VIII - Chromaticism no. 1
IX - Chromaticism no. 2
XI - Dream Bells
Monday, April 3, 2017
Atanas Ourkouzounov - from 11 Prelude-Etudes
VII - Modes
VIII - Chromaticism no. 1
IX - Chromaticism no. 2
XI - Dream Bells
VIII - Chromaticism no. 1
IX - Chromaticism no. 2
XI - Dream Bells
Susan Collins, Neil Gorsuch's Rulings Are On Your And Your Republican-Fascist Parties' Heads
It's a sure thing that if Democrats hold firm in filibustering the Gorsuch nomination and the Republican-fascists under Mitch McConnell get rid of the filibuster that Democrats will be blamed for destroying that movie device that gave Jimmy Stewart one of his iconic opportunities. I can hear NPR's rote expressions of world-weary, belt-way sorrow at the passing of an institution even as I type this.
But the fabled filibuster has mostly been used to prevent things like anti-lynching and civil rights laws from being passed. I would love to see a tally of successful uses of the filibuster to judge what has benefited from it most, I'll bet you it's not liberal or even moderately progressive legislation. It was designed to be an obstruction and what mostly gets obstructed is liberal legislation.
The fact is that Republican-fascists have used the filibuster in minority when Democrats held the Senate but that Senate Democrats have not used it when they are in the minority with anything like success. With the racist Republican-fascist decision to turn the first Black president into a non-president, ultimately in denying his last Supreme Court nominee even courtesy visits, never mind a hearing, they're the ones who removed any meaning in Senate rules or even their oath to follow the Constitution.
Democrats will find times they wish they hadn't stood firm on this but, for their purposes, the filibuster was lost a long time ago. If they never tried using it, it was never there anyway. Better to face facts and make Republican-fascists own Gorsuch and his depraved hostility to the non-rich, from the phony moderates like Susan Collins to the hard-right racist fascists which are, in fact, most of the Senate Republicans now.
But the fabled filibuster has mostly been used to prevent things like anti-lynching and civil rights laws from being passed. I would love to see a tally of successful uses of the filibuster to judge what has benefited from it most, I'll bet you it's not liberal or even moderately progressive legislation. It was designed to be an obstruction and what mostly gets obstructed is liberal legislation.
The fact is that Republican-fascists have used the filibuster in minority when Democrats held the Senate but that Senate Democrats have not used it when they are in the minority with anything like success. With the racist Republican-fascist decision to turn the first Black president into a non-president, ultimately in denying his last Supreme Court nominee even courtesy visits, never mind a hearing, they're the ones who removed any meaning in Senate rules or even their oath to follow the Constitution.
Democrats will find times they wish they hadn't stood firm on this but, for their purposes, the filibuster was lost a long time ago. If they never tried using it, it was never there anyway. Better to face facts and make Republican-fascists own Gorsuch and his depraved hostility to the non-rich, from the phony moderates like Susan Collins to the hard-right racist fascists which are, in fact, most of the Senate Republicans now.
Remember This When An Atheist Claims Atheism Gives You Self Respect
An update on the question I posed to a bunch of atheist trolls at Religion Dispatches, what does atheism have that Christianity doesn't. The semi-pro atheist troll I first posed the question to came up with "self respect". Which is rather odd since she and her fellow atheists accused Christians of being puffed up with self-regard and snobbery about their religion having a special status and granting Christians a special status above all others*.
But, considering the wacky stuff atheists come up with to maintain their rigid, materialist monist insistence that the material universe "is all that is or was or ever will be" in the words of their fellow materialist, Carl Sagan, that claim that atheism promotes or even contains self respect is not only absurd, it's hilariously absurd.
I noted yesterday that those atheists in philosophy, in neuroscience, in other biological and psychological fields, when they come up against the problem of consciousness, have come to the ultimate intellectual decadence of denying that consciousness, itself, exists as anything other than being a mere epiphenomenon of the chemistry and physics that merely happen, as a result of random chance to be present in the skulls of people and animals, which results in what we are so deluded to believe we experience as is a living being - our very selves - thinking. In order to maintain their materialist-atheist ideology, these university based scribblers and babblers have impeached everything about human intellectual activity into having no more of a status of distinction or truth than that cast iron skillet you left in the sink getting rusty or the baking powder you used to raise your pancakes in it.
As also pointed out yesterday, those academic atheists, somehow, have no shame in demonstrating that they, themselves, don't really believe that because they not only copyright their scribblings about that, they would certainly find, somehow, that those selves they turn into a mere nothing, their very own selves have a right to the random reactions that are their thoughts and not only a right to them but any of their colleagues they might suspect of cribbing "their" "intellectual property" have done their non-existent, insignificant "selves" a moral wrong which "they" have a "right" to see punished. Really, considering what those always PhD'd philosophers and scientists claim, you'd have to put scare quotes around virtually every one of the nouns and many of the pronouns and adjectives dealing with issues such as plagiarism, copyright, really any discussion of morality or legal rights in order to signal you're aware that they and anyone who claims to believe their nonsense are engaged in a ridiculous level of doublespeak. They clearly have so little faith in their idea that they're entirely unwilling to live even their absurd academic lives as if they really believed it.
I have said before that my past eleven years as a critic of atheism got started when one of the old regulars at an atheist majority-lefty blog, during a discussion came out with the barroom atheist claim** that "Science has proved that free-will is a myth". Considering we were lefties railing against violations of peoples' freedom and dignity, reading a lefty make that claim forced me to consider how that belief would pretty much destroy the validity of our claims for freedom. I suspect I might have seen the problem before that but seeing a lefty claim that on a lefty blog without anyone else seeing the problem such a belief, believed with the alleged certainty that science has, science that such lefties worship in place of God, couldn't but lead to the invalidation of all of our political-moral claims. The belief that "science has proved free-will is a myth" I suddenly realized, is fatal to liberalism though it was perfectly compatible with dictatorship, oligarchy, plutocracy. feudalism, etc. It would certainly be compatible and convenient for pseudo-lefty Stalinists, Maoists, etc and how they could ignore those mountains of corpses and grinding oppression that those "lefty" heroes forced other people to live under.
That simple statement, made by a lefty on a lefty blog to no objection by the other resident lefties, was what started me on this. I stay in it for the same reason I started on it, that it is a totally false and unnecessary belief which is fatal to egalitarian democracy, and which puts any idea of civil rights, to any moral stand other than survival of the fittest, might makes right or to any claim of oppressed people or any claim of rights for other sentient life at a fatal disadvantage. Materialism undermines the entirety of liberalism. When it is pressed to its ultimate and rationally necessary meaning, it entirely undermines any status given to people and other living beings over inanimate objects, it demotes all of our insights into less than delusions. A delusion, after all, is had by a conscious being who is capable of becoming undeluded, to come to know the truth. Materialism has to produce a claim that the conscious beings, themselves, have no more status than a delusion and mirage and their mental products have no more status as being true than any other chemical reaction happening under whatever random physical conditions they happen in.
Like those Buddhists who cleave to the doctrine of no-self with a similar understanding, atheist materialists not only have no claim to producing self-respect, they must deny the existence of a self which would have to be deluded to believe it had respectability. Though, as seen in the academic atheists who make such claims, they don't have the self-respect to really conduct their lives and careers as if they really believe what they claim with such obvious pride.
As a traditional, convinced, American style liberal, I'm saying the whole thing is nonsense that no liberal could believe without fatal damage to their liberalism.
* This exchange, for example:
Jim Reed Anthony McCarthy • 19 hours ago
I see your point. Christianity was founded on judging others, not having others judge them.
Anthony McCarthy Jim Reed • 18 hours ago
Christianity was founded on judging your own actions. You might want to check out what Jesus said about taking the beam out of our own eyes before criticizing the spec in the eyes of other people, judging not lest we be judged, on those who are without sin throwing the first stone...
It doesn't, though, prevent me from pointing out that you a. don't know what you're talking about, b. are lying.
There was more. Anyone who's ever read atheists slamming Christians will know what I'm talking about.
** He was the kind of guy who would join the I.W.W. so he could show people his card and call himself a wobbly just like ol' Joe Hill and Big Bill Haywood. Oddly, they very seldom mention about the only Wobbly who ever really spent their life actually feeding hungry people, clothing them, sheltering them, etc. Dorothy Day. Only she did most of that as a Catholic Worker. She was an even better leftist after her conversion to Christianity as a Catholic.
But, considering the wacky stuff atheists come up with to maintain their rigid, materialist monist insistence that the material universe "is all that is or was or ever will be" in the words of their fellow materialist, Carl Sagan, that claim that atheism promotes or even contains self respect is not only absurd, it's hilariously absurd.
I noted yesterday that those atheists in philosophy, in neuroscience, in other biological and psychological fields, when they come up against the problem of consciousness, have come to the ultimate intellectual decadence of denying that consciousness, itself, exists as anything other than being a mere epiphenomenon of the chemistry and physics that merely happen, as a result of random chance to be present in the skulls of people and animals, which results in what we are so deluded to believe we experience as is a living being - our very selves - thinking. In order to maintain their materialist-atheist ideology, these university based scribblers and babblers have impeached everything about human intellectual activity into having no more of a status of distinction or truth than that cast iron skillet you left in the sink getting rusty or the baking powder you used to raise your pancakes in it.
As also pointed out yesterday, those academic atheists, somehow, have no shame in demonstrating that they, themselves, don't really believe that because they not only copyright their scribblings about that, they would certainly find, somehow, that those selves they turn into a mere nothing, their very own selves have a right to the random reactions that are their thoughts and not only a right to them but any of their colleagues they might suspect of cribbing "their" "intellectual property" have done their non-existent, insignificant "selves" a moral wrong which "they" have a "right" to see punished. Really, considering what those always PhD'd philosophers and scientists claim, you'd have to put scare quotes around virtually every one of the nouns and many of the pronouns and adjectives dealing with issues such as plagiarism, copyright, really any discussion of morality or legal rights in order to signal you're aware that they and anyone who claims to believe their nonsense are engaged in a ridiculous level of doublespeak. They clearly have so little faith in their idea that they're entirely unwilling to live even their absurd academic lives as if they really believed it.
I have said before that my past eleven years as a critic of atheism got started when one of the old regulars at an atheist majority-lefty blog, during a discussion came out with the barroom atheist claim** that "Science has proved that free-will is a myth". Considering we were lefties railing against violations of peoples' freedom and dignity, reading a lefty make that claim forced me to consider how that belief would pretty much destroy the validity of our claims for freedom. I suspect I might have seen the problem before that but seeing a lefty claim that on a lefty blog without anyone else seeing the problem such a belief, believed with the alleged certainty that science has, science that such lefties worship in place of God, couldn't but lead to the invalidation of all of our political-moral claims. The belief that "science has proved free-will is a myth" I suddenly realized, is fatal to liberalism though it was perfectly compatible with dictatorship, oligarchy, plutocracy. feudalism, etc. It would certainly be compatible and convenient for pseudo-lefty Stalinists, Maoists, etc and how they could ignore those mountains of corpses and grinding oppression that those "lefty" heroes forced other people to live under.
That simple statement, made by a lefty on a lefty blog to no objection by the other resident lefties, was what started me on this. I stay in it for the same reason I started on it, that it is a totally false and unnecessary belief which is fatal to egalitarian democracy, and which puts any idea of civil rights, to any moral stand other than survival of the fittest, might makes right or to any claim of oppressed people or any claim of rights for other sentient life at a fatal disadvantage. Materialism undermines the entirety of liberalism. When it is pressed to its ultimate and rationally necessary meaning, it entirely undermines any status given to people and other living beings over inanimate objects, it demotes all of our insights into less than delusions. A delusion, after all, is had by a conscious being who is capable of becoming undeluded, to come to know the truth. Materialism has to produce a claim that the conscious beings, themselves, have no more status than a delusion and mirage and their mental products have no more status as being true than any other chemical reaction happening under whatever random physical conditions they happen in.
Like those Buddhists who cleave to the doctrine of no-self with a similar understanding, atheist materialists not only have no claim to producing self-respect, they must deny the existence of a self which would have to be deluded to believe it had respectability. Though, as seen in the academic atheists who make such claims, they don't have the self-respect to really conduct their lives and careers as if they really believe what they claim with such obvious pride.
As a traditional, convinced, American style liberal, I'm saying the whole thing is nonsense that no liberal could believe without fatal damage to their liberalism.
* This exchange, for example:
Jim Reed Anthony McCarthy • 19 hours ago
I see your point. Christianity was founded on judging others, not having others judge them.
Anthony McCarthy Jim Reed • 18 hours ago
Christianity was founded on judging your own actions. You might want to check out what Jesus said about taking the beam out of our own eyes before criticizing the spec in the eyes of other people, judging not lest we be judged, on those who are without sin throwing the first stone...
It doesn't, though, prevent me from pointing out that you a. don't know what you're talking about, b. are lying.
There was more. Anyone who's ever read atheists slamming Christians will know what I'm talking about.
** He was the kind of guy who would join the I.W.W. so he could show people his card and call himself a wobbly just like ol' Joe Hill and Big Bill Haywood. Oddly, they very seldom mention about the only Wobbly who ever really spent their life actually feeding hungry people, clothing them, sheltering them, etc. Dorothy Day. Only she did most of that as a Catholic Worker. She was an even better leftist after her conversion to Christianity as a Catholic.
Sunday, April 2, 2017
Hate Mail
Oh, for crying out loud. Freki the Brit is about as credible as Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer or Ken Ham*. She lies with as much facility but since she does it for a bunch of people who don't care that she's lying and who will never fact check her, her job is a lot easier.
I don't recall ever taking information from a creationist website. Perhaps you might want to ask her to back it up. Don't worry, she won't so there won't be any work to it.
I don't think I've ever read anyone ask that question I did this morning, maybe she'd like to answer it, what does atheism have that Christianity doesn't? I haven't gotten any answers to it at Religion Dispatches either. Apparently the atheists can't think of a thing.
Friki pretty much lies about everything. That's really all you need to know about her. I think she might be the person who first led me to suspect that there really was a consequence to not believing in sin and so it wasn't a sin to lie. Though there are others over there who add weight to the contention.
* I was curious as to what I've ever said about the big names of creationism. I came up with two posts where I mention Ken Ham, one which I remember from a few weeks back in which I said:
Looking at the link provided to said "friendly atheist" he has a couple of recent posts mocking the mockable Ken Ham over his denial of the reality of the "big bang" the current best model of the beginning of the universe.
In which I point out that another Big Bang denier was the atheist-ideologue, editor of Nature, the late John Maddox who railed against it as late as the 1990s. He was afraid that the Big Bang would undermine atheism. He wasn't the only atheist who was afraid it would.
The other mention of Ken Ham was a while earlier and more detailed.
In the King James translation of Psalm 30 it says "in His favor is life". Despite what some self-appointed bully boy of fundamentalism said to get his name in the news (Ken Ham) the idea that God might have found life so good that it is an intrinsic part of the physical universe also named as His creation that life will arise, over and over again, in many forms, with many purposes that we can't comprehend because we don't happen to be God.
Despite what current atheists repeat out of ignorance, the entire text of The Bible asserts, over and over again that life is good, that life is part of the purpose of God and that the diversity of life is good. The idea that God finds life to be good is entirely consistent with there being life in other places in the universe.
I look at what some numbnuts like Ken Ham says about scriptures and see that what he said says everything about what his preferences are and not what is said in the scriptures. I look at atheist assertions about what the finding of "other life" means and see everything about what their preferences are, not what a conclusive conclusion that could be drawn from that would be.
Off hand, I don't remember writing much about creationism other than to say it's neither a good interpretation of Genesis or the evidence and that evolution is a fact. Though natural selection isn't.
Update: You can tell the dumb dolly that I've had that book for decades. She can bite me.
Update 2; Yeah, yeah, she lives in Canada, so she says, but she's Tanland to her Irish hating bones.
I don't recall ever taking information from a creationist website. Perhaps you might want to ask her to back it up. Don't worry, she won't so there won't be any work to it.
I don't think I've ever read anyone ask that question I did this morning, maybe she'd like to answer it, what does atheism have that Christianity doesn't? I haven't gotten any answers to it at Religion Dispatches either. Apparently the atheists can't think of a thing.
Friki pretty much lies about everything. That's really all you need to know about her. I think she might be the person who first led me to suspect that there really was a consequence to not believing in sin and so it wasn't a sin to lie. Though there are others over there who add weight to the contention.
* I was curious as to what I've ever said about the big names of creationism. I came up with two posts where I mention Ken Ham, one which I remember from a few weeks back in which I said:
Looking at the link provided to said "friendly atheist" he has a couple of recent posts mocking the mockable Ken Ham over his denial of the reality of the "big bang" the current best model of the beginning of the universe.
In which I point out that another Big Bang denier was the atheist-ideologue, editor of Nature, the late John Maddox who railed against it as late as the 1990s. He was afraid that the Big Bang would undermine atheism. He wasn't the only atheist who was afraid it would.
The other mention of Ken Ham was a while earlier and more detailed.
In the King James translation of Psalm 30 it says "in His favor is life". Despite what some self-appointed bully boy of fundamentalism said to get his name in the news (Ken Ham) the idea that God might have found life so good that it is an intrinsic part of the physical universe also named as His creation that life will arise, over and over again, in many forms, with many purposes that we can't comprehend because we don't happen to be God.
Despite what current atheists repeat out of ignorance, the entire text of The Bible asserts, over and over again that life is good, that life is part of the purpose of God and that the diversity of life is good. The idea that God finds life to be good is entirely consistent with there being life in other places in the universe.
I look at what some numbnuts like Ken Ham says about scriptures and see that what he said says everything about what his preferences are and not what is said in the scriptures. I look at atheist assertions about what the finding of "other life" means and see everything about what their preferences are, not what a conclusive conclusion that could be drawn from that would be.
Off hand, I don't remember writing much about creationism other than to say it's neither a good interpretation of Genesis or the evidence and that evolution is a fact. Though natural selection isn't.
Update: You can tell the dumb dolly that I've had that book for decades. She can bite me.
Update 2; Yeah, yeah, she lives in Canada, so she says, but she's Tanland to her Irish hating bones.
Stories Permissible And Impermissible - Putting A Thumb On The Scale For Darwin
In looking up the quote from Stephen Jay Gould I referred to this morning, I came across a rather curious thing, that the evo-psys are using a quote from the arch-anti-evo-psy guy Stephen Jay Gould in a number of things online to support the validity of their work which he slammed in much of his other public writing.
Curious, especially as I'd read the source of the quote along the way, I needed to go back and reread it. And, in fact, that quote is extremely interesting in what it reveals, especially as it is entirely at odds with just about everything by Gould on the topic which I'd ever read. The quote, whole or clipped, is the first of two paragraphs from Gould's essay Sociobiology: The Art of Storytelling, New Scientist November 16, 1978.
Sociobiologists have broadened their range of selective stories by invoking concepts of inclusive fitness and kin selection to solve (successfully I think) the vexations problem of altruism – previously the greatest stumbling block to a Darwinian theory of social behaviour. (Altruistic acts are the cement of stable socieities. Until we could explain apparent acts of self-sacrifice as potentially beneficial to the genetic fitness of sacrificers themselves – propagation of genes through enhanced survival of in, for example – the prevalence of altruism blocked any Darwinian theory of social behaviour.)
The next paragraph is especially interesting to consider in light of the current use of that paragraph because in it (and in the entire essay) Gould undermined what he said in that paragraph.
Thus kin selection has broadened the range of permissible stores, but it has not alleviated any methodological difficulties in the process of storytelling itself. Von Bertalenffy's objections still apply, if anything with greater force, because behaviour is generally more plastic and more difficult to specify and homologise than morphology. Sociobiologists are still telling speculative stories, still hitching without evidece to one potential star among many, still using mere consistency with natural selection as a criterion of acceptance.
It would be fun and instructive to go through Gould's list of problems with sociobiology and, as well, evolutionary psychology, but it's more interesting to ask why Gould was willing to cut them slack over the matter of "altruism" which would certainly have been covered by his as well as Von Bertalenffy's objection to coming up with unevidenced stories about other supposed traits, that they had an ineffability that meant could never be concretely observed unlike morphological features of individuals and, I suppose, species.
Clearly, for Gould to have made such an exception for something as complex, ineffable, as varied and as possibly opportunistically misinterpreted as acts deemed to display "altruism" he must have had a motive in doing that and I think his motive is, in fact, not in any way different from the motive of sociobiologists he criticized in coming up with stories he deemed not "permissible". They got rid of "vexatious problems" for the theory of natural selection.
Just how Gould would have decided that that motive in making stuff up was bad when he didn't like what they concluded but, in this one case, it was just swell reveals one of the biggest problems with the theory of natural selection which is based entirely on the empowerment of selfishness, self-interest to a law of nature when no one who wasn't depraved would accept that as better than generosity, selflessness, kindness, helpfulness, etc. There is, actually, no way to square those moral values with natural selection except by redefining them, reanalyzing them, making up a story about them that turns them into an act of selfishness, even if you have to twist the entire act into what it certainly isn't. As I've pointed out, when you try to turn selfless acts of individuals into acts of selfishness on behalf of their genes the problems you create quickly overwhelm the story with things that have to be ignored to support the creation fable.
That Gould began his essay with a discussion of one of the foremost of scientific skeptics of natural selection, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, shows that Gould was certainly aware of the problem with what he did in that paragraph as he was with what his fellow Darwinists did when they went beyond where there was any evidence. Here, from the beginning of the essay:
In 1969 he [Bertalanffy] wrote: If selection is taken as an axiomatic and a priori principle, it is always possible to imagine auxiliary hypotheses – unproved and by nature unprovable – to make it work in any special case … Some adaptive value … can always be construed or imagined.
“ I think the fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in “hard” science, has become a dogma, can only be explained on sociological grounds. Society and science have been so steeped in the ideas of mechanism, utilitarianism, and the economic concept of fee competition, that instead of God, Selection was enthroned as ultimate reality”.
I think the description of how people wanting to assert natural selection in any given instance or, in fact, in any of their purpose-made stories was one of the most insightful criticisms of a scientific or quasi-scientific dogma I've ever read. I think Gould was an extremely able, honest and skilled advocate for natural selection but I don't think he succeeded in removing the criticism contained in it. I think he wanted to apply his skill to using it to render stories he didn't like impermissible while asserting that the kind of story he liked was permissible because of its utility to, certainly Darwinism but, also his generation of biology, more generally and his preferred quasi-material ideology in general. I think that's the reason that all of it is protected from even the most qualified of scientific, even biological criticism. In the end, if, for some reason, natural selection was admitted to function as God and was, in fact, incompatible with the idea that nature happens by blind, random, chance, they would have to construct something else to replace Darwinism. I do think that is one of the most urgent of reasons that people like Gould have done this from the start. In his case, it's more remarkable for his generally honest and rigorous truth telling. I would say the same thing of several of his close colleagues who signed onto their take down of sociobiology in 1976.
I have gone from a totally conventional Darwinist to being an extreme skeptic of natural selection based on reading what Darwinists have said and noticing their lapses in reason, in rigor and, in way too many cases, ideologically interested dishonesty. I used to accept Gould's idea that Natural Selection was the greatest idea in the history of science but these days I think Dmitri Mendeleev and his insights into the elements are more impressive, certainly more supported, less in need of constant patching and stretching, less ideologically motivated and, certainly more durable. They're also a lot less dangerous.
Curious, especially as I'd read the source of the quote along the way, I needed to go back and reread it. And, in fact, that quote is extremely interesting in what it reveals, especially as it is entirely at odds with just about everything by Gould on the topic which I'd ever read. The quote, whole or clipped, is the first of two paragraphs from Gould's essay Sociobiology: The Art of Storytelling, New Scientist November 16, 1978.
Sociobiologists have broadened their range of selective stories by invoking concepts of inclusive fitness and kin selection to solve (successfully I think) the vexations problem of altruism – previously the greatest stumbling block to a Darwinian theory of social behaviour. (Altruistic acts are the cement of stable socieities. Until we could explain apparent acts of self-sacrifice as potentially beneficial to the genetic fitness of sacrificers themselves – propagation of genes through enhanced survival of in, for example – the prevalence of altruism blocked any Darwinian theory of social behaviour.)
The next paragraph is especially interesting to consider in light of the current use of that paragraph because in it (and in the entire essay) Gould undermined what he said in that paragraph.
Thus kin selection has broadened the range of permissible stores, but it has not alleviated any methodological difficulties in the process of storytelling itself. Von Bertalenffy's objections still apply, if anything with greater force, because behaviour is generally more plastic and more difficult to specify and homologise than morphology. Sociobiologists are still telling speculative stories, still hitching without evidece to one potential star among many, still using mere consistency with natural selection as a criterion of acceptance.
It would be fun and instructive to go through Gould's list of problems with sociobiology and, as well, evolutionary psychology, but it's more interesting to ask why Gould was willing to cut them slack over the matter of "altruism" which would certainly have been covered by his as well as Von Bertalenffy's objection to coming up with unevidenced stories about other supposed traits, that they had an ineffability that meant could never be concretely observed unlike morphological features of individuals and, I suppose, species.
Clearly, for Gould to have made such an exception for something as complex, ineffable, as varied and as possibly opportunistically misinterpreted as acts deemed to display "altruism" he must have had a motive in doing that and I think his motive is, in fact, not in any way different from the motive of sociobiologists he criticized in coming up with stories he deemed not "permissible". They got rid of "vexatious problems" for the theory of natural selection.
Just how Gould would have decided that that motive in making stuff up was bad when he didn't like what they concluded but, in this one case, it was just swell reveals one of the biggest problems with the theory of natural selection which is based entirely on the empowerment of selfishness, self-interest to a law of nature when no one who wasn't depraved would accept that as better than generosity, selflessness, kindness, helpfulness, etc. There is, actually, no way to square those moral values with natural selection except by redefining them, reanalyzing them, making up a story about them that turns them into an act of selfishness, even if you have to twist the entire act into what it certainly isn't. As I've pointed out, when you try to turn selfless acts of individuals into acts of selfishness on behalf of their genes the problems you create quickly overwhelm the story with things that have to be ignored to support the creation fable.
That Gould began his essay with a discussion of one of the foremost of scientific skeptics of natural selection, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, shows that Gould was certainly aware of the problem with what he did in that paragraph as he was with what his fellow Darwinists did when they went beyond where there was any evidence. Here, from the beginning of the essay:
In 1969 he [Bertalanffy] wrote: If selection is taken as an axiomatic and a priori principle, it is always possible to imagine auxiliary hypotheses – unproved and by nature unprovable – to make it work in any special case … Some adaptive value … can always be construed or imagined.
“ I think the fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in “hard” science, has become a dogma, can only be explained on sociological grounds. Society and science have been so steeped in the ideas of mechanism, utilitarianism, and the economic concept of fee competition, that instead of God, Selection was enthroned as ultimate reality”.
I think the description of how people wanting to assert natural selection in any given instance or, in fact, in any of their purpose-made stories was one of the most insightful criticisms of a scientific or quasi-scientific dogma I've ever read. I think Gould was an extremely able, honest and skilled advocate for natural selection but I don't think he succeeded in removing the criticism contained in it. I think he wanted to apply his skill to using it to render stories he didn't like impermissible while asserting that the kind of story he liked was permissible because of its utility to, certainly Darwinism but, also his generation of biology, more generally and his preferred quasi-material ideology in general. I think that's the reason that all of it is protected from even the most qualified of scientific, even biological criticism. In the end, if, for some reason, natural selection was admitted to function as God and was, in fact, incompatible with the idea that nature happens by blind, random, chance, they would have to construct something else to replace Darwinism. I do think that is one of the most urgent of reasons that people like Gould have done this from the start. In his case, it's more remarkable for his generally honest and rigorous truth telling. I would say the same thing of several of his close colleagues who signed onto their take down of sociobiology in 1976.
I have gone from a totally conventional Darwinist to being an extreme skeptic of natural selection based on reading what Darwinists have said and noticing their lapses in reason, in rigor and, in way too many cases, ideologically interested dishonesty. I used to accept Gould's idea that Natural Selection was the greatest idea in the history of science but these days I think Dmitri Mendeleev and his insights into the elements are more impressive, certainly more supported, less in need of constant patching and stretching, less ideologically motivated and, certainly more durable. They're also a lot less dangerous.
What Does Atheism Have that Christianity Doesn't?
In my exciting blog brawl at Religion Dispatches, with two of their resident semi-pro blog trolls and the um..... visiting heavy-weight champ from Eschaton, "Skeptic Tank" a question ocurred to me that I don't recall anyone ever asking in one of these things.
What does atheism have that Christianity doesn't?
While waiting for them to answer - there would seem to be crickets there - I'll give you a few observations.
You would think that these atheists who are trying to convert Christians to their religion would want to be able to tell them what they'd get from atheism that Christianity doesn't provide them. In the context of this particular blog brawl, the question might be put as what they'd get from converting to atheism over retaining their liberal Christianity. I don't see that there's a single thing in it for all but a very few academics and those who want to live their lives of nihilistic, amoral depravity at the expense of the large majority of living beings.
Atheists can't offer them hopes for justice or equality because atheism doesn't contain even the acknowledgement that those are real endowments that people have a right to. Atheism doesn't even contain the idea that human rights or the rights of any living beings are real and more than a mere delusion. When you press a sciency atheist-materialist on that question it's far more likely that they will, in an effort to preserve their materialism, they will deny those are there. And it's not just the current fashion of evolutionary psychology and other sects and cults of Darwinism. It's not any accident that the previous majority faith in such things, behaviorist psychology produced popular lit about a scientific world "Beyond Freedom and Dignity"* where we will be scientifically managed into a superficial and banal contentment like a well managed herd of well provided for sheep. And, of course, when pressed to the ultimate they go a hell of a lot farther than that denying that even the very consciousness which comprises our real being exists.
Though in all of their tortured, twisted, turgid verbiage over that, one thing that inexplicably is, apparently, to survive is the notion of academic-intellectual distinction for such ideas and the inexplicably to be honored right to propriety over them and the professional, academic, legal and monetary rewards they are, somehow, entitled to as well as justice against those who deprive them of, especially, the proprietary and monetary rewards of such ownership. They never seem to question the existence of the owners of such mental property as they are in the business of producing.
So, there is something in it for the scribbling, publishing, teaching entirely inconsistent and entirely unwilling to live with the consequences of their ideology atheist, though, if made a matter of law and custom, there's not even the ownership of the vast majority of us to even own our own consciouness, never mind a right to equal justice and the liberality that an honest application of The Law, the Prophets and the Gospel say is our due as a matter of endowment by God.
Naw. atheism has got nothing that is of any use to people who don't want to live as conceited, arrogant, snobs. As I've been saying, it destroys the very basis of egalitarian democracy. That is something that has been being asserted by materialists since at least the 18th century.
* Younger folks might never have heard of it but it was as big in the early 1970s as sociobiology and evo-psy would start being a few years later after the New York Times ordered everyone to read it.
What does atheism have that Christianity doesn't?
While waiting for them to answer - there would seem to be crickets there - I'll give you a few observations.
You would think that these atheists who are trying to convert Christians to their religion would want to be able to tell them what they'd get from atheism that Christianity doesn't provide them. In the context of this particular blog brawl, the question might be put as what they'd get from converting to atheism over retaining their liberal Christianity. I don't see that there's a single thing in it for all but a very few academics and those who want to live their lives of nihilistic, amoral depravity at the expense of the large majority of living beings.
Atheists can't offer them hopes for justice or equality because atheism doesn't contain even the acknowledgement that those are real endowments that people have a right to. Atheism doesn't even contain the idea that human rights or the rights of any living beings are real and more than a mere delusion. When you press a sciency atheist-materialist on that question it's far more likely that they will, in an effort to preserve their materialism, they will deny those are there. And it's not just the current fashion of evolutionary psychology and other sects and cults of Darwinism. It's not any accident that the previous majority faith in such things, behaviorist psychology produced popular lit about a scientific world "Beyond Freedom and Dignity"* where we will be scientifically managed into a superficial and banal contentment like a well managed herd of well provided for sheep. And, of course, when pressed to the ultimate they go a hell of a lot farther than that denying that even the very consciousness which comprises our real being exists.
Though in all of their tortured, twisted, turgid verbiage over that, one thing that inexplicably is, apparently, to survive is the notion of academic-intellectual distinction for such ideas and the inexplicably to be honored right to propriety over them and the professional, academic, legal and monetary rewards they are, somehow, entitled to as well as justice against those who deprive them of, especially, the proprietary and monetary rewards of such ownership. They never seem to question the existence of the owners of such mental property as they are in the business of producing.
So, there is something in it for the scribbling, publishing, teaching entirely inconsistent and entirely unwilling to live with the consequences of their ideology atheist, though, if made a matter of law and custom, there's not even the ownership of the vast majority of us to even own our own consciouness, never mind a right to equal justice and the liberality that an honest application of The Law, the Prophets and the Gospel say is our due as a matter of endowment by God.
Naw. atheism has got nothing that is of any use to people who don't want to live as conceited, arrogant, snobs. As I've been saying, it destroys the very basis of egalitarian democracy. That is something that has been being asserted by materialists since at least the 18th century.
* Younger folks might never have heard of it but it was as big in the early 1970s as sociobiology and evo-psy would start being a few years later after the New York Times ordered everyone to read it.
It was sort of the last gasp of the behaviorism that we were all taught in those awful Intro to Psy courses we were required to take as a prerequisite before it was overtaken by the next fad of Darwinian Fundamentalism (Stephen J. Gould's name for it, not mine) that is still with us but which is showing signs of its many lapses and internal contradiction catching up to it just as those of behaviorism caught up with it.
Commentary on the Fifth Work of Justice and Peace
For the Fifth Week of Lent
From the Sermons of St. Oscar Romero
I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective
end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root
of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion
of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All
this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest
flows naturally. September 23, 1979.
I'm deeply impressed by that moment when Christ stands alone
before the world figured in Pilate. The truth is left alone, his
own followers have been afraid. Truth is fearfully daring, and
only heroes can follow the truth. So much so that Peter, who has
said he will die if need be, flees like a coward and Christ
stands alone.
Let's not be afraid to be left alone if it's for the sake of the
truth. Let's be afraid to be demagogs, coveting the people's sham
flattery. If we don't tell them the truth, we commit the worst
sin: betraying the truth and betraying the people. Christ would
rather be left alone, but able to say before the world figured in
Pilate: Everyone who hears my voice belongs to the truth. Feast
of Christ the King, 1979.
Would that the many bloodstained hands in our land were lifted
up to the Lord with horror of their stain to pray that he might
cleanse them. But let those who, thanks to God, have clean
hands -- the children, the sick, the suffering -- lift up their
innocent and suffering hands to the Lord like the people of
Israel in Egypt. The Lord will have pity and will say, as he did
to Moses in Egypt, "I have heard my people's cry of wailing. It
is the prayer that God cannot fail to hear. September 18, 1977
The church is calling to sanity, to understanding, to love. It
does not believe in violent solutions. The church believes in
only one violence, that of Christ, who was nailed to the cross.
That is how today's gospel reading shows him, taking upon himself
all the violence of hatred and misunderstanding, so that we
humans might forgive one another, love one another, feel
ourselves brothers and sisters. November 20, 1977.
We have never preached violence, except the violence of love,
which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must
each do to ourselves, to overcome our selfishness and such cruel
inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence
of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love,
of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into
sickles for work. November 27, 1977
Who knows if the one whose hands are bloodied with Father
Grande's murder, or the one who shot Father Navarro, if those who
have killed, who have tortured, who have done so much evil, are
listening to me? Listen, there in your criminal hideout, perhaps
already repentant, you too are called to forgiveness. December
18, 1977
A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of
the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good so that they
become entrenched in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's
call. A preaching that does not discomfit sinners but lulls them
in their sin leaves Zebulun and Naphtali in the shadow of death.
A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens -- as when
a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper -- that
is the preaching of Christ, calling, "wake up! Be converted!"
this is the church's authentic preaching. Naturally, such
preaching must meet conflict, must spoil what is miscalled
prestige, must disturb, must be persecuted. It cannot get along
with the powers of darkness and sin. January 22, 1978
And so, brothers and sisters, I repeat again what I have said
here so often, addressing by radio those who perhaps have caused
so many injustices and acts of violence, those who have brought
tears to so many homes, those who have stained themselves with
the blood of so many murders, those who have hands soiled with
tortures, those who have calloused their consciences, who are
unmoved to see under their boots a person abased, suffering,
perhaps ready to die. To all of them I say: no matter your
crimes. They are ugly and horrible, and you have abased the
highest dignity of a human person, but God calls you and forgives
you. And here perhaps arises the aversion of those who feel they
are laborers from the first hour. How can I be in heaven with
those criminals? Brothers and sisters, in heaven there are no
criminals. The greatest criminal, once he has repented of his
sins, is now a child of God. September 24, 1978
From the Sermons of St. Oscar Romero
I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective
end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root
of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion
of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All
this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest
flows naturally. September 23, 1979.
I'm deeply impressed by that moment when Christ stands alone
before the world figured in Pilate. The truth is left alone, his
own followers have been afraid. Truth is fearfully daring, and
only heroes can follow the truth. So much so that Peter, who has
said he will die if need be, flees like a coward and Christ
stands alone.
Let's not be afraid to be left alone if it's for the sake of the
truth. Let's be afraid to be demagogs, coveting the people's sham
flattery. If we don't tell them the truth, we commit the worst
sin: betraying the truth and betraying the people. Christ would
rather be left alone, but able to say before the world figured in
Pilate: Everyone who hears my voice belongs to the truth. Feast
of Christ the King, 1979.
Would that the many bloodstained hands in our land were lifted
up to the Lord with horror of their stain to pray that he might
cleanse them. But let those who, thanks to God, have clean
hands -- the children, the sick, the suffering -- lift up their
innocent and suffering hands to the Lord like the people of
Israel in Egypt. The Lord will have pity and will say, as he did
to Moses in Egypt, "I have heard my people's cry of wailing. It
is the prayer that God cannot fail to hear. September 18, 1977
The church is calling to sanity, to understanding, to love. It
does not believe in violent solutions. The church believes in
only one violence, that of Christ, who was nailed to the cross.
That is how today's gospel reading shows him, taking upon himself
all the violence of hatred and misunderstanding, so that we
humans might forgive one another, love one another, feel
ourselves brothers and sisters. November 20, 1977.
We have never preached violence, except the violence of love,
which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must
each do to ourselves, to overcome our selfishness and such cruel
inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence
of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love,
of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into
sickles for work. November 27, 1977
Who knows if the one whose hands are bloodied with Father
Grande's murder, or the one who shot Father Navarro, if those who
have killed, who have tortured, who have done so much evil, are
listening to me? Listen, there in your criminal hideout, perhaps
already repentant, you too are called to forgiveness. December
18, 1977
A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of
the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good so that they
become entrenched in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's
call. A preaching that does not discomfit sinners but lulls them
in their sin leaves Zebulun and Naphtali in the shadow of death.
A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens -- as when
a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper -- that
is the preaching of Christ, calling, "wake up! Be converted!"
this is the church's authentic preaching. Naturally, such
preaching must meet conflict, must spoil what is miscalled
prestige, must disturb, must be persecuted. It cannot get along
with the powers of darkness and sin. January 22, 1978
And so, brothers and sisters, I repeat again what I have said
here so often, addressing by radio those who perhaps have caused
so many injustices and acts of violence, those who have brought
tears to so many homes, those who have stained themselves with
the blood of so many murders, those who have hands soiled with
tortures, those who have calloused their consciences, who are
unmoved to see under their boots a person abased, suffering,
perhaps ready to die. To all of them I say: no matter your
crimes. They are ugly and horrible, and you have abased the
highest dignity of a human person, but God calls you and forgives
you. And here perhaps arises the aversion of those who feel they
are laborers from the first hour. How can I be in heaven with
those criminals? Brothers and sisters, in heaven there are no
criminals. The greatest criminal, once he has repented of his
sins, is now a child of God. September 24, 1978
Saturday, April 1, 2017
Hate Mail
They want an answer they can come here to get one. I haven't posted a comment at Eschaton since June 2012. Skeptic Tank, Freki, Tunder Boy... don't come here much because when they did I kicked their asses. I kicked S.T's over at RD the past couple of days. He was reduced to goal post moving and distraction because he's got nuttin'. Their Eschaton buddy, Dopey is too stupid to stay away. Dunc Black and his seven(teen) Douch-offs, Dopey, Stupy, Liey, Numby,....
Update: Critics, Bah!
Don’t listen to those people. It’s rubbish. Write it off. Critics have given me too much bad advice in the past. I remember Kenneth Tynan demolishing The Blood Knot in London. Today Tynan is in his grave and The Blood Knot isn’t. I was once told that my play is too specifically written for a South African audience, and that I should write in a more universal sense ... for an English-speaking audience ... can you believe advice like that? Thank God I’ve read my Tolstoy and my William Faulkner to know that by virtue of their regionalism they became universal. I have never benefited from a critic’s advice ... they see themselves as performers at the expense of your work. If you want advice, go stand at the back of the theatre during a performance of your play and watch the audience. They’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t. If I was ever to be a critic ... just for a few months, then I would open every review with this line: “This is one man’s opinion, it is not the truth!” Athol Fugard
Update: Critics, Bah!
Don’t listen to those people. It’s rubbish. Write it off. Critics have given me too much bad advice in the past. I remember Kenneth Tynan demolishing The Blood Knot in London. Today Tynan is in his grave and The Blood Knot isn’t. I was once told that my play is too specifically written for a South African audience, and that I should write in a more universal sense ... for an English-speaking audience ... can you believe advice like that? Thank God I’ve read my Tolstoy and my William Faulkner to know that by virtue of their regionalism they became universal. I have never benefited from a critic’s advice ... they see themselves as performers at the expense of your work. If you want advice, go stand at the back of the theatre during a performance of your play and watch the audience. They’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t. If I was ever to be a critic ... just for a few months, then I would open every review with this line: “This is one man’s opinion, it is not the truth!” Athol Fugard
Um, Ever Hear of, you know, those little things called Atomic and Nuclear Bombs? Atheists Have Got To Be The Stupidest Of People
Avatar
Adam Hominem--colossal putz Doug, lazy Dervish • 14 hours ago
Name just one weapon of modern war not invented by Xtians.
Yeah, that's from Duncan Black's self-defined "brain trust" in response to one of dopey's clip and paste jobs from here. Of course none of Duncan's dolts read what I actually wrote. Since the hate mail sent to me from there earlier in the day contained the practically daily implication (when it's not blatantly asserted as a "fact") that science was the exclusive property of atheists, something which is repeated there more often than Christians recite the creed, it's pretty mind blowingly stupid of them to assert this later in the very same day. At least one of the participants in the snippet of thread the above quote comes from was involved in the earlier one, today. She didn't point out the irony of the claim.
Adam Hominem--colossal putz Doug, lazy Dervish • 14 hours ago
Name just one weapon of modern war not invented by Xtians.
Yeah, that's from Duncan Black's self-defined "brain trust" in response to one of dopey's clip and paste jobs from here. Of course none of Duncan's dolts read what I actually wrote. Since the hate mail sent to me from there earlier in the day contained the practically daily implication (when it's not blatantly asserted as a "fact") that science was the exclusive property of atheists, something which is repeated there more often than Christians recite the creed, it's pretty mind blowingly stupid of them to assert this later in the very same day. At least one of the participants in the snippet of thread the above quote comes from was involved in the earlier one, today. She didn't point out the irony of the claim.
Or as the great Marilynne Robinson said in her take down of Richard Dawkins' God Delusion:
The gravest questions about the institutions of contemporary science seem never to be posed, though we know the terrors of all-out conflict between civilizations would include innovations, notably those dread weapons of mass destruction, being made by scientists for any country with access to their skills. Granting for the purposes of argument that Dawkins is correct in the view that the majority of great scientists are atheists, we may then exclude religion from among the factors that recruit them to this somber work. We are left with nationalism, steady employment, good pay, the chance to do research that is lavishly funded and, by definition, cutting edge — familiar motives of a kind fully capable of disarming moral doubt. In any case, the crankiest imam, the oiliest televangelist, can, at his worst, only urge circumstances a degree or two farther toward the use of those exotic war technologies that are always ready, always waiting. If it is fair to speak globally of religion, it is also fair to speak globally of science.
I think the past four decades of atheist promotion, from CSICOP and its sTARBABY scandal to the blather on the blogs today prove that it is an ideology for TV trained dolts with no knowledge of even the most basic of even recent history or intellectual culture.
I was going to ignore the stuff that gets sent to me from there but this one was just so massively stupid I had to comment. Contemporary atheism has the integrity of fog in a hurricane.
Friday, March 31, 2017
Hate Mail - "Freki said...."
I can't be bothered to worry about what that liar says. She's a jerk. Anyone who takes her seriously is a fool.
Update: Thunder Boy, well I can't say he's any stupider than the Brit twit but he's stupid enough. Who cares.
It would seem that Duncan's flurry of writing is over, he can't even be bothered to write for his own blog because he knows none of them are going to read it. Eschaton is a blog for people who can't read or think.
Update: Thunder Boy, well I can't say he's any stupider than the Brit twit but he's stupid enough. Who cares.
It would seem that Duncan's flurry of writing is over, he can't even be bothered to write for his own blog because he knows none of them are going to read it. Eschaton is a blog for people who can't read or think.
The Only Thing Mike Pence Has Ever Done For Women
Mike Pence NOT having lunch with any woman other than his wife would count as one of the very, very rare things he's done for women in his public career. I can't imagine any woman would want to sit at a table with him. The cheapskate would probably stiff her with the check and expect her to do the cleaning up, too.
Really, would any rational woman want to sit down with someone who wanted to make it a law that they had to have a probe shoved up their vagina, not once but twice? I can't imagine being able to enjoy the meal, knowing that.
How Atheism Poisons Liberalism
I have been having some blog brawls at the ironically named "Religion Dispatches". One I'm currently having with an idiot, alleged science PhD who is so brilliant as to name himself "Skeptic Tank" (what is it with those Eschaton-based, atheist sci-trolls and their identification with feces?) who has been moving goal posts faster than a geezer of his age should attempt. The issue is the status of liberal Christianity, today. He started by ridiculing out of ignorance.
Do you remember when liberal Christians were relevant? Me neither.
Which is easy enough to counter, considering that every single piece of liberal legislation passed in Congress, in every single state legislature and even in almost all cases, liberal statutes on the local level would have depended, absolutely on the support and work of liberal Christians. I mentioned the high water marks of American liberalism, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Right Act to the doctored dolt, which would never have gone anywhere without the efforts of the Black Church members and others who put their lives, repeatedly, on the line. Not to mention every bit of 19th century reform, abolition, extension of the vote, etc. I also mentioned the second most liberal president in our history, Franklin Roosevelt who famously answered an inquiry into his ideology, "I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all".
Apparently his sci-track education didn't include much in the way of basic rhetoric or history or anything that would have included the information that having a PhD in science didn't grant him an indulgence making his ignorance an adequate replacement for knowing what he was talking about.
Among his demands were.
Name the liberal Christians who matter.
The starting list I gave included:
Methodists such a Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton and Debbie Stabenow Baptists like Kamala Harris, Lutherans such as Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, Congregationalists such as Amy Klobuchar Catholics such as Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Jack Reed....
That was in answer to "Skeptic Tank's" list of "Bernie Sanders". I don't know if Senator Sanders would agree with his constituting such a list of one, so I note him being so .... um..... "honored" only for the sake of this argument.
I gave other information as demanded by the atheist blog rats who infest the ironically named "Religion Dispatches" like Putin rent-boy trolls. The atheists, as I have found they generally do, had nuthin'..
Atheists have had nuthin' for a long, long time. I mentioned that even such atheists as, perhaps, Bernie Sanders and Barney Frank, if such they are, were smart enough to understand that their presence in the House and Senate depended on the votes of liberal Christians since there simply are not enough liberal atheists to elect them. They also knew that anything that alienated Christians who would potentially support their election was not only massively stupid, it was a guarantee of futility. That is something I've been pointing out to enraged atheist brats since 2006 and the idea doesn't seem to make much of a dent in their bratty arrogance, that's more important to them than moving any kind of liberal progress in the United States.
That preference for their counter-productive venting and ridicule over making liberal progress is, I contend, the definition of the effect of atheism on American liberalism, especially since the mid-1960s. Before that the damage atheism inflicted on American liberalism was largely through Marxists attaching themselves to liberalism like parasites that kill their host. None of which was either a legitimate aspect of American liberalism or helpful. The only effect such actions have ever had was in diminishing the political effectiveness of liberalism, distracting liberals from their legitimate agendas, duping liberals into supporting the elevation of lies and pornography as the most clueless of icons of freedom - they both destroy freedom and human dignity - and into permitting and agreeing to the line of Supreme Court rulings in which the corporate fascists have used to lie us into the Trump-Ryan fascism we have, today.
In virtually every case, when you see the influence of that strain of ideological atheism at work on the American left, the results have been damaging to liberalism, diminished the power of liberals, defeated our agenda and undermined it through attacks on the moral foundations that all liberalism depends on. The falsification of history, the replacement of lies for fact, taking advantage of the ignorance of most Americans about what has worked and what has not, playing on the sympathies of liberals through phony melodramatic show biz crap, have been a big part of that effort.
Atheism carries no defining moral content that liberalism requires to make a case for its validity and to counter the selfishness that is the basis of those things liberalism exists to counter. It carries no absolute moral obligation to respect the rights of other people, to be rigorous in the respect for those rights, or even admitting that any rights you wish to brush aside exist. Atheism doesn't carry any moral content that identifies lies as wrong. Atheism doesn't even carry a requirement that an atheist tells the truth that they are an atheist.
I noted that, in response to another atheist troll at "Religion Dispatches" that there was no defining stand in atheism that would identify anything that Trump or Ryan or Putin or Stalin or Hitler, for that matter, as being wrong or immoral. Any moral stand that any atheist took, one opposing that list of anti-liberals or, for that matter, any alleged moral stand that supported them, would have to come from somewhere other than atheism. Atheism is morally nihilistic. I also noted that if an atheist came up with an assertion that equality and justice were moral absolutes, their greatest opponents wouldn't be Christians or Jews or Muslims they would be their fellow atheists. I've seen such discussions online, I've noted that the nuclear physicist held up to be an atheist expert in what makes people do bad things, Steven Weinberg, has pretty much stated that other than his feelings of loyalty to his family and his university department, he didn't feel he had any moral obligations in the world to anyone.
Atheism has been a catastrophe for liberalism far more than the vulgar materialism of what conservatism means in the United States now. When your ideological position includes shafting the poor, cheating the vulnerable, using the alien among us as a means of whipping up paranoia to gain power, destroying the very environmental basis of life continuing, you will find your opponents in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in virtually all religions. You won't find any real opposition to that in atheism because there is none there to be found. Any atheist who asserts any moral position has to leave atheism to do that. Any atheist politician who ever proposed a liberal law or policy had to, as well.
Do you remember when liberal Christians were relevant? Me neither.
Which is easy enough to counter, considering that every single piece of liberal legislation passed in Congress, in every single state legislature and even in almost all cases, liberal statutes on the local level would have depended, absolutely on the support and work of liberal Christians. I mentioned the high water marks of American liberalism, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Right Act to the doctored dolt, which would never have gone anywhere without the efforts of the Black Church members and others who put their lives, repeatedly, on the line. Not to mention every bit of 19th century reform, abolition, extension of the vote, etc. I also mentioned the second most liberal president in our history, Franklin Roosevelt who famously answered an inquiry into his ideology, "I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all".
Apparently his sci-track education didn't include much in the way of basic rhetoric or history or anything that would have included the information that having a PhD in science didn't grant him an indulgence making his ignorance an adequate replacement for knowing what he was talking about.
Among his demands were.
Name the liberal Christians who matter.
The starting list I gave included:
Methodists such a Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton and Debbie Stabenow Baptists like Kamala Harris, Lutherans such as Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, Congregationalists such as Amy Klobuchar Catholics such as Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Jack Reed....
That was in answer to "Skeptic Tank's" list of "Bernie Sanders". I don't know if Senator Sanders would agree with his constituting such a list of one, so I note him being so .... um..... "honored" only for the sake of this argument.
I gave other information as demanded by the atheist blog rats who infest the ironically named "Religion Dispatches" like Putin rent-boy trolls. The atheists, as I have found they generally do, had nuthin'..
Atheists have had nuthin' for a long, long time. I mentioned that even such atheists as, perhaps, Bernie Sanders and Barney Frank, if such they are, were smart enough to understand that their presence in the House and Senate depended on the votes of liberal Christians since there simply are not enough liberal atheists to elect them. They also knew that anything that alienated Christians who would potentially support their election was not only massively stupid, it was a guarantee of futility. That is something I've been pointing out to enraged atheist brats since 2006 and the idea doesn't seem to make much of a dent in their bratty arrogance, that's more important to them than moving any kind of liberal progress in the United States.
That preference for their counter-productive venting and ridicule over making liberal progress is, I contend, the definition of the effect of atheism on American liberalism, especially since the mid-1960s. Before that the damage atheism inflicted on American liberalism was largely through Marxists attaching themselves to liberalism like parasites that kill their host. None of which was either a legitimate aspect of American liberalism or helpful. The only effect such actions have ever had was in diminishing the political effectiveness of liberalism, distracting liberals from their legitimate agendas, duping liberals into supporting the elevation of lies and pornography as the most clueless of icons of freedom - they both destroy freedom and human dignity - and into permitting and agreeing to the line of Supreme Court rulings in which the corporate fascists have used to lie us into the Trump-Ryan fascism we have, today.
In virtually every case, when you see the influence of that strain of ideological atheism at work on the American left, the results have been damaging to liberalism, diminished the power of liberals, defeated our agenda and undermined it through attacks on the moral foundations that all liberalism depends on. The falsification of history, the replacement of lies for fact, taking advantage of the ignorance of most Americans about what has worked and what has not, playing on the sympathies of liberals through phony melodramatic show biz crap, have been a big part of that effort.
Atheism carries no defining moral content that liberalism requires to make a case for its validity and to counter the selfishness that is the basis of those things liberalism exists to counter. It carries no absolute moral obligation to respect the rights of other people, to be rigorous in the respect for those rights, or even admitting that any rights you wish to brush aside exist. Atheism doesn't carry any moral content that identifies lies as wrong. Atheism doesn't even carry a requirement that an atheist tells the truth that they are an atheist.
I noted that, in response to another atheist troll at "Religion Dispatches" that there was no defining stand in atheism that would identify anything that Trump or Ryan or Putin or Stalin or Hitler, for that matter, as being wrong or immoral. Any moral stand that any atheist took, one opposing that list of anti-liberals or, for that matter, any alleged moral stand that supported them, would have to come from somewhere other than atheism. Atheism is morally nihilistic. I also noted that if an atheist came up with an assertion that equality and justice were moral absolutes, their greatest opponents wouldn't be Christians or Jews or Muslims they would be their fellow atheists. I've seen such discussions online, I've noted that the nuclear physicist held up to be an atheist expert in what makes people do bad things, Steven Weinberg, has pretty much stated that other than his feelings of loyalty to his family and his university department, he didn't feel he had any moral obligations in the world to anyone.
Atheism has been a catastrophe for liberalism far more than the vulgar materialism of what conservatism means in the United States now. When your ideological position includes shafting the poor, cheating the vulnerable, using the alien among us as a means of whipping up paranoia to gain power, destroying the very environmental basis of life continuing, you will find your opponents in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in virtually all religions. You won't find any real opposition to that in atheism because there is none there to be found. Any atheist who asserts any moral position has to leave atheism to do that. Any atheist politician who ever proposed a liberal law or policy had to, as well.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Walter Gerwig plays Pietro Paolo Melii da Reggio Capriccio Cromatico
I used to have an LP this was on, I remember thinking at the time that Gerwig was one of the most convincing lute players around. Then came the later generation (such as the very fine player, Paul O'Dette) who had some other ideas. Listening to it for the first time in several decades, it still strikes me as pretty good. It was as close as we were going to get in the early 70s.
Tablature
I believe it's the tablature (beginning on page 48 of the pdf) for this piece, though I haven't checked it by retuning my guitar and trying it out. If I get around to trying it out I'll revise.
Objectivity Is A Myth
The assertions from atheists that I answered yesterday occupied a lot of my free time yesterday. For an ideological bunch who rail endlessly against "Cartesian dualism" they are mighty hell-bent on dividing things into dualisms, the one on display in the comments that motivated my post some of the most cherished delusions of atheists, today.
Atheists love to claim "reason, logic, science, objectivity" etc and ascribe what they assert are the opposites of those, mostly dealing with emotion, irrationality, subjectivity, superstition and subjectivity, to non-atheists. Their methods of doing that are the same methods anyone who wants to set up a self-serving, dishonest dualism will use to do that, depending on superficial, ignorant, paranoid and dishonest narratives designed to serve their ends - the opposite of their self-asserted, self-serving "objectivity".
As can be heard in the "Bar Theology" discussion posted above, religious figures are far more likely to encounter the contradictions of such dualist conveniences than you are likely to hear atheists admit to.
I think anyone who wants to divide human minds and humanity in such a way is best suspected of having dishonest motives. I doubt there is such a thing as "objectivity" or "reason" or even "logic" which can be distilled, sublimated, crystallized, etc. from the rest of the contents of the same minds that emote, narrate, twist facts, etc. in service to the desires of those minds. The crude and far from perfect methods of doing formally and socially that in formal science are certainly not very effective in all but the rarest of cases. As always, I would recommend you look at Retraction Watch and other watchdog groups that track the lapses of those methods within successfully published and asserted, cited and quoted science. If they can't even do a better job of doing that within science, with all its safeguards, atheists who turn science into scientism are sure as hell not going to do it in their ideological assertions. The social sciences, by the way, probably the least successful in following the idealized methods of science, are full to the top of such lapses, inserting ideological desires within the formal literature of their fields. I am coming to believe that even biology has a real problem with that as, obviously, do cosmology, neuro-cognitive science. I think those three, these days, are largely governed by such ideological motivation.
If scientists want to get away from that, they'd better consider the fact that they and their colleagues, in their professional work, are as fully human as theologians or artists and they are continually giving in to their own ideological and professional desires as anyone.
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