Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: is there a doctrine in the house?

Mats laments a church in the downward spiral:

Another church service, another feminist promotion. Well, not hardcore feminism, but the notion of a service with ONLY women singers, ONLY women motiffs, and specially, a female “preacher” was enough for me to walk away before the sermon.

I really don’t mind it when I see a woman take the pulpit. That’s when I know that I no longer have to bother attending that church anymore, as it’s only a matter of time before they abandon every other principle of Christian doctrine. It might make for some interesting research to track when women are first permitted leadership positions in a church against the church’s congregation size and the abandonment of specific doctrinal positions.

Science champion wanted

I’ve gotten a few emails from people relating to science, so I think it would be beneficial to hash this out in public. I propose a Socratic dialogue to examine the following question: Is science self-correcting?

Whoever is nominated the Official Champion ofSpeaker for Science should at least be an enthusiastic believer in the scientific method, although an actual scientist would be preferred. Don’t forget to inform everyone of your credentials, as I’m told they’re very important! Now, this isn’t intended to be a debate per se, because I am not defending a position and I have nothing against the idea of science being self-correcting. If the matter is as obvious as my various emailers believe it to be, it should be no problem to successfully answer my simple and straightforward questions in a manner that will prove illuminating to everyone.

So, feel free to throw your name in the hat if you’re interested in educating me and everyone else can discuss who they believe would provide the strongest and most credible champion of science here.

UPDATE: We have several volunteers, two of whom stand out in particular. Matt is a Scienceblogger and PhD candidate for a degree in Physics, while 445supermag is a Senior Research Scientist with 15 published papers ranging from biophysics to quantum chemistry. Matt has suggested that the dialogue include both of them, seeing as they represent different disciplines within science, and I tend to agree with him. I think they will both make for excellent Speakers for Science, but feel free to share your opinon on the matter.

Mailvox: let me explain how this works

Modernguy objects to my kicking around a few angst-ridden atheist teenagers:

You’re treating them as arbiters of the best arguments for atheism so you’re doing battle with them. And acting like you just spiked the ball in their endzone is comical considering they’re probably just a bunch of teenagers. In any case they are philosophically unsophisticated, so I would think below your weight class as internet superintelligence.

First, if I only limited myself to those of my intellectual weight class, I’d have to ignore nearly everyone. Second, it has always been my philosophy to take on all comers and give everyone at least one shot. So, if an atheist Neo-Keynesian with Down’s Syndrome wants to take his best shot, he’s welcome to do it. It’s not like his chances are going to be significantly worse than anyone else’s. And third, who is spiking the ball? I’m not celebrating, being from the Emmitt Smith school of having been there before and expecting to be there again soon; it is an unusual defense that cannot be run over with ease. What I find annoying about Modernguy’s protest is that for every atheist who wonders why I am bothering to kick around the ineffectual opposition, there are 10 clueless atheists who genuinely believe the kickees are making really good points and doing rather well.

The underlying problem isn’t that the atheist teenagers of Reddit are philosophically unsophisticated – and since we’re talking about internet atheists, the chances are good that they are not actually teenagers, it’s just that their intellectual and social development makes them appear to be – it is that self-anointed atheist champions such as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Myers are no more philosophically sophisticated than the teenagers and make pretty much the same arguments. Dennett and Onfray do somewhat better, but they’re still not in my class as their arguments are riddled with obvious errors big enough to drive fleets of trucks through. But don’t take my word for it, read TIA and make up your own mind. No one – and I mean absolutely no one despite tens of thousands of readers – has successfully argued that my critiques of the various arguments presented by these godless gentlemen are incorrect in any way. Few have even attempted to do so because the facts upon which I draw are so conclusive and easily confirmed. Whether it is the Courtier’s Reply or the Red State argument, the Extinction Equation, the Ultimate 747, One Less God, Extraordinary Claims, the Lancet Fluke, or the Epic Self-Evisceration of Christopher Hitchens, I have shown how their arguments to be both inept and invalid.

So, as I and various others have told Modernguy, if you think there is anything better out there, if you think there are any atheists arguments against religion, Christianity or God that are stronger or more valid, then by all means send it to me. I’ll post it here in its unedited entirety before picking it apart. And in the meantime, I’ll finish my post for later today explaining why a scientist who is apparently rather well-regarded in the field of evolutionary science simply does not know what he’s talking about when he prematurely proclaims a particular triumph of so-called science.

On the modern Ivy League education

In which Tom provides an eloquent summary of the present state of the elite American university education:

“Cicero’s The Republic and The Laws”? I admit I’m an Ivy leaguer, but I thought Plato wrote those?

If you, like me, are familiar with a sufficiently large number of Ivy Leaguers, this response no doubt strikes you as a highly unlikely one. One is forced to conclude that Tom is only pretending to possess a degree from an Ivy League university, not because he doesn’t know the works of Cicero, but because he isn’t anywhere nearly pretentious enough about the chance to correct someone else he assumes is insufficiently familiar with Plato. Any genuine Ivy Leaguer would surely have phrased his response thusly:

“The Republic and The Laws? Um, Plato, anyone?”

Ivy Leaguers are, almost to a man, moderately intelligent but uneducated individuals who nevertheless believe they are very well-educated and extraordinarily intelligent. MPAI applies to them with an ironic vengeance. They tend to be heavily inclined towards intellectual bluffing, presumably based upon the magical properties of their sheepskins, which is why you should always call them on their assertions and ask pointed questions on any occasion when you are not already certain that they are demonstrably incorrect.

For example, Tom is partly right. Plato did indeed write both The Republic and The Laws. The dialogues have been famous for centuries and anyone with a halfway-decent university degree will have heard of them, or at least The Republic. (On the other hand, very few of the degreed folk who are prone to happily citing the question “Who will watch the watchers?” at the drop of a hat has actually read either dialogue.) And even fewer happen to know that Cicero, who was a learned admirer of Ancient Greece, (albeit not to the extent of his great friend Atticus), also wrote a number of dialogues, among them De Re Publica and De Legibus.

While the more proper translation of these two dialogues would be “On the Republic” and “On the Laws”, they are more commonly known as “The Republic” and “The Laws”, which, as it happens, is exactly how the new Oxford translation to which I was referring has them.

Mailvox: No fear!

Big Chilly sends word of an incredibly courageous woman who puts us all to shame:

“SM has been studied for more than 20 years, and many papers have been published about her fear-related abnormalities. She has trouble recognizing fear in facial expressions, for example. In another experiment, published in 1995, she was blasted with a loud horn every time she saw a blue-colored square appear on a screen. Despite the repeated blasting horn, she never developed the fear an ordinary person would feel when seeing the blue square.“

Emphasis is mine. She not only does not, but can not fear seeing the blue square. Holy crap.

The glorious return of Uber Dawks

Speaking of social autism, Uber Dawks offers this timely reminder that atheists who believe in reason don’t actually tend to utilize it well:

I see that your and fellow idiot fundies at WND who are somehow trying spin the Florida School Board shooting story into an anti-atheist screed because the shooter listed his religion as “Humanist” and was obviously ultra-liberal. I am now anxiously awaiting the typical Vox Day commentary bereft of logic and reason, much like your belief in Jesus.

This is typical conservative bait and switch and it disgusts me. You and your WND comrades should be ashamed. The world would be a better place if you idiots would just realize that you are fighting a losing battle against progress, including atheism and social equality. You just don’t understand that the human society is evolving into a better social construct, much like humans themselves have evolved into creatures that transcend racial inequality and sexual biology. We are no longer driven by the need to herd and procreate but have progressed into a society where freethinking is encouraged and sexual preference has transcended basic biology.

I’ve said it before an I’ll say it again – YOU IDIOT FUNDIES ARE LOSING! Humanism is a philosophy that will take over because it is based on REASON – and no smear campaign against it like linking a crazed Florida shooter to humanism will change that. Learn to give up your myths and this season celebrate reason. You people infuriate me and I anxiously await the day that you have been pushed out by science reason and are gone from our society.

Ah, yet another atheist arguing that the actions of a humanist [and probable atheist] should not be cited as an argument against atheism even though he has cited the actions of religious individuals as an argument against religion in the past. No doubt he would similarly argue that mass murders committed by atheists cannot possibly be attributed to their atheism even as he “anxiously” awaits the day that “science reason” has pushed theists out of his society. No doubt that’s just a coincidence and has nothing to do with his own atheism, right?

And who but an atheist would ever think to take the example of a humanist committing suicide and attempt to spin it into evidence for the ultimate triumph of humanism. Remember, these people genuinely believe they are more intelligent than you are.

UPDATE: Uber Dawks adds the following: You are missing the point entirely. The man did not shoot at others and then kill himself BECAUSE he was a humanist or an atheist, which is the same mistake you make when you mention Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot. The conservative media is already pointing to his atheism/humanism in order to paint the same sort of idiotic argument you make when mentioning the atheism of Joseph Stalin, etc. Epic fail.

Interesting. And leads to the question, would Uber Dawk hate “IDIOT FUNDIES” and dream about “Science Reason” pushing them from his society if he were not an atheist? Isn’t it his atheism that is behind his hatred? Some people really need to stop deifying reason and start using it.

Mailvox: On the secrets of the state

An interested party asks for elucidation on my attitude towards the legitimacy of state secrets:

I have read your column for years, sometimes in agreement, and sometimes not, and am so not surprised at your position on the most recent Wikileaks affair. Given that position, I am curious as to whether you would agree with the statement that no state may morally conceal any of its actions, intentions, or internal communications. If not, how would you qualify the statement to render it acceptable to you? I am also interested in whether you would draw a distinction between the concealment just mentioned and the provision of intentionally false or misleading responses — lies — in answer to requests for information. Finally, I would ask whether you might see any basis for differentiation between individual or state concealment or lies.

The question requires some clarification before it can be answered. First, what sort of state is it? Second, from whom is the state concealing its actions, intentions, and international communications? In the case of a state that is ruled by a sovereign monarch, in which “l’etat, c’est moi”, then the state can morally conceal its actions, intentions, and communications from anyone it pleases. In the case of a state in which the people are sovereign, (which is to say that the people are the state), the state cannot morally conceal its actions, intentions, and international communications from the people, which is to say itself.

It is completely false and historically illiterate to argue, as some would have it, that it would be self-destructive for a state in which the people are sovereign to retain no secrets. Quite the opposite is true; because most great powers fall to internal corruption prior to their conquest by external parties, it is the ability of powerful elements within the state to conceal information from the rest of the state that leads to the subversion of the state and its eventual transformation and collapse.

The example of war, so often cited in support of state secrets, actually supports the contrary case even more strongly. While it might have been more difficult make the D-Day landings, the more significant point is that they never would have needed to be made had the American people not been led blindly into World War I, which allowed the stage to be set for the rise of Hitler, the National Socialists, and the conquest of France. In the same manner, the informants who are supposedly endangered by the Wikileaks releases would never have faced any danger if the American people had been in full possession of the facts with regards to Afghanistan and Iraq; those invasions would never have taken place.

Obviously, it is worse for the government to lie in request for information; sins of commission are generally considered worse than sins of omission. But in a supposedly free and democratic society, there is no place for either. And finally, the difference between a state lie and an individual lie is that in the case of the former, (assuming a nominally free and democratic state), the state is lying to itself whereas the individual is lying to someone else. Needless to say, whether one is a state or an individual, one who lies to himself is very unlikely to make optimal decisions. And that is precisely the practical problem that underlines not only the immorality, but the self-destructive foolishness of state secrets.

In a state where the people are sovereign, state secrets are maintained for one reason and one reason only: to permit certain elements of the state to operate freely without taking into account the will of the other elements of the state. This is why state secrets are intrinsically authoritarian and invariably lead to the loss of human liberty over time. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that mine is a “naive” position, as the self-styled geopolitical realists like to describe it. It is nothing of the kind, being an extremely cynical one instead.

Mailvox: the daughter of the Devil and other emails

SF presents a succinct case:

Two wrongs don’t make a right, you fool.

That may be true, but the more salient point is that one right does. Bill helpfully illustrates the importance of owning a dictionary, or at least a passing familiarity with the English language:

Back in the real world, this was known as treason and the perpetrator would tried and hung. That is the way that true Americans feel about the betrayal of their country. These are also the ones that have fought and served their country, something, more than likely unknown to the likes of you and your kind. Sad that people have died defending the rights of traitors!

It is sad that Julian Assange should have so treasonously betrayed all those Americans who died defending his rights when the British invaded Australia… or something. Important rights like the freedom of speech, which that traitor should have known better than to exercise! Seriously, what is it with these conservatives who can’t seem to figure out that you cannot commit treason against a country to which you owe no allegiance?

GL, on the other hand, quite liked the column:

I purposefully read Barbara Simpsons article before yours and my mind was going off like it was Chinese New Year. I wanted so much to e-mail her and either yell in her face to shut her stupid illogical lying mouth or conversely to quietly tell her how wrong she was on so many levels. Fortunately I read your article before I did and now my mind is perfectly at ease. You said what I would have wanted to say if only I had been articulate, smart and cruel enough to say it.

And then there was this masterpiece of reason from JT:

I usually disagree with just about everything you say and usually just toss off your doffus opinions as probable doobie influence, but this time I so vehemently disagree I have to comment. You sit behind your PC in, no doubt, your cushy chair in your very cushy home, just like that little weasel you think is a hero, and make comments that are so unreal I can smell the pot. Join the military, put yourself in danger—not just the danger of getting sores on your butt by sitting too long in one position behind your PC screen—real danger—people shooting at you, people lobbing grenades at you, people hiding behind women and children and firing at you and you may have some kind of credibility.

But since you have never done anything to put yourself in that kind of danger, as my son has done by serving on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan, you have no idea how disgusting your hero worship of this little piece of vermin is. You are as disgusting as the Wikileaks Weasel. I used to think that libertarians were just as dangerous as liberals. I’ve now had to change my mind. You’re even more dangerous.

To which I responded: “Julian Assange is not putting anyone in any danger that George W. Bush and Barack Obama did not already put them. The fact that the truth may be dangerous does not justify the lie. You talk about others being disgusting, but you are daughter to the Devil, the Father of Lies.”

I am dangerous, Ice…man.

Mailvox: beyond overload

HW writes of the effects of engaging in an intellectually hazardous adventure:

Effects of reading 7 years of Vox Popoli entries in two months:

I started following your blog and somehow came to the insane conclusion that I should read every single one of your posts, starting from 2003. I came to Vox Popoli after reading TIA and thoroughly enjoying the unapologetic demolition of the New Atheists’ best arguments. While I know that TIA is not meant as a defense of Christianity, its author was clearly a believer, and not the kind whose confused imagination portrays Christ as a limp-wristed hippy. Vox’s posts on feminism piqued my interest further and I decided to read the entire archive. You know, for fun.

How has concentrated exposure to Vox’s writing affected my life? Let’s break it down by category.

Career: Won’t try to become a professional writer.

Economics: Intense feelings of doom.

Child-rearing: First child is due in January. Won’t be vaccinating, (at least immediately), will be homeschooling. It’s clear now that my public school education was not only inefficient, but just plain wrong at times. The Dark Ages never happened? Who knew?!

Politics: Clearer view of how police power is dangerous and needs to be severely restricted. I previously described myself as a conservative, and though my political leanings were similar to libertarianism, I consistently voted Republican. However, as I reached the end of the 2008 archives, that changed. Two years of the Obama administration has conditioned me to blame everything on him, and the bailouts fit his modus operandi perfectly, so my brain naturally added the farcical attempts at recovery to his list of sins. Then a shocking realization: Bush was still President. The man I VOTED FOR was governing like Obama. The time-travel effect of the archives has convinced me that Bush was not conservative, and I now regret voting for McCain. Fortunately, this was in time for the November elections, and my wife and I cast our first votes for libertarian candidates.

Digesting the archives was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and while it challenged several of my concepts of the world, I don’t feel that it’s any exaggeration to say that I’m better off for it. I’m taking steps to cure my historical blind spots and my wife happened to be convincing me that homeschooling was superior at the same time as I was reading Vox’s posts on the subject. The only downside to finishing this little project is that I have to wait until you post now, instead of being able to simply move on to the next month. I guess I’ll start Summa Elvetica…

I know the feeling, I did much the same thing a few years ago when I discovered Fred Reed’s articles. I am pleased that HW found the experience to be a useful one, especially because it appears to have encouraged him to think for himself and to heighten his critical faculties. The primary goal of this blog is to encourage myself and others to raise our intellectual game in a free, casual, and reasonably civil manner.

Speaking of which, I have an idea for a book which would require an amount of fairly serious research help from the Ilk. Despite the copious amounts of ink and its digital substitute that have been devoted to blathering in ignorance about religion and war, there has never been a serious book about it from the military historians, the military strategists, or the critics of religion. So, I’m contemplating the expansion of the two chapters of TIA devoted to the subject into a book entitled God and War that deals with the use and utility of religion in historical warfare dating back to the earliest written records.

This would not be a book of apologetics or even an attack on the hypothesis that religion causes war, it would be a straightforward summary of all the known facts about the relationship between religion and the causes and practice of war. This strikes me as a more useful contribution to the sum of human knowledge than continuing to beat up on intellectual lightweights like the New Atheists and Keynesian economists. It’s a rather large-scale undertaking and will take an amount of time to write since I can’t devote any work time to it, so it would help speed up the process if if five or ten people would be willing to help with digging up the details on specific wars that have either eluded the three-volumes of the Encyclopedia of Wars or been given insufficient shrift by the authors of that very useful reference work.

Anyhow, it’s just an idea at this stage, so let me know if it would be of any interest to you, either as a reader or a potential volunteer.

Mailvox: Jesus and war

LJ has his doubts:

Read your bit on Jesus and war. It is hard to believe Jesus would support all the death that War brings to innocent children. What would he say about our inability to put money into education for the poor. You are fooling yourself.

I’m always a little taken aback when people begin with a reasonable, if mistaken, point, and then go on to make asses of themselves by making baseless declarative statements about me. How am I fooling myself? And with regards to what? While everyone is certainly welcome to disagree with me, you have to either know nothing about me or be almost completely unfamiliar with this blog to believe that my opinions are formed on the same basis of that amorphous collection of vaguely remembered elementary school classes, parental biases, college lectures, personal insecurities, peer pressures, and emotional reactions that go into forming most people’s opinions.

Now, as to the subject in question, Jesus doesn’t speak much on war, but it is clear that he doesn’t regard it as the be-all and end-all of evil that most people today seem to consider it, except when the media and the White House have whipped them up into a frenzy of support for another round of long-distance bombing.

First, God Himself wages war against men. “You fear the sword, and the sword is what I will bring against you, declares the Sovereign LORD.” – Ezekiel 11:8.

Second, Jesus did not come to bring peace. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” – Matthew 10:33

Third, Jesus intends to make serious war upon mankind in the future. “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” – Revelation 19:11

Fourth, I’ve never seen any evidence that Jesus cares particularly about education, either for the poor or anyone else, to say nothing of any moral duty to pay for the education of poor children.

In conclusion, it would appear that LJ doesn’t know the Bible nor the first thing about what Jesus would say about anything. The efforts of the New Atheists notwithstanding, spouting an opinion in complete ignorance is unlikely to convince anyone of anything.