for a disturbingly high percentage of history’s most lethal governments. This pattern began with the very first atheist government, the Revolutionary French regime, and continues to this day in North Korea. Atheists can bring up the No True Scotsman logical fallacy all they like but it’s no use; if Catholics had as reliably awful a track record, people would fear putting them in power too. It’s not that atheists are a threat to the religious, they’re an obvious threat to everyone, including themselves.

Speaking of Catholics, the Gallup poll shows how completely out of touch this Downey gentleman is. In an earlier post, he demonstrated that he didn’t understand the basic nature of the obvious need for Amynda’s resignation from the Edwards’ campaign. Perhaps this poll will help him understand that it is utterly impossible to go out of your way to intentionally insult what is apparently the least offensive large political bloc in the country and then expect to win an election.

Or perhaps it won’t. Boorish assholes are usually boorish assholes because they are socially autistic and incapable of applying logic to interpersonal relations, not because they want to be hated. If atheists don’t wish to be personally despised for their lack of belief, perhaps they should consider behaving more politely, or at least in a manner which is somewhat less despicable.

Atheists like to claim that Christians are atheists, we simply believe in one more god than they do. (This is incorrect, of course, but we’ll leave it alone for now.) If that’s so, then I don’t believe in nearly as many supernatural absurdities as the average atheist. But unlike the average atheist, I don’t behave like a boorish asshole on a regular basis, telling every Shinto worshipper or astrology nut I encounter how stupid they are for believing such obvious nonsense. If I am asked for my opinion of their particular lunacy, I will share it, otherwise I keep it to myself.

So do the vast majority of Christians. And even when missions-oriented Christians do volunteer their opinion unsolicited, most people understand that the Christian is usually doing so out of concern for them, out of a desire, however misguided, to save them from a terrible future fate. It’s hard to hate someone like that even if you think they’re completely crazy. On the other hand, most people also realize that the atheist is only sharing his unsolicited opinion with them because he is a jerk and wishes to demonstrate his superior intelligence, not because he cares so deeply that they know The Truth as he understands it.

I mean, they want people to call them “brights”, for crying out loud. Seriously. Talk about social autism… why not simply have done with it and go for “super sex machines to all the chicks”. That would at least have the benefit of being amusingly ironic instead of embarrasingly self-parodying.

A novel theory for relative female failure:

Women—especially high-achieving women—choke under pressure….

It turns out that by at least one measure—the number of unforced errors—men play equally well throughout the match. They make unforced errors on about 30 percent of the most important points, about 30 percent of the least important, and about 30 percent of all those in between. But women show a very different pattern: 34 percent unforced errors on the least important points, steadily rising to almost 40 percent on the most important. That’s almost surely too big a difference to be mere coincidence.

While this wouldn’t surprise me, as everyone’s ability to take risks tends to be significantly reduced as the pressure grows and women are normally more risk-averse from the start, the variable for which there doesn’t appear to be a control here is the age of the player.

Women’s tennis stars are usually a good decade younger than their male counterparts, and although the cluelessness of youth could just as easily exacerbate the difference as account for it, I’d be hesitant to put any weight on this sort of study without controlling for that age difference. One simply wouldn’t expect a 17-year old girl to show the same cold-blooded assassin’s mentality that Roger Federer or Adam Viniateri bring into high-pressure situations.

Of course, since choking is all about emotions, it wouldn’t come as a shock to learn that the sex more given to be controlled by their emotions would tend to choke more. I don’t know if it’s age or sex that might explain why Michelle Wie has kicked off her much-ballyhooed career with both hands wrapped firmly around on her throat, much less if this has any relevance to women in high profile positions in business or government – though that Louisiana governor weeping during Hurricane Katrina suddenly comes to mind – but it will be interesting to see if those noble and unbiased scientists permit themselves the discussion.

I suppose one could never really hope to compete with Me So Michelle:

I’m not so much mad at Fox as sad for us all: It’s sad they do have to do these things for ratings. Michelle Malkin had to do an Anna Nicole segment last night when she filled in for O’Reilly.

Now THAT is truly funny. They’re gen-u-wine intellectuals, they are, these leaders of the conservatariat.

We see her here
We see her there
We can’t escape her anywhere.
Is she on Fox? Now CNN?
That media ho M. Malkin.

From defending internment to discussing dead Playmates… that’s simply perfect.

Vaccuum Energy only reads the first quarter before leaping to an erroneous conclusion:

The nature of the dilemma is that one would presumably wish both assertions to be true, even though this would seem to lead to a circular definition of “the pious”.

So how does WorldNetDaily columnist Vox Day tackle the dilemma? His argument is to switch from piety to obedience….

Thus, regardless of which interpretation we choose, Vox Day’s argument that “God’s priority is obedience, not piety” gives us no way of resolving the Euthyphro Dillemma that we didn’t have available already.

This isn’t the case at all.

1. The decision that Euthyphro was relevant to a discussion of the question of OBEDIENCE was not mine, but an atheist on Pharyngurl’s site.

2. Therefore, my substitution of OBEDIENCE for THE PIOUS was not some sort of strange attempt to evade the Euthyphro Dilemma, but a clear demonstration that the “dilemma” did not apply to the subject being discussed.

3. The substitution of OBEDIENCE for THE PIOUS did show, however, that Euthyphro is not a valid criticism of Christian morality, although it is sometimes errantly considered one by those who have failed to read the entire dialogue or failed to understand it.

4. My demonstration of the basic flaw in Euthyphro is not based on this substitution of OBEDIENCE for THE PIOUS, but rather on Socrates’ substitution of THAT WHICH ALL THE GODS LOVE in the place of THAT WHICH THE GODS LOVE as well as my ability to demonstrate that Socrates’ arbitrarily narrowed definition of “THE PIOUS” does not inevitably lead to a circular conclusion, thereby eliminating the dilemma.

Blood in my Eye: The Vox Day Story
– By JamieR

As the sun set on another woggy day, blogger at large Vox Day pondered. He pondered his team, he pondered his abilities, he pondered the task before him, he pondered victory… For tonight, his indoor soccer team, the Italian Handbags, were playing the much feared German Reinforcements. The crowd was eager. The Italian team finalised their warm ups – one by one they hugged their mothers in the pre-match ritual, while the boxheads stared at their opposition and simply rolled their eyes. They were not to do it for all though…..they didn’t do that in Vox Day’s direction. Oh no. Vox Day was to be feared, Vox Day was being massaged by a one Spacebunny, while he finished up ebook number five for the day on the Treo….

Surely this time, this time, air power will do the trick:

Democrat leaders in Congress vow they’ll move to block President Bush from invading Iran, but Pentagon officials say that won’t be necessary, because they have no active plans for a ground attack.

In fact, officials tell WND they have war-gamed a full-blown invasion and ruled it out because of the difficult terrain in Iran, a mountainous fortress compared to Iraq.

“It’s a non-starter,” said one official.

He explains Iran is ringed virtually 360 degrees by towering mountains, and even if they were passable by artillery units, unstable salt flats and high desert wastelands stand between those mountains and Tehran, the capital.

I’ll tell you this right now, before the first bomb drops – assuming the Bush administration is dumb enough to go for the air strike option – it won’t work.

And then, Iran will be perfectly justified in striking back any way it likes… and surely the architects of the Iraqi and Lebanese quagmires are incapable of having planted hundreds if not thousands of agents inside America for just this very purpose….

Superior strategists with inferior forces have been defeating superior forces since Sertorius was running rings around Metellus, if not long before. The mere fact of significant technological advantage is never enough to defeat an opponent who is smart enough to avoid risking his entire force on a head-to-head gamble.

Remember one thing: the advocates of air power are always wrong. Always. They NEVER manage to deliver the results predicted, usually they fail to deliver any useful results at all. You can no more win a war with air power than you could win one with cavalry alone… it’s theoretically possible, but history demonstrates that you’re rolling the dice against very heavy odds.

Before Pharyngurl wrote this:

Charming. Good Christian Vox Day argues that murdering toddlers in the name of Jesus is defensible.

He wrote this:

I’m in favor of voluntary late term abortions (where premature birth would impose severe economic hardship, for instance), and can even consider situations where infanticide is ethically tenable.

This is not a black and white issue…. That’s why I say infanticide can be considered in some situations, but not all — an anencephalic child, for instance, should be humanely euthanized without a qualm.

Apparently Pharyngurl was upset over the idea that I asserted the morality of obeying a nonexistent but hypothetically incontrovertible command of God to kill ALL the toddlers, not merely those he believes SHOULD be offed or can ethically be slaughtered.

Pleaes note that I, and to the best of my knowledge, God, stand OPPOSED to the murder of children. (As the brighter and more intellectually honest atheists recognized, I was merely providing a logical response to the theoretical situation proposed by Jefferson.) The good atheist Pharyngurl, on the other hand, believes that child murder is not only POTENTIALLY ETHICAL, but is actually the MORAL IMPERATIVE in some situations.

So, it seems that it’s okay for Pharyngurl to decide who lives and dies, but not the Creator God. (Pharyngurl is a scientist, you see, so all that ethical training he received in obtaining his holy sheepskin justifies his exercise of the high justice.) Unlike Satan, Pharyngurl is not merely content to make himself like the Most High, he asserts his superiority to God even in the hypothetical context wherein it is proposed that God exists and rules supreme over His Creation.

And some of you worry about the arbitrary nature of a morality defined by that Creator God? Do you truly believe that six billion competing arbitrary moralities expounded by irrational and inconsistent individuals drunk on their half-baked educations are likely to provide superior results?

By the way, I’m still waiting for those legions of intelligent, educated atheists who were previously name-dropping Euthyphro to provide any criticism, let alone refutation, of my dismissal of that so-called dilemma.

UPDATE: Tom Foss disingenously claims that Pharyngurl hasn’t exposed his characteristic hypocrisy: “So we’re back to the “PZ is a hypocrite because he’s pro-abortion AND pro-euthanasia, but not pro-God-mandated slaughter of innocent healthy babies” argument? Yeah, Parakeet, that’s right. No one refuted that, not a hundred and fifty posts ago.”

No, PZ is a blatant hypocrite because he is not only pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia, but also explicitly pro-INFANTICIDE as long as INFANTICIDE is not proven conclusively to be God-mandated. No one has refuted that, not a hundred and fifty posts ago and not now, because it is irrefutable. And Tom himself well knows this, which is why he avoided using the word that Pharyngurl himself used, namely, INFANTICIDE.