Historian: The Hypocritical Statue Obsession of a ‘Smug Generation’
Victor Davis Hanson slams progressives who 'pick and choose their type of outrage for political purposes'
Military historian and political columnist Victor Davis Hanson said the “moral smugness” of this current generation allows it to “pick and choose their type of outrage for political purposes,” all the while adhering to a “double standard,” during an interview Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”
In the aftermath of Saturday’s violent Charlottesville rally, Hanson, a Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of classics emeritus at California State University, Fresno, pointed to the progressive liberal protesters increasingly clamoring for the removal of statues and monuments honoring Confederate soldiers and leaders. In Durham, North Carolina, a group of protesters toppled a Confederate statue Monday night, while other cities are calling for the removal of such statues.
"This generation has decided that it's the most moral and ethical in history and has the right to go back and pick winners and losers," Hanson said. "I think it's a progressive project in which they pick and choose their type of outrage for political purposes in the present."
The problem, however, is that these protesters and activists don't feel the need to apply the same filters and standards to themselves, he argued. When far-left Antifa activists or Black Lives Matter protesters repeatedly took to the streets calling for retaliation against police officers following high-profile shooting deaths of African-Americans, Hanson noted that such standards weren't applied to these groups.
"They all have this moral smugness, but it's not evenly applied and it doesn't apply to themselves," Hanson said. "This smug generation feels that human nature works like an app on their phone that has to be perfect. But I don't think that people who march in the street and say, 'Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em,' are the moral adjudicators of anything. And yet they think they are."
Hanson noted that many several prominent Confederate leaders did not personally support or condone slavery at the time of the Civil War, and yet because they fought for the South, this current generation views all Confederates as "100 percent bad."
"In other words, we give no room or no allowances that people are human and that they make mistakes in history's tragedy," he said. "It's not melodrama where we go back and judge people as a hundred percent good or a hundred percent bad. And yet that's what we're doing."
Hanson noted that the Left doesn't slime the memory of other icons and heroes because of imperfections in their life.
"Are we going to say that we can't honor Martin Luther King because he was known to be a little bit rough with women? Is that a sin that cancels out all the good that he did?" he asked.
"[The Left doesn't] have political power … but they, in recompense, they really exaggerate cultural influence," Hanson said, noting that the Left holds universities, the media, and Hollywood captive and "use that to counteract their political impotence."
"And they're very successful at it because they either force conservatives to apologize or to virtue-signal among one another who's the more moral or ethical or ready to concede a point," he added.
LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham brought up her sparring match Tuesday night with syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Fox News' "Special Report," in which the two clashed over President Donald Trump's Tuesday press conference.
The president had doubled down on his Saturday comments in which he blamed "many sides" for the violence in Charlottesville. On Monday, Trump specifically condemned "white supremacists" and "neo-Nazis." On Tuesday, he blamed both the Alt-Left and the Alt-Right for contributing to the violence.
Krauthammer dubbed Trump's Tuesday press conference "a moral disgrace," saying that Trump "reverted back to Saturday" and undermined his strong Monday statement because it wasn't really "in his heart."
Hanson said Krauthammer was applying a certain double standard to Trump.
"I agree that [Trump] should have said it earlier. But the fact is, he did say it, and I don't think it was because it wasn't in his heart," he responded. "I do think he's not a racist by any means. And I don't understand Charles Krauthammer, because after the policemen were killed by a racist sniper, people asked Barack Obama to condemn the type of movement that had led to that, the Black Lives Matter. And he said the problem was guns."
"And in Fort Hood, that person yelled 'Allahu Akbar' as he killed and mowed down and butchered 13 people. And Obama said, 'Let's not rush to judgment,'" Hanson added. "If Trump had said, rather than blaming both sides for the cycle of violence, 'Let's not rush to judgment,' people would have been outraged."
Hanson advised both the Never-Trumpers on the Right and the Never-Trumpers on the Left to "step back and see that people, for a variety of reasons, have a deep antipathy for Donald Trump, and that clouds their empirical judgment."
Ingraham and Krauthammer Clash Over Trump’s Rocky Press Conference
"A lot of people just can't get over that fact. And then they find out that the more that they automatically slander and smear Trump, the more that they feel they accrue virtue and acknowledgment, influence," Hanson said. "I think they're creating a landscape in which we all want to jump and damn Trump because they feel that, either career-wise or moral-wise or I don't know what-wise, but it makes us feel good. But we don't look at it empirically."
Hanson also jabbed Krauthammer, saying that the panelist "could have reminded people" that "Barack Obama invited a rapper to the White House [Kendrick Lamar], whose album that week came out with a dead white judge with his eyes x'd out with African-American rappers toasting his demise on the White House lawn."
"And no one said, 'Should the president of the United States be condoning or promoting a rapper who celebrates the murder of a judge?' And that was a racist thing, that album was abjectly racist," he said.
"But a lot of kids, our new generation, they look at that and they think, 'Wow, there's a double standard.' And nobody wants to say that because if you say that, then all of a sudden everything in your career, everything in your life, everything in your atmospherics — you pay a price for that," Hanson concluded. "And that is how brilliantly the Left has done."
Showing posts with label Morals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morals. Show all posts
Saturday, August 19, 2017
A Lone Sane Voice: Victor Davis Hanson on the Smug Generation
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Moral Authority: Morals vs. Ethics
All words are “hackable” in the sense that they can be declared ambiguous by someone intent on changing their meaning. The motivation for doing so is moot. What is significant is the changes in the outcome of a concept or communication which results from such word hacking.
This is especially visible in the world of “ethics”, where the term itself is subject to a large variety of differing definitions. However, most definitions of ethics seem to come to a common agreement that ethics involves people who try to determine good behavior and bad behavior, and in some cases to call that determination “morality”.
There are classical ethical questions and situations which might be posed. Here is the “run away trolley car dichotomy”:
A further supposition is this: the situation itself gives the person at the track switch the temporary moral authority to choose the value of the two different assortments of potential victims and the moral necessity to act. Why is this temporary? Because it will be second-guessed at the public hearing, by other people who will have been legally endowed with the authority to judge the “ethics” of the person at the track switch. The person at the track switch might ultimately be accused of racism, ageism, or some other form of ethical malfeasance for choosing the wrong path for the trolley, based on a different ethic which is applied by the prosecutor, and ultimately the court itself might apply a different ethic still.
It can be easily understood, then, that ethics is a temporary opinion of some person who creates such opinions. There will be conflicting ethical pronouncements by different people who are making their opinions based on different criteria. And how an ethic is used is also highly variable.
There is no such thing as a fixed ethic.
There is no such thing as an ethical Truth.
Most situations involving actual ethical decisions are far less drastic than the runaway trolley scenario. And yet there are ideological forces which do take the extreme issues to the maximum and force the reconsideration of what is right and what is wrong. Eugenics is one of those issues, because it involves human classes which are valued purely on class, and nothing more.
The valuation of human classes is a tempting use of ideologies. The Kulakization of entire subpopulations was the result of a ruling class which created a class of valueless humans to be eradicated. The definition of “kulak” became highly expansive as other groups of inconvenient humans found themselves suddenly defined as “kulaks” by the state. In a top-down state the ethics which has authority is determined by those who devise ethics which benefit the state. So the moral authority resides in the head of the state. [Note 1]
But in other societies, who is it that has moral authority to dispense rules of behavior which apply to the entire society? Who would determine the ethics to be used in a Utopia? Is moral authority really only the physical authority of the state?
It all boils down to the “Great Sez Who?”, as the inimitable Arthur Leff [2] put it. If behavior has no consequences, then all behavior is OK. Where do consequences enter into the consideration of ethics as would be applied universally? For example, if there were a universal ethical principle such as universal human rights, what would the source for that Truth be? How would it be enforced, or would it be enforced at all?
The declaration of universal human rights would necessarily come from a source which is able to provide both universal wisdom and universal consequences. This immediately leaves out any single or group of human ethical authors. Only under the hypothetical utopia which is ruled by force of death could such an ethic be applied.
Only if the ethic and consequences can be applied from outside the universe, and with consequences both in the universe and outside the universe for both good and bad behavior, could a single ethic be applied to all humans with the moral authority of consequences.
But such an authority is not based in material understandings which are favored by thinkers encumbered by a philosophy of Materialism. Rejection is inevitable. So consequences must also be inevitable – but they are not, at least within the confines of the material universe.
Still, the option of a universal ethic is attractive. Without it, there is no consistent guide for human behavior. In fact, many Materialists insist that our evolutionary history shows that humans are deterministic and thus are without culpability. So there actually is neither good nor evil, there is only power and its ability to help the powerful to survive and control their fates while alive. Thus Good becomes the strongest Will To Power, based in the most evolutionarily fit individuals. In other words, dictatorship and the will of the dictator are defined as ultimate Goods.
Is that a credible criterion for Good? The question is trivial under Atheism and Materialism, because it is the only choice in the long run. Ethicists can generate faux morality rules for the masses, but only under true authoritarian force can the rules become universal. But the dictatorship removes human rights, and that presents an unavoidable internal contradiction. No dictatorship can provide universal human rights, including a putative utopian dictatorship.
The other choice is the unthinkable: non-Materialist ethics with consequences outside the material realm, provided by a force untouchable by human resentment or revolution. If there are human rights, then this is the only option which fits that description of a necessary universal enforcer of consequences.
If we are to think that there actually are universal human rights, then the only non-contradictory choice is the non-material incontrovertible source.
This is not a proof of the existence of a deity. It merely indicates that without such a source for human rights, there can be no universal human rights.
This conclusion is empirically validated by both metrics and observation of the countries which are dedicated to the top down ethics of New Man, equalitarian, worker’s-paradise Ethics, as formed by Marx and implemented under the various Revolutionary dictators. The most recent is the Chavez dictatorship in Venezuela which has resulted in immense wealth for the dictators and their clans, while reducing their masses to hunger and privation, as well as ever increasing government confiscation and control. One might conclude that such top down ethical programs work opposite to their claims. This is again validated in every Marxist totalitarian country around the globe. Even within the USA the AtheoLeftist “blue model” has failed radically in cities which have been run under that model for decades, and which now sport growing ghettos and fiscal decadence to the point of virtual social and economic collapse.
There is no possible AtheoLeftist ethic which can provide universal human rights. Such ethics always necessarily devolve to class systems, where certain classes are preferred and other classes declared inconvenient or evil and thus dispensable. In some European post-nations it is now “ethical” to dispose of certain classes of elderly or other disadvantaged without their permission. In other parts of the EU, it is now ethical to perform genetic modification on human embryos to determine which modifications kill the embryonic human as it attempts to grow. The ethical road the Third Reich is being cleared off for travel again. This is happening under the unelected dictators of the European Union, a de facto AtheoLeftist totalitarian coterie.
Returning to the basic concept of ethics for dictating Good and Bad behavior, the USA has been the sole nation to incorporate the concept of an external source for immutable universal human rights into its fundamental documents. That is under considerable assault from the AtheoLeft, and the hazard of AtheoLeftist degenerative ethics replacing universal ethics is well underway.
To conclude, ethics are human opinions and are subject to contradiction between ethicists, volatility within a single ethical source, perversion by ideologies, and the necessity for totalitarian enforcement to provide consequences – which are always negative.
Morals are externally sourced, immutable, non-contradictory and have consequences beyond the human enforcement or non-enforcement, and thus beyond human corruption.
Moral Authority is external to human control. The consequences are both negative and positive and exist beyond the reach of human control.
Notes:
1. Rahm Emmanuel’s brother, whatzisname Emmanuel, devised a system of ethics for the ObamaCare takeover. Humans were valued like this:
2. Leff, Arthur; "Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law; Duke Law Journal;Vol.1979, Dec., No.6.
This is especially visible in the world of “ethics”, where the term itself is subject to a large variety of differing definitions. However, most definitions of ethics seem to come to a common agreement that ethics involves people who try to determine good behavior and bad behavior, and in some cases to call that determination “morality”.
There are classical ethical questions and situations which might be posed. Here is the “run away trolley car dichotomy”:
”You are in San Francisco, standing near a trolley line on which there is a trolley coming down a steep hill. You realize that the trolley is out of control and is coming down at very high speed. You see that you have access to a track switch that can take the trolley one of two ways, depending on the position of the switch. You suddenly understand that you can do something; you can throw the switch. But to which path should you send the trolley? Looking down one path, there is an elderly man standing on the track with his back to you. Down the other path there is a group of young people standing on the track with their backs to you. So you must decide which path, immediately. Which do you choose?”The purpose of this dichotomy in ethics is to force a budding ethicist to place value on different classes of human life. The question can be changed to involve a group of elderly men, and a single young person, or any combination of different people: different sexes, different abilities, different races; the difference in the class membership of the potential victims is the point. It is all in the service of placing values on differing humans. The pursuit of Ethics demands that you do those things: put people into classes and then put a value on that class.
A further supposition is this: the situation itself gives the person at the track switch the temporary moral authority to choose the value of the two different assortments of potential victims and the moral necessity to act. Why is this temporary? Because it will be second-guessed at the public hearing, by other people who will have been legally endowed with the authority to judge the “ethics” of the person at the track switch. The person at the track switch might ultimately be accused of racism, ageism, or some other form of ethical malfeasance for choosing the wrong path for the trolley, based on a different ethic which is applied by the prosecutor, and ultimately the court itself might apply a different ethic still.
It can be easily understood, then, that ethics is a temporary opinion of some person who creates such opinions. There will be conflicting ethical pronouncements by different people who are making their opinions based on different criteria. And how an ethic is used is also highly variable.
There is no such thing as a fixed ethic.
There is no such thing as an ethical Truth.
Most situations involving actual ethical decisions are far less drastic than the runaway trolley scenario. And yet there are ideological forces which do take the extreme issues to the maximum and force the reconsideration of what is right and what is wrong. Eugenics is one of those issues, because it involves human classes which are valued purely on class, and nothing more.
The valuation of human classes is a tempting use of ideologies. The Kulakization of entire subpopulations was the result of a ruling class which created a class of valueless humans to be eradicated. The definition of “kulak” became highly expansive as other groups of inconvenient humans found themselves suddenly defined as “kulaks” by the state. In a top-down state the ethics which has authority is determined by those who devise ethics which benefit the state. So the moral authority resides in the head of the state. [Note 1]
But in other societies, who is it that has moral authority to dispense rules of behavior which apply to the entire society? Who would determine the ethics to be used in a Utopia? Is moral authority really only the physical authority of the state?
It all boils down to the “Great Sez Who?”, as the inimitable Arthur Leff [2] put it. If behavior has no consequences, then all behavior is OK. Where do consequences enter into the consideration of ethics as would be applied universally? For example, if there were a universal ethical principle such as universal human rights, what would the source for that Truth be? How would it be enforced, or would it be enforced at all?
The declaration of universal human rights would necessarily come from a source which is able to provide both universal wisdom and universal consequences. This immediately leaves out any single or group of human ethical authors. Only under the hypothetical utopia which is ruled by force of death could such an ethic be applied.
Only if the ethic and consequences can be applied from outside the universe, and with consequences both in the universe and outside the universe for both good and bad behavior, could a single ethic be applied to all humans with the moral authority of consequences.
But such an authority is not based in material understandings which are favored by thinkers encumbered by a philosophy of Materialism. Rejection is inevitable. So consequences must also be inevitable – but they are not, at least within the confines of the material universe.
Still, the option of a universal ethic is attractive. Without it, there is no consistent guide for human behavior. In fact, many Materialists insist that our evolutionary history shows that humans are deterministic and thus are without culpability. So there actually is neither good nor evil, there is only power and its ability to help the powerful to survive and control their fates while alive. Thus Good becomes the strongest Will To Power, based in the most evolutionarily fit individuals. In other words, dictatorship and the will of the dictator are defined as ultimate Goods.
Is that a credible criterion for Good? The question is trivial under Atheism and Materialism, because it is the only choice in the long run. Ethicists can generate faux morality rules for the masses, but only under true authoritarian force can the rules become universal. But the dictatorship removes human rights, and that presents an unavoidable internal contradiction. No dictatorship can provide universal human rights, including a putative utopian dictatorship.
The other choice is the unthinkable: non-Materialist ethics with consequences outside the material realm, provided by a force untouchable by human resentment or revolution. If there are human rights, then this is the only option which fits that description of a necessary universal enforcer of consequences.
If we are to think that there actually are universal human rights, then the only non-contradictory choice is the non-material incontrovertible source.
This is not a proof of the existence of a deity. It merely indicates that without such a source for human rights, there can be no universal human rights.
This conclusion is empirically validated by both metrics and observation of the countries which are dedicated to the top down ethics of New Man, equalitarian, worker’s-paradise Ethics, as formed by Marx and implemented under the various Revolutionary dictators. The most recent is the Chavez dictatorship in Venezuela which has resulted in immense wealth for the dictators and their clans, while reducing their masses to hunger and privation, as well as ever increasing government confiscation and control. One might conclude that such top down ethical programs work opposite to their claims. This is again validated in every Marxist totalitarian country around the globe. Even within the USA the AtheoLeftist “blue model” has failed radically in cities which have been run under that model for decades, and which now sport growing ghettos and fiscal decadence to the point of virtual social and economic collapse.
There is no possible AtheoLeftist ethic which can provide universal human rights. Such ethics always necessarily devolve to class systems, where certain classes are preferred and other classes declared inconvenient or evil and thus dispensable. In some European post-nations it is now “ethical” to dispose of certain classes of elderly or other disadvantaged without their permission. In other parts of the EU, it is now ethical to perform genetic modification on human embryos to determine which modifications kill the embryonic human as it attempts to grow. The ethical road the Third Reich is being cleared off for travel again. This is happening under the unelected dictators of the European Union, a de facto AtheoLeftist totalitarian coterie.
Returning to the basic concept of ethics for dictating Good and Bad behavior, the USA has been the sole nation to incorporate the concept of an external source for immutable universal human rights into its fundamental documents. That is under considerable assault from the AtheoLeft, and the hazard of AtheoLeftist degenerative ethics replacing universal ethics is well underway.
To conclude, ethics are human opinions and are subject to contradiction between ethicists, volatility within a single ethical source, perversion by ideologies, and the necessity for totalitarian enforcement to provide consequences – which are always negative.
Morals are externally sourced, immutable, non-contradictory and have consequences beyond the human enforcement or non-enforcement, and thus beyond human corruption.
Moral Authority is external to human control. The consequences are both negative and positive and exist beyond the reach of human control.
Notes:
1. Rahm Emmanuel’s brother, whatzisname Emmanuel, devised a system of ethics for the ObamaCare takeover. Humans were valued like this:
a. Elderlies have low value, since they have already expended their value during their careers, leaving them with low value and increasing needs; so their medical care can be rationed and even denied, as local ethicists determine.Thus every human goes through several class designations during her life, and ends with no value at all, if she lives that long.
b. Babies have the next lowest value, being non-contributors yet absorbing educational and medical resources along their growth path.
c. Youth at roughly 20years of age already have the value of their educations installed, are generally healthy, and have their productive adult lives ahead of them; their value is the highest, and they should easily receive medical care. But their value decreases slightly as they age, until their retirement when their value goes off a cliff as they officially become elderly class.
d. Women as a class have more value (Victimology) than men as a class. There might have been a racial component too, since class war has that class.
2. Leff, Arthur; "Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law; Duke Law Journal;Vol.1979, Dec., No.6.
Friday, April 8, 2016
In a Society Free From Moral Principle, This is a Result
Mother says sex with her son is 'incredible' as she reveals they're planning marriage and trying for babyI read the other day that a woman went to Europe so that she could marry herself. And I know of people who have married bridges, trucks, trees and such. But they don't generate offspring. Used to be that you couldn't marry your first cousin, for genetic reasons. But apparently that is oppressive, and hateful. So its completely open, now that "secular" morality is the rage.
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.
I have quoted the Qur'an; This is from the Old Testament:
13 For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.Jeremiah 6.
14 They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.
15 They acted shamefully, they committed abomination; yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord.
16 Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, “We will not walk in it.”
17 Also I raised up sentinels for you: “Give heed to the sound of the trumpet!” But they said, “We will not give heed.”
Saturday, July 18, 2015
AI and Human Values
'Artificial Intelligence is as dangerous as NUCLEAR WEAPONS': AI pioneer warns smart computers could doom mankindAnd exactly which "human values" should AI focus on? Abortion? Elderly death panels (euthanasia via deprivation of care)? Possibly top down control of total "equality" in all aspects of life? Maybe complete "tolerance" of all computer behaviors regardless of how aberrant? The main value in play today is relativism; is that the "control" to implement?
Expert warns advances in AI mirrors research that led to nuclear weapons
He says AI systems could have objectives misaligned with human values
Companies and the military could allow this to get a technological edge
He urges the AI community to put human values at the centre of their work
"In an editorial in Science, editors Jelena Stajic, Richard Stone, Gilbert Chin and Brad Wible, said: 'Triumphs in the field of AI are bringing to the fore questions that, until recently, seemed better left to science fiction than to science."Under human control"? What does that even mean? Even humans are not always under human control, if that means rational, beneficial, enlightenment-values-oriented self-control. Too many humans want total control of all other humans; that is one human value, and it's been in play forever, and it still is in play.
'How will we ensure that the rise of the machines is entirely under human control? And what will the world be like if truly intelligent computers come to coexist with humankind?'"
It is probable that humans will be more dangerous to humans than computers, at least for a while. Those values are already being implemented in our own culture, and have been historically in other cultures with catastrophic effects, as can be seen by those who care to know.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
An Argument FOR Relativism In Morals
The recent article regarding the existence of moral fact, an article in the New York Times philosophy page, The Stone, claiming that relativism is now beginning to be instilled in grade schools and that college students are more morally relativistic than ever, has received a scathing rebuke from Slate columnist, Daniel Engber. Engber begins by slashing philosopher Justin McBrayer for not providing any empirical science in support of his claims. Rather, says Engber,
Thus Engber tries now to recoup his position by placing irrelevancies in the path, hoping for some intellectual stumbling:
Second, he has asserted a false analogy: Islam is itself highly relativist, allowing any sort of bad behavior based on the situation. Under jihad, any passion may be exercised, be it sexual lust, blood lust, the lust for power, the lust to own women and slaves. All are both prohibited and allowed under Islamic documents, thoughts and the very life of Muhammad. So this argument fails, and fails hard. Yet Engber charges on with more arguments consisting of relativism which actually exists in many minds, and then ends with this:
"So that’s the argument. And here’s an opinion: It’s total crap. If you subject McBrayer to the sort of claims-testing that is routinely taught to second-graders—i.e., if you assess it using evidence and observation—the essay falls apart. There’s no evidence that college students are any less morally resolute today than they were in years past. There’s no evidence that public school lesson plans are changing how we think (and besides, the Common Core hasn’t been around that long). There’s no evidence that moral relativism, McBrayer’s bugbear, causes “rampant cheating,” or indeed any other substantial harm. In fact—in fact—most of the evidence goes the other way.So Engber is asserting that McBrayer's entire premise is not fact - actually empirical factoids - it is opinion. False opinion, according to Engber, at least at this point in the article. But is this denial, itself, fact? Or is it opinion? Engber chooses to produce some studies which refute McBrayer, but the first study is not released, and presumably is not peer reviewed, either, so empirically it is irrelevant. And it can be ignored in light of a subsequent study to which Engber refers us which does, in fact, refute his own position:
"For another recent study, conducted at UCLA, researchers presented students with relativistic and objectivist accounts of female genital mutilation, then asked them to roll a pair of dice and report the result in exchange for tickets to a raffle. (The higher the roll, the more chances they would have to win.) In the end, students who had been primed to think of morals as negotiable ended up reporting higher dice rolls—a clear sign that they were cheating. Other research, using standard questionnaires to assess people’s moral outlooks, has found that moral relativism correlates with willingness to switch price tags at a store, or to lie about a child’s age to get a kiddie price, or to copy software illegally.Minor misbehaviors? That is a judgment which resonates relativistic, considering that all three examples are illegal, and are criminal behaviors, apparently lurking just below the surface without a moral fact to inhibit them. A worldview based in moral fact would not be so easily led into crime. Engber has presented a refutation of his own high volume attack.
McBrayer may be onto something: If you put relativist ideas into people’s heads, they do get a bit nihilistic, and in general, relativist worldviews are indeed associated with at least some minor misbehaviors."
[emphasis added]
Thus Engber tries now to recoup his position by placing irrelevancies in the path, hoping for some intellectual stumbling:
"But there’s another batch of research that complicates the story. The psychologists Geoffrey Goodwin and John Darley have found that more objectivist moral thinkers tend to be more closed-minded. When confronted with a disagreement, they’re not inclined to understand the other person’s point of view. They’re less likely to say they’d want to have that person as a roommate, or to adjust their own opinions through discussion and debate. Goodwin and Darley even found that moral realists perform worse on certain kinds of logic puzzles that require thinking through alternative scenarios. (Here’s one—the five-block task.)Here Engber is trying to justify moral relativism under a new moral presupposition: discrimination against immoral actions and immoral people is "intolerance" - clearly immoral in Enger's mind, but there only. All the features Enger decries are facets of the same failure, (except not understanding the other person's point of view, which is likely false, given that the other point of view is unknowable due to being relative): under relativism the holder's point of view is that whatever he decides is morally OK, is in FACT, morally OK. That is perfectly understood. And for those with actual fixed morals which are relatable to immutable facts, that opposite point of view is an indicator of untrustworthiness, and is not a feature of a person to which one wishes to be attached. Discrimination against such people is purely common sense, and is evil only to those people who don't believe in evil. And therein is Engber's intellectual and moral failure. Still, he calls in back-up:
So moral relativism makes us more corrupt, but it also keeps us open-minded; moral objectivism keeps us on the straight and narrow, but it also breeds intolerance. Is one of these outcomes clearly better than the other?"
"For a second opinion, I called my friend Joshua Knobe, an experimental philosopher at Yale who has worked on related questions. He thinks there’s no more reason to be fearful of moral relativism than there is to think that atheists are untrustworthy because nothing compels them to be good people. “I think there’s a lot of reason to be terrified,” he said, “not of the [relativistic] people who end up being miscreants, but of the people who are so full of conviction about whatever religious views they hold, and they’re absolutely convinced theirs is the only right way to think.” You know, like the types who might join ISIS."First, there is no reason whatsoever to trust anyone whose morals are self-derived and instantly volatile. To do so would indicate irrationality on the part of the credulous naif.
Second, he has asserted a false analogy: Islam is itself highly relativist, allowing any sort of bad behavior based on the situation. Under jihad, any passion may be exercised, be it sexual lust, blood lust, the lust for power, the lust to own women and slaves. All are both prohibited and allowed under Islamic documents, thoughts and the very life of Muhammad. So this argument fails, and fails hard. Yet Engber charges on with more arguments consisting of relativism which actually exists in many minds, and then ends with this:
"Those data tell us, once again, that these questions don’t have simple answers. College freshmen may come off like fools, doubting every moral universal, but perhaps we ought to think of their displays as a form of practice. They’re learning how to weigh the evidence and challenge their beliefs. That’s a skill worth having, whether you’re an undergraduate or a writer for the New York Times."Here's an actual skill suggestion for Engber and any relativist apologist: perform a disciplined, grounded, Aristotelian deduction which shows the truth which inheres in relativism. The mere concept that there is a truth of any sort, even relativism as the correct view of anything, proves the contrary: Some statements are objective truths and can be shown to be objective truth by virtue of their deduction and testing under Reductio Ad Absurdum. But that is known logic. Logic is not the essence of relativism nor that of its apologists, who rely on their emotional state to dictate moral responses. Relativism asserts that what is true is that which seems true to me, only here and only now and only for this case which presents itself. But if there are immutable truths by which to compare and judge the congruence of the present situation, then relativism is false, logically. And if there are moral deductions - and there are - then relativism is morally false as well.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Are There Moral Facts?
The difference between fact, opinion and belief can get muddy:
For example, we might deduce that murder is bad, as a moral fact. Reductio would ask, how would our world be if that deduction were not true? We can observe that if murder were a perfectly moral activity, then the world would be a far worse place in which to live. (In fact, in Atheist totalitarian countries where government murder of its own peoples is de rigeur, life is indeed quite animalistic, and mere survival is the objective.)
Deduction, done legitimately, produces truth. It can and does produce the moral truths which apply at the universal level to human existence. Denial of this is rooted in the objection to any moral authority (or logical, intelligent existence) outside of the human individual. It is the arrogance accompanying the emotional need for personal deliverance from external moral law and the knowledge of higher authority than humans.
There are moral facts. Those who object to them, say in the pursuit of abortion or infanticide, have placed their personal moral authority over both received and deduced moral principles. These are moral dictators.
This process is clearly the result of evolution as Dawkins explains:
Under the moral and intellectual VOID of Atheism, any personal opinion can be substituted for moral fact. The moral and ethical crisis of western culture is due to the secularization of education to the point of Atheist moral voidism being installed and instilled in generations of western youth, who emerge with no moral compass whatsoever, other than their personal opinions. There is no such thing as an Atheist Moral Code.
Atheist morals start with consequentialist tactics (pragmatism) which immediately backfills the Atheist Void which is attained by rejectionism. They might then progress (or not) to presuming that their own behavioral proclivities are moral (aka: "Moral Without God"), because they have stayed out of prison (so far). And the use of their own behaviors as moral principles makes the Atheist moral-by-definition, i.e. tautologically moral. Thus being so completely moral and without even the ability to betray that sort of moral definition, the Atheist becomes a moral elite by his own lights.
Dawkins and Singer are examples of such moral eliteness. They pronounce moral principles for the morally defective herd, while also admitting that there are no objective moral facts in the Atheist universe (a logical non-coherence which never concerns them in the slightest). This extends to the inability to say that Hitler's extermination of classes of humans was morally wrong:
Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral FactsAnd there is this:
"A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education. When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:
Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.
Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.
Hoping that this set of definitions was a one-off mistake, I went home and Googled “fact vs. opinion.” The definitions I found online were substantially the same as the one in my son’s classroom. As it turns out, the Common Core standards used by a majority of K-12 programs in the country require that students be able to “distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.” And the Common Core institute provides a helpful page full of links to definitions, lesson plans and quizzes to ensure that students can tell the difference between facts and opinions.
So what’s wrong with this distinction and how does it undermine the view that there are objective moral facts?
First, the definition of a fact waffles between truth and proof — two obviously different features. Things can be true even if no one can prove them. For example, it could be true that there is life elsewhere in the universe even though no one can prove it. Conversely, many of the things we once “proved” turned out to be false. For example, many people once thought that the earth was flat. It’s a mistake to confuse truth (a feature of the world) with proof (a feature of our mental lives). Furthermore, if proof is required for facts, then facts become person-relative. Something might be a fact for me if I can prove it but not a fact for you if you can’t. In that case, E=MC2 is a fact for a physicist but not for me.
But second, and worse, students are taught that claims are either facts or opinions. They are given quizzes in which they must sort claims into one camp or the other but not both. But if a fact is something that is true and an opinion is something that is believed, then many claims will obviously be both. For example, I asked my son about this distinction after his open house. He confidently explained that facts were things that were true whereas opinions are things that are believed. We then had this conversation:
Me: “I believe that George Washington was the first president. Is that a fact or an opinion?”
Him: “It’s a fact.”
Me: “But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion.”
Him: “Yeah, but it’s true.”
Me: “So it’s both a fact and an opinion?”
The blank stare on his face said it all."
Do College Students Care About Truth?But there is more to it than that. There ARE moral facts, those which can be deduced with disciplined Aristotelian, grounded, valid deductive processes, and validated with Reductio Ad Absurdum.
"So after reading these tests for truth, [see link for those] what do I see out there?
Do I see college students who know about these tests for truth? Of course not. And which test for truth do I see the most when talking to students about the truth claims of Christianity? I will skip #2, #3, and #4. These tests for truth almost never come up.
The most popular view today seems to be #1 (a pragmatic view of truth) and then coming in second place is a tie between #5 and #6 (“Truth is what feels good” and “Truth is what is existentially relevant”).
...
So what about atheists?
The one bright spot is that since popular atheists started writing their books and we saw a more aggresive approach towards atheism on the campus, I so see some interest in the truth question. In other words, atheism has caused some people to ask whether a belief is objectively true and corresponds to reality. Ravi Zacharias once said,
“There is just enough of the modern worldview left so that reason still has a point of entry. But we have to use this knowledge wisely. We cannot give an overdose of argumentation.”- “An Ancient Message, Through Modern Means To the Postmodern Mind” in Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns, 2002, p. 27Many of our speakers at Ohio State appeal to modern (not post-modern) objections such as science, evidence, miracles, etc. So this is why our speakers like Frank Turek and William Lane Craig have had good turnouts for their events."
For example, we might deduce that murder is bad, as a moral fact. Reductio would ask, how would our world be if that deduction were not true? We can observe that if murder were a perfectly moral activity, then the world would be a far worse place in which to live. (In fact, in Atheist totalitarian countries where government murder of its own peoples is de rigeur, life is indeed quite animalistic, and mere survival is the objective.)
Deduction, done legitimately, produces truth. It can and does produce the moral truths which apply at the universal level to human existence. Denial of this is rooted in the objection to any moral authority (or logical, intelligent existence) outside of the human individual. It is the arrogance accompanying the emotional need for personal deliverance from external moral law and the knowledge of higher authority than humans.
There are moral facts. Those who object to them, say in the pursuit of abortion or infanticide, have placed their personal moral authority over both received and deduced moral principles. These are moral dictators.
This process is clearly the result of evolution as Dawkins explains:
"An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (1986), page 6"
Under the moral and intellectual VOID of Atheism, any personal opinion can be substituted for moral fact. The moral and ethical crisis of western culture is due to the secularization of education to the point of Atheist moral voidism being installed and instilled in generations of western youth, who emerge with no moral compass whatsoever, other than their personal opinions. There is no such thing as an Atheist Moral Code.
Atheist morals start with consequentialist tactics (pragmatism) which immediately backfills the Atheist Void which is attained by rejectionism. They might then progress (or not) to presuming that their own behavioral proclivities are moral (aka: "Moral Without God"), because they have stayed out of prison (so far). And the use of their own behaviors as moral principles makes the Atheist moral-by-definition, i.e. tautologically moral. Thus being so completely moral and without even the ability to betray that sort of moral definition, the Atheist becomes a moral elite by his own lights.
Dawkins and Singer are examples of such moral eliteness. They pronounce moral principles for the morally defective herd, while also admitting that there are no objective moral facts in the Atheist universe (a logical non-coherence which never concerns them in the slightest). This extends to the inability to say that Hitler's extermination of classes of humans was morally wrong:
""What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."When morality is left to secular government schools, this is what you get. The effluent from the Atheist void includes Moral Dictators, who prey on the totally amoral.
Richard Dawkins
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Atheism And Morality
Atheists are doubling down on their insistence that they are moral and that the rest of the world needs to accept that. The non-Atheist world is beyond skeptical, because the cry of "we are too Good" contains a word without meaning in the relativist utopia of Atheism. What do they mean, they are good? Anyone with education in such things knows that Nietzsche absolutely did away with Good and Evil, in his philosophical work on the subject, "Beyond Good and Evil". And Dawkins cannot judge anything Hitler did, because evil does not exist for Dawkins - except for things Dawkins hates.
So if there is no Good or Evil, how is it that Atheists can demand that they be seen as "good"? There are obvious and not obvious reasons for that. Let's take it from the bottom, up.
Atheism rejects any moral authority which is absolute or binding. It can't help doing so, because of evolution which "scientifically" doctrinally commits the Atheist to both Philosophical Materialism and to the animalism of humans. There obviously is no morality contained in either Philosophical Materialism, or in the human as animal. The claim that morality evolved is based on no material evidence whatsoever, and therefore is not empirical nor is it objective knowledge under the constraint of Materialism. So without any exterior source of morality, Atheists have only themselves as the source.
Atheists therefore claim that it is their special empathy which gives them the ability to morally judge situations on an individual basis. There being no set principles for judging any situation, the Atheist claims that empathy leads to justice and righteous decisions. But what then are "justice" and what is "Right" vs. "Wrong"? They reduce straight to merely whatever the Atheist claims that his empathy tells him they are, for a given situation.
The Atheist has done two things here. He has eliminated any ethical consideration from anyone but himself, thereby establishing himself as the ultimate moral authority, i.e., an ethical elite. And he has seized control - he thinks - of the actions and lives of others who are inferior to himself because they adhere to contrary absolute ethics and give the moral authority to a fictional source; so the Atheist considers himself the only and final moral arbiter. Justice and Right are exactly what the Atheist says they are and no more than that.
Thus an Atheist cannot be other than Good - in his own estimation. It is tautological, defined to be that way.
By eliminating the standards of behavior and instituting behaviors which are judged by Atheists and no one else, the Atheists have produced "moral" control for themselves of situations and of other people. They have removed the walls of civility and decency, and replaced them with the anarchy of behaviors which only Atheists can morally judge. And they judge differentially, based on class distinctions. If Class R does behavior L, it is OK; But if Class G does behavior L, it is Evil. That's how situational ethics works in real life.
Civilization is not a natural state. It is formed around necessary and consistent rules of civilized behavior. Situational moral judgment by elitists removes any possibility of knowing in advance whether your behaviors are "moral" under the Atheist's personal situational moral authority. Because the common man cannot know in advance whether the Atheists will approve or disapprove of his behavior, what, then, is the use of restricting one's behavior in advance? Why not moral anarchy, just like the Atheists propose for themselves?
In fact, under the modern morality of "tolerance and equality", it is arguable that there is no aberrational behavior at all. All behaviors are "equal" and must be "tolerated". But that is not how Atheist empathy works. In actual reality Atheists and leftists in general will not tolerate any behavior which might invalidate their authority, be it political authority or moral authority. So they are quite totalitarian in policing the behaviors of other people, while tolerating all behaviors of their own fully entitled class.
So it boils down to "tolerance" for any behavior of the correct class regardless of its nature and consequences; "equality" of outcome for my class by redistribution of their wealth and stuff; strict policing of the Oppressors and punitive retaliation if they upset me in any manner. To upset an Atheist is intolerant and therefore immoral under the Atheist dichotomous rules.
Atheist "morality" is actually a force of moral entropy, a degradation of civilization while promising utopia on earth, as the Messiahs promise to their Victim class which they perpetuate in actual suppression.
So if there is no Good or Evil, how is it that Atheists can demand that they be seen as "good"? There are obvious and not obvious reasons for that. Let's take it from the bottom, up.
Atheism rejects any moral authority which is absolute or binding. It can't help doing so, because of evolution which "scientifically" doctrinally commits the Atheist to both Philosophical Materialism and to the animalism of humans. There obviously is no morality contained in either Philosophical Materialism, or in the human as animal. The claim that morality evolved is based on no material evidence whatsoever, and therefore is not empirical nor is it objective knowledge under the constraint of Materialism. So without any exterior source of morality, Atheists have only themselves as the source.
Atheists therefore claim that it is their special empathy which gives them the ability to morally judge situations on an individual basis. There being no set principles for judging any situation, the Atheist claims that empathy leads to justice and righteous decisions. But what then are "justice" and what is "Right" vs. "Wrong"? They reduce straight to merely whatever the Atheist claims that his empathy tells him they are, for a given situation.
The Atheist has done two things here. He has eliminated any ethical consideration from anyone but himself, thereby establishing himself as the ultimate moral authority, i.e., an ethical elite. And he has seized control - he thinks - of the actions and lives of others who are inferior to himself because they adhere to contrary absolute ethics and give the moral authority to a fictional source; so the Atheist considers himself the only and final moral arbiter. Justice and Right are exactly what the Atheist says they are and no more than that.
Thus an Atheist cannot be other than Good - in his own estimation. It is tautological, defined to be that way.
By eliminating the standards of behavior and instituting behaviors which are judged by Atheists and no one else, the Atheists have produced "moral" control for themselves of situations and of other people. They have removed the walls of civility and decency, and replaced them with the anarchy of behaviors which only Atheists can morally judge. And they judge differentially, based on class distinctions. If Class R does behavior L, it is OK; But if Class G does behavior L, it is Evil. That's how situational ethics works in real life.
Civilization is not a natural state. It is formed around necessary and consistent rules of civilized behavior. Situational moral judgment by elitists removes any possibility of knowing in advance whether your behaviors are "moral" under the Atheist's personal situational moral authority. Because the common man cannot know in advance whether the Atheists will approve or disapprove of his behavior, what, then, is the use of restricting one's behavior in advance? Why not moral anarchy, just like the Atheists propose for themselves?
In fact, under the modern morality of "tolerance and equality", it is arguable that there is no aberrational behavior at all. All behaviors are "equal" and must be "tolerated". But that is not how Atheist empathy works. In actual reality Atheists and leftists in general will not tolerate any behavior which might invalidate their authority, be it political authority or moral authority. So they are quite totalitarian in policing the behaviors of other people, while tolerating all behaviors of their own fully entitled class.
So it boils down to "tolerance" for any behavior of the correct class regardless of its nature and consequences; "equality" of outcome for my class by redistribution of their wealth and stuff; strict policing of the Oppressors and punitive retaliation if they upset me in any manner. To upset an Atheist is intolerant and therefore immoral under the Atheist dichotomous rules.
Atheist "morality" is actually a force of moral entropy, a degradation of civilization while promising utopia on earth, as the Messiahs promise to their Victim class which they perpetuate in actual suppression.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Zuckerman and the Pursuit of Atheist "Morality"
Phil Zuckerman On Atheism:
"Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being:
How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions
Zuckerman is attempting to make a case for Atheist morality, by using the elitist ideology of "Social Justice". What he actually does is to confirm the obvious, which is that Atheists support elitist, top-down declarations of subjective principles concerning the ideology of Victimhood/Messiahism vs. The Oppressor Class. For example, he lists the environment, women’s rights and gay rights, each of which is purely a Victimhood Classification designed by the Messiahs for their own benefit.
Protecting the environment was previously called conservationism; almost everyone was conservation-conscious and responsible (save certain ethnic groups). When the environment became designated Victimhood status by the Messiahs, conservation gave way to bitter defamatory and financial attacks on the designated Oppressors of the victimized environment. False data such as the case against DDT was brandished by the environmentalists like righteous weapons of deities. That is when responsible people backed away. The salvation of Gaia became both perverted and profitable.
Women have every right that men do. Men cannot kill their offspring; but currently women can and do. So women’s rights is a phony cause, involving the right to kill, disguised as “choice” and “privacy”. It is a falsely designated Victimhood Category by the putative Messiahs.
Gays have every right to pursue their personal proclivities, except that instead of contractual obligations to each other, they want the patina of legal legitimization afforded to marriage by the government. In order to do that, marriage itself must be de-legitimized and forced to accept all associations as marriageable, without boundaries. Boundaries are like other restrictions: they represent intolerance. In a short time span, marriage will become a meaningless term, legally. Further, most violence on gays is by other gays; lesbian violence is especially high. AIDs was visited on gays by gays.
Further it is stated that, “ethnocentric, racist, or nationalistic attitudes” are more prevalent in theists. That is beyond merely doubtful, if one considers including all and every Atheist on the planet. Zuckerman and friends are infamous for not doing this, but by selectively declaring Atheist characteristics to be as they exist in selected locales only. If one includes Russia and China, the claim is seen to be false. Therefore it is proof of the bias inherent in Zuckerman’s claims.
Zuckerman has proven to himself, at least, the tight bond between Leftist principles and Atheism. When one takes upon himself the mantle of moral authority, he moves straight into Leftism and the Three Class System which Zuckerman inadvertently acknowledges. In fact he not only acknowledges it, he insists that the Three Class System makes for "strong values or ethical beliefs"; and that is the case, but they do not represent actual morals. The Three Class System is not designed as behavioral restrictions on the two classes of Victimhood or Messiahs; it represents intolerance for any restrictions from the Other, the Oppressor Class, and immediate punishment even for the suggestion of such. The Victimhood and Messiah Classes have no moral or ethical restrictions; if a tactic works, then it is moral/ethical, as defined by Alinsky. Thus the belief system touted by Zuckerman is the inversion of a set of moral principles. It is behavioral anarchy for us, and behavioral restrictions for the Other.
So Zuckerman's implication that Atheism is a moral, caring, ethical belief system is false, according to to actual evidence, and despite anyone's claim to the contrary.
"Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being:
How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions
”The above information reveals that atheists and secular people have very clear and pronounced values and beliefs concerning moral, political, and social issues. As Lynn Nelson (1988, 134) has concluded, religiously unaffiliated people ‘‘have as well-defined a sense of social justice as weekly churchgoers.’’ But I would go farther. I would argue that a strong case could be made that atheists and secular people actually posses a stronger or more ethical sense of social justice than their religious peers. After all, when it comes to such issues as the governmental use of torture or the death penalty, we see that atheists and secular people are far more merciful and humane. When it comes to protecting the environment, women’s rights, and gay rights, the non-religious again distinguish themselves as being the most supportive. And as stated earlier, atheists and secular people are also the least likely to harbor ethnocentric, racist, or nationalistic attitudes. Strange then, that so many people assume that atheists and non-religious people lack strong values or ethical beliefs – a truly groundless and unsupportable assumption.”
Zuckerman is attempting to make a case for Atheist morality, by using the elitist ideology of "Social Justice". What he actually does is to confirm the obvious, which is that Atheists support elitist, top-down declarations of subjective principles concerning the ideology of Victimhood/Messiahism vs. The Oppressor Class. For example, he lists the environment, women’s rights and gay rights, each of which is purely a Victimhood Classification designed by the Messiahs for their own benefit.
Protecting the environment was previously called conservationism; almost everyone was conservation-conscious and responsible (save certain ethnic groups). When the environment became designated Victimhood status by the Messiahs, conservation gave way to bitter defamatory and financial attacks on the designated Oppressors of the victimized environment. False data such as the case against DDT was brandished by the environmentalists like righteous weapons of deities. That is when responsible people backed away. The salvation of Gaia became both perverted and profitable.
Women have every right that men do. Men cannot kill their offspring; but currently women can and do. So women’s rights is a phony cause, involving the right to kill, disguised as “choice” and “privacy”. It is a falsely designated Victimhood Category by the putative Messiahs.
Gays have every right to pursue their personal proclivities, except that instead of contractual obligations to each other, they want the patina of legal legitimization afforded to marriage by the government. In order to do that, marriage itself must be de-legitimized and forced to accept all associations as marriageable, without boundaries. Boundaries are like other restrictions: they represent intolerance. In a short time span, marriage will become a meaningless term, legally. Further, most violence on gays is by other gays; lesbian violence is especially high. AIDs was visited on gays by gays.
Further it is stated that, “ethnocentric, racist, or nationalistic attitudes” are more prevalent in theists. That is beyond merely doubtful, if one considers including all and every Atheist on the planet. Zuckerman and friends are infamous for not doing this, but by selectively declaring Atheist characteristics to be as they exist in selected locales only. If one includes Russia and China, the claim is seen to be false. Therefore it is proof of the bias inherent in Zuckerman’s claims.
"Strange then, that so many people assume that atheists and non-religious people lack strong values or ethical beliefs – a truly groundless and unsupportable assumption.”"
Zuckerman has proven to himself, at least, the tight bond between Leftist principles and Atheism. When one takes upon himself the mantle of moral authority, he moves straight into Leftism and the Three Class System which Zuckerman inadvertently acknowledges. In fact he not only acknowledges it, he insists that the Three Class System makes for "strong values or ethical beliefs"; and that is the case, but they do not represent actual morals. The Three Class System is not designed as behavioral restrictions on the two classes of Victimhood or Messiahs; it represents intolerance for any restrictions from the Other, the Oppressor Class, and immediate punishment even for the suggestion of such. The Victimhood and Messiah Classes have no moral or ethical restrictions; if a tactic works, then it is moral/ethical, as defined by Alinsky. Thus the belief system touted by Zuckerman is the inversion of a set of moral principles. It is behavioral anarchy for us, and behavioral restrictions for the Other.
So Zuckerman's implication that Atheism is a moral, caring, ethical belief system is false, according to to actual evidence, and despite anyone's claim to the contrary.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
An Atheist Betrays Her Moral Anarchy
An Atheist Wants To Teach Us:
Yet she marches on:
Further it is easily shown, empirically, that Atheists have very little actual empathy if empathy is measured by contributions to charitable causes. As messiahs of their created Victim Classes, they depend on the funds taken from the designated Oppressor class as taxation to do the funding that they personally will not do; AtheoLeftists are notorious for not paying their own taxes. Empathy, as an Atheist claim, is very, very empty. In fact, it is their creation of the Victimhood Classes which are necessary for the support of their claim to empathy: by having "victims" (usually themselves) to weep over, they convince themselves of their empathy. What they have done is to paint their narcissistic egotism with a patina of slobber which they call "empathy".
But all of that obstructs the actual claim she makes, which is that having fixed, known expectations for guiding one's behaviors is not part of religious moral code. That is absurd. But for her it is a necessity if she is to believe her other absurdities.
And next she chooses to educate us on what morality is and is not:
Should morality instead be defined by childish pseudo-philosophy? Do what feels right at the time? Or just do what you feel like, because there is no right or wrong? If she assumes first that she is more, better, superior to all other possible moral authorities, only then can such statements be made with a straight face.
But all Atheist concepts necessarily fabricate and attack such false notions in order to draw their conclusions. It allows them to develop false reasoning for justifying making up their own rules. They refuse standards and absolutes of course, and they live by their own personal codes of the moment. In other words, they are anarchists, both intellectually and morally.
The title of this article is false on both counts. She demonstrates that she has no "lack of belief" regarding a deity or religious principles (which she doesn’t even know or comprehend). And she demonstrates fully that she is not possessed of any fixed moral principles other than that she claims empathy in a world full of non-empathetic religious people. She cannot justify a claim of being moral, and certainly not actually empathetic with the Other (only Victimhood Categories); she demonstrates fully that she is a deluded moral anarchist. But she did justify her claim of being based in rationalization.
Atheism is lack of belief, not moralityWe join this article in progress:
The concepts of good and evil can be defined outside of religious frameworks
By Lauren Young
"My views on morality versus immorality were rooted in my natural ability to empathize and rationalize.Rationalize? Interesting. Tell us more.
"My ability to understand the horror of sexism, racism and homophobia isn’t based off of my fear of going to hell, but by basic rational thought, supported by empirical evidence in biology, psychology and sociology.The horrors of the presumptive oppression of the defined Victimhood groups. Her comprehension is based on rational assessment of empirical evidence, she claims. But there is nothing empirical about sociology, a discipline which has foregone the title of “science”. Psychology is not based on cause and effect, either, and is not empirical. That leaves biology, so maybe she will proved the biological sources for defining the biological horrors of sexism, racism and homophobia. However, after reading through the remainder of her writing here, she does not do so. What she has done is to try to imbue herself with respectability for her position by making an empty claim of rationality, and scientific backing. A blatant Appeal to Authority Fallacy, purposefully perpetrated.
"Atheists can determine right and wrong based on the consequences of their actions.Consequentialism, inadequately defined, nonetheless it is the concept.
"By observing the positive or negative effects of their actions, atheists can hold themselves accountable for what they do and how they should treat others under the law.This is so loosely defined as to allow the “right and wrong” and the “positive or negative” to be completely determined by the acting Atheist, including how it affects her own outcome.
"Elementary ideas, such as cause and effect, personal responsibility and the golden rule help constitute an atheist’s set of morals.Really? These are encoded into what document which is accepted as the official Atheist Set of Morals? There is no set of such rules, and each of the stated “elementary ideas” is hardly agreed to or incorporated by Atheists as standard Atheist operating procedure. Atheist philosophers who deal in ethics talk in much different terms, generally about what is good for society as a whole, at the expense of the individual members of society. This is part of the massive Leftist shift that occurs when Atheists decide that they are the moral arbiters for everyone else. It results in the victimhood groups which she enumerates above. The existence of these prefabricated Victimhood categories allows the AtheoLeftist to become their savior, or messiah.
"As a result of evolution, humans are naturally social animals.Now we’re talking. Evolution is "science", right? This is stated as an immutable fact. Let’s see some empirical cause and effect experimental data which proves that to be the case; otherwise it is not a valid concept. But no, it is just asserted as an all new ontological First Principle. We must accept it at face value. Sorry but it is not self-evident, nor is it empirical; it is a biased inference.
"This helps to explain why we sacrifice ourselves to fit in, to survive within the group and to develop intense relationships with others.Nope. The evolutionary hypothesis must be objectively demonstrable before you can use it to explain anything, particularly human behaviors. And those behaviors are not universal, and are not the certain effect of any cause. This chain of thought is failing at each step.
"Because of our psychobiological desire for relationships, we act in our own self-interest by furthering the interests of others.That is psychobiological-babble. In fact, it is evo-devo-babble which she co-opted. This is certainly not a universal trait or feature. It is an artifact of evolutionists' imagination which is being fired up for use in generating false premises for her ultimate conclusion – indeed rationalizing her conclusion, as she first stated. This chain of premises, being non-universal and fallacious, cannot support any conclusion which one might want to be valid or true. She she is in deep water here.
Yet she marches on:
"The human will to cherry-pick what makes a righteous Christian and what constitutes an unethical Muslim justifies the reality that morality can’t be left to a strict religious construct."Justifies the reality"? Aside from an absurd lexical construct, her conclusion strays into absurdity all on its own. First, she makes no effort to define what, precisely, is being cherry picked, or who, exactly, is cherry-picking what out of what. The accusation stands as merely bizarre, without actual content. Further, if she is saying that humans are fickle, then that demolishes her entire previous argument about humans being deterministically altruistic due to evolution.
"Morality is not dependent on one’s belief in a god, and the ability to take objectively good actions in society does not rely on humans developing a relationship with God before developing one with others.These two preceding statements entirely contradict one another; first humans have a “will to cherry pick” whatever morality they want. Second, developing relationships with others apparently will automatically, deterministically produce morality, which is actually just evolved empathy, not any prescriptions for acting. Tell that to the constabulary in Rotherham and Manchester, Britain. Tell that to the elderly who develop relationships with someone only to be stolen blind by that person. Developing a relationship with someone who has no consistent, non-volatile moral system is destined for disaster. Empathy doesn't go far, all on its own.
Further it is easily shown, empirically, that Atheists have very little actual empathy if empathy is measured by contributions to charitable causes. As messiahs of their created Victim Classes, they depend on the funds taken from the designated Oppressor class as taxation to do the funding that they personally will not do; AtheoLeftists are notorious for not paying their own taxes. Empathy, as an Atheist claim, is very, very empty. In fact, it is their creation of the Victimhood Classes which are necessary for the support of their claim to empathy: by having "victims" (usually themselves) to weep over, they convince themselves of their empathy. What they have done is to paint their narcissistic egotism with a patina of slobber which they call "empathy".
"Horrific religious cleansing massacres such as the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust and the Bosnian Genocide plague the holy righteousness that is associated with religious virtue.Yep. Here it is, the obligatory evil of religion. For which the obligatory rejoinder is that Atheists killed nearly 250,000,000 people in just the past ten decades. Sources for this recent history abound; either she is truly ignorant, or she is willingly deceptive in her claim. She intends to support her own self-righteous Messiahism by insinuating that religious killing exists as a religious virtue and that Atheist mass killing does not. Further, there is nothing in Christianity which justifies the false claim of “religious virtue” in any religious killing. That is a blatant lie by implication.
"To solely rely on religion for your moral code only provides you with a pedestal to place yourself above others.And there is the lie of lies, a slander rather than a fact. The principles of Christianity absolutely do not do this. Any Christian who does this is acting outside of the red print in the bible. Atheists, on the other hand, this Atheist included, do exactly that, with statements exactly like this one. She is self-righteously condemning a religion which is instructed not to judge others. Her personal anointed self-righteousness elevates her to presumptive moral eliteness and moral authority to preach her morality of evolved empathy to others, based on, well, on the false statements she chooses to make.
But all of that obstructs the actual claim she makes, which is that having fixed, known expectations for guiding one's behaviors is not part of religious moral code. That is absurd. But for her it is a necessity if she is to believe her other absurdities.
And next she chooses to educate us on what morality is and is not:
"Morality can’t be defined strictly by its ethereal context.Is this part of her science or her rationalization? She is dictating a fact, but based on what? Let’s see her empirical evidence, or at least a disciplined deductive argument. That doesn’t happen and will not.
Should morality instead be defined by childish pseudo-philosophy? Do what feels right at the time? Or just do what you feel like, because there is no right or wrong? If she assumes first that she is more, better, superior to all other possible moral authorities, only then can such statements be made with a straight face.
"It is defined by how you treat others on earth, not how you think they should be treated in the afterlife.And this final statement betrays a massive ignorance of the actual moral principles which she rails against, but does not comprehend. Morality is not about behavior in the afterlife, in any religion; that’s only in her mind as she struggles to concoct a case for supporting her own elitist concepts. She has created a false notion to attack, a classical straw man fallacy. It's another false premise for the chain of support of her rationalized conclusion.
But all Atheist concepts necessarily fabricate and attack such false notions in order to draw their conclusions. It allows them to develop false reasoning for justifying making up their own rules. They refuse standards and absolutes of course, and they live by their own personal codes of the moment. In other words, they are anarchists, both intellectually and morally.
The title of this article is false on both counts. She demonstrates that she has no "lack of belief" regarding a deity or religious principles (which she doesn’t even know or comprehend). And she demonstrates fully that she is not possessed of any fixed moral principles other than that she claims empathy in a world full of non-empathetic religious people. She cannot justify a claim of being moral, and certainly not actually empathetic with the Other (only Victimhood Categories); she demonstrates fully that she is a deluded moral anarchist. But she did justify her claim of being based in rationalization.
Ethics Is Whatever You Want It To Be
43 Dartmouth Students Suspected Of Cheating In Ethics Class Designed For AthletesWhat do they expect? Ethics is all about how moral decisions are made by the individual, depending upon the situation, not some absolute objective law. These students have done just that. They should all get A+.
"Forty three students at Dartmouth College have been "implicated in an academic dishonesty case" in an ethics course, student newspaper The Dartmouth reports.
According to The Dartmouth, the 43 students allegedly skipped class, but got other students to sign in for them and answer questions using an electronic clicker. "Each clicker is registered with one student, who gains points for submitting answers to certain in-class questions," The Dartmouth reports.
The course — "Sports, Ethics and Religion" — is taught by Dartmouth religion professor Randall Balmer and is the largest course at the college this term, with 272 students. "Attendance and participation account for about 15% of a student's grade in the class," The Dartmouth reports."
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Slippery Slope vs. Kinseyan Spectrum vs. Total Libertinism, Sexual, Moral, Intellectual, Political.
Headline:
Vox Day comments:
But Vox is right; it will not be sustained long term because deviant behavior always becomes too radicalized and too destructive for the host society to continue to allow it. The problem becomes how to put the demons back in the box. They won't take it well. And violence is predictable, since violence was part and parcel of the homosexual liberation movement.
Australian judge says incest may no longer be a tabooUnsurprisingly, he compares incest to homosexuality which was once a forbidden sexual behavior. So the slippery slope, aka the Kinsey Spectrum of Sexual Behaviors (all legitimate, of course), will ultimately result in total sexual libertinism. And that is just a symptom of the underlying intellectual libertinism for which "no truth" spells out no morality at all, and "tolerance" spells out no challenging our libertinism".
"Judge in Australia says incest may no longer be a taboo and the only reason it is criminal is potential birth abnormalities, which can be solved by abortion "
Vox Day comments:
There is no middle ground. What devotees of one particular immorality or another believe is a reasonable stopping point - here, and no further - is nothing more than a waystation on the road to total depravity of the worst imaginable sort.With the death of meaning for the term, marriage , the advent of Homosexuals as victims, and abortion as "women's health", there no longer is any realistic barrier sexual activity along Kisey's spectrum such as pedophilia or incest (or necrophilia or any other sexual behavior). The objections of some Leftists that Homosexuality was the last stop for "reform" is just bleating into the wind. Once morality is abridged, there is no stopping it until all immorality is gathered into the fold of "victimhood" and normalization. The fact that some homosexuals oppose pedophilia is nullified by the same charge used against opponents of homsexuality normalization: hypocrisy; irrational pedophobia; discrimination against a victim category; demonization of detractors of "normal sexual behavior" a la Kinsey; sexual bigotry not worthy of modern social needs. What worked for one deviation category will certainly work for the others.
We libertarians were wrong. Societal liberty simply cannot be maximized through sexual anarchy any more than it can be maximized though unrestricted immigration, unrestricted government, or unrestricted voting. In retrospect, this should always have been obvious: if everything goes, then literally everything will go. This is no longer a hypothetical objection on the part of traditional conservatives, it is an undeniable reality. It is human nature to push at the boundaries; there will always be those who cross the line. Therefore, the line needs to be set firmly along boundaries that are undeniably eucivic and proven by centuries of tradition to be sustainable in the long term.
There will be those who disingenuously insist that the clock cannot be turned back, that humanity is doomed to an endless future of sodomy, incest, rape, necrophilia, and bestiality. This is provably false; the current period of sexual anarchy in the West is hardly the first in human history and it is very short by historical standards. And this particular clock most certainly will be turned back, one way or another, because everything from birth rates to the transmission rates of sexually transmitted diseases indicate that the current state of near-sexual anarchy has already reached the point of unsustainability.
But Vox is right; it will not be sustained long term because deviant behavior always becomes too radicalized and too destructive for the host society to continue to allow it. The problem becomes how to put the demons back in the box. They won't take it well. And violence is predictable, since violence was part and parcel of the homosexual liberation movement.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Planned Parenthood Pimps Bondage-Discipline-Sadism-Masochism To Teens... With Tax $$
CNS News:
Planned Parenthood Produces Video Promoting Bondage and Sadomasochism to TeensDemocrats are in full display of their total lack of moral principles. And their entrapment of teens into their universe of amorality matches their efforts to make certain that the teens are uneducated. As Michelle O says, young people are knuckleheads which is just the type of voter we need.
(CNSNews.com) -- Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE)--which received more than $2.75 million in government funding in 2012--has produced and posted online a video specifically aimed at teenagers that promotes bondage and sadomasochism (BDSM) and proposes "rules" to follow when engaging in these activities.
“People sometimes think that those who practice BDSM are emotionally scarred or were once abused—not true, it’s a total myth," the host of the video, Laci Green, informs its intended audience of teens.
"BDSM relies upon and creates trust," she says.
In a message published at the beginning of PPNNE's 2012 annual report, PPNNE President Meagan Gallagher described the genesis of the project that produced the video on bondage and sadomasochism.
CNSNews.com also contacted all the members of the New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont congressional delegations and asked them whether they thought it was appropriate for a federally funded organization to produce a video promoting bondage and sadomasochism to teens.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) was the only member of Congress to reply. According to spokesman Jeff Grappone, “Senator Ayotte thinks this video, which is clearly targeted at a younger audience, is inappropriate and troubling. She believes taxpayers shouldn’t be directly or indirectly funding activity like this.”
However, despite repeated requests for comment, Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT), Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Rep. Michael Michaud (D-ME), Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), and Rep. Ann Kuster (D-NH) did not respond.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. Angus King (I-ME), and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) also dodged CNSNews.com’s questions.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Institutionalizing The Non-family Family
Two friends who don't even live together have been given the judicial green light to adopt a child together. In other words, none of the three individuals are related, except via the adoption papers. The concept of family has taken another step toward extinction.
What's next?
“They spent years planning and hoping” for a child, and their dream came true in 2011, when KAL was able to adopt a child — identified as G. — from Ethiopia.The once-radical idea that any group of people which lives together is a family has now expanded to include those who like each other at a distance.
They traveled to Africa together to bring the baby home, but because they weren't married, only KAL was able to adopt, filings say
.
When they returned to the U.S., the pair petitioned Manhattan Surrogate's Court to have LEL named as a second legal parent, even though they don't live together and are not romantically involved.
Manhattan Surrogate's Court Judge Rita Mella ruled that a couple who are not romantically involved are legally allowed to adopt a baby, the first ruling of its kind in New York.
Manhattan Surrogate's Court Judge Rita Mella ruled that a couple who are not romantically involved are legally allowed to adopt a baby, the first ruling of its kind in New York.
In a landmark ruling, Judge Rita Mella did so.
“From the moment they met G,, more than two years ago now, KAL and LEL have functioned as her parents," the judge wrote in a decision from last month.
“G. calls KAL ‘Mommy’ and LEL ‘Daddy,’” and “although they live in separate households,” they “have created a nurturing family environment for G., including a well-thought-out, discussed and fluid method of sharing parenting responsibilities between their homes.”
What's next?
Thursday, October 31, 2013
The Evolving Ethics of Killing Humans
Belgium is always in the forefront of eugenics, it seems. Now they are considering making it legal to euthanize children and the demented.
In related news, there is a crisis in the availability of organs for transplants. That leads to the question of who should be killed for organ harvesting.
From the Weekly Standard: At the Bottom of the Slippery Slope; Where euthanasia meets organ harvesting.
Go to the sites for additional links.
Also, Belgium pioneers organ donation after voluntary euthanasia.
In related news, there is a crisis in the availability of organs for transplants. That leads to the question of who should be killed for organ harvesting.
"The story concerns the Canadian situation. But I would warrant the same is true in the USA.Apparently Belgium is ahead of the curve on that also:
Alas, as I have discussed here and elsewhere frequently, the reduced organ supply and the increased demand has many in bioethics and organ transplant medicine urging that we kill living, seriously brain injured patients, for their organs.
In Belgium, doctors kill and harvest as part of the euthanasia program.
Biological colonialism has the well off buying the organs of the destitute or going to China where people are matched and murdered to supply organs to buyers.
We have some even saying that organ donation should be mandatory after death.
Organ transplant medicine is a wonderful thing. But the desire to help desperately ill patients threatens to induce us to abandon morality and ethics in the name of healing.
"My first anti-euthanasia article, published in Newsweek in 1993, warned that one day euthanasia would be coupled with organ harvesting “as a plum to society.” Over the years, I was chided as an alarmist. But it didn’t take the Belgians long after legalizing euthanasia for doctors to do just that, and now they brag about it at medical symposia. Most of the euthanized and harvested were not terminally ill, but disabled. One had a mental illness."
From the Weekly Standard: At the Bottom of the Slippery Slope; Where euthanasia meets organ harvesting.
"The idea of coupling euthanasia with organ harvesting and medical experimentation was promoted years ago by the late Jack Kevorkian, but it is now becoming mainstream. Last year, the Oxford bioethicist Julian Savulescu coauthored a paper in Bioethics arguing that some could be euthanized, “at least partly to ensure that their organs could be donated.” Belgian doctors, in particular, are openly discussing the nexus between euthanasia and organ harvesting. A June 10 press release from Pabst Science Publishers cited four lung transplants in Leuven from donors who died by euthanasia.
What’s more, Belgian doctors and bioethicists now travel around Europe promoting the conjoining of the two procedures at medical seminars. Their PowerPoint presentation touts the “high quality” of organs obtained from patients after euthanasia of people with degenerative neuro/muscular disabilities.
Coupling organ donation with euthanasia turns a new and dangerous corner by giving the larger society an explicit stake in the deaths of people with seriously disabling or terminal conditions. Moreover, since such patients are often the most expensive for whom to care, and given the acute medical resource shortages we face, one need not be a prophet to see the potential such advocacy has for creating a perfect utilitarian storm.
Go to the sites for additional links.
Also, Belgium pioneers organ donation after voluntary euthanasia.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
No Limits
When there is no obtaining morality, there are no limits. When the "mandated" vision is undefined “Change”, then what happens is indiscriminate behavior which will favor the “changers” and persecute the stabilizers.
The changers, i.e. Progressives, came into power fully armed with ideas of dealing with their enemies by using their Victimization list as the trigger. Their enemies are those who don’t believe as Progressives believe, to wit: that there are earth-bound messiahs whose only yet supreme moral position is to eradicate opposition to their aspirations of world-wide salvation:
Brought to the fore, then is the freshly opening view of the tactics being used by the Progressives in order to achieve their objectives. For example, the leader of the free world is now able to ignore all legislation with which he does not agree, and to issue presidential decrees which serve as legislation ex-congressio (to coin a much needed term). Abetted by the SCOTUS, the president is now nearly supreme in doing whatever he wishes to do, or not to do. And his vast executive organization is similarly enabled:
Under the U.S. president, his minions are able
(1) to define certain groups as terrorists; to ship weapons off to drug lords for their use in murdering both Mexicans and Americans;
(2) to use the full weight of the tax code to eliminate activity which might influence their re-election adversely;
(3) to give corporations to unions while stiffing actual investors, and then providing funds to the corporations to “pay back the loans”;
(4) to implement massive payouts to “black farmers” with no oversight;
(5) to use taxpayer cash to pay off bankers, environmental boondoggles, abortion providers, and election manipulators;
(6) to ignore pleas for help from diplomats under attack;
(7) to ignore border security with token changes while demanding citizenship for all who get into the country, forever.
Now it is revealed that the Justice Department has been instrumental in organizing demonstrations against George Zimmerman, who, at this moment, has not been convicted or exonerated of criminal activity in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. This is just one of the many racist actions implemented by the Justice Department. The president added to the racism when he declared that, if he’d had a son, he would look just like Trayvon, a seemingly deliberate poisoning of the well of fair justice, now tainted racially. It is highly likely that Trayvon was a pot smoking serial criminal, as shown in his email brags, but that information will not be accessible to the jury. And it will make no difference to the rioters, who are waiting in the wings to destroy whatever they come across as their own racial statement. Perhaps they will be funded or even led by the US Dept of Justice for whom there are no limits.
The 21st century has started off as one with no limits, certainly no moral limitations and obviously no legal limitations either as the Progressives in government show with their disdain for law, the constitution, and in fact anything which stands between themselves and power, such as a robust nation full of individualists, entrepreneurs, and liberty seekers (as opposed to groupthinks, anti-capitalists, and libertines). What Progressives need is a nation full of fully dependent sycophants, willing to trade liberty (and votes) for government doles.
In the illegal immigrant, Progressives have found the mother lode of such chronically sycophants. Accordingly there are no limits on what the Progressives will do, including not deporting them, and turning many of them loose on the streets, of course, as well as prohibiting individual states from doing so, but also struggling to legitimize them as future voters. The law is no limiting factor to Progressives, for whom all new labels redefine their obstacles: "illegal" becomes "undocumented"; "abortion" becomes "choice" and "women;s healthcare"; "criticism" becomes "racism"; "homosexual becomes "gay"; "morality" becomes "hate".
When the government has no limits, it is violation of the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution – not that anyone cares, it appears. The people of the United States of America are no longer the moral, free people of character of yore; and as always, the people deserve the government which they allow to exist over them.
Government Cheese; the Rainmakers:
The changers, i.e. Progressives, came into power fully armed with ideas of dealing with their enemies by using their Victimization list as the trigger. Their enemies are those who don’t believe as Progressives believe, to wit: that there are earth-bound messiahs whose only yet supreme moral position is to eradicate opposition to their aspirations of world-wide salvation:
one world + one thought process = universal happiness and flourishing.If only the (immoral) opposition were eliminated, everyone would be morally happy.
Brought to the fore, then is the freshly opening view of the tactics being used by the Progressives in order to achieve their objectives. For example, the leader of the free world is now able to ignore all legislation with which he does not agree, and to issue presidential decrees which serve as legislation ex-congressio (to coin a much needed term). Abetted by the SCOTUS, the president is now nearly supreme in doing whatever he wishes to do, or not to do. And his vast executive organization is similarly enabled:
Under the U.S. president, his minions are able
(1) to define certain groups as terrorists; to ship weapons off to drug lords for their use in murdering both Mexicans and Americans;
(2) to use the full weight of the tax code to eliminate activity which might influence their re-election adversely;
(3) to give corporations to unions while stiffing actual investors, and then providing funds to the corporations to “pay back the loans”;
(4) to implement massive payouts to “black farmers” with no oversight;
(5) to use taxpayer cash to pay off bankers, environmental boondoggles, abortion providers, and election manipulators;
(6) to ignore pleas for help from diplomats under attack;
(7) to ignore border security with token changes while demanding citizenship for all who get into the country, forever.
Now it is revealed that the Justice Department has been instrumental in organizing demonstrations against George Zimmerman, who, at this moment, has not been convicted or exonerated of criminal activity in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. This is just one of the many racist actions implemented by the Justice Department. The president added to the racism when he declared that, if he’d had a son, he would look just like Trayvon, a seemingly deliberate poisoning of the well of fair justice, now tainted racially. It is highly likely that Trayvon was a pot smoking serial criminal, as shown in his email brags, but that information will not be accessible to the jury. And it will make no difference to the rioters, who are waiting in the wings to destroy whatever they come across as their own racial statement. Perhaps they will be funded or even led by the US Dept of Justice for whom there are no limits.
The 21st century has started off as one with no limits, certainly no moral limitations and obviously no legal limitations either as the Progressives in government show with their disdain for law, the constitution, and in fact anything which stands between themselves and power, such as a robust nation full of individualists, entrepreneurs, and liberty seekers (as opposed to groupthinks, anti-capitalists, and libertines). What Progressives need is a nation full of fully dependent sycophants, willing to trade liberty (and votes) for government doles.
In the illegal immigrant, Progressives have found the mother lode of such chronically sycophants. Accordingly there are no limits on what the Progressives will do, including not deporting them, and turning many of them loose on the streets, of course, as well as prohibiting individual states from doing so, but also struggling to legitimize them as future voters. The law is no limiting factor to Progressives, for whom all new labels redefine their obstacles: "illegal" becomes "undocumented"; "abortion" becomes "choice" and "women;s healthcare"; "criticism" becomes "racism"; "homosexual becomes "gay"; "morality" becomes "hate".
When the government has no limits, it is violation of the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution – not that anyone cares, it appears. The people of the United States of America are no longer the moral, free people of character of yore; and as always, the people deserve the government which they allow to exist over them.
Government Cheese; the Rainmakers:
”Give a man a free house and he'll bust out the windows
Put his family on food stamps, now he's a big spender
no food on the table and the bills ain't paid
'Cause he spent it on cigarettes and P.G.A.
They'll turn us all into beggars 'cause they're easier to please
They're feeding our people that Government Cheese
Give a man free food and he'll figure out a way
To steal more than he can eat 'cause he doesn't have to pay
Give a woman free kids and you'll find them in the dirt
Learning how to carry on the family line of work
It's the man in the White House, the man under the steeple
Passing out drugs to the American people
I don't believe in anything, nothing is free
They're feeding our people the Government Cheese
Decline and fall, fall down baby
Decline and fall, said fall way down now
Decline and fall, fall down little mama
Decline and fall, decline and fall
Give a man a free ticket on a dead end ride
And he'll climb in the back even though nobody's driving
Too ******* lazy to crawl out of the wreck
And he'll rot there while he waits for the welfare check
Going to hell in a handbag, can't you see
I ain't gonna eat no Government Cheese”
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Homosexual Watch: Gays Attack Religious Protestor, on Video
One does not exercise free speech around Gays. Prop 8 supporters learned that the hard way, and now in Seattle, it has happened on video.
As with supporters of The Right To Kill One's Progeny, supporters of normalized, moralized homosexuality are intolerant of dissent. Dissent from their form of new morality is immoral; immorality must be terminated - on the spot.
Will there be outrage from the AtheoLeft, who are outraged nearly all the time?
As with supporters of The Right To Kill One's Progeny, supporters of normalized, moralized homosexuality are intolerant of dissent. Dissent from their form of new morality is immoral; immorality must be terminated - on the spot.
Will there be outrage from the AtheoLeft, who are outraged nearly all the time?
Monday, June 17, 2013
Progressivism and Pedophilia
The Progressive Problem
The current mantra of “hope and change” marks the Progressive problem: hope for what, and change to what, are not specified. We get constant change, driven by the rejection of “old morality” and in exchange we are forced to accept the “new reality” which is imposed upon us, mostly by unelected judges. This is implemented in the Hegelian manner of incremental steps between thesis, antithesis and synthesis, repeat. Repeat. Repeat. The pressure is constant, like water eroding the granite foundations of great structures of yore.
The synthesis is never a slippery slope, according to the antithesis protagonists. We just want this one concession. To claim slippery slope is hysterical, they say. The evidence, however, is conclusive. The slope is not merely slippery, it no longer has any traction at all.
Progress never stops for the progressive, and the march toward elimination of moral principles is indefatigable. Moral principles hamper the Progressive view of themselves, which is that they are self-endowed with overweening “morals” which supersede the old morality. The replacement of “old moral principles” with new ones which are dictated by the Progressive results in the new moral principle of “tolerance”: tolerance of only those principles with which Progressives agree, and complete intolerance of disagreeable principles and those who hold them.
Tolerance of me, not of thee.
This is born out in universities which allow only Leftist speech and Leftist professors, and now the major institutions of government are found to be nearly completely populated with Leftists (who are free, and enabled, to persecute those deemed disagreeable). Disputing this is futile, considering the daily news reports.
Tolerance proves to be something other than a behavior, something other than an attitude. Tolerance in Progressive parlance means to do nothing, to ignore whatever onerous encroachments onto the culture which the Progressives seek at any particular time. To object (ie. Not ignore, to do something contrary to Progressive cant) is deemed a moral failure: intolerance, which is not to be tolerated, so is designated Hate, and where possible is codified into criminal law.
Intolerance of Contrary Opinion, With the Claim of Tolerance.
The issue of the slippery slope is borne out with
The idea that there is no slippery slope with Progressivism is false.
It is demonstrable that Progressivism is destructive when the government becomes the messiah for the culture. Progressivism is infested with elitist messiahism and self-anointed messiahs. Progressives feed their egos by designating categories of victims for whom to provide salvation from their oppressors. Thus the existence of oppressors is absolutely required, so they are designated and vilified constantly and shrilly: oppression is intolerable, and the oppressors cannot be tolerated. And denial of the moral authority of the messiahs is also intolerable: messiahism is exactly the moral thrust of Progressivism. As discussed above, that which is designated intolerable is the moral crime of “hate”, which must be abolished from humanity by means of harshest punishment. So Hate Legislation ensues to harshen punishment of otherwise ordinary crimes, but against protected categories.
Continuums of Normal Behavior: A Moral Concept
The Kinsey Report, the Kinsey book, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” and its enthusiastic acceptance by progressives is a case-in-point. The metanarrative of Kinsey’s position is that there is a continuum of behavior, none of which should be accorded moral approbation. Hence, homosexuality is purely a behavior (not a disorder) and thus not subject to moral judgment.
Kinsey reported extensively on child sexuality, from anal contact to coitus to oral contact and orgasms. (Ibid, pp 157 – 192).
He proceeded to address the concern of “normal” vs. “abnormal”:
The question of how pedophilia fits into this environment is almost moot; with the ever-changing DSM, the ever present pressure against old standards, and the always present slippery slope, the hazard of social acceptance of pedophilia is possible. Not by present standards, of course, but due to the philosophy that “cultural acceptance” changes (note 1), and that morality is culturally deterministic. There is no possible way to predict that culture will never accept any given change, especially in an atmosphere where “change” itself is revered for its own sake.
The idea that mental disorders as presented in the DSM are fixed concepts or representative of reality is not the case. The DSM has just changed, yet again, to its fifth iteration. The author of the DSM IV is a heavy critic of the content of the new DSM V, and it is becoming clear that even the definitions of the term “disorder” are debatable. So under the American Psychiatric Association, mental disorders are relative to the opinions of certain influential people or groups, they are not fixed, objective principles of nature, or the universe, or biology, or even psychology. Again, relativism leads to continuums of arguably unproblematic symptoms.
Still, DSM IV TR retains the definition of DSM III and DSM III R, as follows:
For Pedophilia, the same issues and eliminations can logically apply.
In fact, the DSM IV TR definition of pedophilia disorder (actually a paraphilia) is not predicated solely on the possession of a certain set of mental proclivities or attitudes, it is predicated on the consequences of those proclivities or attitudes:
It has been suggested by a reader that a disorder is defined as follows:
However, if we accept that the definition of disorder is actually those four consequences of a behavior, rather than the possession of the psychological need to behave a certain way, then there are few, if any behaviors which are not acceptable… unless specific circumstances stack against a certain specific individual. For example, there is no way to predict that loving sex with a child will always produce problems for the child later in life. There is no way to predict that every and all parents will have problems with the fact of their child having loving sex. There is no way to predict that all pedophiles have problematic lives due to their proclivity for sex with children. So there is no disorder to be predicted with pedophilia, except the cultural revulsion, which can be destigmatized just as was homosexuality (Note 1), which still engenders revulsion in most of the population.
This concept was brought to fruition in 1998 when the American Psychological Association published a peer-reviewed study by Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch and Robert Bauserman, which was a metastudy of 59 other studies. Now known as the Rind Study, it concluded that the activities traditionally called child sexual abuse, or CSA, were not only not necessarily harmful to children, but also were not necessarily associated with long term psychological harm in adulthood. The abstract is here:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/106/hconres107
The findings were referred to the AAAS:
In 2005, a subsequent study by Heather Ulrich confirmed the findings of the Rind Study:
Further observation:
The Issue Of Consent
If child sexual activity can be harmless and supported in certain environments, then the remaining objection is functional: the child cannot consent. Yet parents consent all the time to various commitments for the child, commitments which the child might even hate, like attending school or eating vegetables or doctor appointments and vaccinations or not playing video games. And the parents can commit the child to pleasurable activities like going to parties, soccer teams, summer camp, etc. When pedophilia is mainstreamed, the issue of consent becomes moot. Parents these days are told to accept their child’s homosexuality as normal; should they not be told to accept their child’s budding sexuality as normal?
Any further objections are moral in nature, and concern the “ick” factor which is roundly rejected as a valid response to any behaviors on the continuum, especially homosexuality, transgenders, fetishists, etc., who recently have been mainstreamed. Morality is no longer accepted; the continuum of acceptable is amoral, and moral proclamations regarding behaviors on the continuum is now designated to be Hate thought. So the “ick” factor and any moral concerns are dismissed, a priori, as valid objections regarding behaviors along the continuum of behaviors.
The Over-Arching Principles of Tolerance And Change
The dedicated pursuit of cultural and political amorality to which Progressives adhere is unconstrained, morally, except for self-defensive principles such as “tolerance” and “change”. Tolerance becomes the anti-moral principle, declaring all behaviors to be acceptable. Change becomes the Great Commandment for the messiah class: all society which is not Progressive (or is the stupid herd) is evil and must be changed. Constraint and personal restraint in the moral sense, including personal responsibility for consequences, are intolerant demands on the pursuit of Change. It can be seen that messianic failures never constrain future messianic assaults on cultural norms; personal responsibility is never taken by the messianic class. (Note 3)
The demolition of morals and “good character” has consequences which can be foreseen, especially given the history of Hegelian Progressivism and its anti-moral assaults on culture. Those consequences include the acceptance of almost any behavior (logically, the absolute acceptance of all behaviors), and the denial of responsibility for consequences of their own beliefs and behaviors. As with government spending, failure (economically or socially) means only that more is needed. More Progressivism is always the answer, regardless.
NOTES:
Note 1: The homosexual war for cultural acceptance is outlined in the book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the90's (Plume) by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen (Sep 1, 1990).
Note 2: For some Progressives such as Whoopi Goldberg, sex with children who consent is not “rape rape”, and punishment is unfair and unjust.
Note 3: Thos. Sowell, “The Vision Of The Anointed; Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”; 1995; Basic Books/Perseus Book Groups.
The current mantra of “hope and change” marks the Progressive problem: hope for what, and change to what, are not specified. We get constant change, driven by the rejection of “old morality” and in exchange we are forced to accept the “new reality” which is imposed upon us, mostly by unelected judges. This is implemented in the Hegelian manner of incremental steps between thesis, antithesis and synthesis, repeat. Repeat. Repeat. The pressure is constant, like water eroding the granite foundations of great structures of yore.
The synthesis is never a slippery slope, according to the antithesis protagonists. We just want this one concession. To claim slippery slope is hysterical, they say. The evidence, however, is conclusive. The slope is not merely slippery, it no longer has any traction at all.
Progress never stops for the progressive, and the march toward elimination of moral principles is indefatigable. Moral principles hamper the Progressive view of themselves, which is that they are self-endowed with overweening “morals” which supersede the old morality. The replacement of “old moral principles” with new ones which are dictated by the Progressive results in the new moral principle of “tolerance”: tolerance of only those principles with which Progressives agree, and complete intolerance of disagreeable principles and those who hold them.
Tolerance of me, not of thee.
This is born out in universities which allow only Leftist speech and Leftist professors, and now the major institutions of government are found to be nearly completely populated with Leftists (who are free, and enabled, to persecute those deemed disagreeable). Disputing this is futile, considering the daily news reports.
Tolerance proves to be something other than a behavior, something other than an attitude. Tolerance in Progressive parlance means to do nothing, to ignore whatever onerous encroachments onto the culture which the Progressives seek at any particular time. To object (ie. Not ignore, to do something contrary to Progressive cant) is deemed a moral failure: intolerance, which is not to be tolerated, so is designated Hate, and where possible is codified into criminal law.
Intolerance of Contrary Opinion, With the Claim of Tolerance.
The issue of the slippery slope is borne out with
(a) no-fault divorce resulting in destruction to marriage with divorce now destroying half of marriages (that’s the synthesis), and the next antithesis being homosexual marriage;The list goes on and on. Gays? AIDS. Responsibility for consequences? denial. Persecution of dissenters? punish whistleblowers who contribute to dissent by revealing Leftist activities.
(b) women’s right to kill their unborn progeny resulting in more than 50 million deaths (the synthesis) and unaccountable abattoirs focused on blacks, with the new antithesis being the push for the Right to kill defective newborns and young children;
(c) the sexual revolution resulted in the current fad of cohabitation until tired of it, with countless single mothers and fatherless children resulting and expected promiscuity in every TV show and movie;
(d) the unionization of education resulted in ever increasing illiteracy;
(e ) the unionization of government employees, resulting in Leftist policies of persecution by government agencies;
(f) the war on poverty resulted in more poverty and increased taxation of the productive as well as the re-enslavement of blacks onto the Progressive plantations of welfare entitlement.
The idea that there is no slippery slope with Progressivism is false.
It is demonstrable that Progressivism is destructive when the government becomes the messiah for the culture. Progressivism is infested with elitist messiahism and self-anointed messiahs. Progressives feed their egos by designating categories of victims for whom to provide salvation from their oppressors. Thus the existence of oppressors is absolutely required, so they are designated and vilified constantly and shrilly: oppression is intolerable, and the oppressors cannot be tolerated. And denial of the moral authority of the messiahs is also intolerable: messiahism is exactly the moral thrust of Progressivism. As discussed above, that which is designated intolerable is the moral crime of “hate”, which must be abolished from humanity by means of harshest punishment. So Hate Legislation ensues to harshen punishment of otherwise ordinary crimes, but against protected categories.
Continuums of Normal Behavior: A Moral Concept
The Kinsey Report, the Kinsey book, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” and its enthusiastic acceptance by progressives is a case-in-point. The metanarrative of Kinsey’s position is that there is a continuum of behavior, none of which should be accorded moral approbation. Hence, homosexuality is purely a behavior (not a disorder) and thus not subject to moral judgment.
”But the scientific data which are accumulating make it appear that, if circumstances had been propitious, most individuals might have become conditioned in any direction, even into activities which they now consider quite unacceptable. There is little evidence of the existence of such a thing as innate perversity, even among those individuals whose sexual activities society has been least inclined to accept.”
Kinsey, et.al., ”Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”, Saunders and Co, pubs, 1948, pg 678.
Kinsey reported extensively on child sexuality, from anal contact to coitus to oral contact and orgasms. (Ibid, pp 157 – 192).
He proceeded to address the concern of “normal” vs. “abnormal”:
"Most of the complications which are observable in sexual histories are the result of society’s reactions when it obtains knowledge of an individual’s behavior, or the individual’s fear of how society would react if he were discovered. In various societies, under various circumstances, and (as we shall show later) even at various social levels of the population living in a particular town, the sex mores are fundamentally different. The way in which each group reacts to a particular sort of history determines the “normality ‘or “abnormality’ of the individual’s behavior – in that particular group (Benedict 1934). Whatever the moral interpretation (as in Moore 1943) , there is no scientific reason for considering particular types of sexual activity as intrinsically, in their biologic origins, normal or abnormal. Yet scientific classifications have been nearly identical with theologic classifications and with moral pronouncements of the English common law of the fifteenth century. This, in turn, as far as sex is concerned, was based on the medieval ecclesiastic law which was only a minor variant of the tenet of the ancient Greek and Roman cults, and of the Talmudic law (Angus 1925, May 1931)….”The concept of amoral spectrums of behavior has permeated western society, at least the Progressive faction. This is coupled with the moral protection of the continuum or spectrum concept, which is now a moral feature, and to some extent protected by law, and enforced governmentally.
The question of how pedophilia fits into this environment is almost moot; with the ever-changing DSM, the ever present pressure against old standards, and the always present slippery slope, the hazard of social acceptance of pedophilia is possible. Not by present standards, of course, but due to the philosophy that “cultural acceptance” changes (note 1), and that morality is culturally deterministic. There is no possible way to predict that culture will never accept any given change, especially in an atmosphere where “change” itself is revered for its own sake.
The idea that mental disorders as presented in the DSM are fixed concepts or representative of reality is not the case. The DSM has just changed, yet again, to its fifth iteration. The author of the DSM IV is a heavy critic of the content of the new DSM V, and it is becoming clear that even the definitions of the term “disorder” are debatable. So under the American Psychiatric Association, mental disorders are relative to the opinions of certain influential people or groups, they are not fixed, objective principles of nature, or the universe, or biology, or even psychology. Again, relativism leads to continuums of arguably unproblematic symptoms.
Still, DSM IV TR retains the definition of DSM III and DSM III R, as follows:
In DSM IV, each of the mental disorders is conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or patter that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom. In addition, this syndrome or pattern must not be merely an expectable and culturally sanctioned response to a particular event, for example the death of a loved one. Whatever it’s original cause, it must currently be considered a manifestation of a behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunction of the individual. Neither deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious or sexual) nor conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict is a symptom of a dysfunction in the individual, as described above).Further, DSM IV TR defines paraphilias (pedophilia is a paraphilia) thus:
DSM IV TR, pg xxxi. (emphasis added).
”A Paraphilia must be distinguished from nonpathological use of sexual fantasies, behaviors as a stimulus for sexual excitementin individuals without a paraphilia. Fantasies, behaviors, or objects are paraphilic only when they lead to clinically significant distress or impairment (e.g. are obligatory, result in sexual dysfunction, require participation of nonconsenting individuals, lead to legal complications, interfere with social relationships).For homosexuality, the issues of distress, impairment, legal complications, and social relationships have been eliminated as factors because they are now attributed to cultural stigmatization of that behavior. The idea of nonconsenting individuals concerns rape, which is a separate legal issue: that of consent and who can consent, and legally, who actually did or did not consent when they could have. (Note 2)
(emphasis in original)
For Pedophilia, the same issues and eliminations can logically apply.
In fact, the DSM IV TR definition of pedophilia disorder (actually a paraphilia) is not predicated solely on the possession of a certain set of mental proclivities or attitudes, it is predicated on the consequences of those proclivities or attitudes:
(a) possession of sexual urges or feelings regarding children;Both (a) and (b) must be in place in order for the diagnosis of pedophilia to be made. Thus, just feelings or urges alone do not qualify for the diagnosis of pedophilia; action is required. It is the action which is a moral consideration under the current culture (which will be discussed below). And it was denied in the original definition, above, that deviant sexual behavior is a reason for diagnosing a disorder. So the diagnosis of Pedophilia is somewhat of an incoherent statement, contradicting the very definition of disorder.
(b) acting on those feelings.
It has been suggested by a reader that a disorder is defined as follows:
1. Harm to others or selfNone of these conditions suggests the possession of a pathological mental attitude or urge, including the propensity toward behaviors which are culturally repugnant. All of these conditions are specifying only the consequences, personal or social. And even the personal consequences can be explained in terms of social approbation. So there is still no deviancy seen in pedophilia, except in the social context.
2. Personal distress
3. Inability to fulfill necessary obligations, (viz, employment, parenthood).
4. In violation of cultural norms (which is flexible and changes over time).
However, if we accept that the definition of disorder is actually those four consequences of a behavior, rather than the possession of the psychological need to behave a certain way, then there are few, if any behaviors which are not acceptable… unless specific circumstances stack against a certain specific individual. For example, there is no way to predict that loving sex with a child will always produce problems for the child later in life. There is no way to predict that every and all parents will have problems with the fact of their child having loving sex. There is no way to predict that all pedophiles have problematic lives due to their proclivity for sex with children. So there is no disorder to be predicted with pedophilia, except the cultural revulsion, which can be destigmatized just as was homosexuality (Note 1), which still engenders revulsion in most of the population.
This concept was brought to fruition in 1998 when the American Psychological Association published a peer-reviewed study by Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch and Robert Bauserman, which was a metastudy of 59 other studies. Now known as the Rind Study, it concluded that the activities traditionally called child sexual abuse, or CSA, were not only not necessarily harmful to children, but also were not necessarily associated with long term psychological harm in adulthood. The abstract is here:
”Many lay persons and professionals believe that child sexual abuse (CSA) causes intense harm, regardless of gender, pervasively in the general population. The authors examined this belief by reviewing 59 studies based on college samples. Meta-analyses revealed that students with CSA were, on average, slightly less well adjusted than controls. However, this poorer adjustment could not be attributed to CSA because family environment (FE) was consistently confounded with CSA, FE explained considerably more adjustment variance than CSA, and CSA-adjustment relations generally became nonsignificant when studies controlled for FE. Self-reported reactions to and effects from CSA indicated that negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much less negatively than women. The college data were completely consistent with data from national samples. Basic beliefs about CSA in the general population were not supported.”After an organization called NARTH discovered and revealed the study to a wider audience, conservatives took note and objected, resulting in an unprecedented condemnation of the article by both chambers of Congress, which had never before condemned a scientific finding.
http://www.ipce.info/library_3/rbt/metaana.htm
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/106/hconres107
The findings were referred to the AAAS:
”On July 12, 1999, our meta-analysis on child sexual abuse published in Psychological Bulletin, one of the American Psychological Association's (APA) premiere journals, was condemned by the U.S. Congress (H. Con. Res. 107). The condemnation followed months of attacks on the article, the APA, and us by various social conservatives and psychoanalytically-oriented clinicians. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) was asked by the APA to independently review our article. After considering criticisms of it and the article itself, AAAS declined, but commented that it was the criticisms, not our methods or analyses, that troubled them because these criticisms misrepresented what we wrote.”
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12119-000-1025-5
In 2005, a subsequent study by Heather Ulrich confirmed the findings of the Rind Study:
Abstract:
”Research conducted during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s consistently reported widely accepted negative outcomes associated with child sexual abuse. In 1998 Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman conducted a meta-analysis challenging the four most often reported correlates of child sexual abuse. The present study attempted to reexamine the four main objectives of the Rind et al. (1998) study, correcting for methodological and statistical problems identified by Dallam et al. (2001) and Ondersma et al. (2001). The current meta-analysis supported the findings by Rind et al. (1998) in that child sexual abuse was found to account for 1% of the variance in later psychological outcomes, whereas family environment accounted for 5.9% of the variance. In addition, the current meta-analysis supported the finding that there was a gender difference in the experience of the child sexual abuse, such that females reported more negative immediate effects, current feelings, and self-reported effects. The implications of these findings, problems with replicating the Rind et al. (1998) meta-analysis, and future directions are discussed.”
http://www.srmhp.org/0402/child-abuse.html
Further observation:
”In addition to their perceived potential misuse by individuals with certain personal or ideological agendas (e.g., individuals with favorable attitudes toward pedophilia), one likely reason that Rind et al.’s findings were roundly denounced is that they directly contradicted many individuals’ intuitions and convictions. The Rind et al. affair demonstrates that when social science research and common sense clash in the court of public opinion, common sense is often the winner (see Shermer, 1997, for other examples). Dr. Laura’s remark that any scientific findings that conflict with common sense should typically be regarded as erroneous strikes a responsive chord with much of the general public. Nevertheless, it reflects a deep—although widely held—misunderstanding of the nature of the scientific enterprise.The purely rational conclusion, scientifically supported and without moral input, would be that in loving family environments the natural sexual urges of children could be fulfilled without harm to the child, even later in adulthood. Without harm, the practice is acceptable. One might argue that intellectual, social, and hunger appetites are willingly fulfilled by loving adults in the child’s life; how does that differ from sexual appetites and development? I’m certain that if I can conceive of this train of thought then the pedophile community can also dredge it up.
Karl Popper (1965) and many others (e.g., Meehl, 1978; Platt, 1964) have pointed out that science involves placing favored hypotheses in grave danger of refutation. The more cherished a claim, the more deeply ingrained it is in a belief system, the more crucial subjecting it to the risk of falsification becomes. As Carl Sagan (1995) pointed out, one must be especially cautious about accepting claims that accord with strongly held beliefs, as such claims are often found to be subjectively compelling or even intuitively obvious (see also Rind, Bauserman, & Tromovitch, 2000). The scientific method remains the optimal means of rooting out error and myth (Bartley, 1984; Popper, 1965), and this method grinds to a halt if the process of self-correction that is so essential to science is short-circuited. If Richard Feynman (1985, p. 311) was correct that the essence of science is bending over backward to prove oneself wrong, then scientists must be encouraged to report findings anddraw conclusions that run counter to common sense. It is also probably worth recalling Voltaire’s (1764/1972) admonition that common sense (which, in contrast to my usage here, Voltaire conceptualized as scientific/logical reasoning) is not especially common.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20030429000006/http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ble/SciSoc/lilienfeld02.pdf
The Issue Of Consent
If child sexual activity can be harmless and supported in certain environments, then the remaining objection is functional: the child cannot consent. Yet parents consent all the time to various commitments for the child, commitments which the child might even hate, like attending school or eating vegetables or doctor appointments and vaccinations or not playing video games. And the parents can commit the child to pleasurable activities like going to parties, soccer teams, summer camp, etc. When pedophilia is mainstreamed, the issue of consent becomes moot. Parents these days are told to accept their child’s homosexuality as normal; should they not be told to accept their child’s budding sexuality as normal?
Any further objections are moral in nature, and concern the “ick” factor which is roundly rejected as a valid response to any behaviors on the continuum, especially homosexuality, transgenders, fetishists, etc., who recently have been mainstreamed. Morality is no longer accepted; the continuum of acceptable is amoral, and moral proclamations regarding behaviors on the continuum is now designated to be Hate thought. So the “ick” factor and any moral concerns are dismissed, a priori, as valid objections regarding behaviors along the continuum of behaviors.
The Over-Arching Principles of Tolerance And Change
The dedicated pursuit of cultural and political amorality to which Progressives adhere is unconstrained, morally, except for self-defensive principles such as “tolerance” and “change”. Tolerance becomes the anti-moral principle, declaring all behaviors to be acceptable. Change becomes the Great Commandment for the messiah class: all society which is not Progressive (or is the stupid herd) is evil and must be changed. Constraint and personal restraint in the moral sense, including personal responsibility for consequences, are intolerant demands on the pursuit of Change. It can be seen that messianic failures never constrain future messianic assaults on cultural norms; personal responsibility is never taken by the messianic class. (Note 3)
The demolition of morals and “good character” has consequences which can be foreseen, especially given the history of Hegelian Progressivism and its anti-moral assaults on culture. Those consequences include the acceptance of almost any behavior (logically, the absolute acceptance of all behaviors), and the denial of responsibility for consequences of their own beliefs and behaviors. As with government spending, failure (economically or socially) means only that more is needed. More Progressivism is always the answer, regardless.
NOTES:
Note 1: The homosexual war for cultural acceptance is outlined in the book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the90's (Plume) by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen (Sep 1, 1990).
Note 2: For some Progressives such as Whoopi Goldberg, sex with children who consent is not “rape rape”, and punishment is unfair and unjust.
Note 3: Thos. Sowell, “The Vision Of The Anointed; Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”; 1995; Basic Books/Perseus Book Groups.
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