Tag: atheism

Never Laugh at God

Because He will have the last laugh. And sometimes, He’ll even have a chuckle or two while you’ve still got time to repent:

Penn Jillette, the tall half of the hugely successful magician duo Penn & Teller, is one of the entertainment industry’s most outspoken atheists. For decades, Jillette has smugly condemned all manner of religious, psychic, and pseudoscientific irrationality. He also has a fan base on the right, because as a self-described libertarian, Jillette’s often mused about how “taxation is theft” and government compulsion is bad.

Penn Jillette: a man with no gods, including government. A man who falls for no (to use the title of his Showtime series) “bullshit.”

Then his teenage daughter decided that she’s a man. And the world witnessed how quickly the “smug” vanishes from the rationalist when the bullshit hits too close to home.

About a year or so ago, Jillette’s daughter, Moxie Crimefighter (yes, that’s her name), decided that she’d been “assigned the wrong sex at birth.” And she demanded that her parents no longer use female pronouns for her, like, ever.

Back in 2014, Jillette bragged on his podcast about how he’d raised Moxie to “laugh at God.”

There’s an old saying I just coined: “When you laugh at God, He laughs back and best.” Because now Jillette—Mr. “no pseudoscience,” Mr. “no cults or flimflam”—has become the spokesperson for the biggest pseudoscientific cultlike flimflam of the 21st century. The guy who’s spent a career deconstructing magic (“no, the bouquet of flowers didn’t actually become a rabbit; it was sleight of hand”) is now a true believer that a girl can actually become a boy overnight, by the sheer power of mentalism!

Abracagender!

There’s no such thing as anyone who “believes in science”. That’s nothing but rhetoric from people who need an excuse to justify their disbelief in anything that causes them emotional pain or prevents them from doing what they want to do.

DISCUSS ON SG

Thank you for your service

Sooner or later, the Black Rider always throws his servants from his high horse:

Established in 1953, the Humanist of the Year Award is conferred annually by the American Humanist Association (AHA), recognizing the awardee as an exemplar of humanist values. Communication of scientific concepts to the public is an important aspect of advancing the cause of humanism. Richard Dawkins was honored in 1996 by the AHA as Humanist of the Year for his significant contributions in this area.

Regrettably, Richard Dawkins has over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values. His latest statement implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient. His subsequent attempts at clarification are inadequate and convey neither sensitivity nor sincerity.

Consequently, the AHA Board has concluded that Richard Dawkins is no longer deserving of being honored by the AHA, and has voted to withdraw, effective immediately, the 1996 Humanist of the Year award.

The wicked may prosper for a season, but often the rewards for which they sold their souls don’t even last a lifetime.

How do you like that post-Christian culture you sought to bring about now, Mr. Dawkins?

Outgrowing logic

Scientists can’t do logic. Especially not atheist ex-scientists:

Thankfully, though, the farther this book gets from God, the better it gets. A chapter on the increasing niceness of humanity is neatly presented, contrasting popular support for attacking enemy civilians in the Second World War with condemnation of even accidental civilian casualties in the two Gulf wars. By the time we get to part two, which focuses on his first passion of evolution, the bitterness has evaporated. Instead we have delight at the way a cheetah can accelerate faster than a Tesla and five pages on what goes on with a chameleon’s tongue. The skin of an octopus, we learn, changes colour according to the same principles as a TV screen, to the extent that if we could hook an octopus brain to a computer, “we could play Charlie Chaplin movies on its skin”.

We hear about goosebumps being a leftover from the days we were hairier, and about the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which loops down into the chest of a mammal, then loops back up to where it is needed, in the throat. In a giraffe it is metres longer than it would need to be if the damn creatures had been designed properly. In other words, it offers irrefutable proof that they, like us, evolved from something else.

It should be noted that almost none of this is new, and especially not for the readers of Dawkins. The laryngeal-nerve stuff, for example, is lifted almost wholesale from his 2009 book The Greatest Show on Earth. For the earlier, more cantankerous anti-religious stuff, you might as well just read The God Delusion, where you’ll find most of the same arguments, and usually with the same examples too.

It’s rather amusing the way scientists attempt to convey a permanent status on themselves. For example, no one describes me as “a chart-topping techno band member” because my band no longer records music or hits the Billboard club charts. But Richard Dawkins’s most recent science paper is nearly as old as Welcome to My Mind.

Anyhow, scientist or ex-scientist, logic has always been well beyond Richard Dawkins. Consider the logic of his 2009 argument about the giraffe in syllogistic form.

Major premise: That which is designed is perfectly efficient.
Minor premise: The giraffe’s recurrent laryngeal nerve is not perfectly efficient.
Conclusion: The giraffe was not designed.

As I pointed out when he first wrote The Greatest Show on Earth, this logic is not merely based on a false major premise, but the false premise requires almost complete ignorance about engineering and design. No one who has ever seen a prototype computer board would fall for such nonsense, and indeed, the core concept that underlies this false logic is obviously ridiculous from a philosophical perspective, as it could be used to logically disprove the existence of the material world.

Major premise: That which is not its Platonic Form does not exist.
Minor premise: The world is not ideal (i.e. we can imagine a more perfect world)
Conclusion: The world does not exist.

It’s the reverse ontological argument for the nonexistence of God, the universe, and everything. And then, of course, even if we ignore the incorrect initial logic and simply grant the assumption that the giraffe was not designed, that does not mean that the giraffe must have evolved, much less that the giraffe evolved by natural selection as per Darwin by way of Mendel.

Another atheist shooter

Interesting that the low-status atheist angle doesn’t seem to come up often amidst all the theatrics and diagnostics that have been performed over the years concerning mass shooters. Notice the patch on the right side of the Dayton shooter’s chest.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that says Against all Gods. The primary pattern to be recognized here is low-status white male atheist. Perhaps they make the best wind-up toys.

“The best blogger”

This is very flattering, particularly as the designation comes from an intellectual for whom I have a considerable amount of respect, and to whom I really should link more often:

Blogs are clearly on the way out, and many of the best bloggers have gone – but let’s just express our opinion on who is – overall – the best blogger… Leaving-out myself (!) and also my co-bloggers at Albion Awakening and Junior Ganymede (because we are really the best ? – then who do you think is the best?

My vote goes to Vox Day (Theodore Beale) – whose blog is quite remarkable in terms of posting very frequently, across a wide range, and with great ‘originality’ – in the sense that he is so inventive and so good at discovering, elaborating and refining ideas.

Read the rest of it there. And also read this post, which should demonstrate why I have a high opinion of Prof. Charlton’s perspicacity beyond his excellent taste in bloggers.

What makes modern people ‘naturally’ disbelieve in God?

(My answer; speaking from the experience of several decades of living as an atheist…)

The fact that all modern public discourse excludes the divine.

As a modern child grows up, he becomes socialised, he becomes trained in modern public discourse of many kinds: school work, everything to do with the mass media, sports, pastimes, hobbies… and all of these exclude the divine.

It Just Isn’t There. The lexicon of objects that function in the system  exclude the divine; the causality of the system excludes the divine.

As the child reaches adolescence – these modes of thought become more dominant, and they become habitual to the extent of being simply taken for granted; and eventually they become so habitual as to be extremely difficult to break out from.

Culture matters and the globos know it. That’s why they have been relentlessly campaigning to force Christianity out of the public spaces, by hook, crook, and Christmas carol, for generations.

He’s not wrong

Richard Dawkins appears to be rethinking the consequences of his decades-long assault on Christianity.

Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals. So much nicer than the aggressive-sounding “Allahu Akhbar.” Or is that just my cultural upbringing?

To paraphrase my previous assertion, never bring a philosophy to a religious war.

No problem, Sam

Sam Harris never thinks anything through:

“Alt-right: You can’t keep blaming us for our ancestors crimes against other people
Also Alt-right: We are just as responsible for our ancestors accomplishments as they are

You can’t have it both ways.”

Absolutely. Stop blaming us for our ancestors’ crimes against other people. We are not responsible for our ancestors’ accomplishments, only for our own accomplishments and our own crimes.

Now will you stop? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Genetically inferior

More scientific evidence in support of my original hypothesis that atheism is a form of mental abnormality that results in spiritual insensitivity is accumulating:

Left-handed people are more likely to be atheists, a study has found, as it says belief is passed on genetically.  The study suggests that religious people have fewer genetic mutations and are therefore less likely to be left handed or have conditions such as autism or schizophrenia.

British academic Edward Dutton, a professor at Oulu University, Finland, said that in pre-industrial times religiosity was passed on like other genetic attributes because it was associated with greater stability, mental health and better social behaviour. But modern science means many people who would not previously have survived are making it to adulthood and reproducing – leading to a greater incidence of atheism.

Lack of belief in God is connected to genetic mutations which cause attributes such as left-handedness or autism, the paper argues.

This would also put Bruce Charlton’s Mouse Utopia observations into context, as atheism appears to be one aspect of the nihilistic despair that is a consequence of the increased prevalence of genetic inferiority that results from easier circumstances.

Mailvox: feel the rage

GW wonders about the socio-sexuality of skepticism:

Perhaps you haven’t been following the debacle between the YouTube race realists and the skeptic community, but I would love to hear your view on the main instigator of it, Kraut and Tea. His infantile attacks on imagined ghosts of the Alt-Right, blatant hypocrisy in regards to the principles of not deplatforming or doxxing people, and smug overestimation of his level of expertise in biology and statistics seem like classic symptoms of a Gamma’s wounded ego. That he also refuses to silence his tongue when thoroughly outmatched is just more proof of his status.

It makes me think the “online skeptic” nowadays is predisposed towards being Gamma. What else can explain their lack of conviction? Their unwillingness to argue the believer or race realist in good faith?

There is no question that the average “internet atheist” is a Gamma. More than a few are Omegas. Both scientific studies that looked into my original hypothesis about atheism being a consequence of being on the autism spectrum found correlations between an inability to make social connections and an inability to feel spiritual connections.

This sort of aggressive atheist are akin to the blind man who not only insists that everyone else is lying about their ability “to see”, but also that they are inferior to him due to their inability to come to terms with their blindness. And then proceeds to try to poke out their eyes.

I have no intrinsic problem with people who don’t believe what I do about God or anything else. But I utterly despise those who first proclaim that religion is a crutch, then promptly attempt to kick out that crutch from others who are reliant upon it. They are nasty little creatures.

Morality is objective

Again and again, we see that the rationales and justifications offered by atheists for their disbelief simply don’t stand up to even cursory philosophical analysis. (This is not to say their disbelief is not genuine, merely that its cause is seldom rooted in the explanations provided.) While on the emotional side, atheism may be little more than social autism, on the intellectual side, it appears to be primarily a combination of historical and philosophical ignorance.

Consider the following exchange:

AB: some people, psychopaths especially have no capacity for moral reasoning and no moral agency.

VD: Of course they do, if you define morality correctly. The fact that psychopaths have no EMPATHY does not mean they have no moral agency, because morality does not depend upon empathy.

AB: I think understand what you are saying but I simply cannot grok the idea fully as I cannot see morality as objective.

This is little more than a failure to understand what morality is, because while the existence of God is nominally disputable, the objectivity of morality is not, and more importantly, cannot be disputed.

The definitions of morality refer us to the definition of moral, which is given a follows:

  1. of, relating to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong;
  2. expressing or conveying truths or counsel as to right conduct, as a speaker or a literary work.
  3. founded on the fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on legalities, enactment, or custom.
  4. capable of conforming to the rules of right conduct: a moral being.
  5. conforming to the rules of right conduct

Now, if “the fundamental principles of right conduct” are not mere legalities, enactment, or custom, then they must be objective, for the obvious reason that if the standard for right conduct is subjective, then no such standard exists, not being a fundamental principle. Morality not only is not subjective, it cannot be subjective, because a subjective fundamental principle is both an oxymoron and an actual contradiction in terms.

A psychopath has both a capacity for moral reasoning and moral agency because he is capable of conforming to the rules of right conduct even if he does not feel any empathy for others. He can even conform to the Golden Rule; even a psychopath knows how he prefers to be treated himself.

AB’s fundamental mistake is that he confuses the concept of a personal ethos with morality. But a personal ethos is an ersatz morality and is no more a system of universally applicable rules than a preference for calling pass plays over running plays or playing man-to-man defense instead of zone are official NFL rules.