They're ALL "one of theirs"

Which is why there is a very sudden call for civility. Right in the midst of all of the calls for killing Trump, as in the now-disappeared article in HuffPo for capital punishment of Trump and his half of the population; the nightly killing of Trump on Broadway, NYC; the infamous beheading "joke"; on and on. The rhetoric is no joke. It demonstrates the Left's end game, revealed by the cognitive dissonance of losing to the Destroyer of Leftist Hegemony.

The rational Left has demonstrated that their moral authority is the "Lord of the Flies". And that "civility" is a concept of pure convenience, not a fundamental Leftist principle. It's how they deflect the obvious blame they so richly deserve by pretending to abjure that which they joyfully created with their 6 month hate rant.

Leftist morality can and does turn on a dime; it is purely an act of convenience, under Consequentialism.

Comment of the Day

"What Dems really hate about Trump is that he campaigns and governs with the no-holds-barred approach of a Democrat."
Glenn Reynolds

Democrats cared exactly nothing about what the non-Democrats thought or believed. If they even thought about it, they ridiculed the Othered Class, and declared them inferior in every way.

Now they are pretty sure that we, the ridiculed Others, should care what they, the totalitarian class, think/feel/say/scream. As for me: I do not in any way, manner or form give a rusty, red, rodent's rectum what they think/feel/say/scream. Actually, the volume at which they perform is very, very satisfying: they set this all up; now they reap the consequences. They deserve the whole magilla, which Trump is serving up daily.

Enjoy your consequences, Lefty-Donks. Your consequentialism has come home to roost, bringing you the crap you served us for nearly a decade, and which you seriously, richly deserve.

Headline of the Day

New York taxi drivers to be banned from flirting with or ejaculating on passengers
The new rules come off the back of a large increase in complaints ranging from inappropriate conversation to unwanted contact and rape

Well, when Relativism and Consequentialism are the prevailing moral codes, everything goes until it is made illegal. So under what moral code is not "ejaculating on passengers" deemed a punishable offense? Hm. Maybe feminists do like it?

Atheist Morality on Display...

...for all the world to see. Putin has turned away from his superficially civil behaviors (except for Russian election political brutality), behaviors with which he fooled those gullibles in the west who ridiculed Mitt Romney for his prescient claims of Russian dangers two years ago. Putin has turned back toward the Will To Power which Nietzsche illuminated as the one consistent emergent characteristic of Atheism. It is now known that the Ukranian "rebels" are actually Russian military functionaries who are working to destabilize and reconquer the Ukraine for Russian re-acquisition.

The Atheist claim that they should be trusted is laid to rest as we observe what Atheists do when they acquire power. If you haven't been paying attention, what Atheists do is to apply tactics toward consequences, and any tactic which moves them toward a desirable goal is to be used. And it is to be used without qualm or reference to odious moral principles. This is called Consequentialism, and it is the default ethical principle of behavior for Atheists. Alinsky wrote Rules For Radicals as a call to Consequentialism. Without naming it, the Atheist conquistadors of the 20th century bloodbaths used it without compunction. Its essence is the pursuit of strategic objectives with no moral compunction regarding tactics.

The Left, everywhere in the world, is Consequentialist. And so is Islam. But for Islam, Consequential is instilled as a part of the Prophet's instruction: the global caliphate is to be installed, and the deaths of any who resist are guaranteed and necessary - especially Jews. This allows for all brutalization that happens in the pursuit of the objective. It is an institutionalized barbarianism. And that makes it the Hegelian antithesis of western civilization; it is the civilization of the west which is the thesis. But there is no synthesis for either Putin or for Islam; both cultures might pretend to accept a synthesis, but only until they have refreshed, rearmed and then see an opportunity.

Obama is that opportunity. The world is currently without the braking force of thesis normally provided by western civilization, because the third type of Consequentialist after communism and Islam is the western Leftist. Obama, the apogee western Leftist for the next 2 1/2 years, is content to focus on applying Cloward-Piven to the United States in his attempt to subvert all U.S. systems and bring on destruction of U.S. institutions for the takeover promised in the First Humanist Manifesto (the declaration of the New Man, installed by the elimination of all support for the Original Man).

And that is why impeaching Obama will not change anything. The next four or five or more successors would also have to be impeached, because they, also, are traitorous Consequentialists.

There is a long, hard haul ahead. It's called Hope and Change, as Obama is applying it.

The New World of Slippery Morals and Sliding Intellectual Processing

Daniel Dennett, in his interview with Andrew Brown of the Guardian, shows no reluctance to Special Plead for Atheism. Churches, claims Dennett, by doing their good works are legitimizing the “bad churches” and the evil that the “bad churches” do; therefore good churches are actually bad churches. When his criticism is applied to Atheism, correctly, Dennett claims that “we condemn that, of course”, referring to the communist murders (hundreds of millions) and persecutions and the Mexican persecution of the 1930’s. When he is cornered with the statement that churches also condemn the bad churches, Dennett weakly claims, “not very vocally”.

Dennett wouldn’t actually know, it appears, because he obviously doesn’t read anything that goes counter to his set of personal “memes” which support his ideology. And the press doesn’t carry protests against the Westboro bigots, it carries protests BY the Westboro bigots. What Dennett does is to invoke his own personal reality, in which all churches are evil, period. Then he transmits that “meme” as if it were actual truth.

Dennett and the New Atheists are prime examples of self-endowment of moral authority and self-created thought processes, all of which are specifically designed to support their personal opinion and, as necessary, deny reality. Truth is relative to the desired ideologic narrative, and logic is merely the supporting of the desired narrative with fanciful mental gyrations ginned up as props for support. Facts don’t enter into the personal reality of those dedicated to an ideology which is not fact based.

Yet Dennett is a guru in the new world of relativist thinking, relativist morality and persecution of the Other where possible. This new world revolves around and folds in on itself. It is defined by self-interest, both in morality and in the definition of truth: in the new world of relativism, neither morality nor truth exist as externals, and both are completely relative to the needs of the creating entity, i.e. the person who is at the center of his own reality.

Relativity in thought results in defining truth on a moment by moment basis; what was true 5 seconds ago is no longer true now, if that is the requirement of the relativist. So there is no possibility for contradiction because the earlier “truth” is now ignored completely as if it never existed. So there are no lies for the relativist, just denials and claims that the observer just doesn’t understand - which is true, because there is no rational position which can be observed or understood.

However here’s what actually can be observed: when the standards of disciplined, grounded, deductive logic are applied to the maunderings of the relativist, it becomes obvious that there is no rational content. That renders such content that there appears to be, irrational.

Nonrtheless, these creating entities, despite being sequestered in their own personal universal truth and moral universes, have something in common: their personally-derived tautological morality. Being the arbiter of all things moral, they are automatically moral themselves, merely by definition. Their own definition, of course.

This commonality leads to their common vision of themselves as messiahs, saviors of mankind as a general class, and starting with the salvation of certain classes of victims which must be saved from the oppressor class. Hence women must be saved from being oppressed by their own embryonic progeny, by killing the embryonic progeny. Blacks can never be expected to meet the oppressive standards of behavioral, educational and work standards, and must be saved from being subjected to such standards by selectively lowering the standards for them and just them. Homosexuals must be normalized and fully legitimized, and their opposition vilified and delegitimized as hate mongers. The “99%” must be saved from the “1%”.

These four categories, which enable killing of progeny, continued racial subjugation of blacks, destruction of marriage as a moral institution, and redistribution of wealth to non-producers, are selected because they will always be a battleground, permanently, so long as there exists any rational opposition which has not been eliminated or silenced. A permanent battleground is a necessity; the messiahs need a permanent set of Victims and Villains, in order to maintain their narrative.

The cases against these messiah-driven pogroms are both rational, and simply stated:

1. Killing one’s progeny for the convenience of the parent is neither rational nor moral, nor is it “women’s healthcare” or “reproductive freedom”. (Obama spoke for the continuation of abortion rights for his daughters so that they could kill his own grandchildren if they wish: "I don't want them punished with a baby").

2. Continually regarding the black community as inferior and requiring lower standards is racist. So is the perpetual maintenance of poverty via wealth redistribution.

It should not be forgotten that Jim Crow was a Democrat Party implementation in the “Solid (Democrat) South” and that the Democrats were the southern slaveholders. Now the Democrats and Leftists racially discriminate to keep blacks in ghettos by subsidizing them for minimal survival there – but refuse to allow education vouchers so that blacks can escape their abysmal schools (Obama’s first act was to eliminate that limited program from D.C., denying even exceptional black students access to superior schooling). And they keep the stereotype alive by demanding that blacks not have to meet criteria which “are too hard”, implying the perpetual inferiority of blacks, a stereotype which adheres to and follows all blacks regardless of their actual capabilities.

Under the moral relativist brain-flip, objection to the discrimination against blacks implemented by the AtheoLeft is called “racist”, as is any objection to policies made either for or by blacks.

3. Homosexuality is abnormal behavior, not normal behavior; probably fewer than 3% are homosexual. Normalizing and legitimizing abnormal behavior as morally and legally equal to the 97% who exhibit normal behavior is destined to lead to the normalization of any behavior along the Kinseyan spectrum of “behaviors which are not to be judged”, and the resulting collapse of all fixed morality. Chaos and anarchy are the rational conclusions of a world with no limits on behaviors, no possible truth or noncontradiction, no possible morality except that which is concocted at the moment by individuals encountering a situation.

4. Redistribution of wealth is seen as friendly to the masses who are greedy for what they don’t earn, and it has a naturally hated Villain, the wealthy. Wealth, regardless of how it is accumulated, is designated as evil by the messiahist arbiters of morality and justice. People with wealth are designated for hate and attack – unless they are part of the messiah group (say movie stars, TV journalists, global financiers, and senators), and then they are forgiven for having their wealth. Again, there is no contradiction, because there is no truth other than that decreed relativistically, by the relativists.

Chaos and anarchy already reign the minds of the moral relativists. With no fixed principles to guide them, they can declare anything to be either moral or immoral, depending upon their personal need at the moment. That being the case, then moral and intellectual anarchy are the moral basis upon which this group acts and depends.

Because the new relativist messiahs believe completely in their own morality and immunity to external morals, they are a dangerous group. There are no immoral tactics, a concept immortalized by Alinsky and taught by Obama. Enemies of the messiahs can be attacked in any and every creative fashion possible, all of which are totally moral in the concept of the relativist messiahs.

Here’s a current example. After the Zimmerman trial, if he is not convicted for the murder of Trayvon, there are groups already organized, some by the US government, to protest in the streets. These will result in riots and death, and the messiahs will call it justified in the defense of Blacks Everywhere; justice by jury is ignored completely, because the relativists have decided guilt themselves, and they will decide the consequences, too. They are above the law. As are all Leftists, which is attested by the current Administration and its minions. The law, like all concepts, is merely relative and the messiahs are the arbiters of whether to abide by it or ignore it.

Being the total arbiters of truth, morality, definers of who is the oppressor of the victims, and the source of the pogroms against their enemies, the relativist messiahs are totalitarian in nature and extremely dangerous. Being tautologically moral themselves, they are subject to no guilt, no shame. They hold to no fixed moral theory, they think in consequentialist tactics, and they define enemies based on their own moral elitism. They are self-righteously and morally self-enabled to both persecute and conquer. By whatever Alinsky-imagined tactics might work. After all, anything they do is automatically moral.

For them, Caesar is god, and they are Caesar.

If Tolerance is the Main Virtue, then...

...there are no virtues.

The Boy Scouts is lost as a character-development process for young males.

Honesty

Honesty is a Precious Thing.

Not only do I value honesty, I presuppose it in people. While I know that is an error, I still commit it. Honesty is a subset of truth, and truth is a subset of the absolutes. For Atheism there are no absolutes, so by the time we get back down the chain from absolutes to honesty, there is none in the MaterialWorld of Atheism.

Now honesty might necessarily be feigned as a pragmatic effort to convince others of trustworthiness. So it not only is not a characteristic that is valued under Atheism, it is a tool to be exploited, used as far as it will go to the Atheist’s advantage.

Atheism is largely pragmatic. The main Atheist claim regarding morality is just that: behaving in a certain way is pragmatic and that is morality for the Atheist. The term for this is Consequentialism, where any goal which one desires should be pursued with whatever tactics are required to achieve it. Atheists might protest that this is a distortion, yet that in itself is a tactic being used.

The issue of honesty vs. Consequentialist pragmatism is why Atheists are not seen as trustworthy. There is no such thing as honesty which is attached to the concept of Atheism. That includes intellectual honesty.

Intellectual honesty requires humbling oneself before logic first, and material factoids last. But there is a strain of Atheism that refuses humility as an abrogation of “free thought”, which is just thoughts without anchors in anything meaningful. Free Thought, Atheism, and Philosophical Materialism are the keys to total freedom, unencumbered by the need for humility in the face of anything which is undeniable, such as incorrigible truth.

Thus logic becomes not a disciplined refection of a path to rationality, it becomes a malleable weapon which is to be tuned to the needs of the wielder. The Atheist assertion of “logic” is thus tautological, not actual: they define whatever they say to be “logical”. There is no urge to study logic as a discipline, nor to follow actual logical procedures. Whenever a fallacy in their “logic” is pointed to, they pull out as many Red Herrings as necessary to divert the conversation. I say this as a general principle because inductively, that is the case; there might be exceptions, and I hope to come across them in order to find out how they justify the logical chasms in their worldviews. But so far, not much luck.

There is no feasible Atheist defense against this observation. “Good without God” is transparently a relativist matching of a temporary “ethics” statement to whatever behavior the Atheist is currently fond of. Any possible Atheist protest of “personal integrity” is transparently just another tactic in the pragmatist’s toolbox. In fact, no matter what an Atheist says, it can be seen as a “tactic”, toward some objective, some agenda, which only s/he sees and knows. There is no possible way to encounter Atheists without suspicion, unless one is naïve to this characteristic.

So I should not be caught off guard while in discussions with Atheists. There is no reason to suppose that their arguments are sincere, that their facts match any actuality, or that their approach to their fallacies will help them learn anything. Atheists in general do not intend to learn anything, especially logic, which they have already redefined to be whatever they say. On the contrary, Atheists seem to have another objective, which is to preserve their total freedom so as not to have to be humble in the face of truths which they are powerless to change. In other words, "free" thoughts without grounding in anything but agenda.

So, there are no truths in AtheistWorld, and there is no truthfulness. So there cannot be any honesty, or for that matter, dishonesty. And that characteristic makes every Atheist suspect.

I, personally, value honesty. But it cannot be presupposed in people.

I need to take more care.


ADDENDUM:
This issue extends to the concept of “absurdity” also. Logical absurdity is a specific thing; it refers to a proposition which is logically non-coherent, or cannot be shown to be coherent, and this is found using Reductio Ad Absurdum, which takes the converse and hopes to show that it is contradictory (absurd). If the converse of a proposition is absurd, then the proposition itself is not. Clearly, logically inconsistent premises or logically unsubstantiable claims fit this category of determination of logical validity, including those propositions or premises which fail Boolean categorization.

The convenient but ungrounded and transient nature of the logic of Atheism is subject to producing statements which are logically absurd, but which seem perfectly logical under the transient processes of non-absolutist Atheism. In fact, linear logical discipline fails the transient processes of non-absolutist Atheism, and appears – I am instructed – absurd to the Atheist.

This is a serious fork in the ability to communicate, a dichotomy between those who choose logical dictates to rule their processes, vs. those who eschew any absolutist control over their free thought. For this reason, I have in the past taken the conversation to a point where an obvious fallacy is in play, and then stopped the conversation from progressing beyond that fallacy, and insisting on its recognition. This has produced considerable tension and sometimes behavior which resulted in banishment. But it is the right thing to do. No conversation should proceed when it is based on a fallacy or is logically absurd. Kindly remind me of that next time.

Consequentialism has Consequences

Thanks to Mariano...!

JournoList and the Progress of the Progressives

Just as opening the conversations of the AGW “scientists” [1] to the public allowed the outside world to observe the reality behind the AGW / IPCC curtain, so has the release of the JournoList conversations opened up the collusion of the Leftist “journalists” that infest and infect the dying mainstream media. As one observer noted, it will not be possible for some time to read an article by any MSM journalist without wondering just how it has been manipulated by him and the JournoList conspiracy. Even the innocent will be suspect due to the machinations of the secret membership of the anti-ethical, Consequentialist cabal.

While this reality has long been obvious by the products of these Leftists, the actual mechanism has not been known until now. Now, the products of these folks will be known as activist rags and little more. It is interesting to see that after Obama accused FOX of being an arm of the Republican party, the reality is that the entire remaining media is a swamp of activist Democrats and Leftist news-modifying liars and scoundrels.

This is in no way a new feature of journalism. The USSR set up entire villages called Potemkin Villages for the express purpose of entertaining the Leftist-socialist fantasies of the western journalist useful idiots of the time. I learned in high school – many decades ago – that Newsweek was farther Left than Time, but that neither could be trusted. The trend only worsened. Rather-gate for example. The blatant opinion manipulations of the last two decades, hardly disguised at all. The feverish rush to attack Palin's family, while totally ignoring the entire history and career of Obama: this is now known to have been a coordinated Leftist "journalist" smear attempt, in order to drive votes to the Leftist candidate. And not least, the smarmy, weepy gushing when Obama won.

It would be interesting to count the number of times that the words "attack" and "kill" are used on JournoList. Their entire focus is to attack the non-Left, and to kill all stories embarrassing [a la Rev. Wright] to the Left. The idea of attack / kill is not part of the common understanding of journalistic ethical standards. But the ethic of modern "journalists" is Consequentialism in pursuit of their Leftist political aims.

Perhaps the main difference between the Potemkin days and now is that today there are alternative paths to valid information concerning the current events in the USA and around the world. Using these paths, many of us knew more about Obama than did his fawning "journalist" acolytes, judging by their recent abandoning of The One, who is merely consistent with his earlier history. These private paths are now endangered, as the summary closing of 73,000 websites last week by a USA government “concerned with their content” shows - more websites closed, it is said, than by the Chinese communists.

When the ruling class is threatened, it will fight back by squeezing hard on the source of discontent, in this case internet paths to reality. After government seizure of massive regulatory control of health care, automotive manufacturing, and the financial industry, it would make sense to watch for two things: first, a dictated amnesty [2] and perks for illegals in order to preserve Leftist power; second, to put a choke hold on the internet information flow. Those two agenda items would serve their purposes more than any others.


[1] I scare-quote that because of their obvious breeches of scientific protocols in favor of predetermined conclusions, including controlling the peer review process and falsifying data. Science and activism are not compatible.
[2] Is it possible that today's news release claiming that amnesty won't happen in this congress is a Red Herring, designed to relax the defenses of the opposition? Why should anyone believe anything any MSM source reports? Why should we not attribute machinations to it?

The Atheist Alliance International Declaration On Religion in Public Life

The recent Gods and Politics conference in Copenhagen adopted the following Declaration on Religion in Public Life. The conference was the first European event of Atheist Alliance International, and was co-hosted by AAI and the Danish Atheist Society.

We, at the World Atheist Conference: “Gods and Politics”, held in Copenhagen from 18 to 20 June 2010, hereby declare as follows:

1. We recognize the unlimited right to freedom of conscience, religion and belief, and that freedom to practice one’s religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights of others.

2. We submit that public policy should be informed by evidence and reason, not by dogma.

3. We assert the need for a society based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. History has shown that the most successful societies are the most secular.

4. We assert that the only equitable system of government in a democratic society is based on secularism: state neutrality in matters of religion or belief, favoring none and discriminating against none.

5. We assert that private conduct, which respects the rights of others should not be the subject of legal sanction or government concern.

6. We affirm the right of believers and non-believers alike to participate in public life and their right to equality of treatment in the democratic process.

7. We affirm the right to freedom of expression for all, subject to limitations only as prescribed in international law – laws which all governments should respect and enforce. We reject all blasphemy laws and restrictions on the right to criticize religion or nonreligious life stances.

8. We assert the principle of one law for all, with no special treatment for minority communities, and no jurisdiction for religious courts for the settlement of civil matters or family disputes.

9. We reject all discrimination in employment (other than for religious leaders) and the provision of social services on the grounds of race, religion or belief, gender, class, caste or sexual orientation.

10. We reject any special consideration for religion in politics and public life, and oppose charitable, tax-free status and state grants for the promotion of any religion as inimical to the interests of non-believers and those of other faiths. We oppose state funding for faith schools.

11. We support the right to secular education, and assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge, and in the diversity of religious beliefs. We support the spirit of free inquiry and the teaching of science free from religious interference, and are opposed to indoctrination, religious or otherwise.

Adopted by the conference, Copenhagen, 20 June 2010.
[Statements have been numbered for reference].

What is most interesting is the lack of any statement about the underlying philosophy driving this position paper. For example, the source of the stated “rights”. Although not explicit, these are positive rights for the most part, to be allowed by the State. Exceptions to those rights which explicitly discriminate against religion are also called out in items 8, 9, 10. The State is the source and arbiter of these rights, as allowed by the Atheists, who are explicitly solely in charge under paragraph 9. State Atheist education is the only education that can receive taxpayer funding – called “state funding” in the text. Presumably then, the state owns your funds under solely Atheist auspices, for dispersal to solely Atheist enterprises.

These stated rights are those allowed under this particular group of Atheists. Who knows what the next group will allow. History, however, (not typically a favored subject for the Atheists, who call for science education, aka evolution, but are silent on other subjects) demonstrates that once Atheists are in power (Lenin for example), the rights statements change drastically to suit the needs of the Atheist state. The state has all the rights, first; it might or might not dole them to the public, depending on the Consequentialist needs of the moment.

The idea of submission to international law [item 7] on the one hand (One Worldism), and yet invoking these “rights” on the other, is self-defeating and internally inconsistent – unless these Atheists are in charge of international law, too. That implication is built into the unstated fundamentals underlying this paper. But if the international law is Sharia, this statement is without value. So in actuality the statement is without value regardless of the international law at the moment. The intent of the statement seems to be the levelling of all nations under Atheism.

The ever present Atheist call for critical thinking, evidence and reason, contra dogma, illuminates one of the most obvious self-contradictions of Atheist “reasoning”: The Philosophical Materialism underlying Atheism cannot be demonstrated with either evidence or with reason. The Atheistic definition (de facto, never explicit) of critical thinking is a) scientism; b) rigid Materialist dogma. Never does Atheist “critical thinking” subject itself to the rigor of the First Principles, nor does it reveal its axioms despite their blatant obviousness. So the type of thinking referred to as “critical” by Atheists is actually dogmatic adherence to a religious principle: there is no non-material reality available to hold a non-material deity, despite the total lack of empirical evidence to support that claim, or the ability to falsify it. For Atheist Materialists, it is critical to seek friendly premises in order to support the conclusion. Atheism is a religious metaphysic, not a scientific result based on empirical, scientific data.

The declaration of reason as the path to knowledge is valid (item 11); yet this is not congruent with Atheistic Materialism, which is not based on reason, but on emotional rejection of unwanted reality, and hubristic intellectual rebellion. The entire basis is non-coherent, a self-contradictory, non-rational, completely religious position. Again, this paper is a statement of intended domination by a religious group: Philosophical Materialist Atheists.

Moreover, the claim that material evidence is the only path to knowledge is unsupportable, empirically, and is on its face, not valid, in light of abstract knowledge which is deduced, but not mechanically provable with empirical, experimental evidence. In fact all of evolutionary claims seem to be so based, yet are not considered problematic for Atheist Materialists, yet another non-coherence of Atheism and Materialism.

Placing faith in a group of non-absolutists that they will, once in power, accord me with any rights is a complete abandonment of rationality. Non-absolutism speaks for itself: it deserves no respect, intellectually or morally. It has been shown historically to be a fearful master, never mind what their position papers declare.

The faith placed in such a document by PZ and others seems misplaced, given that historically, secularists feed off of other secularists just as much as they do dissenters.

ADDENDUM: I should have stated at the top that item 2 is an explicit position for relativism and Consequentialism, and against virtue-type absolutist morality. These are the choices of every elitist totalitarian. It sets the tone for the rest of the "rights" statements.

And in item 3, which successful "secular democracies" are they referring to? Perhaps ours, which is now suffering under secular seizure?

Rebellion, Freedom and Reality

When the movie, “Rebel Without a Cause” came out in 1955, I felt as if they had made it about me. Being adolescent in a time of gang warfare, football hero worship, drag racing, and back seat bingo – none of which applied to me – put me in a peripheral category. Being a peripheral adolescent is not fun, especially if it includes life at home, a place where I was pretty much just in the way. Mom and Dad both had careers and their expectations for me were that I be a scholar and keep quiet. Neither of which appealed to me, both which I ignored. I felt marginalized and without a definition of being anyone.

In those days, they cracked down on peripheral slackers. These days I suppose slackers and peripherals get lots of sympathy, and co-dependent support. I got cracked down on. James Dean got co-dependent support in the movie. Either way, rebellion is inevitable, because there is no way to develop a sense of ownership of one’s own self, if that self is controlled by someone else. Adolescent rebellion is one of the ways that youth sheds dependence and becomes. It is the need to become that drives rebellion, the need to differentiate oneself, to become autonomous, and in control. In adolescents, it is normal.

Not long after the James Dean movie, the James Bond movies started coming out. Talk about cool and in control. Bond always survived the worst attacks and then had sex with the most beautiful women. Not so the peripheral adolescent. The lack of control became omnipresent and painfully so.

Yet with the acquisition of adult age, a self-financed degree, a good professional job, the peripheral adolescent in me should have disappeared. It faded, but never really seemed to disappear, in the sense that rebellion against authority was always still just subcutaneous, barely repressed but also not really visible to the casual observer.

Rebellion is a destructive force. When it is not released, it becomes an attitude, a worldview. As it gets worse, it metastasizes into internalized negativity, then externalized as a substitute for rational thought. In an adult, it is a toxin.

Here’s what I mean by that. Rebellion might originally have legitimate causes such as seeking oneself by eliminating the forces that control. But it has illegitimate tactics that go along with that, including a thoughtless rejection of articles that are perceived as threats, which really are not. The pursuit for autonomy can and frequently does eliminate every input from standard cultural sources as wrong, and then: evil.

Such rebellion, when not abated in adulthood, can become stultifyingly irascible, belligerent, reflexive, uncompromising and destructive to rationality. This sort of individual finds support from like minded belligerents who come to feel that their pain is a source of moral superiority, a source that cannot be comprehended by the “Other”. Rebellion thus becomes a moral statement, a decree against almost everything cultural which might inhibit or control the rebel. Rebellion becomes a force against the tyranny of others, the tyranny of external control, of standards, of rules, of mores and of ethos. Rebellion leads to a reflexive rejection of most everything which the host culture values.

It is this reflexive rejection that gives chronic rebellion its irrational character. The adult rebel will immediately reject or deny a cultural standard without a shred of evidence to support his premise. The common path of rebel thought includes rejection, Reductio Ad Absurdum, ridicule, Ad Hominem attacks, and verbal violence upon foes. The adult rebel automatically knows better than his foes, still without a shred of supporting evidence. Generally seen as a fractious belligerent, the rebel will not succumb to reasoned debate, but will frequently explode tangentially into a non-coherent tantrum in the face of persistent logic.

This sort of worldview is seen by the rebel as freedom, total freedom of thought. Rather, he is captive to negative reflexion away from standards, all standards, whether rational or not, beneficial or not, moral or not. The rebel’s morality is merely to reject.

What suffers for the rebel is the loss of contact with universals. To present universals to a rebel is to meet with instantaneous rejection. Sometimes the rejection is based on scientism. No matter, the just the idea of universals is an idea of external control: psychologically anathema to the rebel.

But for rationality, universal reality is the only guideline we have. Coherence can only be derived from a condition of universal consistency, a trait that we can observe ourselves without external coercion. In fact, universal reality is deduced after inductive observation of the characteristics of the universe; it is falsifiable by continuous observation, and philosophical observations over millennia have observed some consistent characteristics that are inherent to the basic construction of the universe, and which render it coherent. These principles allow the deduction of First Principles, which apply to reality, and how we can think about reality coherently and produce valid thoughts through structured processes of thought. Such structured thinking about universal realities is called “logic”. And symbolic math. And ultimately science.

But rebellion is against the external control of things like roots, which demand subservience as they require recognition of their validity. Here again, reflexive rebellion goes astray, goes awry, as it rejects the implacable validity of the universal characteristics to which we are subject. Misreading roots as threats rather than foundations for valid thinking is endemic in rebels.

The freedom that rebels crave, they also reject because freedom of thought comes with the ability to apply rationality to every and all propositions, at least those subject to rational analysis.

And this brings us to morality. The rebel’s presumed morality, mentioned above, is derived from the pain produced by the rebellion, which the rebel presumes confers moral authority upon himself. But it can be seen that irrationality rules the rebel; so why would morality be invested upon such an individual? And invested by whom?

The intellectual world is infested with rebels of the sort discussed above. Their forte’ is to reject all the norms for thought and behavior that are present in the culture which provides for them. And they self-anoint (in Sowell’s terminology) with mantles of extraordinary morality, priests of differentiated thinking and Consequentialism. They gather into groups of self-appellated intellectuals, remaining in and taking control of university lounges, and venturing into government advisory positions from which to pontificate and maneuver the masses.

But their rebellious rejectionism remains a distinctive characteristic, the immediate defiance in the presence of rational alternatives to their “moral advances” and progressivism for the herd. Again, a mark of the irrational rebel is that they know better than us about everything (and in a moral way), without a shred of supporting evidence, in fact despite the masses of evidence to the contrary. Morality is not influenced by evidence, if you are possessed of irrational rebellion. The lack of personal freedom that the rebel incurs for himself everyday is to be compensated by the removal of personal freedoms from the Other, leveling the field once and for all, and this is morality. As Alinsky said in his tenth rule, “…clothe it in moral garments.” He didn’t mean be moral. He meant, make it look moral, regardless of the tactic: make the ends look moral, and the means will justify themselves: Consequentialism.

The inevitable Consequentialism of the rebellious is merely a self-justification for doing whatever they wish (frequently to whoever they wish). This illusion of freedom results in either incarceration of the Consequentialist in a just world, or abuse of the Consequentialist’s fellow man, in a Consequentialist world. Frequently in history it has been the latter, at least for those who aspire to control rather than be controlled. Rebellion in adults is not without victims, not in the victimology sense of co-dependence, but real victims. The first victim is the rebel himself, trapped in a fearful state of perceived persecution by forces that want to control him, unable to free himself into rational thought and worldview behaviors, because that requires his submission – subservience – to outside forces, the universals which cannot be recognized. Rejection of these necessary roots is fatal to rationality, and the rebel suffers under his own constrictions, imprisoned away from the reality of the universe as shown through its coherence.

In short, the rebel is miserable and frequently without recourse. The rebel is frustrated by the refusal of the Other to abandon rationality and join him in his irrational, miserable state. So he is also angry. And an angry, miserable, irrational Consequentialist is not a pleasant companion. Or correspondent. Or politician.

Rebels are beyond help, at least logical help. It is a deep seated psychological issue. But like most mental issues these days, it is not considered pathological until an actual crime is committed. The damage they do can be controlled, until they seize the three branches of government. Uh oh. Our reality is changing, and not to the more rational state.

The Trouble With Truth

The Trouble With Truth: Freedom vs. Subservience

Freedom is the advantage of Atheism, while subservience is the plague of religion: that is the message from PZ Meyers last Sunday. The perfect freedom that Atheism provides is a release from authority and obligatory moral tenets. According to Meyers, the Atheist has,

”...no gods and no masters, only autonomous agents free to think and act”.

The Trouble With Truth: Rebellion

Many Atheists arrive at their Atheism during or after a journey of personal rebellion. Rebellion is part of the adolescent process of determining who one is. An adolescent is captured under rules of behavior that restrict. The restriction is resented. If the person is to be self-sufficient, then those rules made by others are onerous. Many youth rebel, and some rebel against all authority over them. In the manner of a prisoner rebelling against captors, the youth rebels, seeking personal control. In many cases, the youth is released from the restrictions as he reaches legal maturity, and he becomes independent and moves on, having accomplished personal control at last. In others, the resentment lingers, and rebellion continues. For some it continues throughout life. Some never reach the degree of personal control they seek.

So it is no wonder that the ultimate freedom and personal control that Atheism promises is popular amongst the young. And it is no wonder that it, rebellious Atheism, declines with age, along with Leftist, omni-control political leanings. But there remain those who cannot let go of the resentment they felt at the restrictions placed on them during their formative years, who retain the need for personal control over everything to the very end.

Another factor is the type of fathering that the youth received. In today’s distributed families, the fathers very often are not present. The youth are raised in an estrogen-rich environment, one which tries valiantly to provide the needs of the young person, but fails to provide a stable masculine role model. It is now known that male rebellion against the single female parent is a direct link to Atheism, and that faulty fathers produce the same issues in children, especially males.

When Meyers promises the great relief of omni-freedom and personal control via Atheism, he knows what he is doing. Freedom from all constraint is the main offering that Atheism has to bestow. Complete freedom is an attractive feature to a person who has been afflicted with onerous restrictions, real or imagined.

But freedom always comes at a price. Complete, unrestricted freedom costs dearly. It costs the connection to reality through truth, because for the Atheist there is no truth, it is all relative. Relativity gives one freedom to choose, whereas truth can restrict you to predetermined answers.

The Trouble With Truth: Definition

That’s the problem with truth. Or at least one of the problems. Truth has some characteristics that are uncomfortable for the rebel, the seeker of perfect freedom. Because truth, by definition, is uncompromising. Truth is incorrigible, unchangeable by the opinions of humans. Truth is not controllable by humans. Worse, logic and rational thought require that truth exists. And worst of all, truth might not be on the side of the rebel.

Humans are not the source of truth. The universe is not the source of truth. The source of the universe and humans is the source of truth. So controlling truth and bending it to an individual’s personal needs is out of the question for actual, universal truth. Any concepts that are manufactured for personal benefit are opinions, not truth. So it is opinion that is relative, not truth.

How should truth be defined then, in order to capture its incorrigible, universal quality? There are so many definitions of truth, that I have condensed them before;

Here is another condensation:

”Original Truth reflects observable characteristics of the universe that are inferred to be incorrigibly valid and perpetually unchanging within our universe, and which, if not so, would require a different sort of universe than ours in order to accommodate them.”

The Trouble With Truth: The Role of Inference.

Inference of truth is the only possible manner in which it can be apprehended. It is not possible to use empirical scientific methods to generate a truth, ever. This is because of the “inductive defect” and its spawn, the deductive defect, upon which empiricism depends. Truth is known only through the process of observation, inference and introspective examination. Before any objections about using inference for truth are raised, consider the widespread use of inference to declare the truth of the evolution hypothesis. Empirical science also infers a probability of the validity of an hypothesis after performing experiments that fail to falsify the hypothesis. Science is no stranger to inference: it uses it extensively.[1]

Inference of universal truth is different only in that the validity is inferred from the consequences that would be seen if the concept were not true, universally. It would take a much different universe to accommodate realities where a tautology was not valid, where cause and effect was not valid, or where an large, non-quantum object could both exist and not exist simultaneously. Our universe would not be what it is if these concepts were not true.

It is certainly valid to declare that these concepts cannot be proven, especially empirically. But it is not valid to declare them false because of that. Nietzsche did that and invented anti-Rationalism. But rationality remains a desirable characteristic amongst most humans today. In fact, rationality is an inborn human faculty that is well described in Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. If a person denies rationality as a valuable trait, then a rational conversation cannot be had with him.

There are also arguments against introspection, declaring that mental activity such as that is subject to error. But this neglects the fact that all decisions are mental activities which are carried on in the individual mind, and which use the same Lockian human faculties that are exercised when analyzing empirical data. Moreover, introspective conclusions can be compared against those of others who have considered the same issues and have come to conclusions. Differences between individual findings can be considered evidence for consideration, just as is done in empiricism, comparing experimental results. The declaration that introspection and other mental considerations are faulty is a fallacy of failing to consider the full use, and consequences of full use, of the mental faculty and using only data favoring the desired conclusion (Exclusionary Fallacy). After all, Atheism is itself an inference which would automatically fail if introspection and mental agitations are not valid by definition.

The Trouble With Truth: Subservience.

Since it is demonstrable that truth does exist, and that it is incorrigible and its validity is not dependent upon what humans think about it, then it is necessary for human thought, if it is to be valid, to work within the framework of that truth.

I have been lucky enough to have observed and worked with some individuals who were independently brilliant. These individuals all exhibited a singular characteristic: intellectual humility. None of these people considered themselves to be “intellectuals”, especially “Public Intellectuals” endowed with the duty to moralize to the masses. What made them special was their willingness to look into physically abstruse matter with a totally open mind, a mentality that wished to know and understand rather than to control. By objectively exercising causes and observing all – All – the effects, or vice-versa, the truth of the phenomenon being examined could be found.

In other words, the observations were subject to the principle of cause and effect. The entire environment was allowed to be subservient to that principle. And the other First Principles as well, all were assumed as axioms. Valid thought can only happen under such subservience. Rebellion against these axioms produces the Nietzschean anti-rationality, which has no place in science, math, logic or rational discourse.

In fact, one can see that coherent information converges into knowledge, while incoherent information, i.e. noise, disperses into the chaos of more noise. Coherence is the First Principle of Non-Contradiction. Another way to say this is that denying Non-Contradiction produces chaotic thinking. So the total freedom that is the objective of Atheism and Materialism, the open thinking that denies absolutes, that claims control over its thoughts while denying external limits as arbitrary constructs, this total freedom brings only chaotic thinking.

Rebellion against absolutes and external control over the thought process is a faulty mind set, one which prevents the submission of thought to the reality of truth.

The Trouble With Truth: Reality.

Consider this. If there is no truth, then there is no reality, at least none that is stable and consistent. If there are no absolutes governing the universe, then the universe has no stable characteristics that we can call laws. And there is no consistency in an unstable reality that we can use to produce rational decisions, and thus rationality is non-existent.

Are we to believe this? Can this be inferred from any observations of the properties of the universe? Is language merely unintelligible mutterings without any logical meaning? Is there no personal experience with the reality that is described by the First Principles? Are there no absolute principles governing the behavior of the universe in a consistent and stable?

We can only infer answers to these issues. But if Atheism is valid, if there is no meaning to the principles of consistency, if total freedom of thought reigns, then all these things are so: and the consequence of that is another tenet of Atheism – we are meaningless, valueless, irrational creatures in an irrational, valueless, meaningless universe: so anything goes, anything whatsoever.

The Trouble With Truth: Ethics

Which brings us to ethics and truth. The most common ethic of Atheists is Consequentialism which is focused on the masses as Humanism. Here Atheists are forced to consider whether Consequentialism is “truth”, or whether it is merely a tactic.

It almost seems that I needn’t say any more about that, yet I am compelled to point out that ethics are never “truth” for Atheists, who deny that truth exists. So the default is “tactic”. They do claim loud and long that they are moral, Meyers does so frequently. But that resolves to “tactic” as well, since it cannot be truth either. And tactics are what Consequentialism is all about. It is no different than the procedures for carrying on warfare; once again, anything goes, if it produces results.

The Trouble With Truth: Not-Truth

The final yet universal problem for Atheists is that truth, when denied, produces an environment of not-truth. Without truth, only not-truth remains. That is the environment of Atheism: not-truth. In such an environment, as was pointed out earlier, anything goes, including all sorts of denials of the obvious. Atheism cannot be true for several reasons, in this case, the fact that it denies the existence of any arbitrary, uncontrollable, external, incorrigible, absolute… truth.

So it cannot be true.

[1] Note that science does not warrant inferred results to be truth: science, including empirical science, produces only contingent factoids, tentative information that is always subject to further investigation and findings.

Alinsky-Cloward-Piven-Obama: Finally it has a Name

I admit to not being familiar with Cloward-Piven until recently. These contemporaries of Saul Alinsky were socialist activists with a plan. The actual objectives of the Cloward-Piven Strategy, as it is now called, were not as wide sweeping as the nation’s Leftist political strategists of today are enjoying. But the strategy has worked and it is still viable for the bigger picture under Obama. Cloward-Piven wanted a single objective: a guaranteed universal living wage. This would end poverty, and the morality of that end justified any means to get it.

In order to get such a thing, they proposed to overload the welfare system with double the number of poor people demanding their entitlement “rights”. This would overload the system, eventually crashing it. The result would bring the poverty stricken minorities together in angry, chaotic strikes at the remaining bureaucracies. The Leftist journalism outlets would generate sympathy for the poor, both in the general populace and in the government. In the chaos of the crisis caused by the deliberate system crash, politicians would suddenly see that a guaranteed universal living wage was the only solution.

The Cloward-Piven "manifesto" is reprinted at discoverthenetworks.com:

”A series of welfare drives in large cities would, we believe, impel action on a new federal program to distribute income, eliminating the present public welfare system and alleviating the abject poverty which it perpetrates. Widespread campaigns to register the eligible poor for welfare aid, and to help existing recipients obtain their full benefits, would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments. These disruptions would generate severe political strains, and deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the white working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be con-strained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas. By the internal disruption of local bureaucratic practices, by the furor over public welfare poverty, and by the collapse of current financing arrangements, powerful forces can be generated for major economic reforms at the national level.”


The ultimate aim of this strategy is a new program for direct income distribution. What reason is there to expect that the federal government will enact such legislation in response to a crisis in the welfare system?

We ordinarily think of major legislation as taking form only through established electoral processes We tend to overlook the force of crisis in precipitating legislative reform, partly because we lack a theoretical framework by which to understand the impact of major disruptions.

By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention. Public trouble is a political liability, it calls for action by political leaders to stabilize the situation. Because crisis usually creates or exposes conflict, it threatens to produce cleavages in a political consensus which politicians will ordinarily act to avert."

How could they have anticipated their good fortune to have an Alinsky organizer elected president – by huge minority support – as well as a Democratic congress so controlled that even filibuster was ruled out, at least for Obama’s first year. Plus the existing crisis of collapsing financing and economic systems brought on by purposeful “American Dream” legislation which seemed to be actually designed to create collapse, what more could a crisis strategist want?

With every federal move destined to exacerbate the crisis, and grabbing more means through health care “reform” to create a new crisis, Alinsky-Cloward-Pimm-Obama (ACPO) seemed destined for success.

When viewed in light of this type of strategy, a great preponderance of Democratic moves make sense. And even if the great collapse doesn’t come immediately, the momentum toward the wall has been increased considerably.

The ultimate failure of the entire nation now seems to be within the grasp of the ACPO's. Merely by drunkenly spending the nation into a completely unrecompensible debt, the nation's systems of all types will be stressed to the failing point.





According to an analysis at discoverthenetworks.com,

"Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. In the summer of 1967, Wiley founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). His tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in Cloward and Piven's article. His followers invaded welfare offices across the United States -- often violently -- bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a dues-paying membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation.

Regarding Wiley's tactics, The New York Times commented on September 27, 1970, "There have been sit-ins in legislative chambers, including a United States Senate committee hearing, mass demonstrations of several thousand welfare recipients, school boycotts, picket lines, mounted police, tear gas, arrests - and, on occasion, rock-throwing, smashed glass doors, overturned desks, scattered papers and ripped-out phones."These methods proved effective. "The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams," writes Sol Stern in the City Journal. "From 1965 to 1974, the number of households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy."As a direct result of its massive welfare spending, New York City was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975. The entire state of New York nearly went down with it. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness."

Within the ACPO strategy, even such things as the constant decline in public education, the erosion of national sovereignty, the ignoring of constitutional limits, the pursuit of victimology as policy, as well as purposeful fiscal irresponsibility all come into focus. The Consequentialist Left is in their heyday; perhaps they have squandered it in Massachussetts, perhaps not. They are on the move in a big way.

The Democrats Are NOT Corrupt

One might be tempted to cringe at the bribe and payoff behavior of the Senate Democrats; at the bipartisan promises and closed door policies; at the demands for voting on an unread bill; at the unilateral and dicatatorial tactics of the Democrats in general. One might be tempted to cry corruption! Foul!

That would actually be wrong.

There is no corruption in a culture that doesn't acknowledge corruption's existence. In such a culture there is only success and failure. The ethic in such a culture is Consequentialism, the ethic of pragmatic Atheist Will To Power, the Nietzschean drive toward the singular objective of seizing more control over the "herd".

In Consequentialism, morality (that wicked absolute) is traded for a calculation of a cost/benefit ratio. And in order to be calculated, every entity, and everybody, must be given a value. This value is typically designated by evaluating the amount of contribution an entity would make toward the Objective, and the amount of investment already made in the entity.

For example, in the Emmanuel evaluation of humans for their "share" of health care, the elderly are significantly reduced in their ability to contribute, and receive less. And the infant has received less investment in its care and education than the 20 year old, so the infant receives less.

Similar calculations are made for organizations like ACORN, which also cannot be corrupt, and which has both significant invested and significant future potential to contribute.

Consequentialism is the ethic that Secularism forces to the surface when the need for an explanation of the ethical variety arises. Cost vs. benefit. It must cost the man to benefit men. It is the practical side of Atheist Humanism.

Yet in real life Consequentialism is just an intellectual cover for the Nietzschean power grab it is intended to camoflage. The real ethic is to do anything and everything that it takes in order to extend power over the herd. This is the ethic within which there is no such thing as corruption, at least in the traditional sense. It is possible, in fact, for the Consequentialist/Nietzschean to view resistance to the Will To Power as corrupt, itself. But that is outside the ethic; within the ethic there is no possible action that can be considered corrupt, so long as it furthers the Will To Power. See Alinsky, Rules For Radicals, page 26.

It is not possible for me to view the government of the USA without considering the fact that these people do not consider themselves corrupt. They are merely doing what the Atheist Dictators and Radicals and wannabes have always done. They are being Consequentialist Will To Power brokers.

The reason that logic and evidence doesn't work with these individuals is that they are not motivated by such things. In fact, logic and evidence merely get in the way of the final Consequentialist objective, which in this case is not healthcare, it the assumption of power over a huge bloc of the private sector, the increase of victimology in the USA lower class, and the march toward fully institutionalizing eugenics (currently limited to unborn humans). That's why they are unmoved by fiscal policy faliures, deficits, spending limits, the poor performance of similar health care systems in other countries: that is not the goal, or even the issue: it is just the red herring.

With the dominance of Consequentialist Nietzscheism in the US government, where will this nation be in a decade? In ten decades? The slope has been greased with taxpayer $.

Having paid each other off with billions and billions of USD, the Democrats are on the brink of success in their Consequentialist endeavor. They should be congratulated on their success. Congratulations. What's next?

Book Review: Steven E. Landsburg’s "The Big Questions"

Dr. Steven E Landsburg is an economist at the University of Rochester. This is his third book.

From an overview perspective, Landsburg's writing is clear, accessible and engaging. It is not likely that his position will be misunderstood, no matter what your opinion of it might be.

Landsburg admits up front that he takes on the Big Questions from an economist’s viewpoint. What this actually means doesn’t surface immediately. So I will reveal it early on: Landsburg is a philosophical Consequentialist.

Consequentialism, especially in the economist’s world, is the valuing of actions by their consequences – at the surface. More deeply it is the moral evaluation of actions based on cost / benefit ratios. This leads directly and inevitably to several conclusions: global governance by consequentialists, and the leveling of all peoples to equal outcomes as determined by cost / benefit analyses. While Landsburg doesn't overtly endorse this conclusion, neither does he take pains to abjure it.

With that held in our minds, We start, with Landsburg immediately taking on ontology with a breathtakingly over-simplification of a number of variables to arrive at these conclusions: (a) all existence is mathematics, and (b), the existence of mathematics proves there is no God.

Here’s how that works in Landsburg’s universe:

The first premise is that mathematics is real and immutable; it exists because it is necessary that it exists and it cannot NOT exist.

Premise 2 is that because computer software can run on any computer, it is independent of the computer (the computer is just baggage). This leads to,

Premise 3: The mind is software, the brain is hardware; the mind is independent of the brain (isn’t this a variation on Duality?).

Premise 4: The computer / brain baggage can be eliminated altogether, since it doesn’t matter what computer is used to run the software.

Premise 5: Consciousness – being software - is not a function of the brain; consciousness would exist independently of the brain.

Premise 6: If software is developed that is conscious, it would be conscious without the computer.

Premise 7: Since all hardware is merely “baggage” and can be eliminated, then all reality is actually software – which is basically mathematics.

Conclusion: All reality is actually mathematics.

Next,

Mathematics could not have been created because it is essential, necessary. (In fact, the universe exists expressly for mathematics, which must exist)

Therefore God could not have created it.

And thus, since there is no existence that is not mathematics, then God didn’t create anything that exists, ergo: no God.

This Atheodicy, like all analogies, fails in its inability to be comprehensive. Starting with Premise 4, the analogy goes astray, wandering off into absurd thoughts that are taken as Truth, even axiomatic. To declare that computers can be eliminated is of course absurd. To declare that all reality is mathematics is absurd: if mathematics is metaphysical (and it is), then there is no physical existence, if the premises are valid.

Are mathematics truly essential, immutable? What is immutable is the numbering of objects, where 2 objects added to 3 objects always leaves 5 objects; as Landsburg says, the number three is essential - without it mathematics and logic fail. But wait. Without objects, mathematics is without meaning despite being metaphysical and abstract. If 2 plus 3 does not refer to objects, then "2" and "3" are meaningless symbols. Outside space/time mathematics as we know it is just as likely to be false as it is true, and there is no evidence possible to prove otherwise. Moreover in multiple dimensions our concepts of mathematics would never suffice to describe objects of 6 or 9 or 11 dimensions. So there is no reason to think that our mathematics is immutable outside our dimensions, and there is no coherency conflict with the concept of a creating deity.

It is difficult to tell if Landsburg is just playing with us to see what we will stomach, or if he is seriously setting up the rest of the book.

But as we proceed, we see that he is definitely a materialist in the sense that he measures the values of outcomes (benefits) using material measures. So he contradicts his Atheology as he goes along.

Landsburg does not shy away from taking on scientific questions, including quantum mechanics. He several times declares admiration for Dawkins (an early life influence on Landsburg) and Dennett, yet never mentions Aristotle, Newton, Hume, Locke, Popper, Boole, etc. although he does give one sentence to Feynman, and he creates a fictional conversation with Einstein. But science really is a cause and effect sort of business, which is Landsburg’s forte’. Science just doesn’t try to invoke morality for its principles... well, science which subjects itself to the scientific method, anyway.

One wonders if all economists are afflicted with the cost / benefit approach to morality. Given the affliction with Keynesianism, one might guess, maybe so.

As Landsburg says, “Morality then, is a biological accident”.

And, “My problem with deontology [abstract moral absolutes] is that I can’t think of anything that is always wrong. I’d cheerfully cut off the ears of a small child to cure malaria.”

Again, “…my ‘self interest’ accounts for everyone’s interests. That’s what a moral judgment should do…”

So he develops what he calls “The Economist’s Golden Rule”:

“Roughly, the rule is ‘Don’t leave the world worse off than you found it.’ A corollary is ‘Don’t spend valuable time and energy is nonproductive ways’”.

This “roughly” translates to: your moral capital is measured by your contribution. If you are not totally productive, you are losing moral capital commensurate with your lapse of productivity. You are valued by the amount of moral capital you accumulate, or lose.

The moral valuation of an individual becomes numerically quantifiable based on cost / benefit calculations. If this does not raise both red flags and the hair on your neck, well I can’t help you. Because the immediately obvious next step is to make certain that individuals are, indeed, evaluated and their morality assured. And the quality of the individual’s moral benefits would be defined not by the individual but by elites who know better than the individual what that individual “should” be doing.

Consequentialism is not just compatible with Alinskyism, communism, socialism/totalitarianism and eugenics, it is the fundamental moral theory underlying those aggressive philosophies.

Western culture was not founded on assured outcomes. It was founded on the freedom to personally assume the cost of pursuing a yet unrealized benefit. The probability of achieving the benefit is frequently inversely proportional to the magnitude of the benefit – yet no one is precluded from pursuing benefits for which they can pay the cost and are willing to do so, no matter what the ratio might be. This could be thought of as the underlying premise for liberty, freedom and private ownership of property. Assured outcomes are the darlings of elitist, socialist, totalitarian thoughts and agendas.

While Consequentialism is the main thrust of the book, one last interesting feature intrigued me, a section called “How to Think”. But I was disappointed to find, not a treatise on logic or rational thought, but a series of articles on what to think, not how. Only two subjects are worthy of mention here: his attack on Al Gore’s use of phony metaphors in a section called “Don’t Blather”; and the final tiny section called “Delight in Losing Arguments”, which I quote here in its entirety:

“Argue passionately for your beliefs; listen intently to your adversaries, and root for yourself to lose. When you lose, you’ve learned something”.

And learning something is a benefit that is (usually) worth the cost.