Vox Popoli

The Quick and the Dead provides a useful lesson which Pharyngurl, to say nothing of many others, would do well to absorb:

Vox Day serves me crow

here,with a rich mole poblano, re my comments on Amanda Marcotte, late of the John Edwards campaign. As a blogger, I really should have known better than to take words at face value: Edwards is a politician, his lips were moving, therefore he was lying.

Too true. The Quick and the Dead goes on to offer some reasonable after-the-fact perspective on the debacle as well. Now look, there is nothing shameful with being wrong. Everyone screws up from time to time, there are certainly some particularly idiotic mistakes that I have made that I really don’t like to think about.

But one must face up to one’s mistakes if one is to avoid repeating them. Had Bush lost the election, had the Republicans gone from strength to strength instead of peaking and taking a dive like the 2000 NASDAQ, I would have cheerfully admitted that I was wrong. If the Lizard Queen is not elected President in 2008, (a prospect which is looking much more likely than it was when I first announced the inevitability of her victory), I will not only confess error but try to figure out where I went wrong.

It’s not that hard, really. For example, it is looking highly probable that my early surmise about Pataki serving as the 2008 fall guy was wrong. Now, I can pretend I never wrote that and blithely post future predictions two years prior to the next presidential nominations, or I can note my error, ascertain why I was wrong and attempt to use that information to do better next time.

Concealing error only increases the odds of future failure.

While Edwards campaign debacle was hilarious from start to finish, I will always regret that Amynda didn’t take my advice and claim she was resigning in order to spend more time with her abortions:

A second blogger working for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards quit Tuesday under pressure from conservative critics who said her previous online messages were anti-Catholic. Melissa McEwan wrote on her personal blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, that she left the campaign because she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the level of attention focused on her and her family.

“This was a decision I made, with the campaign’s reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign,” McEwan said Tuesday night.

Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, said McEwan left the campaign under her own terms. Both Bedingfield and McEwan declined additional comment. McEwan’s resignation came just one day after another blogger, Amanda Marcotte, left the Edwards staff for similar reasons.

This all smacks of careful orchestration to me. As I previously wrote, the person that Edwards really needs to fire is the woman responsible for hiring these two woefully inappropriate employees. But we do owe her for providing us with more entertainment than we’re likely to see over the next six months, unless the Lizard Queen decides she doesn’t want B. Hussein as her VP and goes after him with a vengeance.

UPDATE: This piteous lament for the ex-Edwardian pair is hilarious in light of what everyone now knows about Amynda and Shakespeare’s Sister: “Is it utterly impossible to have a political debate between the aisles on the blogosphere with out resorting to vile and contemptible attacks?

It seems that it must be…. I feel a sense of sadness however at the level of base, negativity that pervades the blogosphere. Bloggers on both sides of the aisle could be doing so much more to make a difference in this country and instead the discourse degenerates into this petty, small minded ugliness about who said what, where.

This is why Pharyngirl teaches at a jumped-up community college instead of a real university:

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

(I’m hoping ol’ Vox will make another post calling me “Pharyngurl”. It’s pathetic that he thinks femininity is an insult, isn’t it?)

No, Vox answers that offing two-year olds at the direct and 100-percent confirmed command of the Almighty is the moral act. Jesus never entered into it one way or another, let alone a self-motivated or (presumably) delusional act justified post facto by an exculpatory invocation of Jesus Christ’s name.

But as Scott Adams and others have learned, Pharyngirl can’t even read a simple statement and understand it well enough to summarize it accurately. This is particularly amusing considering that Jefferson and all of the atheists and agnostics here, despite their many differences with me and their rejection of my position, have had no similar difficulties.

It’s possible, of course, that Pharyngirl does actually understand the difference but simply chose to lie. And why shouldn’t he? He’s an atheist, he has no reason not to lie… except for the fact that he keeps getting caught at it.

And yes, femininity in bearded middle-aged men is considered to be an insult by those who actually managed to leave college.

The interesting thing is that no atheist – not here and not on any of the blogs that have commented on the Sharpening Knives post – has even attempted to explain why this divinely ordered slaughter would be an immoral act. Instead, like impressionable young women, they gasp and pretend to collapse on their fainting couches over the correct answer to an obvious and inconsequential Q&A trap.

This feigned swooning is particularly ironic given the obvious fact that God has not given such a command in nearly 2,000 years of Christianity, meanwhile, godless butcheries continue in the United States and around the world even as their comrades rush for the smelling salts.

A commenter adds an interesting note: “I know it’s only been 2500 years since this kind of idea was shown to be ridiculous, but maybe this guy’s just a little slow.”

That’s entirely possible. Of course, it’s also possible that I am vehemently anti-Platonist, have little respect for Socrates and can present a logical case for rejecting the Euthyphro dilemma as spurious… tune in tomorrow.

From TMQ:

Caviezel played Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ” and — I am not making this up — has said that to method-act sorrow on the cross, he thought about the Minnesota Vikings’ Super Bowl losses.)

I actually have a harder time with some of the playoff losses, strangely enough. Gary Anderson, Darren Nelson, Drew Pearson….

But I feel his pain.

Gilburn is a poor-man’s Richard Dawkins, whose YouTube videos are popular with and considered marvelously enlightening by the sort of 10th-grade boys who seriously believe that no Christian has ever read the Bible. (This is a common theme in the sort of science fiction they read, wherein the scene featuring the atheist hero stunning the Bible-thumping bigot into silence with a devastating quote from John 8:7 is as mandatory as the sex scene with the seductive female scientist/space alien. Of course, only an author who knows nothing about the ubiquity of Christian Bible studies could posit such a scenario, moreover, they invariably leave out John 8:11.)
– Vox Day, 12 February 2007

Luckily, I happen to have a Bible laying around this house, because even though I’m not a Christian, I was an English major, and it is important to Know Your Ancient Mythologies if you are reading poetry. And I flipped to this passage that seems to have solid advice on what to do if you’ve got some asshole dragging a woman in front of an angry crowd and yelling, “SINNER!”:
– Amynda Marcotte, 13 February 2007

Here’s a suggestion for atheists who wish to avoid looking like ignorant doorknobs. Stay very far away from quoting the Gospels, 1st Corinthians and 1st John if you harbor a desire to play Bible expert. I recommend delving into the latter part of Job, Ecclesiastes, or Ephesians if you want to have even a prayer of saying something that isn’t effortlessly dismantled by anyone whose spent more than six months attending a Bible study.

Her ignorance is demonstrated by her focus on the misguided notion of her losing her job due to her being a sinner. That was never the point, as every Christian already knew that before the first time encounter with her verbal diarrhea. The point, from the start, that she is a man-hating, Christian-hating bigot, publicly condemned and convicted as such by her own words and therefore a major handicap to the Edwards’ campaign seeking Christian votes. A campaign to which no one dragged her, one should mention.

And one should also mention that criticism based on direct quotes of your own words is hardly equivalent to a fatal stoning. Yes, there is a certain symmetry in the metaphor of “words” and “stones” combined with “forced resignation” and “death”, but it is a shallow one.

Her problem is that there is no “context” in which her writings can be interpreted in which those terms do not apply to her, and yet Amynda is too wedded to her sanctimonious rage to view herself with any degree of objectivity. The fact that she genuinely hates certain forms of bigotry does not inoculate her from being a bigot herself any more than having been an abused child inoculates an adult from abusing others.

But in any case, her sin is no worse than anyone else’s. The door is always there, awaiting only the knock.

Rayven does better than most:

My ethical self could not accept the obvious evil displayed by the Abrahamic Gawd…it was not logical that a Gawd would give us the ability to understand proper behavior and yet not follow it himself.

Good logic based on a faulty assumption. God did not give us the ability to understand proper behavior. The Bible is quite specific on this score: Man doesn’t know what it is and is wholly incapable of following even the part that has been explained to him.

Hence that small part relating to humanity being fallen and the need for the gentleman on the cross.

Of course, being an atheist, Rayven will no doubt toss out the logic she has hitherto followed and stick with her feelings instead. Evil, to the atheist, is nothing more than something he doesn’t like at the moment, hence the constant attempt to apply it to God. Interestingly enough, it is written that there is both a word describing and a fate awaiting those who call good evil and evil good.

Guru Mike attempts to conveys moral instruction to some who are clearly in need of it:

The next time some godbot twit tries to say we need god for our morality, I’m going to direct them to this a-hole’s blog. Morals do not consist of blindly following dear leader’s orders. That’s not morality, that’s obedience. Real morals start with the idea that you dont do things to others that you would not want done to yourself.

By all means, do send them here. Obviously Mike could use some more in-depth reading here; if he visited more often he would know that since the Golden Rule is but a subset of Christian morality, traditional Western morals do not start there.

And as has been pointed out before, morals cannot possibly start there even outside the Christian perspective. Attempting to use the Golden Rule as a base for morality is a logical dead end, as it grants a free pass to anyone who happens to be twisted enough to desire the sort of thing they wish to inflict on others.

Strange masochists lurking in dungeons enacting violent fantasies is no basis for a system of morality!

The Bible is forthright. The one thing, the only thing, God demands is our obedience. To understand is good, but to obey is better, mostly because we are incapable of understanding. Glass darkly and all that. Ironically, Mike comes close to the truth, he simply fails to grasp that obedience is morality.

Of course, this should not be confused with the “just following orders” defense for which Mike has rightful contempt. A human authority which gives illicit orders is an illegitimate authority, but God’s authority can never be illegitimate, therefore His orders cannot be illicit, however repugnant they may strike us at first.

It seems more than a little ironic, though, that so many atheists should get their panties in a bunch over a hypothetical Divine-ordered child-killing of the sort that has never taken place in two thousand years of Christianity while simultaneously supporting the thousands of actual child murders that occur daily. (I know, I know, unborn children aren’t children, they’re goldfish or ferns or whatever. That’s why gays and feminists are so terrified of sex selection and pre-natal testing, right?)

For folks that claim to be so terribly fond of reason, it is astonishing how little familiarity with it these atheists demonstrate. It seems absence really does make the heart grow fonder after all.

Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I propose a law paraphrasing it thusly: “Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity”.

You need an IQ this high –> 115

Those who grew up in the former Communist nations recognize an articifially manufactured Truth by Diktat when they see one:

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?

A: It’s not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it’s a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It’s neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it’s an undignified slapstick that people don’t wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the “but’s” are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses. This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.

But, but, nine out of ten dentists AGREE that Dentine fights tooth decay! Meanwhile, Charles Stross complains that the American Enterprise Institute is paying scientists to write papers demonstrating the fraud of global warming.

As if there aren’t dozens of UN NGO’s doing precisely the same thing for the other side. Global warming is a political and ideological battle, it isn’t a scientific one. The fact that there are scientists arrayed as weapons on both sides doesn’t make it science.

In which The Quick and the Dead is reminded that the inevitable doesn’t always happen immediately:

Amanda and Melissa safe, for now

John Edwards isn’t going to fire his two new bloggers for being, well, bloggers. And that’s a good thing. It would have cost him more in the long run to cave to the likes of Donohue, than it has to apologize and deal…. So you have to wonder why intelligent people like Vox Day were so sure that Amynda would be tossed to the wolves.

Where on Earth do I come up with my crazy, crazy ideas? I swear, sometimes I think I should be kicked out of Mensa and forced to wear a dunce cap!

Oh, and by the way, Amynda has a little announcement for everyone:

Regardless, it was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can’t do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won’t do it. I resigned my position today and they accepted.

I’m sure they did, with alacrity. And yet the whole thing really wasn’t Amynda’s fault – although if she understood the first thing about politics she never would have accepted the position in the first place – so if John Edwards has any executive capacity at all, he will wait one week and quietly fire the person responsible for creating the media debacle in the first place.

Of course, by attempting to place all the blame on Bill Donohue, Amynda demonstrates that she hasn’t learned anything from her experience. Donohue was simply the first of what would have been many fingers on the trigger, Pandagon was the gun and Amynda’s words were the plentiful bandolier of bullets.

It is, of course, vastly amusing that she managed to publicly eschew the integrity of her writing before being forced to exit anyhow. As I wrote last week, she’ll be making a regular meal of these words for a long time to come.

The manner of her exit is a good lesson for everyone else, though. Never crawl. Few things are worth it and such crawling seldom serves its nominal purpose anyhow. No doubt she wishes she had shown some backbone and stuck by her words now.

UPDATE: Some people simply will not learn:

“On the why did I apologize thing—I never apologized for my opinions or beliefs. I do feel bad if people read my comments out of context and are hurt, but I don’t think that’s my fault so much as the fault of people who take my writing out of context.”
– Amanda Marcotte

Amynda’s grasp of “context” is as accurate as Alannis Morrisette’s grasp of irony.