Will Atheists Believe Anything?

A quote which is apparently misattributed to G.K. Chesterton: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything", doesn't quite cover the subject, but it is close.

Consider this Atheist who has created her own reality and system of truths, and is trying to convert the world, a woman who has both a real name and a fake name which she uses simultaneously: D.M. Murdock/Acharya S. In her article, "An Atheist Here to Destroy?", she affirms the title, and goes on to explain how mysticism is true, and all religions are false (or part true, or something, it's not clear). She makes assertion after assertion, firmly convinced that her mystical truths are self-evident and in no need of explanation, evidence, or rational support.

She starts with these "truths":

"It has been suggested that I am an "atheist" and am "very destructive." However, I am neither a theist nor an atheist, although, for the most part, I prefer atheists because they can think for themselves and are not as vicious as "believers." Their morality comes not from the outside, imposed by some supernatural figure, some repressive puppetmaster in the sky, but from within, as dictated by their own autonomy, wisdom and maturity."

Now, it's hard not to agree with the last comment, because Atheists do, in fact, get their morality from their own autonomy, their own (lack of) wisdom, their own (lack of) maturity [note 1]. But do Atheists in general think for themselves? Do they employ syllogistic arguments coupled with actual physical evidence to make a case for their beliefs. Emphatically, no.

She proceeds to ramble on mystically, with many mystical assertions self-obvious only to herself, and then there is this, which is where I stopped:

"Let us think back to when we were children, before we started getting conditioned--or, more appropriately, brainwashed--by those around us. We did not see race, gender, ethnicity or religion. We saw other children, beings with smiling faces exuding innocence. The unbridled, radiant love of life beamed from our souls and flowed from our hearts. Then we started to learn that we were no longer one empathetic being but were part of a variety of groups that separated us from each other. Suddenly, we were "boys" or "girls," "blacks" or "whites." We were "Americans" and "Russians." We were "Christians" or "Jews." And those over THERE were not like us over HERE. Again, this is extremely ugly and is at the root of all kinds of prejudice and bigotry that go on day in and day out. These are, in reality, false separations."

"One empathetic being"? The absurdity prevented me from reading further. Anyone who has ever been around children knows that they are born as selfish narcissists. When children spontaneously share and care, their parents video the event and put it on YOUTUBE because it is so rare.

And so, backing up through her fanciful personal universe, I came to realize that she is not living among us. She is long gone from our perceived reality, and fully acclimated to her own.

The quote that started this page really should state more inclusively that Atheists are free to make up any reality they wish, and attempt to live in it. Atheists can make up any morality they wish, and attempt to force the rest of us to live in it. Atheists can deny all rational arguments showing that Atheism cannot prove its own premises, all the while claiming ownership of truth and evidence. Thus it is that Atheists lose any claim to rationality and therefore any claim to sanity. And that this is easily documented and shown to be the case.

It seems like I should finish reading the article, but I have no desire to intrude into her personal faux reality any further than I have to.

Note 1: It is well documented that Atheists are largely males who attained their "wisdom" during adolescence, never outgrew the simplistic arguments, and never attained full maturity (rampant misogyny being a case-in-point, as is the concept that ridicule is an effective argument).
H.T. Anshuman Reddy

Amir D. Aczel Eradicates the Infinite Multiverse Using Probability Theory

Amir Aczel demonstrates a straightforward and deadly approach to the concept of the infinite multiverse. In order to get around the anthropic characteristics inherent in our own universe, physicists posit the existence of other universes which vary slightly, but are infinite in number. This is not provable, and is a useful fiction only for the story-telling aspect that now inhabits much of non-experimental, non-verifiable, non-empirical science. Yet much of cosmology now depends on this useful fiction.

Fictions are now often employed by science apologists, and the question is no longer that of science as truth, but of science as the pursuit of agenda by story telling. The TV scientistic apologetics series, Cosmos, has aroused the historians due to its false presentation of science history as Atheistic and religion as scientific heresy. There is even a debate regarding the proper ethics of using useful lies to promote scientific "truth", in this case regarding Cosmos, but also in the past regarding the usefulness of Haekel's fraudulent embryo drawings in modern texts; the designation of evolution as "truth" by Jerry Coyne despite its non-falsifiability and the inability of selection to account for it; the fraudulent title and thrust of Laurence Krauss' book declaring knowledge of a "universe from nothing"; the entire field of "evo-devo" as it applies to the evolution of psychological and cultural features; the "settled truth" of climate computer models, and so on. The field of anthropology actually removed the term "scientific" from the description of its endeavors, in a fit of intellectual honesty rarely seen in science today.

But is this multiverse fiction even possible? Aczel walks through a quick demonstration of how infinities and probabilities collide, providing clear, logical evidence that a multiverse cannot be probable. I think Aczel is my new favorite mathematician.

After the proof (read it, it is clear, sharp and concise), Aczel concludes:

"What does it all mean? It means that if you create universes that are countably infinite then, yes, you could say that things will happen (maybe something like you and me will materialize in other universes--maybe), similarly to how a monkey might reproduce Hamlet after a really, really long time. But you can't really say anything about parameters and fine tuning. If you think that you can somehow "create" finely-tuned parameters for your universe, ones that live on the continuum of numbers (such as pi!), then you can forget about it: With probability one (that is, except for on a set of measure zero), this will never happen! Put another way, there is a zero probability that you could ever recreate finely-tuned parameters that would replicate those of our universe. What does this imply about our own universe?"

Of course, the implication for our own universe is clear: it is uniquely outside of any mathematically possible multiverse.

A Few Headlines From Instapundit

"GOVERNMENT MOTORS UPDATE: GM Is Alive. Drivers Are Dead. Any Questions?"

IF YOU LIKE YOUR DOCTOR, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR DOCTOR. PERIOD. UnitedHealthcare to cut doctors for Mass. seniors.



MALE PRIVILEGE, CIRCA 1944:

Thought Crime = Domestic Terror

With the current players, it was destined to happen.

"In his statement announcing the return of the committee, Holder said he remains concerned about the specter of attacks prompted by Islamic extremists, but he said this committee will be tasked with identifying other threats.

“We must also concern ourselves with the continued danger we face from individuals within our own borders who may be motivated by a variety of other causes from anti-government animus to racial prejudice,” Holder said.

According to reporting from Reuters, the American Civil Liberties Union is pushing back against the DOJ plan, fearing “it could be a sweeping mandate to monitor and collect controversial speech.”

Objecting to Obama's programs and performance is BOTH antigovernment AND racist. We must scrape and bow before the One.

Despairing For Gender Atheism

Gender Atheism is a fairly new take on Radical Feminism. The author of an article devoted to it doesn't hold out much hope for it as a significant movement because, like Atheism, Gender Atheism will be misunderstood. And of course, the new definition of Atheism is misunderstood, but it is misunderstood by Atheists themselves, who think that the Other will be fooled by it.

Regardless of the problems of Atheism and its disinclinations toward truth, Gender Atheism, being Rad Fem, encounters problems with Atheists, right out of the chute. Atheism, being oriented toward macho male narcissists in the first place, tends heavily toward misogyny. And that is acknowledged up front by this author. So the Atheist Rad Fems will remain at odds with Atheists in general, it appears.

Is It Imperative to Trust Scientists?

Regarding the charge that it is ignorant of Americans not to trust scientists, I reprint a portion of a comment made earlier by Robert Coble which goes straight to the heart of that issue:

"Consider the impending extinction of the polar bears...

Here's a link to an article claiming that the polar bear population is actually - unknown.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/05/scientist_confesses_he_made_up_polar_bear_population_estimates.html

Here's the "money quote" from an impending report. It will be buried as a footnote, apparently.

Here is the statement that the PBSG proposes to insert as a footnote in their forthcoming Circumpolar Polar Bear Action Plan draft:

“As part of past status reports, the PBSG [Polar Bear Specialist Group; thank goodness it was NOT the Polar Bear Scientismist Group!] has traditionally estimated a range for the total number of polar bears in the circumpolar Arctic. Since 2005, this range has been 20-25,000. It is important to realize that this range never has been an estimate of total abundance in a scientific sense, but simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand. It is also important to note that even though we have scientifically valid estimates for a majority of the subpopulations, some are dated. Furthermore, there are no abundance estimates for the Arctic Basin, East Greenland, and the Russian subpopulations. Consequently, there is either no, or only rudimentary, knowledge to support guesses about the possible abundance of polar bears in approximately half the areas they occupy. Thus, the range given for total global population should be viewed with great caution as it cannot be used to assess population trend over the long term.”

Yet, with nary a public peep from the PBSG, the "global climate change" alarmists have been using the rapid decline in polar bear populations to support their contention that we are teetering on the brink of a global disaster, requiring the immediate assumption of global autocratic power (of course, by those supporting global climate change) in order to "save" the endangered polar bears."

The climate issue has been fraught with intellectual malpractice and fraud from the start. It would be intellectually irresponsible to believe anything emanating from this segment of "science" until the data from the earth itself can be compared with the data from the computer models (failing in preliminary results). Further, science which has social progressive overtones must always be kept at abeyance until all the data, from all actual results (not computer programs) are finalized and thoroughly checked (independently) for accuracy. That is how science earns the credit of being "objective", not by demanding wealth transfer based on computer programs.

Science has limitations; scientists are humans with limitations and possibly, agendas. To demand that they be trusted is to elevate them to the status of secular sainthood, within the religion of Scientism.

Leftist Education in the USA Has Achieved Its Goals

Headline:

The Results Are In: America Is Dumb and on the Road to Getting Dumber

"America remains a scientifically ignorant nation for two reasons: the resurgence of fundamentalist religion during the past 40 years, and secondly, the low level of science education in American elementary and secondary schools, as well as many tertiary colleges.

While television ratings for Cosmos may have stunned media critics and your average fundamentalist, “Americans continue to poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth.”

This week, Gallup released a poll showing 42 percent of Americans still believe God created human beings in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. Last week, the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire published a study showing only 28 percent of Tea Party Republicans trust scientists.

It gets worse. More than two-thirds of Americans, according to surveys conducted for the National Science Foundation, are unable to identify DNA as the key to heredity. Nine out of 10 don’t understand radiation and what it can do the human body, while one in five adult Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth.

A 2008 University of Texas study found that 25 percent of public school biology teachers believe that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth simultaneously.

“This level of scientific illiteracy provides fertile soil for political appeals based on sheer ignorance,” writes Susan Jacoby in The Age of American Unreason. "

First, allowing the government schools to "educate" your children is a form of child-abuse, unless you get involved heavily to take up the slack and correct the errors. Second, the likes of Jacoby are also maleducated in the basics of scientific limitations and boundaries to knowledge, which makes for a religion of secularist Scientism and Atheism being taught in government schools. Parental involvement is the only solution... But we are several generations into the maleducation of Americans, so parents might no longer have the ability to guide their children intellectually. What to do?

There comes a time in every social history to throw off the onerous power of totalitarians in charge. Sometimes it is peacefully done, sometimes violence is necessary. We are at the cusp, the threshold, of losing the opportunity for peaceful retrieval of civil liberties and truthful education for literate and fully aware citizens.

Noam Chomsky

I rarely agree with Chomsky - or rather he rarely agrees with me. But he now, finally, sees the light regarding the Leftist totalitarian in the White House. Says Chomsky:

"As the colossus fulfills its visions, in principle every keystroke might be sent to President Obama's huge and expanding databases in Utah.

In other ways too, the constitutional lawyer in the White House seems determined to demolish the foundations of our civil liberties. The principle of the presumption of innocence, which dates back to Magna Carta 800 years ago, has long been dismissed to oblivion."

It's a little late for Chomsky to be coming aboard, but, welcome anyway, Noam. Some of the old Leftist proponents of civil liberty can catch on, albeit quite late in the game.

It's a MAD world

Climate Change: Following the Money at the Pentagon

Headline:

Pentagon wrestles with bogus climate warnings as funds shifted to green agenda

"Ten years ago, the Pentagon paid for a climate study that put forth many scary scenarios.

Consultants told the military that, by now, California would be flooded by inland seas, The Hague would be unlivable, polar ice would be mostly gone in summer, and global temperatures would rise at an accelerated rate as high as 0.5 degrees a year.

None of that has happened.

Yet the 2003 report, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” is credited with kick-starting the movement that, to this day and perhaps with more vigor than ever, links climate change to national security.

The report also became gospel to climate change doomsayers, who predicted pervasive and more intense hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts.

“The release of this report is what likely sparked the ‘modern era’ of security interest in climate affairs,” said Jeff Kueter, president of the George C. Marshall Institute, a nonprofit that examines scientific issues that affect public policy.

“It was widely publicized and very much a tool of the political battles over climate raging at the time,” said Mr. Kueter, who sees as “tenuous” a link between U.S. security and climate change.

Doug Randall, who co-authored the Pentagon report, said,

“Even I’m surprised at how often it’s referred to.

“I think it did have an impact, for sure, in getting people talking and seeing the connection, which at that time was harder for some people than it is today,”

said Mr. Randall, who heads the consulting firm Monitor 360.

Some critics say such alarmist reports are causing the Pentagon to shift money that could be used for weapons and readiness. It is making big investments in biofuels, for example, and is working climate change into high-level strategic planning.

There is no exact budget line for climate change. The Government Accountability Office in 2011 documented a big increase in federal spending, from $4.6 billion in 2003 to nearly $9 billion in 2010.

Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Armed Services, has been the chief congressional critic of the Pentagon’s financial commitment to climate change. He said biofuel projects should be left to the Energy Department.

“The president’s misguided priorities with our national security can be seen in the $1 trillion defense cuts he has put into motion since taking office and then using the limited defense budget to support his green agenda,” Mr. Inhofe said in a statement to The Washington Times. “His green spending in the defense budget is based on the belief that climate change is the ‘new weapon of mass destruction.’ In the meantime the president has loosened sanctions on Iran, [which] has maintained their resources to develop and launch a nuclear weapon — the real weapon of mass destruction.”