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Friday, March 15, 2024

Matt Walsh and "GamerGate 2.0"

You, Gentle Reader, may not have heard of the current outrage among "Gamers" directed at Matt Walsh over his recent video remarks (at Daily Wire) concerning "GamerGate 2.0" For that matter, you almost certainly never heard of "GamerGate 1.0", which was about 10 years ago.

Here is my take on the outrage of the "Gamers" --
1) They are reacting like spoiled children throwing a tantrum, even though many of them (possibly even a majority) are in their 30s and 40s;
2) They are acting like "toxic" women, in that they didn't *listen* to what he said, and, to the limited extent that they are saying anything of more substance than "How dare you criticize how I waste my time!", they are not addressing what he said;
3) Most of their "offense" at what Walsh did (or did not) say is aimed at Walsh's Catholicism and/or his "religious conservatism". Which is to say, at root this "outrage" is anti-Christian and thus anti-Western Civilization;
3a) It isn't really the Wokies (*) who are turning our western societies into shit; rather, it is "normal people" who want to have it both ways -- among which are the majority of these ranting "Gamers" -- they want to have "just a little bit of sin, just the fun parts", while denying that any of the individual and social consequences of that sin matter; the most important consequence being that it is impossible to limit winking at sin to "just a little bit".

(*) "GamerGate 2.0", as with "GamerGate 1.0" ten years ago, is about the gratuitous "wokeness" being injected into "games"

Here is the Matt Walsh video which has the panties of the "Gamers" in a wad -- "The Dark Side To The Video Game Industry"

EDIT: On the bright side, there are claims that a lot of "Gamers" are cancelling their subscriptions to Daily Wire. Wouldn't it be great for DW to go bankrupt and for Matt Walsh to get his balls back?

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Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Comes the Word, Comes the Day

Comment by nihilist2christian:"Some day we are going to look back on this time and these practices the same way we view lobotomy, and those practising it in the same way we see people like Josef Mengele."


The arrival of that day requires, at a minimum, that sane people *refuse* to cooperate with their false language. Non-exhaustively, and in no particular order:

  1. NEVER use ‘gender’ to refer to ‘sex’; people do not come in ‘genders’, we come in sexes, and there are precisely two sexes;
  2. Refuse to use their made-up pseudo-pronouns;
  3. Refuse to use “she/her” to refer to a male, or “he/him” to refer to a female;
  4. Refuse to use the made-up words “transman” and “transwoman” and “transkids” and the demeaning and dehumanizing prefix “cis-“. The "cis-" prefix is especially grotesque, as its purpose is to trick you into mentally (and metaphysically) re-defining the true and normal in terms of the false and abnormal;
  5. Train yourself to stop saying “they/them” when you are referring to one person;
  6. Train yourself to stop saying “biological male” and “biological female” — there are no other kinds. So, using that qualifier is already to bow to the leftists' false language.  In a situation in which you want to make it undeniable that you are distinguishing *real* men and women from the fake, use words like "real", "actual" and "fake", "pretend".

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Saturday, March 2, 2024

False Dichotomy: Pelagianism or Calvinism

 Below is my response (with a minor edit or two) to an internet friend's recent blog post: You Are Saved By Your Works


"You Are Saved By Your Works  ... because you're the only variable in the equation."

 The heresy expressed here is call 'Pelagianism'.  While The One True Bureaucracy has *officially* condemned this belief as heresy since the 5th century, it *also* inculcates the heresy in its adherents, even to this day.  If it helps to ease your mind, there are also some so-called Protestants who are actually Pelagians, such as the 'Holiness Movement'.


 "I've never understood the position some Christians take that you can do nothing on your own and you cannot be saved by your own actions. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it, but as far as I can tell, when it comes to salvation, there are only two actors: you and God. Since He is constant and His Universe is a given for all people everywhere, the only variable is you, your decisions and your actions.

If we aren't saved by our own actions, then what was the point of free will?"

 Does this help? -- You are reasoning from a dichotomy, false as it turns out, between Pelagianism, on the one hand, and “ultra Calvinism”, on the other.

 The Pelagian position is that one can become righteous-unto-salvation by one’s own works.  Or, put another way, that Christ’s death and resurrection is superfluous to one’s salvation; that if one has made oneself “good enough”, then God *owes* one a spot in Heaven, as it were.

The “ultra Calvinist” position is that human nature is so enslaved to sin that not a one of us can even so much as *regret* that we sin, much less repent of it; and thus that only those few in whom God works some mysterious change-of-nature which over-rides Original Sin can ever repent and be saved.

And, by the way, IF you were to look into the *reasoning* presented to justify the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, you will find that that reasoning is just “ultra Calvinism”, but applied to a single individual only … despite that The One True Bureaucracy *officially* condemns Calvinism as heresy.


The *Biblical* position is that *all* our righteousness is as filthy (menstrual) rags compared to the perfect (i.e. total/complete) righteousness of God.  That is, no matter *how* “good” we are, we can never be “good enough” to escape Sin/Death (Understand, that sin *is* capital-D Death).


The *Biblical* position is that *no one* is good, but only God.  Jesus himself asserts this.


The *Biblical* position is that the only contribution we make to our own salvation is to stop fighting/rebelling against God.  Or, to put it another way, it’s not so much that repentance of our sin causes or leads to our salvation, but rather that repentance of our sin allows the sin to be tossed into Hell without dragging us with it.  Sin is Death, and those who do not repent of their sin clutch their own Death to their breast as being more precious to them than Life Himself.  To truly repent of one’s sin is to stop refusing to be saved from Death.

Accepting a freely-given gift is not even on the same plane as earning a reward, much less on the same axis. 

 

The *Biblical* position is that “good works” are the result of salvation, not its cause.

 

If we aren't saved by our own actions, then what was the point of free will?" 

The point of free-will is that you are free to open your hands, thereby letting go the Death which you have been heretofore tightly grasping to your breast, so that you are free to receive the Life which has always been there for you to receive.

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ADDENDUM: We are not saved by our own works any more than we are damned by our works.  You see, from our origin, we are already damned, we are already carriers of the infection of sin and dearth, we are already dying and headed for Death -- this is merely what the doctrine of Original Sin means.  Much as people misunderstand what 'Immaculate Conception' (which is false) refers to, most people also misunderstand what 'Original Sin' (which is true) refers to.

Think of it this way: We are not sinners because we commit sins; rather, we commit sins because we are sinners.

 



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Not everything that matters can be counted. And not everything that can be counted matters.

 My short response to scientism (i.e. the "I f-ing love science!" variant of atheism) --


How many microangelos are in The Pieta or a just-blossomed rose?

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Friday, March 1, 2024

The Charitable-Industrial Complex

 According to the linked page, concerning the MS Society for 2022, the top three officers "earned" --

1) $473,993 compensation + $33,351 other
2) $331,191 compensation + $34,536 other
3) $325,645 compensation + $50,221 other

These, and other similarly "compensated" persons, are those who set the leftist/commie policies by which the organization tossed overboard a 90-year-old woman who had been a volunteer for 60 years ... because she didn't understand Current Year's Pronoun Madness.

One will find similar results for most "charities" -- the Charitable-Industrial Complex is a scam.

ProPublica: National Multiple Sclerosis Society

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Friday, February 23, 2024

Anyone Can Weaponize Feminism to Use Against Women

 In the YouTube video linked below, Tim Pool discusses an article by a (female) journalist in which she describes how she was scammed -- blatantly, obviously scammed -- out of $50,000.  

Here are my thoughts --

1) Feminism is -- and always has been -- primarily a tool to convince women to voluntarily offer themselves up as prey to sexually perverted men.  You will have noticed by now that feminists almost always act as political body-guards for the sort of powerful men who do prey upon women; to the point that in Current Year, the vast majority of feminists pretend to be unable to state what the word 'woman' even means ... even as they shriek that killing babies is the most important of "women's rights";

1a) And, as a necessary step toward that end, to convince women to see the men who do have their own best interest at heart -- their fathers, brothers and husbands -- as "the enemy";

1b) And this mindset -- that the men who actually know and love one are not to be trusted -- opens the door to just the sort of scam to which this woman fell prey.

2) This particular woman was successfully scammed in this particular way due to her commitment to feminism: 

2a) Her feminism demanded that she "girl boss" the situation, that she deal the understandable panic induced by this perceived threat all by herself, without turning to or informing to her husband of the call and of the perceived threat;

2b) Thus, she said nothing to her husband about the threatening phone call, and even actively hid from him what she was doing in response to it.

3) Had this been a *man* who had fallen for such an obvious scam and had thereby thrown away $50,000 of the family's savings, you *know* that everyone would be telling the wife to dump him, and more than likely she would have done so even before such "advice" had started rolling in.  This mindset of endless excuses for any woman's failings coupled with no forgiveness whatsoever for any man's failings *also* follows from feminism.

Tim Pool: "Journalist MOCKED For LOSING $50k To A SCAM, HILARIOUS Article Show Journalists ARE NOT SMART People"


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Thursday, February 22, 2024

99.7% of Agenda-Driven Statistics Are Bogus

 From the linked item at Don Surber's substack -- 
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ITEM 4: The LA Times reported, “It was a decade ago when California became the first state in the nation to ban single-use plastic bags, ushering in a wave of anti-plastic legislation from coast to coast.

The story also said, “According to a report by the consumer advocacy group CALPIRG, 157,385 tons of plastic bag waste was discarded in California the year the law was passed. By 2022, however, the tonnage of discarded plastic bags had skyrocketed to 231,072 — a 47% jump. Even accounting for an increase in population, the number rose from 4.08 tons per 1,000 people in 2014 to 5.89 tons per 1,000 people in 2022."

That works out to 11 pounds of plastic bags per person. 200 single-use grocery bags weigh 240 grams — a little more than half a pound. That means the average Californian goes through 4,157 grocery bags a year.

No wonder Californians are weird. They are addicted to grocery bags.
========

Do you *really* believe that even Californians go through 4,157 single-use grocery bags per person per year and/or the equivalent weight in reusable plastic grocery bags (which is where the "environmentalist" claim is headed)?  Is it *really* credible that this "statistic" is even remotely on the same planet as the truth?  Of course not!

Note: Don Surber calculated from "11 pounds of plastic bags per person".  But 5.89 tons per 1000 people is actually 11.78 pounds per person, which, according to the weight per bag that Don Surber used, works out to the weight equivalent of 4453 single-use plastic bags per person in 2022.

Here is the calculation -- 11.78 pounds * 453.592 (i.e. conversion factor) = 5343.31376 grams total weight;  5343.31376 grams / 240 (i.e. the weight of 200 bags) = 22.263807333... "bundles" of 200 bags;  22.263807333... "bundles" of 200 bags * 200 bags = 4452.7614666... individual bags.

Don Surber's link/claim is that a typical single-use plastic grocery bag weighs 1.2 grams (at the link he used, I did't see a weight given for those 200 bags).  Other claims I found on the internet are that a typical single-use plastic grocery bag weighs 5-10 grams.  

So, just to make the math easier -- and to give all the benefit of the doubt to the "consumer advocacy group" -- let us say that the average single-use plastic grocery bag weighs 12 grams, that is 10 times the weight which Don Surber had used in his calculation; or, in other words, that roughly 38 typical single-use plastic grocery bags weighs a pound.  By that (obviously inflated) weight, the claim of the "consumer advocacy group" *still* works out to the assertion that Californians use the equivalent of 445 single-use plastic grocery bags per person per year.  Is even that number credible?  Is that number credible even given your own personal experience that you yourself end up with more "single-use" plastic grocery bags than you are able to re-use as waste-basket liners and trash-bags, etc?

But, suppose you had only the LA Tines' "reporting" and the "consumer advocacy group" assertions to go by, rather than a per-person break-down of the "statistics" -- you'd almost certainly have said, "Wow!" and believed all the assertions being made, and thus fallen for the agenda being pushed.

Engrave this on your heart as The First Law of Advocacy: Alleged statistics involving very large or very small numbers, made to advance an agenda, are almost always lies; especially when those very large or very small numbers are not put into some relatable context.


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Here is another advocacy "statistic" that you have almost certainly encountered: "Every year in the US, 800,000 children 'go missing'" ... with "go missing" left undefined, but implying abducted and not recovered.

But, think about this assertion.

According to the CDC's "Births and Natality" page linked below, there were 3,664,292 births in the US in 2021.  Taking that number as a yearly average of births over the past 18 years (even though it isn't) would give us a total of  65,957,356 children having been born in the US over the last 18 years.  

Now, the advocacy assertion is that *every year in the US alone*, 800,000 children "go missing" -- that is, that during the past 18 years, a total of 14,400,000 children have "gone missing".  In other words, the assertion is that 21.832% of *all* children born in the US over the past 18 years have "gone missing".

Is that *really* credible?  Do you *really* believe that mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, brothers and sisters would not have *noticed* that nearly 22% of their grandchildren, children, and siblings have "gone missing"?


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Wednesday, February 21, 2024

It Could Be Heaven Or It Could Be Hell

 This is a comment I posted to a resurrected thread (link below) at the 'Shadow To Light' blog --


TFBW (from 2020/01/18): "For the sake of argument, let me concede the point that God could make his omniscience, omnipotence, infinity, eternal nature, holiness, and other divine characteristics fully apparent to you in such a way that they would all be immediately recognisable for what they are. What makes you think that this would be a survivable experience? We humans get traumatised by fairly trivial events when considered at the cosmic scale. What makes you think you could survive a raw, unfiltered glimpse of God in his glory?"


One of the sillier complaints/condemnations which the common internet 'atheist' likes to level at Christianity is that it is "immoral" that Christ says that those who reject him will be eternally damned, that they will "go to Hell" (as people commonly phrase it).  Why, just two days ago in this revived thread, "Yurek H" makes an intellectually dishonest variation on the theme: "You would think a narcissistic being who demands worship and subservience would have no problem with doing something that would bring attention to it."

So, what we see is that the common internet 'atheist' demands to be welcomed to "go to Heaven" (as people commonly phrase it), despite their own despite for the King of Heaven and their own refusal to let go their own unrighteousness, which they clutch to their breast as being dearer than life itself.

But, what does it mean to "go to Heaven"?  Well, at a minimum, it means to live/exist in the direct presence of God: it means to see him face to face, as it were; to experience his infinite righteousness "full strength", without the mediating distraction of the material world.  For the unrighteous soul, for he who clutches his sin to his breast as more dear than life, for he whose sin *is* his identity, will not "being in Heaven" be experienced as "being in Hell"?  Will it not be easier for a mortal man to walk on the "surface" of the Sun than for a God-hater to directly behold the full righteousness of God?

To paraphrase C S Lewis: "The Redeemed shall say, 'I have always been in Heaven.' But, the Damned shall say, 'I have always been in Hell.'"


Shadow To Light: How to Defeat Modern Day Atheism With Three Easy Questions


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Sunday, February 11, 2024

Leftist Hatred For "Blond Blue-Eyed Jesus" Is Just Hatred For Jesus ... And For White People

Leftists *hate* Jesus.  And, while they do indeed hate white people, they hate Jesus far more.  Though they do sometimes find it useful to their goal of enslaving everyone else to engage in "God talk".

One of the ways leftists love to express their hatred of Jesus, and of white people, is to mock the "Blond Blue-Eyed Jesus" whom Europeans have allegedly foist upon the world, along with pretending that we Christians of European cultural descent are not fully aware that Jesus was a Jew, of deep Jewish ancestry, and that he would have looked like a 1st Century Jew.  That is to say, he would have looked like a person of broadly Mediterranean ancestry, rather like a modern Greek or Syrian, not like a person of northern European ancestry.  In the linked clip, the lying leftist Sonny Hostin even trots out the perennial leftist lie that "... and most people don't know that."

In this clip (from about the 1:20 mark), when the lying leftist Sonny Hostin says that at her "black Catholic" church, "Jesus is brown", what do you think the odds are that in that church, Jesus is depicted as a Negro? And further, what do you think the odds are that this depiction is for leftist political reasons, rather than for organic cultural reasons?

The nation of Ethiopia -- a nation of black people, in Africa -- have been Christian for 1700 years or more (And for a good 1000 years of that time, they were forcibly isolated from the rest of Christianity by the Moslem incursions and conquests). When Ethiopians depict Jesus, or any other Biblical character, they depict them as Ethiopians.  Are they wrong to do so? Are they vile racists to do so?  Are they foisting a lie upon the world when they to do so? Of course not!

Will the vile harridans of 'The View' attack the Ethiopians for their "lying" depiction of Jesus as an Ethiopian, rather than as a 1st Century Middle-Eastern Jew? Of course not!

Some years ago, I saw an image of a painting from China, depicting the Holy Family's flight into Egypt. It was a thoroughly Chinese painting; not only the landscape depicted in the traditional Chinese style, but also the Holy Family depicted as Chinese persons.  Was that artist wrong to do so? Was he a vile racist to do so?  Was he foisting a lie upon the world when he did so? Of course not!

Will the vile, hypocritical harridans of 'The View' attack Chinese persons for their "lying" depiction of Jesus as an Chinese man, rather than as a 1st Century Middle-Eastern Jew? Of course not!  

There are cultural and historical reasons (specifically, centuries-long Moslem piratical depredation on the Mediterranean Sea which isolated Northern and Western European Christians from other Christians and from the world at large) that persons of European cultures depict Jesus in a manner derived from European cultures, just as there are cultural and historical reasons that persons of Ethiopian culture depict Jesus in a manner derived from Ethiopian culture, and Chinese likewise.  And there is nothing wrong with this!

Jesus has not only the title, "Son of God", but also the title "Son of Man".  As "Son of God", he is the God and savior of *all* men. As "Son of Man", he is a man of men, he is the representative of *all* men. *All* men are invited to come to Christ and to find their fulfillment and completion as men in him, and their salvation in him.

What Do You Meme??: "They Tried to Trap Him on Jesus (Instantly Backfires!)"


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Saturday, February 10, 2024

The Problem of Too Many "Elites"

One major reason that we have so many "Champaign socialists" in our society has to do with the present-day overproduction of elite wannabes due to the manner of the restructuring of "higher education" following WWII.

Not everyone born into the "elite class", as the discussed Hasan Piker was, is competent enough on his own merits to maintain the status to which he was born, nor as is even more difficult, to rise in status.  This also applies to the vast majority of "educated" persons presently churned out by "higher education".

In a capitalistic society, such as ours, the best way to rise in status, much less to achieve or maintain "elite" status, is to serve one's fellow man: supply a good or service that other persons are willing freely to purchase from you, and you have it made.

But, the most common moral flaw in human beings is the desire to be served by others, rather than to serve others.  This immoral and perverted desire to live off the sweat of another man's brow is the root of slavery ... and of slavery's current manifestation: socialism.

Socialists are *always* either the more incompetent children of the existing elites or the more incompetent of the uplifted wannabe elites. Since such persons are not competent enough to achieve or maintain truly elite status by their own efforts, they embrace socialism as a means to attempt to cynically use the "proles", whom they despise, as a tool to supplant the competent elites, against whom they cannot directly compete.

The Quartering: "Hasan Piker BUSTED & Has MELTDOWN! Fake Twitch Socialist Grew Up SUPER RICH & His Fans BLAST HIM"


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