The importance of discernment

I wouldn’t go as far as Bruce Charlton in calling a lack of discernment a sin, but then, there is a qualitative difference in being unable to discern evil and being unwilling to do so:

I suspect that the discernment of evil is maybe the most important thing to do about evil; much more important than (supposedly) ‘fighting’ evil. We absolutely need to identify, and correctly, what and who is on the side of evil: who are evil-allied. And these evil-allied may well turn-out to be almost-everything, and almost-everybody – we should be prepared for that possibility. 

If I am right, this widespread and determined self-blinding to evil, the refusal to identify and acknowledge evil; may be one of the most prevalent and significant of our many modern sins. 

He is correct, however, to observe that the refusal to identify, acknowledge, and oppose evil is both prevalent and significant in society today. I have no patience or respect for those who insist on blathering about “stupidity” or how the Left “just doesn’t understand”. At this point, the inability to discern evil looks a lot more like a refusal to accept the reality of evil. Because rich and powerful individuals are not abusing children and offering them up to demons out of stupidity.

He’s also right to point out that you have to spot the target before you can FFE on it.


The consequences of the choice

CS Lewis described the process and the consequences of taking the ticket in an essay entitled The Inner Ring:

To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

That is my first reason. Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things. My second reason is this. The torture allotted to the Danaids in the classical underworld, that of attempting to fill sieves with water, is the symbol not of one vice, but of all vices. It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.

The ticket, and those who offer it, have been around for a very long time. Metallica described it in rather more succinct terms.

Careful what you wish

Careful what you say

Careful what you wish you may regret it

Careful what you wish you just might get it


Flat-out Judases

Jim Caviezel rips into the Churchian leadership of Protestants and Catholics alike: 

Catholic actor Jim Caviezel, best known for playing Jesus in the 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, blasted “lukewarm” Christians in a Fox News interview, saying it’s “a bloody shame” one can’t tell the difference “between a priest, a bishop, or a politician.”

“I got to play Jesus, some of us love Peter or Paul, but there are many of us right now, they are flat out Judases, okay? Or they’re Pontius Pilates or they’re the Pharisees, okay?” Caviezel told Shannon Bream on the Fox News show FOX@Night yesterday.

“It’s a bloody shame if you can’t tell the difference between a priest, a bishop, or a politician. It’s really sad, but this is called lukewarmness, and Christ has a very special place for them, and they know it.”

Caviezel appeared as a guest on FOX@Night to discuss his latest movie, Infidel, which he described to Bream as a “well executed thriller.” Caviezel made the remarks when asked by Bream about what his concerns are regarding the role of faith, and what people should be doing about it in today’s world.

He was blunt with Bream, telling her that his new film is not some “candy-ass Christian stupid film,” but is rather one about “what is really going on today” in terms of the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

“Well, it’s relevant because we have this thing called cancel culture, and if Christians don’t watch, it will be canceling Christianity as well, because a lot of our pastors, okay, our bishops, our priests — they’re laying right over,” Caviezel told Bream.

“They let their churches being burned, all right? How do we know that? Well, it’s right there in the news. Statues being ripped down. They don’t say anything.”

He’s absolutely right. God will certainly spit what passes for the modern Church out of His mouth, although most Churchians are worse than lukewarm. They follow the world and the Prince of this world, not Jesus Christ. That’s why they are laying right over; their objective is to lead their flocks away from God.

Read the Bible. Fear God. Serve Jesus Christ. Do not follow evil men and women into Hell simply because they call themselves christians, pastors, priests, or popes.


Even their wealth is fake

The reason all those “rich” people like Bill Gates aren’t leaving any money to their children is because it isn’t theirs.

Steve Bing disinherited his two children Damian Hurley and Kira Kerkorian from his will, as Kerkorian fights for control of his estate that was valued at just $337,000. The multi-millionaire committed suicide aged 55 in June, jumping from his 27th floor apartment in Los Angeles.

Prior to his death, Bing had an estimated net worth of $590 million, according to various reports. While his estate was valued at $337,000 – his properties were not included in that evaluation. Bing also had a trust established in 1983 – which President Clinton’s Foundation was listed as a beneficiary.

The key word being “estimated”. When you take the ticket, the Devil graciously loans you his money, for a little while, and lets you play with it as long as you remain useful to him. But you have to pay it back eventually, and the interest is your soul.


Philosophy catches up to theology

It’s interesting to see how those who deny the supernatural are nevertheless gradually reinventing it under the guise of simulation theory, which is functionally identical to my original God as Game Designer hypothesis described 12 years ago in The Irrational Atheist:

This is one possible way for the intelligent life form to discover that it is actually existing in a simulation. Given enough time, it would discover the nature of its universe and learn it is actually a simulation. The trouble here is the intelligent life form would have to accept as a possibility that it exists in a simulation. A creature that is sure its universe operates on a fixed set of rules is unlikely to accept that those rules are an arbitrary invention of some higher intelligence outside its universe.

There is also another problem. The creators of the simulation could themselves be the product of a simulation. It’s entirely possible the one fixed rule of existence is that no intelligence entity can create an intelligence superior to itself. Perhaps Thomas Aquinas was right all along and there is some prime mover. The very source of the existence is the pinnacle of intelligence, which creates imperfect copies of itself manifesting as simulations within simulations.

We have in this simulation some evidence of this limitation. Despite the hyperbole about artificial intelligence, we have not come close to creating a computer that can rival the human mind. We have made very fast computers that can do calculations and sort through stacks of data faster than humans. These are not artificial intelligence or even intelligence at all, but rather they are very fast calculators. The collapse of the self-driving car project is an example of this limit.

Putting that aside, there is one other way the intelligent life forms inside the simulation could start to notice they are in a simulation. The point of creating a simulation, aside from sadism, is to test some theory or model some conditions. This implies the creators could make a mistake. They recognize this, so before changing something about their world or making a new tool, they test the theories behind it in a simulation. This means their simulation could have errors in it.

Let’s say they create a set of economic rules for their model society, but forget to carry the one or round the wrong way and there is an anomaly in the model. For example, creating more currency of a certain type does not result in inflation. All the other types of money operate by the rules of economics, but this one type of money seems to exist outside of those rules. The intelligent creatures figure this out and start producing tons of this new money to produce great material excess.

Presumably, the creators of the simulation would distribute skills and talents unequally among the intelligent life forms in order to see how creations of differing skills interact with one another. Maybe it is just an efficient way to use the finite resources available to the simulation makers. Regardless, the rules of the universe would have to dictate that those with a skill do better at some things than those without the skill. The result would be natural hierarchies in every aspect of the simulation.

What if there was a bug in the code where those with extreme narcissism and narrow intelligence can rise up to control society? At some point, through random chance, the stupid and narrow-minded figure this out and take over the simulation. Like the mouse utopia, this would be a useful discovery for the simulation makers, but it would create havoc for their simulation. So much so they may be tempted to unplug the thing, fix the bad code and re-run the simulation again.

Assuming the simulation keeps running, some of the intelligent life forms will see the anomalies in the system. They will work to resolve the paradoxes, but at some point, given enough cycles, they will have exhausted their set of options. At that point, they will have to question the very axioms of their existence and that’s when they can begin to contemplate the possibility they are in a simulation. The number of paradoxes grows to the point where they cannot be ignored.

The more we learn about genetics and physics, the more it becomes evident that we are living, not in a simulation, but a consciously created reality. In technological terms, the “supernatural” is simply the coder’s reality as opposed to the coded reality, and evidence of the paranormal is merely elements of the former penetrating the latter.

Which is why I am prone to referring to the afterlife as “Level 2”. After all, does not “the Word became flesh” beautifully describe a transition from a conceptual to a physical reality?


Stone knows

Roger Stone is aware of the true nature of the enemy:

“I really do believe that those who are trying to undo this president, those who are trying to destroy me, trying to destroy Michael Flynn — who’s a very good man and great American patriot war hero — I do believe they’re satanic,” Stone tells Just The News in a podcast interview for The Pod’s Honest Truth. “I don’t believe that any of these people involved in my prosecution are really believers in God.” 

They are, quite literally, Satanic. The “god” they worship is “the god of this world” as opposed to the Creator, the Heavenly Father, who sent His son Jesus Christ to save Man.

The Prometheans are evil beyond anything the average individual can even comprehend. And Christianity is the only force that is capable of not only standing against them, but defeating them, which is why they are hell-bent on converging, diluting, and diverting Christians in every way possible.

The Left-Right ideological struggle is not real. Even the Nationalist-Globalist conflict is essentially a proxy for the real war, which is between Christian and Promethean, between the servants of the Creator God and the servants of the god of this world.


This cult is NOT new

Not being a Christian, the Z-Man doesn’t recognize the nature or the source of what he otherwise quite correctly perceives as a new cult of inclusion and social justice:

This cult we are seeing evolve in the empire is much more like the Cult of Reason, in that it has no gods and elevates abstract concepts like inclusion, diversity, cooperation and openness. When activist chant demands for justice, for example, they are not talking about legal justice or even moral justice. Justice is one of the many words to signify this collection of concepts at the center of the cult…. To the insider, a cult is a world where the internal rules and beliefs of the cult perfectly explain the world. To the outsider, the rules and beliefs of the cult seem amusing, bizarre or possibly dangerous. That’s what is happening in the empire. Most of us are outside this ruling class cult, so their chants, declarations and actions strike as strange and crazy. The destruction of the cities makes no sense. For the cult, these riots are purifying rituals. To outsiders, they are wanton destruction.

This may also explain the bizarre behavior over the Covid virus. It was obvious a long time ago that something other than science and a concern for public health was driving public officials to stoke the panic. The elaborate game of make believe has now been made plain. People are barred from Christian services, but BLM protests and homosexual parades are now permitted. The destruction of civil society from the top down was the elite’s version of the urban street riots.

What we may be seeing is this weird religion of inclusion and cooperation quickly morph into a suicide cult that seeks to level existing society. First the elites try to destroy society with the lock downs and elimination of personal freedom. Now the rank and file are doing their part by devastating the cities. The new faith will not rest until every trace of the old has been erased. That includes the people. Those who represent the old, with their white habits and white ideas must be destroyed.

Like those medieval peasants who woke up one day to learn their king was part of a strange new cult brought in by a couple of bald guys in dresses, normal people in the empire are seeing the mass conversion of their rulers. Just as Christianity could only tolerate the old ways for so long, this new faith is increasing intolerant of the old normal ways of American society. It now exists to expunge every trace of civil life. This cult has declared total war on the rest of us.

This cult is not new. It is a very old religion which has taken different names and forms over the centuries. It is the temple of social justice, it is the church of antiracism, it is the syncretic heresy of churchianity, holocaustianity, and judeochristianity. It is the cult of Babel, it is the religion of the Pharisees, of the Gnostics, and of the Prometheans. Jesus Christ called it the synagogue of Satan. And it all harkens back to the old promise of the snake in the Garden of Eden.

That is the very ancient lie that men will be as gods if they will only submit to the god of this world and worship him in the place of their Creator.


I can’t honestly criticize

China is cracking down on Roman Catholics:

China will enforce new restrictions on religious groups, organizations, meetings, and other related events starting on Feb 1. The country’s state-controlled media announced the new policy on Dec. 30, after Chinese authorities moved to further suppress Catholics in the Archdiocese of Fuzhou who are refusing to join the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

According to UCA News, the new “Administrative Measures for Religious Groups,” which consists of six sections and 41 articles, will control every aspect of religious activity within China, and will mandate that all religions and believers in China comply with regulations issued by the Chinese Communist Party, which must be acknowledged as the higher authority.

I don’t know that one can consider this a persecution of actual Christians, though. At this point, anyone who swears allegiance to the so-called Pope Francis is pretty damn suspect in my opinion. Whatever god it is that cult of grotesqueries worships, I’m fairly confident it isn’t God the Father, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, or even anything related to the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Where is the Inquisition when you need it?


The good guys

I have to admit, I really don’t quite know where to start with the “hurr durr Vox thinks China are the good guys” crowd.

Let’s start with observing that the very formulation contains a category error. Nations and governments are not people. Therefore, they do not have friends, only interests. Nations and governments are also not moral agents. Therefore, they cannot be “good guys”, or, for that matter, “bad guys”.

This is why I detest the inevitably disastrous attempts of my intellectual inferiors to summarize my thinking.

Let me be perfectly clear: I do not think China are “the good guys”. I am aware that it is a nation ruled by the Communist Party. I am familiar with Chinese history and I am cognizant of the fact that its current rulers are persecuting Christians.

You may recall, that I picked up an East Asian Studies major to go with my Economics degree while I was at university.

However, unlike my critics, I am also aware that the Chinese governments persecutes Christians with considerably less vigor than it persecutes Tibetans, Uighurs, and corrupt government officials. In fact, it is only ranked 23rd on the list of religious persecution, and is not known to have executed a single Christian in 2020. This hardly ranks with Diocletian or North Korea.

Furthermore, who could honestly condemn a nationalist government that persecutes Christians, at least so-called Christians of the sort who are actively aiding and abetting the ongoing invasion of the West? I’d very much like to see a dedicated persecution of those Churchians myself.

Finally, I invite my critics to contemplate this conundrum: a socialist system based upon a planned economy does not work because it is unable to allocate resources effectively due to the lack of price signals, as per Mises and The Contradictions of Socialist Economies. The Chinese economy features both price signals and effective resource allocation, as well as considerable economic growth.

Discuss amongst yourselves.


The Gates of Hell will not triumph

But he’s certainly going to try to impose The Mark of the Beast on a fallen world. And no one can reasonably claim they didn’t know:

You have GOT to be kidding me, chapter 837: The enzyme that is used in the Quantum Dot ID that Bill Gates will use for the Mark of the Beast fake vaccine is called… wait for it… Luciferase.

If, at this point, you’re not a Christian, you’re either devoted to evil, blinded by evil, or you’re simply not paying any attention at all. This level of purposeful revolt against God and His Creation, the intensity of this war against the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, simply cannot be mere happenstance.

The logic defies disbelief.