Tag: atheism

Mailvox: atheists always bait-and-switch

Mr. Rational demonstrates why no one trusts atheists, including their fellow atheists:

You’re playing semantic games here by deliberately selecting a nonsensical phrase, Vox.  “The Significance of Human Existence” makes perfect sense, and yes, random events in human history are perfectly understandable in that context.

This is another example of your need to have a First Cause for everything.  It’s just a more advanced version of the animism of savages.  You can’t not see intent and agency in everything because it makes you insecure, and like the left’s search for racism in society what you need to find will be found… somehow.

E.O. Wilson is one of the greatest minds of our age, and you reduce yourself to paraphrasing his book title in a silly fashion.  Talk about ankle-biting.

This is simply embarrassing for Mr. Rational. It would appear that the sight of “one of the greatest minds of our age” being caught out has triggered him. Badly. That “silly fashion” of which he complains is the most generous interpretation of Wilson’s title possible; the alternative is that Wilson is every bit as dishonest as the Richard Dawkins and Sam Harrises of the world.

I am not playing a semantic game. I am observing that there is ABSOLUTELY NO DEFINITION of the term “meaning” that allows E.O. Wilson to be considered simultaneously a) philosophically competent and  b) intellectually honest. As another commenter has already noted, Wilson’s book was not titled The Significance of Human Existence, but rather, The Meaning of Human Existence. A second bait-and-switch is not going to justify the first.

Also notice how the triggered little gamma male immediately leaps to making the philosophy personal. He cannot accept that “one of the greatest minds of our age” is either incorrect or lying, and that fact that I am the one who caught him out only makes his acceptance of that easily observably fact all the more difficult. Unlike both Wilson and Mr. Rational, I am perfectly willing to contemplate the possibility that there is neither intent nor agency in human existence, it is only that unlike them, I am sufficiently competent to understand and accept the logical consequences of that lack of meaning.

You’re too short for this ride, Mr. Rational. I will not again be rescuing your very stupid, very dishonest comments from the spam where they clearly belong, and will henceforth spam them. Since there is neither meaning nor significance in that decision, he really has no grounds for complaint. And even if he did, well, what could that possibly matter?

Groggy thinks I made a mistake.

Vox, carefully parsing the dictionary definitions above which you provided, “what actually is” is not a valid definition to extract.

what is intended to be, or actually is, expressed or indicated; signification; import

It does NOT say that meaning can be “what actually is”.

It says that meaning can be:

  1. what is intended to be expressed or indicated
  2. what actually is expressed or indicated
I actually share Groggy’s interpretation, but as I mentioned above, I felt that it was best to be generous and give Mr. Wilson’s defenders the maximum amount of rope with which to hang the man. Rather than being able to quibble over the parsing of the definition, his defenders are forced to either admit to his error, admit to his dishonesty, or commit their own intellectual sins.

Two American badasses

Compare and contrast the brave behavior of these two gentlemen to the cowardly performance of the Las Vegas Police Department:

Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, was leaving First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs after he opened fire on parishioners during mass when Stephen Willeford, 55, confronted him. Texas Department of Public Safety Regional Director Freeman Martin said Willeford, a keen biker, had ‘grabbed his rifle and engaged the suspect.’

A local resident told DailyMail.com that Willeford, who attends a different church, was first alerted to the shooting when his daughter called him saying there was a man in body armor gunning down church goers. He grabbed his gun and bravely headed down to confront the killer.

The local said that while Willeford has no military experience, he is an excellent shot, and when he came face to face with Kelley, he didn’t hesitate; he shot in between Kelley’s body armor, hitting him in his side. The 26-year-old had dropped his Ruger assault rifle and climbed in an SUV to flee the scene.

He said that Kelley had taken a hostage in the passenger seat as he fled. But another local resident, Johnnie Langendorff, who had witnessed the confrontation refused to let the shooter get away. Both he and Willeford, a local plumber, jumped in his truck and gave chase.

In a Facebook post, Langendorff’s girlfriend Summer Caddel described how the pair had ‘jumped in my boyfriend’s truck and they chased that sick b*****d down in pursuit until the cops could catch up. He was able to run the shooter off of the road on 539!’

Langendorff told KSAT 12 that he’d been speeding at 95mph, while on the phone to dispatch, while Willeford kept his rifle trained on the gunman’s car. As they approached a sharp curve in the road, near the 307 and 539, he said Kelley appeared to lose control and his car swerved off the road. ‘That’s when I put the truck in park,’ he said. ‘The other gentleman jumped out, and had his rifle on him. He didn’t move after that.’

And let’s not hear any more about how atheists are so persecuted in America, or how amazingly moral they are, when they are shooting up schools and churches and universities. No wonder they are the most distrusted group in the country.

Anything but God

Star Trek can tolerate anything, except the concept of a deity:

Star Trek: Discovery‘s producers apparently feel that the word “God” has no place on the bridge of a Federation starship. Series star Jason Isaacs was admonished for ad-libbing a line indirectly invoking a deity, which the show’s producers viewed as fundamentally against Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision of the future.

Discovery, the long gestating Star Trek prequel TV show, is finally debuting in September, and details are beginning to emerge about the series’ story and characters. Set ten years before the events of the original Star Trek TV show, the series will follow Commander Michael Burnham (The Walking Dead‘s Sonequa Martin-Green), who is now known to be Spock’s half-sister. The show will chronicle an important event in Starfleet’s history that will heavily involve the Klingons.

Discovery has made some unexpected choices so far, regarding which traditional elements of the franchise it’s eager to embrace and which one it feels comfortable discarding. A new story from Entertainment Weekly showcases perhaps the most unexpected choice yet, as Captain Lorca (played by Harry Potter veteran Jason Isaacs) was told he couldn’t ad-lib a line including the word “god”. Here is the anecdote in question, from EW‘s report.

The director halts the action and Lorca, played by British actor Jason Isaacs of Harry Potter fame, steps off the stage. The episode’s writer, Kirsten Beyer, approaches to give a correction on his “for God’s sakes” ad lib.

“Wait, I can’t say ‘God’?” Isaacs asks, amused. “I thought I could say ‘God’ or ‘damn’ but not ‘goddamn.’ ”


Beyer explains that Star Trek is creator Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a science-driven 23rd-century future where religion basically no longer exists.


“How about ‘for f—’s sake’?” he shoots back. “Can I say that?”


“You can say that before you can say ‘God,’ ” she dryly replies.

Star Trek is a show for atheists and pedophiles. Now they’re openly pandering to the former; it won’t be too terribly long before they start pandering to the latter.

The war against God

It’s good to see that even the cucks at National Review are not interested in adopting the New Atheists subsequent to their rejection and no-platforming by the Left:

Why must ardent secularists from the Islamic world like Ayaan Hirsi Ali — the type of people the Left looks to for inspiration in the history of Western secularism — be deemed bigots, while Sharia-supporting conspiracy theorists like Linda Sarsour are cherished? Why has criticizing Islam caused the New Atheists to cross a red line in the progressive imagination?

These positions make no sense if one thinks of the Left as seriously secular, convinced of the need to end the reign of superstition. But American liberals profess neither the passionate skepticism of Hume nor the honest, urgent atheism of Nietzsche. They prefer to embrace a shallow, culture-war atheism instead.

This culture-war atheism provides “evidence,” quick and easy, to support the proposition that America is split into two camps: the intelligent, sophisticated, urbane, righteous liberals and the idiotic, gullible, backward, bigoted conservatives. The former are atheists and the latter are believers, flattering one side and bludgeoning the other. In fact, it is this type of thinking that made progressives fall in love with the New Atheists in the first place.

New Atheism pleased the Left as long as it stuck to criticizing “God,” who was associated with the beliefs of President George W. Bush and his supporters. It was thus fun, rather than offensive, for Bill Maher to call “religion” ridiculous, because he was assumed to be talking about Christianity. Christopher Hitchens could call God a “dictator” and Heaven a “celestial North Korea,” and the Left would laugh. Berkeley students would not think to disinvite Richard Dawkins when he was saying “Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion.”

Truth be told, New Atheism was always fundamentally unserious.

The Left rejects the New Atheists because it was never truly atheist or secular. It is merely anti-Christian and anti-Western. The Left embraces Islam because it presently serves as a more effective anti-Christian weapon than the atheism or secular humanism upon which it previously relied.

The heart of the Left is Neo-Babelism, which is inherently globalist and Satanic in nature. All of its various ideologies, from communism to feminism to neo-liberalism to progressivism, are nothing more than the skinsuits it wears in its endless war against God. But unlike the New Atheists, the Neo-Babelists are not warring against the idea of God, much less questioning His existence. They are actually at war with the Almighty Himself, and His son, Jesus Christ.

When evidence is not “evidence”

The media’s “fact-checkers” are no more reliable, or credible, than the very media whose reputation they are attempting to restore.

It’s important to remember that Band’s email was sent privately, with little expectation it would be aired publicly. On the one hand, that might indicate he would be more open about possible conflicts. But he was also feuding with Chelsea Clinton and so might have been inclined to exaggerate or embellish his concerns.

Even the email, at face value, does not justify the hyperbolic news coverage. There was no reference to foundation monies, just “resources.”

At the same time, the foundation, the family and the wedding planner deny the claim made in the email. This was a major social event with 450 guests, something that has to run on clockwork — at great cost. The wedding planner paid the bills and submitted one bill to the Clinton family.

We can’t really award Pinocchios here, since no specific person repeated this allegation. But we can fault the news reporting — and label this as a claim lacking any evidence. Readers (or their friends) who viewed this as the “last straw” about Clinton corruption need to be more careful consumers of the news.

No Evidence

In other words, documentary evidence is not evidence because “money” is a subset of “resources”. That’s an attempted bait-and-switch almost worthy of Richard Dawkins and midwit atheists who claim that documentary evidence and eyewitness evidence is not evidence because it is not scientific evidence.

Almost.

This demonstrates why the media’s rhetoric is so often ineffective. In this case, it is pseudo-dialectic based on a foundation of pedantry and deception.

Paglia and pro-life morality

Camille Paglia is interviewed about her new book, Free Women, Free Men:

You say in the abortion chapter in your new book that pro-lifers have the “moral high ground” in trying to protect the innocent. Yet you’ve also argued that overcoming nature is a moral imperative and that we should “thwart nature’s procreative compulsions” through activities like abortion. How do you reconcile those two views?

In ethics, one of the many branches of philosophy invented by the ancient Greeks, we are usually faced not with a simple, reassuring scheme of right versus wrong but rather an often painfully conflicted choice between morally mixed options. I stated in Vamps & Tramps (1994): “Women’s modern liberation is inextricably linked to their ability to control reproduction, which has enslaved them from the origin of the species.” However, as an atheist who nevertheless respects religion, I see and respect the contrary position. As I went on to say: “We career women are arguing from expedience: it is personally and professionally inconvenient or onerous to bear an unwanted child. The pro-life movement, in contrast, is arguing that every conception is sacred and that society has a responsibility to protect the defenseless.”

Contemporary American feminism has distorted and desensitized itself by its inability or refusal to recognize the ethical weight of the pro-life position, which it routinely mischaracterizes as “anti-woman.” In contrast, I wrote (again in Vamps & Tramps): “Modern woman has become an agent of Darwinian triage. It is or should be ethically troubling: abortion pits the stronger against the weaker, and only one survives.” The inflammatory abortion issue has consumed far too much of feminism, to the point of monomania. I used to be a contributing member of Planned Parenthood, until I realized that it had become a covert arm of the Democratic party. If Planned Parenthood is as vital to American women’s health as feminist leaders claim, then why can’t it be removed from the violent political arena altogether and fully funded by wealthy liberal donors? Let the glitterati from Hollywood to Manhattan step up to the plate and put their money where their mouths are.

One of the reasons I have always admired Camille Paglia, despite the plethora of my disagreements with her policy positions, is that she is a proper ethicist. Even when she comes down on the wrong side of the moral equation, at least she understands that there is a moral equation involved.

Like Umberto Eco, Paglia represents the best intellectual aspects of the noble post-Christian. However, it must be understood that they were produced by Christian societies, and are neither indicative of, nor can be replicated by, any post-Christian society.

Anyhow, read the whole interview, it’s rather better than the run-of-the-mill book launch interview.

SJWs always project

Just in case you still doubted me.

Shot:
The Skeptic Feminist @SkepticFeminist
Sarcastically lambasting Religion and Misogyny For the two are inexorably tied.

Chaser:
Sargon of Akkad @Sargon_of_Akkad
So @SkepticFeminist has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a woman.

A new hypothesis

Scientists discover a physical manifestation of autism:

A team of scientists has discovered that a particular region of the brain is affected in those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They believe that finding the brain region which causes social deficits in those with the condition could point towards new types of therapies. The team included scientists based at ETH Zürich, Trinity College Dublin, Oxford University and Royal Holloway.

They ran MRI brain scans on people with ASD, and on healthy volunteers, in an attempt to track down the brain region linked to some of the behaviours seen in those with ASD and find differences between the two groups.

Dr Joshua Henk Balsters, the team leader, is based at ETH Zürich but performed much of the research at Trinity while working as a postdoctoral research fellow. He described how ASD can disturb normal personal exchanges. “The ability to understand how other people make decisions and what happens to them as a result is key to successful social interaction,” he said. “A big part of social interaction is to try and understand another person’s point of view. You need to understand another person’s perspective and that is very difficult if you have ASD.”

The researchers identified changes in a region called the gyrus of the anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain that responds when someone else experiences something surprising. They published their findings in the current edition of the journal Brain.

My new hypothesis is that scientists will eventually discover that people with these changes in the gyrus of the anterior cingulate cortex also happen to possess a statistically significant predilection towards atheism. Remember, there have been two university studies based on my original 2007 hypothesis that there is a correlation between ASD and atheism, and both studies achieved results that tended to support the hypothesis.

Sam Harris had it backwards. Atheists and theists don’t think differently due to their beliefs, but atheists have different beliefs due to their abnormal brain structure. It’s neither superior reason nor a dedication to logic that tends to produce an atheist, but rather, a lack of ability to grasp the perspective of others. There are other causal factors, of course; this does not explain the “mad at Dad” atheist or the “I will brook no limitations on my sexual behavior” atheist, but it does explain the spergey, socially clumsy sort that bring up their active disbelief at every opportunity.

TIA in audio

On one side of the argument is a collection of godless academics with doctorates from the finest universities in England, France, and the United States. On the other is THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST author Vox Day, armed with nothing more than historical and statistical facts. Day strips away the pseudo-scientific pretentions of New Atheism with his intelligent application of logic, history, military science, political economy, and well-documented research. The arguments of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Michel Onfray are all methodically exposed and discredited as Day provides extensive evidence proving, among other things, that:

  • More than 93 percent of all the wars in human history had no relation to religion
  • The Spanish Inquisition had no jurisdiction over professing Jews, Muslims, or atheists, and executed fewer people on an annual basis than the state of Texas
  • Atheists are almost four times more likely to be imprisoned than Christians
  • “Red” state crime is primarily in “blue” counties
  • Sexually abused girls are 55 times more likely to commit suicide than girls raised Catholic

In the twentieth century, atheistic regimes killed three times more people in peacetime than those killed in all the wars and individual crimes combined. THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST provides the rational thinker with empirical proof that atheism’s claims against religion are unfounded in logic, fact, and science.

Now in audio from Castalia House, TIA clocks in at just under 10 hours and is narrated by Jon Mollison. You can listen to a sample from the audiobook at Audible. You may also wish to note that ON THE EXISTENCE OF GODS is also available in audiobook format.

Also, in case you might be interested in more Selenoth, THE LAST WITCHKING is free on Amazon today.