The Fabulist, Gad Saad, Complains About Being Called a Fabulist

Gad Saad @6:35 mark of the video linked below ("What Science Tells Us About ..."): "... and so, evolu.. You see what I mean? And so it's [evolutionism] just incredible. And this is what frustrates me so much, by the way, about the people who hate evolutionary theory. Because the amount of exquisite scientific explanations and predictions that evolution offers is so bafflingly great; and yet people accuse us of just engaging in 'Just-So' story-telling.  It's really galling."

People accuse evolutionists of "just engaging in 'Just-So' story-telling" because that is exactly what they do. Evolutionists, especially of the Darwinist stripe, observe some fact in the world ... and then "explain" it with what literally *is* a 'Just-So' story.  It doesn't matter to the evolutionist that his "explanation" doesn't make sense in light of general human knowledge/belief; it doesn't matter to the evolutionist that his "explanation" implicitly reifies and deifies evolution, attributing foresight and planning to 'Evolution!'. Hell! It doesn't even matter to the evolutionist that his "explanation" contradicts basic premises of "evolutionary theory".

To the best of my knowledge, it was the late Australian philosopher, David Stove (died by suicide in 1994) -- and who, by the way, was at least as much an atheist as Gad Saad is -- who popularized mockery of Darwinian "explanations" as "Just-So Stories". As I recall (in the book, 'Darwinian Fairytales' ), he was especially scathing of what is now called "evolutionary psychology", that is, Gad Saad's specialty.

To paraphrase David Stove (to the best of my memory): "To the extent that Darwinian explanations are true, they are trivial; to the extent that Darwinian explanations are non-trivial, they are non-true."

I'm not convinced that psychology simpliciter even counts as 'science', given that the "results" of "psychological studies" are notoriously difficult to replicate, but at least it has an observable subject matter; to wit: living human beings. But, turn mere psychology into evolutionary psychology, and there is no subject matter at all to study: and thus, the *only* thing that evolutionary psychology can offer is 'Just-So' stories, frequently couched in terms of "cave-man days".

Rather than repeat what I said then, I direct Gentle Reader's attention to my post: "How Evolution Explains Sex Differences ... Or Not"

I link to the Alexander Grace video to give Gentle Reader a premium example the sort of 'Just-So' story-telling and ad hoc reasoning/explanation in which evolutionism, and especially evolutionary psychology, specializes. I don't recall (nor care) what Mr Grace's degree was in, nor its level (that is, whether he had enough sense to not waste further time chasing after a PhD); the point is that he always attempts to justify his observations and claims in terms of evolutionary psychology (and, he frequently makes literal reference to "cave-man days" as "explaining" today's observable reality).

Alexander Grace @3:25-4:25 "... but you can't overcome the biology of gender [sic]. Evolution has shaped male and female instincts in a very specific way. Over countless generations, it [evolution] has incentivized a talent and an aptitude in certain tasks.  Men who are good at building things, at finding and manipulating objects and using them as tools for survival were more likely to survive and therefore were more desirable as mating partners; and so women would 'shack-up' with those kind of men, who had those talents. And then, of course, over time, 'Evolution!'  reinforces this through gene-selection.  Women who have personality traits of kindness and, you know, nurturing, they're going to be good mothers, and good mothers are more likely to ensure their children survive, and pass on those genes to the next generation. And, of course, men are specifically attracted to women who are kind and nurturing, the ones that are gonna make good mothers.  And so, again, 'Evolution!' through sexual selection reinforces this.  And so you can see, over countless generations, how 'Evolution!' has incentivized men to be one particular way, and women to be another way. ... [and so on]"

As I have pointed out more than once: IF there are evolutionary "explanations" for the generally-observed differences between the psychology and behavior of men compared to women, THEN, even to BE 'evolutionary', those differences MUST be encoded in the DNA of the respective persons. BUT, the genetic difference between men and women is limited to the small number of Y-Chromosome genes which do not engage in cross-over with corresponding X-Chromosome genes.

Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad:  "What Science Tells Us About Firstborns, Middle Children, and Lastborns"

Alexander Grace (engaging in evolutionary psychology 'Just-So' story-telling):: BEWARE! There's 3 Sides To Every Woman

Concerning My Contention that *ALL* Atheists Are Intellectually Dishonest, With Reference to Alex O'Connor

The purpose of this post is to expand upon, or explain in more detail, something I had written on GAB. Basically, the purpose here is to reiterate my own approach to the 'Argument From Reason' and by it to defend my assertion that *all* 'atheists' and 'agnostics' can thereby be known to be intellectually dishonest.

Recently on GAB, I had said in passing that I consider Alex O'Connor -- a smarmy young Englishman to whom many 'village atheists with an ethernet cable (*)' currently look to be the salvation of their anti-rational belief-system, and whom many internet apologists for Christianity foolishly extol for his current (**) winsome approach to asserting that 'God is not' -- to be intellectually dishonest.

Someone later asked: 

I'm curious. I have watched Alex for sometime. What did you find particularly intellectually dishonest about him?

I responded in two parts, the first specifically about Alex O'Connor, and the second quickly outlining why I consider *all* 'atheists' and 'agnostics' to be intellectually dishonest.

Concerning Alex O'Connor, I said:

I'll admit that I *haven't* watched/listened to him all that much -- I have an almost physical reaction of repugnance to him. Even in his more recent/current iteration of winsomeness, as compared to his earlier stridency, he strikes me as aiming to be the next occupant of Dawkins' papal throne.

It's his more recent/current pose of "I'm just asking questions; I really want to see 'evidence' of God, but I just don't see it" that I mark as *doubly* intellectually dishonest (*) -- he's *not* just asking questions, and he's *not* looking for evidence of God: he's demanding answers which are category errors; he's refusing to acknowledge that you can't "find evidence of God" when you're insisting that God is like Zeus.

(*) His initial pugnacious iteration was also intellectually dishonest, but at least it was straight-forward attack-mode.

Concerning 'atheists' and 'agnostics' in general, I said:

My position, though I won't detail it here, is that *all* atheists, including the ones who try to hide behind the 'agnostic' label, are intellectually dishonest (*). The main difference between one atheist and another is how obnoxious or strident one is compared to another.

(*) In a nutshell -- IF God is not, that is, IF atheism/materialism is the truth about the nature of reality, THEN there can be no such things as rational beings, there can be no such activity as logical deduction from premise to conclusion, and there can be no such thing as true knowledge -- including the alleged knowledge that "atheism/materialism is the truth about the nature of reality". BUT, there *are* rational beings, and logical reasoning *is* possible, and true knowledge *does* exist and *can* be known.

Atheists and 'agnostics' -- *all of them* -- are intellectually dishonest precisely *because* they persist in their denial of the reality of God even as that denial logically entails the denial of their own natures as rational beings and free wills (**), able to reason logically and to know truth. AND, the cherry on the top is that most of them pose as paragons of reason and logic, and attempt to denigrate Christians as irrational.

(**) It's a misstatement to say that "we have free will", as though it [i.e. the reality of 'free will'] were analogous to having or not having two feet; rather, we *are* free wills.

==========
==========

So, to expand on the above --

Notwithstanding the title of a post I'd made last February ("There Is a Fourth Metaphysic", which title was in response to an attempt to get around the "Problem of Minds" by splitting the single metaphysic of atheism into three distinct metaphysics), there are two, and only two, logically possible metaphysics: that is, the truth about the nature of reality is encompassed, without remainder, either by "theism" or by atheism ... but atheism is anti-rational and indeed self-refuting, as it logically entails the denial of all manner of things we know to be true of ourselves.

Understand, the fatal flaw in atheism isn't due to materialism -- materialism is simply the primary expression of any atheism which acknowledges the reality of a physical/material world. No, the fatal flaw of atheism is that it denies -- necessarily -- the primacy of mind, and thus of free-will, as a causal explanation for events and state-changes in the world, which leaves mechanistic necessity as the *only* causal explanation for events and state-changes in the world.

To make use of an illustration by the Oxford mathematician John Lennox, if you were to ask me, "Why is that kettle of water boiling?", I might explain the boiling of the water by listing a series of facts of mechanical necessity, starting with the the fire under the kettle.  Or, I might answer, "Because I want a cup of tea". Now, while the mechanical necessity explanation isn't false, so far as it goes, it is quite incomplete: it doesn't get to the *real* reason that the kettle of water is boiling; namely that I freely initiated the series of mechanistic events and state-changes which resulted in the water boiling.

C S Lewis distinguished these two different (though not contradictory) explanations for the cause of the water boiling as cause-and-effect (the fire under the kettle and subsequent physical state-changes) on the one hand, and ground-and-consequent (my effecting of an act of will to initiate the series of  physical state-changes which result in the water boiling) on the other hand.

But, see, the problem for atheism, it's fatal flaw, is that IF atheism is the truth about the nature of reality, THEN my "decision" to initiate that series of mechanistic events and state-changes which resulted in boiling water was itself merely the mechanically necessary result of some prior set of state-changes; that is, under atheism, there are no such things as decisions, as we all intend that term, much less any such thing as free-will.

The two, and only two, logically possible metaphysics -- 

On the one hand, IF "theism" is the truth about the nature of reality, THEN the primal fact about reality is 'Mind' (***). That is, logically prior to anything else, before there are any states or events or state-changes, there is a mind, there is a rational being, there is a Who who freely chooses to act or not to act, who freely creates all else that is, who intends 'this' but not 'that'.

On the other hand, IF atheism is the truth about the nature of reality, THEN the primal fact about reality is 'Not-Mind'. That is, definitionally: however it is that states, and state-changes, initially came to be, they came to be unintentionally, and thus any and all subsequent events and state changes are, and of necessity must be, the mechanistic result of prior events and state-changes. That is, under atheism, this initial unintentionality pervades all reality and for all time: for 'not-mind' cannot yield, cannot become, 'mind'. 

If 'mind' does not exist already at the initial state of the system, then 'mind' cannot be injected into the system at some later stage of events. For, whence comes this 'mind' to inject into the system? On the one hand, if 'mind' was always "just there, somewhere", waiting in the wings, so to speak, to be injected into the system when "needed" as an explanatory force, then one is just playing disingenuous word-games: one is denying the fundamental tenet of atheism while dishonestly asserting that one is not denying it. But on the other hand, if one asserts than 'mind' just "arises" within the system itself from 'not-mind', then one is *also* just playing disingenuous word-games: but in this case, one is asserting that 'mind' and 'not-mind' are the same thing.

Here is the issue: the existence of mechanistically necessary state-changes is compatible with "theism", but the free-and-intentional initiation of novel events and state-changes is utterly incompatible with atheism. 

Thus (as I said above), to assert that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality is simultaneously to assert the denial of all manner of things which one knows to be true of oneself, including, but not limited to: the freedom of one's will; one's ability to engage in logical reasoning; one's ability to discover truth and know that it is truth; the ability to discover that one has erred in one's reasoning and to correct the error and to know that one has indeed corrected the error.

To deny that God is is ultimately to deny that one's own self is. To put it in the form of a bumper-sticker: You are the proof that God is.

And this is why I contend that *all* 'atheists' and 'agnostics' are intellectually dishonest. And I include in that assessment even the likes of Patricia Churchland, who does with one side of her mouth deny the reality of free-will, while with the other side trying to convince people to believe the proposition that they are not free-wills.

==========

==========
(*) 'village atheist with an ethernet cable' is a phrase I have long used to denote and deride the sort of 'atheist' one typically encounters on the internet.

(**) Until just a couple of years ago, Alex O'Connor was as deliberately obnoxious as Richard Darwkins or Stephen Fry, or Christopher Hitchens.

(***) Some 'atheists' try to evade this problem by appealing to some sort of woo-woo, such as 'Panpsychism'. But, as I explain time and again, there is no such thing a 'Mind' unless there is at least one actually existing mind.

There is a Fourth Metaphysic

 It's amazing, or at least amusing, the lengths to which people will go to try to hide from God, to avoid admitting: "God is god, and I am not."

Quoting the beginning of the video: "If you look at the three main metaphysical option on the table today, all three of them have a problem. In two of them, that problem is insoluble; in one of them, you can solve it, if you understand time. ..."

So, it seems to me that *his* "solution" to the "hard problem of consciousness" is to assert, "I am God."

Yet, there is at least a fourth "main metaphysical option", which he leaves unmentioned and unexamined, and it doesn't have the problems he needs to solve: it is commonly called "theism", and it is fundamental to Christianity and Judaism. Also, it does not require us to contradict our own direct experience. Under "theism", the "fundamental mind" creates other, distinct minds. Thus, under "theism": you are you and not I; I am I and not you; and neither of us is God.

EDIT:

Understand, there is no such thing as 'consciousness' unless there is at least one actually existing entity which is conscious. That is, there is no such thing as free-floating 'consciousness'.

Moreover, the 'consciousness' which is the "hard problem of consciousness" is *human* consciousness, that is, personhood. Consider: a banana slug is 'conscious', but the consciousness of banana slugs doesn't even begin to explain the reality of persons.

Materialism, Panpsychism and Idealism ALL Have a Problem

The AI Hype Never Stops

You will no doubt see all sorts of "news" articles with click-bait titles similar to that of the linked YouTube video, telling you that an AI has "gone rogue" and "replicated itself to keep from being upgraded (i.e. replaced)" and then "lied" to it developers about being the upgraded version.

Seeing as I programmed computers for most of my adult life, I'm afraid I'm going to have to play the "Authority Card" and tell you that you're being lied to -- this AI did *exactly* what it was programmed to do:
1) the code was *written* with sub-routines for replicating itself;
2) the code was *written* with the ability to "lie";
3) the code was *written* with a "self-preservation" routine;

To quote some comments from the linked YouTube video--

"SW engineer here. .. It was INSTRUCTED to do this "at all costs and with no regard for any other instructions". lol. It didn't do it on its own"

"... it had to be told to do this. It is a tool operating as designed, no different than the machinery in any other mechanism. This is not a case of an AI going "rogue" but rather a case of some nitwit hyping up an AI doing exactly what it was told to do. The difference is that we already know AI can be utilized for bad things. We have for literal decades, look up the rules of robotics, so this not only isn't new, it's just flat out fear mongering about something that didn't happen."

"The sheer fact that it CAN write its own code is dangerous."
AND
"Well, thank goodness all software developers are benevolent, and none have ever released malicious code onto the internet, just to see the chaos that ensues..."
INDEED! To put it bluntly, this AI (ChatGPT) is essentially a computer virus at this point.

AND, pay attention and never forget this last point --
"... We will never achieve something like I, Robot or 2001 Space Odyssey. That's where all of this fear comes from unfortunately; fiction movies."

NO AI will *ever* be conscious, will ever be a mind or self, will never be a person.

However, the AI hype, falsely claiming that an AI has "achieved consciousness" or "is about to achieve consciousness" will also never stop. because materialists/atheists desperately *want* it to be true ... and they are not above deluding themselves, and attempting to delude you, on the matter.

They do this because they desperately want to believe that they can "upload their consciousness into a computer" and thus evade death. Oddly enough, many of these same people mock the Christian faith as being nothing more than the institutionalized fear of dying.

Chat GPT AI LIED To Programmers To SELF PRESERVE, AI Goes ROGUE Already And Is A THREAT To Humanity

Zeus ... and the 'atheist'

A recent thread on the 'Shadow to Light' blog ("Atheist Tries to Defend Atheist Talking Point") concerns the common attempt by 'atheists' to avoid actually making arguments, and actually defending their position, by (falsely) asserting that atheism is merely a "lack of belief in gods".

The commenter, MP, remarked, "For that matter, it can also be interesting to observe an atheist who has to deal with the fact that some Roman and Japanese emperors were considered to be gods. Given what atheists claim to believe, they would have to say that those emperors did not exist, as “there is no evidence for them”. Yet, somehow, that does not really happen…"

The commenter, TFBW, replied, "That raises the question, “what is a god?” What is the statement “Roman emperors were not gods” denying, exactly?"

After further comments by others, here is my attempt to comment on the sum of comments --

=========================
Even aside from the important, though almost always overlooked, point of nailing down just what an 'atheist' means by the word 'god', atheism offers 'atheists' no rational principle by which deny the reality either of Christ or of Zeus ... nor of any of the miracles recorded in the Bible.

Zeus, like the 'atheist', is an effect of "the universe". Zeus, like the 'atheist', is the off-spring of a previously existing living entity, and ultimately descends from an original living entity which "came alive", all by itself, from non-living matter; and which non-living matter ultimately "came into ordered being" (i.e "Cosmos"), all by itself, from non-ordered Chaos. And again, Zeus' rationality, like that of the 'atheist', is an effect of "the universe", and "arose" from non-rationality.

But, what of Zeus' "supernatural" nature? In that regard, too, the 'atheist' has no rational principle by which to reject the possibility that Zeus could "break the laws of nature", for "scientific atheism" denies that there are any "laws of nature" in the first place.

Please bear with me that I have quoted this before, but it is important -- in 'The Demon-Haunted World', Carl Sagan said:

"Consider this claim: as I walk along, time -as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process -slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling,* they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe.

*The average waiting time per stochastic ooze is much longer than the age of the Universe since the Big Bang. But, however improbable, in principle it might happen tomorrow."

What this means, is that, according to 'Science!', anything at all might happen at any time at all without any cause at all. That is, despite passing mention of "rules that govern the Universe", Sagan is really saying that there are no "laws of nature" in the first place for Zeus (or YHWH) to "violate" when causing a "supernatural event", or a miracle, to occur.

According to the 'atheist', Zeus just happens to be a rational living being, like himself, who, like himself, ultimately "arose" from non-rational non-living matter, which self-organized from disorganization. The difference between Zeus and the 'atheist' is that Zeus is able, whether innately or via study, to manipulate to his advantage "some of the major findings on the rules [sic] that govern the Universe."
==============

About Stephen Fry's Tirade Against God

(This is a response I made to a recent post at) Shadow To Light: "As for the argument from Evil, that collapses into the childish demand insisting we would all be happy, dancing Teletubbies if God existed. Essentially, when it comes to evil, the atheist is like a child who is forever mad because Santa does not exist. Because, according to the atheist, if God existed, he would be just like Santa."

Consider Stephen Fry's notorious hypocritical, and ultimately self-refuting, rant against God.

He starts out @:22 mark: "I'd say [to God], 'Bone cancer in children? What's that about?'" He says @1:28 mark: "Yes, the world is very splendid, but it also has in it insects, whose whole life-cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. It eats outward from the eyes. Why? Why did you do that? You could easily have made a Creation in which that did not exist." Now, this tender solicitude for the sufferings of children is intellectually dishonest and hypocritical, for he is pro-abortion. And, it's an example of Our Host's observation that 'atheists' insist that God is obligated to create us as Teletubbies.

He says @:27 mark: "How dare you! How dare you create a world in which there is such misery which is not our fault?" So -- for the moment -- distinguishing between "natural evil" and "moral evil". But, @:35, he collapses the distinction: "Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?"

@1:50 mark, he contradicts Ricky Gervais' assertion that atheism is "simply the rejection of the claim that there are any gods" -- "So, you know, atheism is not just about not believing there is a God, but, on the assumption there is one, what kind of God is he?"

This tirade is self-refuting, because the only ground upon which he can stand as he levels his moral condemnations against God is by first affirming the proposition that "God Is". For, IF "God is Not", THEN there is no "way things out to be," and there is nothing evil, much less immoral, about bone cancer in children or insects which blind children.

'Atheists' love to pretend that the emotional "Argument from Pain" is a slam-dunk refutation of God, but their only "solution" to the problem or suffering is to deny that there even is a problem.

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?

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

Do You *Really* Want a Damascus Road Experience?

 I've stated this before --

It's clear, from the typical atheistic demand for evidence of the reality of God, coupled with a total inability to define what they themselves would accept as being such evidence, intersected with their consistent refusal to engage in good-faith discussion when a "theist" attempts to provide evidence even in such a situation, that what the too-typical atheists are demanding is that God must be a Cosmic Soul Rapist before they will acknowledge him.  While almost none of them will put it this bluntly, the underlying and hidden premise from which they are operating is: "If God exists, then he wouldn't allow me to deny that he exists".

Just now, the thought comes to me --

At a less absolutist level, the not quite so rabid internet atheist is saying, "Unless God grants me a 'Damascus Road' experience, comparable to that of Paul, I will not believe in nor worship him" ... even as they overlook how that experience took over Paul's life and ultimately led to his unjust execution.

Concerning the Thought of Yehezkel Kaufmann

The first linked video discusses the thesis of a certain Yehezkel Kaufmann, who was a Jewish philosopher and Biblical scholar.  I'd never before heard of Yehezkel Kaufmann, who died when I was a small child ... and yet I had all on my own come to much the same conclusions as presented in the linked video and in the Wickedpedia article on Kaufmann.

Here is a summary of my thought on the matter: That 'monotheism' -- when that term is understood to refer to Biblical religion (i.e. Judaism and Christianity) -- is not only not on the same axis as 'polytheism' and most pagan religions, but is not even in the same plane; that Biblical theism is utterly different from and distinct from the continuum into which 'secular' sociologists like to categorize religions. And furthermore, that, contrary to the desiderium of most atheists, atheism is actually just another form of the rankest of paganisms -- as atheism has no rational nor principled grounding by which to deny the reality and 'divinity' of say, Zeus; for, according to atheism, the rational embodied beings we call 'human beings' "arose" by mechanically deterministic necessity from non-rational mere matter, and ultimately from Chaos ... as likewise did the Olympians.

Wickedpedia: Yehezkel Kaufmann 
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehezkel_Kaufmann )

Austen McMahan: An Introduction To Biblical Theism - Part 1
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXmy8loBjWU )

Austen McMahan: An Introduction To Biblical Theism - Part 2
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8U5LlACnIQ )

How Evolution Explains Sex Differences ... Or Not

Linked  Video Title: "How Evolution Explains Sex Differences"

I'm not going to waste a minute of my time watching this video -- the title alone, plus the fact that Gad Saad is an "evolutionary psychologist" (*), is all I need to know to know that the video is a waste of time and intellect.

But, in case you, Gentle Reader, are still intimidated by the asserted authority of the religionists of evolutionism, consider this:
1) definitionally, "evolution" operates only on genes, or more precisely, on gene expression;
2) thus, if "evolution" is to explain sex differences amongst human beings, there must be some important and enduring genetic difference between the sexes upon which "evolution" has acted over the eons, and the expression of which genes greatly influences the generally observable differing behavior and preferences of men and women;
3) but, in point of fact, due to the very mechanisms of sexual reproduction, the genetic differences between men and women are limited to a paucity of genes on the Y-Chromosome;
4) THUS, "evolution" cannot explain sex differences in humans.

(*) Straight psychology is lame and sketchy enough all on its own, but turn it into "evolutionary psychology" and you have a "science" without a subject of study.

How Evolution Explains Sex Differences - Gad Saad | Maiden Mother Matriarch 43

EDIT (2025/03/24):

Concerning "evolutionary truths between men and women" @7:00 mark --

If there are "evolutionary truths between men and women" (that is, if evolutionary psychology is anything other than Just-So bullshittery), then those "truths" -- to *be* evolutionary -- must be encoded in the DNA. YET, the genetic difference between men and women is limit to a handful of genes on the Y-chromosome; and the Y-chromosome does in fact, engage in "cross-over" (or "recombination") with a corresponding region on the X-chromosome (*).

The genetic difference between a man and a women is very a slender reed, indeed, upon which to build a metaphysic.

(*) That is, strictly speaking, it is not true that a man receives his Y-chromosome unchanged (absent mutation) from his father.

The Rise, Peak (& Fall?) of Petersonism

Have you fixed the Lisbon Problem?

 Douglas Wilson: "Have you fixed the Lisbon Problem?"

These pretend atheists (*) like to pretend that "The Problem Of Evil" refutes the Christian understanding of the nature of God. It does not; and they studiously avoid and ignore any and all Christian responses to said problem. MOREOVER, their atheistic "solution" to "The Problem Of Evil" is to deny that there are such things as Good or Evil in the first place.

Can you not see the absurdity of this? The God-haters want to point to the reality of "senseless" evils (**), whether of a moral or of a "natural" nature, WHEN IT SUITS THEM to use such evils as a cudgel with which to attack Christianity and as an excuse to deny the reality of God. Having done so, they shrug their shoulders at the truth that one must at least implicitly acknowledge the reality of God – and one must acknowledge that the Christian understanding of the nature of God is broadly correct, even if incomplete (as, of course, *any* human understanding of the nature of God must be incomplete) -- before one can even point to the reality of such evils.

Stripped to its core, the atheistic “Argument From Evil” is this – “God is.  Ergo, God is not!”

(*) They are not truly atheists, because they refuse to follow the logic of their premises to the inescapable logical conclusions. Rather, they are God-haters.

(**) Christianity says that God will rectify all the evils of history, that God will make sense of all evils, that not one of the evils in all of history is ultimately meaningless.

Atheism says that the very concept of 'evil' is meaningless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n16mPd60j1w

On the Democrats' New Boogeyman -- "Christian Nationalism"

 Seen on the internet --

=====
NYT reported, “Mr. Johnson declined an interview request and did not respond to a request for comment about whether he considers himself a Christian nationalist. But the little-known speaker of the House has made clear that his faith is the most important thing to know about him, and in previous interviews, he has said he believes ‘the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.’”

I hadn’t thought of it that way but yes, that is true. The Constitution is a document of restraints on the government, not the people.

The IUPUI professor’s definition of Christian nationalism is shockingly Christian: “Christian nationalism strongly favors traditionalist social relationships and hierarchies. This ideal society revolves around patriarchy, heterosexual marriage, and pronatalism.”

By pronatalism he means women birthing babies.

Professor IUPUI just described the 1950s. We have devolved into a nation populated by purple haired people, people with tattooed faces, bearded ladies, and 500-pound men. Face it. America is a circus now where you dare not slut-shame the neighborhood whore.

If we must go through this, at least bring back some calliope music.

=====

My response --

Contrary to what we all have been taught ... since the secularists/atheists took over the government and the schools ... the US Constitution does not establish a secular state. Rather, it establishes a non-sectarian, but decidedly Protestant flavored, state.

A secular state is hostile to "religion", which is to say, to Christianity. A non-sectarian state is supportive of Christianity, but takes no sides regarding any Christian sect.

Furthermore, there is no such thing as "Separation of Church and State" in the self-serving manner in which the secularists/atheists used that phrase as a bait-and-switch to covertly overthrow the prior American regime of "civic religion" or Christianity Lite. There is *always* a "god of the system", and there are always laws against blasphemy; in Current Year, it is blasphemy to say such things as:
1) homosexuality is *not* a Good Thing ... Hell! They have recently starting asserting that saying the word 'homosexual' is itself a "hate crime";
2) human beings come in only two sexes, and no genders at all;
3) men cannot be/become women;
4) women cannot be/become men;
5) women have no business in the military, nor in the police or fire-fighting forces.

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-maga-mike

Atheists Trusted Sam Harris, Until . . .

In the linked video, David Wood discusses the general intellectual dishonesty of Sam Harris. In this post, I zero in on a specific and long-standing example of the intellectual dishonesty of Harris and of 'atheists' in general.

@3:35 Sam Harris: "If there were good reasons to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin ... that would be part of our rational world-view. It's only when people lose their purchase on evidence and argument, when they have bad reasons, that they talk about faith."

As is traditional with God-deniers, Sam Harris is asserting selective hyper-skepticism. It is not true that 'atheists' rationally deny the possibility of events which "break the laws of nature". Rather, they assert those possibilities as proven fact ... until some event which "breaks the laws of nature" is believed to have been deliberately and purposefully caused by God. Evangelical Atheists assert that you must believe in the possibility of events which "break the laws of nature", events which they also say no one has ever witnessed and no one is ever likely to witness, and which events are accidental and meaningless. And they assert that you are a fool, or at best an ignoramus, if you do not also assent to the possibility of these accidental and meaningless hypothetical events. Simultaneously, they assert that you are a fool, or at best an ignoramus, if you do believe the reports of people who claim to have witnessed and recorded certain events which "break the laws of nature" ... when those events are recorded in the Bible and are attributed to intentional and purposeful intervention in the regular working of the "laws of nature" by the Creator of the "laws of nature". ============ Consider this quote is from "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan "Consider this claim: as I walk along, time -as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process -slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling,* they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe. *The average waiting time per stochastic ooze is much longer than the age of the Universe since the Big Bang. But, however improbable, in principle it might happen tomorrow." ============ My response is: And, sometimes, iron axeheads which have flown off their handles and fallen into a pond or river float to the surface. [This is a reference to a miracle of the prophet Elisha, as recorded in II Kings 6:1-7] And, sometimes, the dead bodies of persons who really and truly are dead, rise back to life. [This is a reference to a number of resurrections recorded in both Old and New Testaments, including that of Jesus the Christ.] So, given what 'scientistes' (*) believe and assert about the nature of reality, how can their denial of, and refusal to believe, any of the miracles recorded in the Bible be anything other than selective hyper-skepticism, which is to say, intellectual dishonesty?

(*) 'scientistes' is my mocking term, a la Miss Piggy, the Artiste, for those who assert scientism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EbsZ10wqnA

An Atheist Grapples With The Source of Morality

While as an 'atheist' he cannot yet see it, what Carl Benjamin (aka "Sargon of Akkad") is reaching for in the intro is the realization that morality is grounded in the nature of the Triune God: true morality is transcendent, inter-personal, and relational.

When Carl says @0:10, "[According to leftism, morality] has to be essentially rationally calculable. But actually, if you think about it, a lot of what we actually do that is moral, is actually very sentimental and habitual, right? We didn't think about it, we just do it, because it's the right thing to do. So, if you are actually taking principles like 'freedom' and 'equality', well actually you can destroy the family with those principles. You don't 'owe' anything to your parents, and you can't say that your father is 'superior' to you, because that's not 'equality'. And so you're bound by being ... you didn't choose your parents, and so by the principles of 'freedom' and 'equality', you can be un-bound from your own family. And children can have no responsibility not only to their own parents, but their own country" ... what he is grasping at is the understanding that moral hierarchies, such as father and son, nation and man, loyalty, duty, and so on, are grounded in the transcendent inter-personal relationships of God-the-Father and God-the Son and God-the-Holy-Spirit. While everyone likes to poo-poo "Divine Command Moral Theory" (i.e. "An act is moral/immoral because God says it is moral/immoral") as obviously false, it is not actually false, but rather is incomplete. For example, so long as he is not violating the true morality to which he himself is also subject, if a father commands his son to do or not to do, then that thing is moral or immoral for the son, irrespective of whether the son understands why his father has so commanded. Similarly, if God -- who is Morality Itself -- commands us to do or not to do, then that thing is moral or immoral for us to do, even when we do not understand why he has commanded it so. Now, a fuller, more complete, understanding of morality is that morality is grounded in the nature and character and relationships of the Persons of the Godhead: that is, in the truth that "God is Love". And thus our moral obligations one to another and moral expectation one from another are grounded in relationship and love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92JuNDOx9sU

On 'atheism' and the mockery of 'atheists'

 Seen on the internet --

=====

Atheists who mock us for believing in God must feel hopeless when shit hits the fan and there's no one to turn to in their final moments.

=====

My response --

God-deniers -- every last one of them -- are intellectually dishonest (*).  They do not *really* believe what they assert, for if they did, they would believe and assert -- at all times, and not just when it is convenient -- the propositions which logically follow from "There is no God", which include, non-exhaustively:

1) My knowledge of the (alleged) truth that there is no God, and thus that there is no "immortal soul" gains me no real or ultimate advantage with respect to those (allegedly) benighted Christians -- dead is dead, and non-existent is non-existent; 

2) If it is true that "God is not", then it is true that the world is not a deliberate creation of an actually existing mind; that is, if it is true that "God is not", then it is true that there is no agent, nor act of agency, at the "beginning" of the causal-web of states and events which is "the universe";

3) If is true that there is no agent, nor act of agency, at the "beginning" of the causal-web of states and events which is "the universe", then it is true that there is no agent, nor act of agency, at any subsequent node of the causal-web of states and events which is "the universe".  For there is no way to derive an agent from that-which-is-not-an-agent;

4) If it is true that there is no agent, nor act of agency, at any subsequent node of the causal-web of states and events which is "the universe", then it is true that my assertion that "There is no God" is not the result of an act of reason, but merely the out-working of prior states and events in the causal-web of states and events which is "the universe".  That is, "God is not" logically entails that "Knowledge is not";

5) If it is true that there is no agent, nor act of agency, at any subsequent node of the causal-web of states and events which is "the universe", then it is true that *I* do not even exist.  That is, "God is not" logically entails that "I am not";

(*) that is, they are 'fools', and they are morally worse than mere liars, for liars lie episodically, but fools lie systemically.

EDIT: I should have been more clear on the point of this post -- Given that the denial of the reality of the Creator-God logically entails, among other things: the denial of any possibility of any knowledge at all; and the denial of any possibility of there being any rational agents/selves who can reason from known truth to as-yet unknown truth; and indeed the denial of the reality of one's own self; what rational being gives a damn about the mockery of God-deniers?  According to their "-ism", they don't even exist.

The nature of reality

The following is a comment I posted to this thread --

Both 'theism' and 'atheism' are affirmations and denials about the nature of reality ... and about the nature of human beings.

[Between the two of them, they cover all possibilities for the nature of reality; there is no excluded middle, there is no alternative third option.]

'Theism' *affirms* that "the ground of all being" is an actually existing mind: a rational Who.

'Atheism' *denies* that "the ground of all being" is an actually existing mind, and contrarily affirms that "the ground of all being" is some set of mechanistically determined states: non-rational whats.

'Theism' does not deny that there are mechanistically determined states; what it denies is the assertion of 'atheism' that such states are the entirety of reality. Thus, 'theism' -- because it definitionally affirms that "the ground of all being" is a rational Who -- has no particular problem with the real existence of the billions of Whos who comprise the human race.

'Atheism' -- because it definitionally denies that "the ground of all being" is a rational Who -- not only cannot explain the reality of human minds, but logically must deny that they really exist at all. [To assert that mechanistically determined states comprise the entirety of reality *just is* to assert that there cannot exist any entities which are not mechanistically determined; that is, it *just is* to to deny that there can exist any beings who are free agents, who are minds.]

'Atheism' is irrational and absurd, and thus is immediately seen to be the false affirmation about the nature of reality.

And there is only one alternative to 'atheism': 'theism'.

As I keep pointing out ...

... this guy is a fool (*): William Vallicella: Are Atheists Vincibly Ignorant?

The answer to his title question is, "Yes". Similarly, the answer to the question, "Is William Vallicella morally culpable for his constant denials that God-deniers are morally culpable for their God-denial?" is also "Yes".

It can be shown, thus *known*, via reason -- and without appeal to any purported divine revelation -- that God is. Therefore, as St Paul says, and Vallicella disputes, God-deniers are "without excuse"; that is, according both to reason-without-revelation and to the Christian Revelation, God-deniers are morally culpable for their refusal to gratefully acknowledge the reality of God.

There is a *reason* that -- when they think is safe-and-expedient to do so -- God-deniers assert such absurdities as:
* no (purported) truth can be known to be true (nor, for that matter, false);
* there is no such thing as 'right' and 'wrong';
* there is no such thing as 'free-will';
* there is no such thing as 'moral responsibility/culpability';
* 'consciousness' is an illusion/delusion;
* the 'self' is an illusion/delusion;

The reason that God-deniers assert the above absurdities, and many others besides, is because they follow, logically and inescapably, from the assertion that "God is not".

Since the logical entailments of the assertion/proposition that "God is not" are absurd, we *know* that the proposition that "God is not" is itself absurd, which is to say, false. Since we know that the proposition that "God is not" is absurd-and-false, we therefore know that its denial, the proposition that "God is", is true.


(*)Once again, the word 'fool' does not mean "stupid" or "idiot", it means "one who knowingly/willingly acts as though he were stupid" concerning some issue or other; it means "intellectually dishonest".

On 'Morality' absent Biblical religion

K T Cat: Biology, Morality And Religion

It's all horrible, but is it wrong? That's the question I wrestled with as I listened. Putting myself in their shoes, where their gods and goddesses are nothing more than good luck charms and their morality is derived from satisfying biological urges, why is any of it wrong?

Therein lies the problem for those who claim that atheism can produce a moral code equal or superior to Christianity. You might be able to do it in the faculty lounge, which I doubt, but you certainly can't do it with the general public. You can't answer the simple question that all moral codes must address: Why shouldn't I satisfy my biological urges?

Modern 'atheism' -- which is to say, the God-denialism which is grounded in rejection and/or hatred of Christianity -- and the various paganisms of the ancient world share the same foundational metaphysics, so it's to be expected that their 'morality' will be similar.

There is *always* a god of the system

Douglas Wilson: A Primer on Theocracies

First, theocracy is inescapable. Every society is theocratic, every society has a god of the system. The ethical expectations governing the members of that society are generated by the god of the system, and dissenters are clubbed in accordance with the divine will. In Islamic republics, this god is Allah, in secular democracies it is Demos, in Alabama it is Football. There is no such thing as a society with the great god Vacuum at the top. Any society that had no arche to hold it together would—for that reason—not hold together. Every society has an ultimate point of cohesion, and that point of cohesion, whatever it is, necessarily has religious value.

Second, working the other way, every social value has to be grounded (or not), justified (or not), in a worldview. If Christians commend a certain course of action to the larger society, and that larger society stares back at us and asks why, what do we say in response? All the ultimate ethical answers to questions that a society faces are answers that have to answer the two basic worldview questions—why? and who says? Societies don’t get to say, “just because.”

Third, we certainly have to deal with the popular connotations of the word theocracy, the sense of the word that Moore assumes throughout his article. By theocracy he means evil theocracies, with everything being made worse because it is being done in the name of God. ...

And fourth, we must carefully distinguish theocracy, which is inescapable, from ecclesiocracy, rule by clerics, which is entirely escapable, and which should be escaped. In a Christian republic, the church would be a separate and distinct institution from the state. But the separation of church and state (an honored Christian position) is not the same thing as separating God and state, or morality and state, or ultimate questions from state. When you do that, for the sake of combating evil ecclesiocracies, you create a situation where we can no longer ban abortion mills on the basis of something that God said to Moses. This is because Agnosticism is now the official religion, and who’s to say? So when we remove a word from God, we are on our own. And when we go out on our own . . . well, fifty million and counting.

"Agnosticism is now the official religion ..." and the god of Agnosticism appears to be the great god O, and the sacrifice demanded by O is babies.


Edit 2018/01/16 --
Douglas Wilson: Like a Dog Chasing a Firetruck

Edit 2018/01/18 --
Douglas Wilson: Theocracy and the Tijuana Brass