Grief at the Ultimate Loss to the AtheoLeftist Utopians

Vox Day concludes an article regarding the future of the U.S. in the face of fractured populaces due to the march of the Left, stomping through our wealth, the futures for our grandchildren, our security, our morals, and leaving us in four factions, not unlike the Russians just a century ago: the leftist, progressive, secular Reds (i.e. AtheoLeftists); the Whites of traditional religious America; the Browns emanating from the third world Americas; and the Blacks of Feral America.

The American Reds and Whites contain people of all races, including Hispanic and African American. However the Browns and Blacks seem to be exclusive. The Browns are already agitating via La Raza. The Blacks are already at war with the Browns and with themselves. (20 dead in Chicago last week alone).

In Russia, the Reds took control of the government and proceeded to subdue the whites involuntarily. The Whites resisted and were annihilated. Had there been Browns or Blacks, they’d have had the same fate. Not too dissimilar to when the AtheoLeft took control of France and then proceeded in their pursuit of destruction.

The demographics of the American problem seem gargantuan. The economics of the problem seem insoluble. The politics of change are in the direction of national destruction in pursuit of dewy-eyed ideology on the one hand, and total hegemonic control by the now permanent parasitic Left on the other.

Perhaps the union would be split into separate nations. Even though some NE pundits have recently called for secession as have others in the south and west, it wouldn’t work. That’s because the large cities – which consume and dispose rather than produce these days – are increasingly Leftist, while the moderate size cities, suburbs and rural are not. How would the cities be tied together in a nation? How would they survive their general incompetence and inability to feed themselves?

Vox:

”There will be war, whether anyone truly desires it or not. There has always been war and there always will be war, the arrogant pretenses of the totalitarians and their self-serving promises of peace on Earth notwithstanding. As Vegetius wrote: Si vis pacem, para bellum. The Union cannot be saved because it no longer exists in the hearts of men.

"Twenty-nine percent of registered voters think that an armed revolution might be necessary in the next few years in order to protect liberties, according to a Public Mind poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University."”

Even the Leftists are becoming armed these days, as the Gabby Giffords episode demonstrated. And the Leftist bloggers who were affected by the Boston Bombing when they saw the police loss of a running terrorist finally understand that the police get there well after the attacker does; some now see the sense in owning a self-protective device - the hated gun.

I agree that war is inevitable. The Red Left has its mandibles into the electorate and the election process so deep that the Whites are now irrelevant to that process. Many of the Whites stayed home in the last election, apparently having come to the same conclusion. So the question becomes how to preserve human freedom from government’s deadly parasitism on the populace, coupled with demographic parasitism on governmental largesse, which taken together are large enough to kill the host? If not by votes, then how?

It cannot be done by education: the Leftists control that, and have produced generations of maleducated ignorants, especially in urban regions. It cannot be done by media: the Leftists control that (except radio and the web, and they are after that, too). It cannot be done with economic pacification, the Leftists have mortgaged the futures of our progeny. It cannot be done with constitutional law, the Leftists have destroyed that with mal-interpretations in the courts.

When people in western Europe riot at the very thought of governmental austerity – and governments capitulate - it becomes obvious that parasitism has human independence and the concept of responsible freedom by the throat. The destruction of the west has come from internal sources, just as it did in other major cultures of history.

War is inevitable, but it won’t produce a stay of the Leftist march into the separation and mollification of the Herd in its designated egalitarian state on the one hand, and the hegemony of the elite, Leftist, social manipulators on the other. How this resolves the Red, Brown, Black issue will be interesting, but not as interesting as how the Whites escape it, if they even can. (Maybe that's why so many signed up for the proposed emigration to Mars).

I grieve for the loss of the human independence and freedom that will afflict my grandchildren as they are plunged into social, economic chaos, and political control by the elites. What should I, what can I, do to avert it? Nothing is apparent: should I die as did my forebears attempting to change the course? That's the shooting war that the cultural war will produce.

When will it begin?

Addendum:
" There have been 72,005,482 background checks for gun purchases since President Obama took office, according to data released by the FBI."
CNSnews.com

E O Wilson Defends Innumerate Scientists

In his wsj.com article, E O Wilson admits that evolutionary biology does not require much math and when it does, the evolutionists farm it out. So students who can’t hack math shouldn’t shy away from theoretical evolutionary biology. He shares this secret:

” Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate.”

He is concerned that students who can’t hack math turn from science to easier pursuits.

But aren’t math and science both just extensions of logical thought? Why would math be more difficult than science for the uber rational? And of course it is the uber rational who inhabit the halls of theoretical evolutionary biology, right? Something doesn’t add up… (get it? Add… up).

” Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition.

Everyone sometimes daydreams like a scientist. Ramped up and disciplined, fantasies are the fountainhead of all creative thinking. Newton dreamed, Darwin dreamed, you dream. The images evoked are at first vague. They may shift in form and fade in and out. They grow a bit firmer when sketched as diagrams on pads of paper, and they take on life as real examples are sought and found.”

And you thought science was a discipline.

I’m sure that he is really referring to a small portion of science, not the part where inductive data is analyzed, hypotheses are deduced, experiments are designed for statistical integrity of analysis, then performed with disciplined rigor, finally generating data for statistical analysis, and articulating the findings of the experiment in terms of its statistical boundaries. He’s not referring to that part because evolutionists don’t do that part of science. Biologists who study living things rather than bone shards actually do those things, though, and they are the ones who produce progress in useful knowledge.

Here’s what a couple of other professors have to say regarding E O’s theory of math utility:

” There are those who differ. Lord Kelvin said “I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.” Even those who didn’t have much math sometimes wished that they did. Chuck Darwin said “I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics; for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.

E. O. Wilson would have benefited from having that extra sense. If he had it, he might not have suggested that ridiculous “gay uncle” theory, in which homosexuality pays for itself genetically thru gay men helping their siblings in ways that produce extra nieces and nephews. First, that doesn’t even happen – so much for field work. Second, it’s impossible. The relationship coefficients don’t work. Nephews and nieces are only half as closely related as your own kids, so you’d need four extra to break even, rather than two, as with your own kids. Maybe if Wilson had ever learned to divide by two, he wouldn’t have made this mistake.

Biology and softer-headed sciences such as anthropology are absolutely rife with innumerates, and there is a cost. If I hear one more person say that average growth rates were very low in the old stone age, a teeny tiny fraction of a percent [true], and so anatomically modern humans only left Africa after it filled up, which took a hundred thousand years, I’m gonna scream. If I hear another anthropologist say that she could understand how a small group could rapidly expand to fill New Zealand, but just can’t see how they could fill up the Americas, whole continents, in a thousand years – lady, they screwed, they had babies, and they walked. All it took was a weird, unacademic lifestyle in which you raised three kids – pretty easy to do in the Happy Hunting Ground.”

I think that, even before higher math is required, a full study of logic should be required of all students entering any science or engineering. And philosophy, too. It should be as basic as English; students should be fully literate in logic and its applications. Only then should mathematics be required – and it should be required of all sciences just as it is in engineering.

I personally don’t see how any person can consider himself educated without these fundamentals. That’s just my opinion, of course.

E O is right about one thing: mathematic literacy fades with disuse. However, the underlying principles, including those of calculus and differential equations and transforms and domain mapping and matrix manipulation as well as statistics, and so on, remain. And the literacy is accessible with some effort to re-study it a bit.

Finally, if E O’s defense of innumeracy is right, then it is nonsensical to compare evolutionary biological science with physics, as some proponents do. While I do recall that Einstein imagined riding on a light wave, he didn’t remain there long; he produced mathematics which is still being verified (non-falsified) experimentally. Let’s see E O or his evo cohorts match that.

A Doctor Finds Minds Without Brain Activity.

The idea that the mind is merely an activity of the brain, and that the entire cranial smorgasborg is material is an essential part of Materialism. And Materialism is an essential part of Atheism which ridicules dualists with pink unicorns and flying spaghetti machine Red Herrings. But there is actual evidence tending toward dualism to be considered. Here is some now:

From wired.com:

"Sam Parnia practices resuscitation medine. In other words, he helps bring people back from the dead — and some return with stories. Their tales could help save lives, and even challenge traditional scientific ideas about the nature of consciousness.

“The evidence we have so far is that human consciousness does not become annihilated,” said Parnia, a doctor at Stony Brook University Hospital and director of the school’s resuscitation research program. “It continues for a few hours after death, albeit in a hibernated state we cannot see from the outside.”

And:

"Parnia: I decided that we should study what people have experienced when they’ve gone beyond cardiac arrest. I found that 10 percent of patients who survived cardiac arrests report these incredible accounts of seeing things.

When I looked at the cardiac arrest literature, it became clear that it’s after the heart stops and blood flow into the brain ceases. There’s no blood flow into the brain, no activity, about 10 seconds after the heart stops. When doctors start to do CPR, they still can’t get enough blood into the brain. It remains flatlined. That’s the physiology of people who’ve died or are receiving CPR.

Not just my study, but four others, all demonstrated the same thing: People have memories and recollections. Combined with anecdotal reports from all over the world, from people who see things accurately and remember them, it suggests this needs to be studied in more detail."

And,

"Wired: Couldn’t the experiences just reflect some extremely subtle type of brain activity?
Parnia: When you die, there’s no blood flow going into your brain. If it goes below a certain level, you can’t have electrical activity. It takes a lot of imagination to think there’s somehow a hidden area of your brain that comes into action when everything else isn’t working.

These observations raise a question about our current concept of how brain and mind interact. The historical idea is that electrochemical processes in the brain lead to consciousness. That may no longer be correct, because we can demonstrate that those processes don’t go on after death.

There may be something in the brain we haven’t discovered that accounts for consciousness, or it may be that consciousness is a separate entity from the brain.

Wired: This seems to verge on supernatural explanations of consciousness.

Parnia: Throughout history, we try to explain things the best we can with the tools of science. But most open-minded and objective scientists recognize that we have limitations. Just because something is inexplicable with our current science doesn’t make it superstitious or wrong. When people discovered electromagnetism, forces that couldn’t then be seen or measured, a lot of scientists made fun of it.

Scientists have come to believe that the self is brain cell processes, but there’s never been an experiment to show how cells in the brain could possibly lead to human thought. If you look at a brain cell under a microscope, and I tell you, “this brain cell thinks I’m hungry,” that’s impossible.

It could be that, like electromagnetism, the human psyche and consciousness are a very subtle type of force that interacts with the brain, but are not necessarily produced by the brain. The jury is still out.

Wired: But what about all the fMRI brain imaging studies of thoughts and feelings? Or experiments in which scientists can tell what someone is seeing, or what they’re dreaming, by looking at brain activity?

Parnia: All the evidence we have shows an association between certain parts of the brain and certain mental processes. But it’s a chicken and egg question: Does cellular activity produce the mind, or does the mind produce cellular activity?

Some people have tried to conclude that what we observe indicates that cells produce thought: here’s a picture of depression, here’s a picture of happiness. But this is simply an association, not a causation. If you accept that theory, there should be no reports of people hearing or seeing things after activity in their brain has stopped. If people can have consciousness, maybe that raises the possibility that our theories are premature."

Parnia should be prepared to be called all sorts of things, probably including but not limited to "fraud", "incompetent", and other attacks on his person by those who cannot attack his data. That's what happened last year to the professor from Texas A&M who had the bad judgment to study the effect of having homosexual parents on children (he was exonerated after an investigation of his techniques and conclusions by the university showed the actual integrity of his work).

Rejecting Theist Notions

Atheists want us to believe that they merely reject theist propositions. This is an obvious ploy to avoid having to answer for their actual denial of the existence of a deity, with logic and evidence which they claim to have their worldviews based upon. Stop me if you've heard this conversation before somewhere.

Question to Atheist:
Do you reject theist propositions?

Yes.

Do you reject the theist concept of a creating being which is non-physical?

Yes.

Do you reject the deity?

No. There is no deity.

So you don’t reject the deity, you just reject the concept?

Yes.

What is your logic or evidence for rejecting that concept?

Why hasn’t it contacted me to prove to me that it exists?

Why do you think that because it hasn’t contacted you that it cannot exist?

It’s not reasonable.

It is not reasonable to yourself? Or not reasonable to the deity?

Not reasonable for a deity.

How do you know what is reasonable to a deity?

Because what is reasonable to me would also be reasonable to a reasonable deity.

What is your evidence for that?

Because reasonable is reasonable.

Isn’t that just a tautology?

Yes. So? A tautology is not a fallacy.

Isn’t a tautology a fallacy when used as a proof?

No. Your logic is messed up and fallacious.

Under Aristotlian logic, a premise can’t be the same as the conclusion. So, fallacy is acceptable in your reasoning?

Logic can be twisted to mean anything. Fallacy is meaningless.

Even Aristotlian logic?

Sure why not?

Isn’t Aristotlian logic based on disciplined processes?

Anybody can deduce anything to fool anybody.

Isn’t Aristotlian logic based on axioms?

Axioms are just opinions: they can’t be proved to be true.

Why can’t axioms be proved to be true?

There is no truth, only opinion.

Is that true, or is that opinion?

It’s my opinion that it is true.

So it is only an opinion that there is no truth…. Because there is no truth, only opinion, in your opinion, and your opinion is true?

Yes.

Isn’t that circular?

Yes. So?

So fallacy really is part of your thought process?

No. My thought process works just fine. It’s your logic which is false. Your questions are full of Red Herrings.

If there is no truth, can there still be falseness?

Of course.

Wouldn’t everything be false, if it cannot be true?

Of course not; it could be just opinion, like I told you. You don't listen, do you?

Then opinions might not be false?

Yes, that’s… um, true.

So some opinions might be true even though there is no truth?

Yes, that is true. Well, not “true” – true, but true enough for me.

So there is no deity, but just for you, because that is true enough for you?

Right.

But there might be an existing deity for other people?

No. There would be evidence.

What kind of evidence?

He would do something to show himself. Something physical. Destroy a city; hand me a cheeseburger.

Are you certain of that?

Yes.

That is a necessary condition for the existence of a deity?

Yes.

What is your evidence for that degree of certainty?

I told you: it’s only reasonable. What is wrong with you? You are Gishing this conversation, which is full of your Red Herrings and Fallacies. Do you know how this looks to serious Atheists who just want a reasonable conversation about Atheism? You are the irrational one; you appear to be insane. And full of hate.

Seriously, what is your evidence for...

I told you: it’s only reasonable. What is wrong with you? You are Gishing this conversation, which is full of your Red Herrings and Fallacies. Do you know how this looks to serious Atheists who just want a reasonable conversation about Atheism? You are the irrational one; you appear to be insane. And full of hate.

Evolution Is Explained By A Visitor To Vox's Place

Over at Vox Day's place the evolution debate goes on... rather it comes to a screeching halt, rationally. Vox asked his opponent to answer several questions regarding evolution; his opponent's answers are, well, hysterical yet pitiful. If you are interested, read the whole thing.

The beautiful "science" of evolutionary biology has demonstrated that it is an endeavor of pure induction, with absolutely no deductive capacity of an experimental nature; i.e. the science must be presumed correct, rather than objectively proved conclusively. This renders the answer to Vox’s first question incredibly ignorant:

Question:

1. How do creationists "pose a serious threat to society"?

Answer:
Society only functions when the majority of the people agree on basic fundamental ideas. A critical mass of people who believe reason and evidence don't matter is a slippery slope to tyranny.

Let’s think about this. The fabled Enlightenment was ushered in on bloodbath of the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror by the fanboys of reason and evidence and Atheism. The trend toward socialist control of the Herd is a movement by the Enlightenment enthusiasts who are also are self-endowed messiahs. Not coincidentally, the bloodiest century ever, the 20th, was primarily due to enthusiasts of the Enlightenment philosophers, those who forced New Man philosophy by eugenic homocide.

And as Vox points out, there is no correlation between social advances and the Atheist Enlightened mind:. For example, slavery was fought and conquered by Christians, not the least of whom was Wilberforce, who led the movement which brought freedom to slaves in Great Britain. Civil Rights in the USA was fought for by the Republicans, not Democrats; the Democrats took credit for it.

In fact, that statement regarding the slippery slope can handily be applied to the Atheist governments which inhabited and bloodied half of the earth less than a century ago.

Read the whole thing for further insight into how to avoid any answers at all.

This individual has received evolution as an ideology which falsifies other ideologies: the ideology of Scientism. This is the hazard of evolution and the high priests of evolution who spend half their time on Atheist proselytising, and the other half on why evolution proves Atheism. The general population (especially the population of maleducated young people, taught by maleducated "educators") will easily believe in science (it works, right?) and simultaneously be totally incapabable of rational analysis of the actual issues presented by legitimate science vs actual truth. And who wants to ridiculed as a science-denier?

The predictive value of an hypothesis is the standard of valuation for any hypothesis in science. The white swan hypothesis predicted that the next swan would be white, a deduction based on the induction findings that all swans seen in Britain and Europe were white. This could be falsified, and was falsified by the discovery of black swans in Australia. This is a firm, unquestionable falsification of the white swan hypothesis.

The commonly claimed falsification which is proposed for evolution is the discovery of a rabbit in PreCambrian deposits. But there is no reason to think that the ever-modified theory of evolution (the heart of biology) would not be modified yet again to accommodate such a thing. Why? Because finding a rabbit in a deposit is not conclusive; it is not an unquestionable falsification of evolution. There is no observation of how the rabbit got into that deposit.

The falsification of evolution is ignored and derided: it is falsified by its lack of deductive, predictive capability in the actual, real science of biology. One cannot take a rabbit, or a population of rabbits, or a population of Darwin's Finches, or fish in lake Malawi, and predict a future species which will occur, much less when. The theory of evolution is completely without discrimination when it comes to predicting what will happen to species: anything could come out of evolution. Anything is not an acceptable scientific conclusion, unless there is an ideological component involved.

As Vox points out, Daniel Dennett claims that because Physics works with precision (Newtonian anyway), that gives credibility to evolution. That is the weakest Appeal To Authority possible. When evolution can predict future consequence of evolution, rather than merely predict other instances of induction, then and only then will it be on a par with physics; then and only then will it be of any significant value to actual biological science, which could then use it to predict biological outcomes. Then and only then will it derive, for itself, credibility and respect outside of the circles of ideology who use it for Scientism, Materialism and Atheism (and its fans). It has interest from an inductive-only standpoint; it has no interest for valid worldviews.

Worldviews ask questions like "why are there laws of nature?", rather than merely "What are the laws of nature?". It is irrational for the knowledge of the laws of nature to include the attitude that "there is no why, there are only ever more whats" of material knowledge. Yet there is no possible knowledge contained within "whats" that addresses the "whys", much less negates them. The assertion that there can be no "whys" is not a product of either empiricism or logic. It is ideological. And to delare the "why" to be an illegitimate question as some Atheist philosophers have done, is irrational.

The supposed advocates of "reason and evidence" cannot provide the reason and evidence which can address the supposed lack of "whys", and they will never be able to: it is a Category Error. The advocates will never, ever, admit that, however. The reason is that they they have accepted the unsupportable Principle Of Materialism, and they have done that without either evidence or logic for its validity. It is thus a religious belief, a faith without evidence or reasoning. And that reflects clear back to the use of evolution for ideological and worldview purposes: it is a religious faith.

Updated for typos.

Yes, It is Sometimes Necessary: Moderation is Back ON.

It should come as no surprise that opening the blog to everyone, including the previously banned, would result in having to implement that ban again. I have republished the RULES of the Blog, for those who don't read the Right column. I will be screening out only one individual at this time.

All others who wish to discuss Atheism using rational, logic based arguments for either pro or con, are welcome to do so, with the caveats in the RULES and below.

If you disagree with anything posted here, then make a rational, logic-based case for your disagreement; other discussion using personal attack, persistence in fallacy usage, false fallacy accusation, failure to own a position or respond to questions with direct answers, and other non-rational nonsense will wind up being nuked, so don't even bother. Obstructionism will not be tolerated; responses from those who own and defend their position are what is desired here.

Rules of the Blog: Found in the Right Hand Column, and now Here:

This blog has been an open blog for most of its history. The intent of this forum is to provide civil discourse concerning Atheism, its validity, practices and any consequences that derive from Atheism, Philosophical Materialism, Science, General Philosophy, and more specifically Ethics. Also it is the intent of this blog to pursue rational thought, its logical underpinning, and the source of rationality in the universe and in ourselves. This necessarily includes science and its misuses.

Disruptive behavior will result in being banned from this blog. I am the arbiter of which behavior is disruptive. However, the term “civil discourse” covers most of the expectations for acceptable commenting behavior. But also included is the refusal to acknowledge fallacious thinking when it is pointed to, and to making unjustified accusations, rude or arrogant or personal attacks, obscenity, and probably a whole page full of other abrogations of civil discourse.

For most, this will be easily met. And I appreciate those who have, and continue to make thoughtful contributions here. My sincere thanks. Addendum: No comments from "anonymous" will be allowed. Choose a moniker; it's easy.

Re-Visited: Honest Atheism

[Note: this was originally published, April 12, 2012. Sometimes Atheists need a reminder regarding what Atheism actually is]

The idea is current that Atheism is not a positive assertion. This is in response to the demand for them to produce evidence or logic to back up their claims, just as that demand is made for Philosophical Materialists to back up their claims. In other words, their denial is a dodge, an intellectual malfeasance in order to avoid ownership, because they cannot produce either evidence or logic in support of their belief system.

Here is a look at real Atheism, and a real Atheist with the intellectual stones to say exactly what she believes, honestly and without dissembling, contrary to the approach of many or even most Atheists today:





It remains perfectly acceptable to request that she provide proof for these statements, evidence for these positions of a type which satisfies her underlying Materialist requirements for knowledge.

[Image from Mariano Apologeticus]


Addendum:


Atheist Tolerance

Of Post Natal Consciousness and Personhood

"Disputed signs of consciousness seen in babies’ brains.

This reminds me of the attempts by the abortionistas to deny the value of preborns due to their various inabilities: heart beats, brain functions, consciousness, feeling pain, don't look like adults or post-nates, etc. They have no value as humans if they don't have the ability chosen today for describing a "person", as opposed to a human.

The statement made relating "disputed" to "signs of consciousness" and to age in post-natals smacks of overtones of the materialist view of human existence: just more minerals and atoms being still disorganized. As a jogging reminder to me it is apparent that the take-away from this article might well be the presumed right to terminate the post-nate since it is pre-conscious; the only caveat being for how long it is before consciousness is empirically determined. This is not part of the article, of course, nor of the research. It is part of the cutting-edge AtheoLeft, however, and such information might be useful to the advocates of post-natal abortion/killing. There is nothing new here, but it is a reminder of the slope down which eugenics - in this case pre-natal eugenics - slides.

A Note To Atheists

This blog is for discussing and analyzing in a disciplined fashion the case which Atheists have for rejecting theist concepts, discussing the process of accepting Atheism, and discussing the effects and consequences of Atheism.

Atheists are always invited to present their case for rejecting theist concepts, giving the reasons for their rejections in terms which are rational. That entails providing either disciplined logic for their rejection, which we can discuss, or providing empirical support for their rejection, also which we can discuss.

Unsupported opinions, appeals to emotion or non-supported attacks are not valid arguments, and logical fallacies must be owned if they are used and when they are revealed.

Make your case.

ADDENDUM

To help make your case, I suggest answering the following four questions:

Question:
When a person switches to Atheism, what are the Principles of Atheism that he adopts?

Question:
What are the Principles of Atheist Rational Methodology which Atheists commonly use?

Question:
What are the Principles of Atheist Morality?

Question:
What are the unquestionable, incorrigible sources for each of these sets of Atheist Principles?