"The Homeschoolers Who Proved That School Is a Waste of Time"

=====
"Of course, there are disadvantages to homeschooling, too. If enough people do it, tattoo artists, body-piercing parlors, drug dealers, and abortionists may go out of business."
=====

Also, contrary to their constant whining, teachers are NOT underpaid. Moreover, these days, even the somewhat normal ones, the ones who aren't trying to recruit you children into sexual perversion, tend to be idiots.

I wasn't home-schooled, but three years of my schooling (8th-10th grades) was comparable to home-schooling. And, if not for those three years of absence from the government-union run indoctrination centers, I know that I would not have finished high school, much less college. By the way, overnight, I went from being a "C- student" to being a "straight A student" (and this was without "grade inflation").

The final straw (*) occurred when I was in 7th grade, and the principal told my father, "We don't need students like your son in our school", and my father decided, "You know, I think I agree that my children don't need to be in your school.". You see, I had dared to fight back against a kid who bullied me daily. And worse, I had dared to "call out" a teacher who was refusing to protect an unpopular kid from a mob of "vibrant youth", a few of whom intended to beat the shit out of him (**), and the others to watch and laugh at his pain and injury.

So, my father found places for us for the next school-year in a Seventh-Day Adventist school (we are not Adventists). This wasn't cheap. Or, rather, it *was* cheap, but it was also a *huge* portion of the family income (as I recall, the first year cost $1000 for the four of us).

This is how I think that that "religious" schooling was somewhat comparable to home-schooling: Each class was actually two grades, combined (1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, 9/10). Other than the 9th and 10th grades, a single teacher taught the combined classes: sometimes the two grades received the same lesson, but usually one grade had "study hall" while the other had active instruction, all in the same room. As I mentioned, I went from being a "C- student" in 7th grade, to being a "straight A student" in 8th grade. Moreover, I not only had time -- while at school -- to do all my school-work, but I also had free time to do what interested me. What interested me was history, and without knowing what it was, during that free time I read the entire history book that would be the text in 9th grade history class.

(*) Mind you, this was 55+ years ago. The public schools have been shit for a very ling time.

(**) You've surely seen some of the recent videos of gangs of "vibrant youth" knock someone to the ground and then kick the defenseless person in the head . This behavior is not new.

Selwyn Duke: The Homeschoolers Who Proved That School Is a Waste of Time

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

On Munchausen-by-Proxy and "Trans-kids"

When I was 4 (i.e. more than 60 years ago), I had a "baby doll", and I was very proud of it. But the time I was 5 or 6, I wouldn't play with my friend's GI Joe, because as far as I was concerned, it was a doll.

Thank God my parent's weren't fools. They neither freaked out because the little boy played with a "baby doll", nor freaked-out when he later despised anything resembling a doll.

EDIT: Isn't it odd that --

1) There are no such things as "boys' toys" and "girls' toys";

2) And, simultaneously, if a boy prefers "girls' toys", then he is clearly a girl.

More to the point, isn't it odd that in California, it is illegal for stores to have separate sections for boys' toys/clothes and girls' toys/clothes, because that would be "reinforcing the sex binary" or some similar codswallop. But, at the same time, in that same California, they will cut off your son's dick to further the lie that he is a girl (even though that also say that "some women have penises").

A Father’s Tragic Fight to Save His Son from Gender Ideology | Ep. 1493

Liberals ... and Speed Limits

Seen on the internet -- "Conservatives are just liberals doing the speed limit."

My response --

True enough in the cases of most people.

Meanwhile, "liberals" are just unprincipled leftists. That is, "liberals" are people who subscribe to leftist presuppositions, they just don't like some of the destinations logically entailed in those presuppositions. BUT, as they have no *principle* by which to reject the logic, and thus the entailed destination, they will always eventually fold when the open leftists demand it.

In the meantime. unless your proffered alternative to leftism is Jesus Christ, then you are also just another variant of leftist.

====

The late Andrew Breitbart famously said, "Politics is downstream of culture."

And, while that is true, it is incomplete. A more complete statement is expressed by my internet friend Kristor: "Politics is downstream of culture, and culture is downstream of cult." 'Cult' is not here a pejorative, as the word is commonly erroneously used in present-day English.

Or, as as (Calvinist) pastor and blogger, Douglas Wilson, points out: "There is always a god of the system." There is no such thing as metaphysical/religious neutrality (*); there is always some metaphysical underpinning of the social system, and which will be expressed in its politics. There are always blasphemy laws, but what is counted "sacred", and thus not to be blasphemed, depends upon the underlying metaphysics.

(*) The secularist promise of "religious neutrality" was a deliberate bait-and-switch lie. The goal was not "religious neutrality", which is impossible, but rather to disarm the general Christian(ish) populace long enough to install their anti-Christian metaphysics as the organizing principle of Western societies. It worked because most people were merely "cultural Christians", who wanted to enjoy the fruits of a Christian culture, while bulldozing the orchard.

The Incoherence of Anti-anti-abortionism

I'm not "pro-life" -- that designation is the sort of "non-judgmental" pap cooked up on Madison Ave to appeal to a certain sort of woman -- I'm anti-murder, and thus I'm anti-abortion.

Earlier today, Jeremy at "The Quartering" uploaded a YouTube video in which he expresses his dismay, and even revulsion, about a recent trend on TikTok of "celebrating" the baby-murders one has commissioned.

Now, Jeremy's problem (as with Megyn Kelly) is wanting to have it both ways: wanting abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare" as the utterly immoral Clintons formulated it. But, this is incoherent, it is self-contradictory.

If an abortion is the murder of a helpless and innocent human being (and it is), then only a demon wants it to be "safe, legal"; and a moral person wants abortion to be not merely "rare" but illegal and prosecuted and punished, just as with any other method of murder.

But, if an abortion is of no more moral consequence than an appendectomy, then "safe, legal, and rare" is still incoherent and self-contradictory. Now, of a truth, all moral persons want appendectomies to be "safe, legal", but ""rare"!? No, a moral person wants appendectomies to be as numerous as they need to be.

I have had an inguinal hernia repaired, as had my father and also a great-nephew; I have had an appendectomy, as has one sister. The other sister has had her gall bladder removed, as had our mother.  Certainly, it would be odd and strange were any of us to be talking about these surgeries for no specific and relevant reason, much less to be boasting about them. But, would it really be "creepy"? Would these surgeries really be something to be ashamed of?  Of course not! They have no moral content of themselves. In contrast, and except for the super-rare case of "saving the life of the mother", abortion *is* immoral, utterly and always; for the *point* of all abortions except that super-rare case is to kill a baby.

The flood of lawlessness and degeneracy which is destroying America has many streams feeding it; two of the most important are: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Abortion Regime.  Either of those alone would have been enough to destroy the nation within just a generation or two -- and remember, both of those were set up within the lifetimes of millions of Americans now living. Do you *really* think that things can go on as they are for another 50 or 60 years?

It is not that "God is Gonna Get Us Because of Drag-Queen Story Hour", rather, Drag Queen Story Hour -- the deliberate grooming of children (*) into sexual perversion -- and much horror beside, IS the judgement of God upon this nation for its rejection of true morality and true law.

(*) You may have noticed that Drag Queen Story Hour is never held at Ye Olde Folkes Home.

The Quartering: "TikTok Abortion Vlogs Are Now A Popular Thing"

Matt Christiansen: "Whistleblower on Teen Gender Transitions, AZ Abortion Ban"

When is a Person Not a Person?

 ... when the Powers That Be do not wish that person to be treated in law as a person.

Quote from linked YT video: =="Abortion (like a Clinton witness' cause of death) is homicide. And *like* homicide, it's a matter for the States to prosecute (ahem, unlike the Clintons)."==

Indeed, abortion *is* homicide, and like other acts of homicide, it is for the States to prosecute.

Yet, there is the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, which states that: =="No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."==

Now, imagine that some State were to enact a law to deny some class of persons "the equal protection of the laws". Say, for instance, that New York State, whether by explicit statute or by prosecutorial action in some instances and inaction in other instances, were to deny "straight white males" having "the equal protection of the laws": Say, if a "straight white male" were to kill a black person while in the act of protecting other persons in public from the violent threats of that black person, the killing were to be prosecuted as murder, yet at the same time, some "persons of color" who assisted that "straight white male" in subduing the now-deceased violent black person were not prosecuted at all.

How, one might ask, could such a thing happen, even hypothetically? Why, in practice, it does happen in the very same way that abortion -- murder of pre-born (and sometimes in Current Year post-birth) babies -- is winked at: by denying the personhood of the persons whom powerful political interests wish to exclude from "the equal protection of the laws."

=====
Isn't it odd that when the Democratic Party were explicitly (*) the party of slavery, even they didn't go so far as their intellectual descendants do with respect to the murder of babies? The Democrats of 1860 didn't deny that slaves were persons, they merely denied that slaves were citizens. -- even in the deepest of the Old South, killing a slave could get one prosecuted for murder.

(*) In Current Year, the Democrats are implicitly the party of slavery -- the Democrats *never* gave up on wanting to enslave some persons: all that changes is the who and the whom.

The Rageaholic: Arizona BOOFS Baby Murder - Razör Rants

=====

EDIT (2024/04/14): I much doubt that Tim Pool reads this dusty little blog. Nonetheless, he recently had a segment in which he brings up the conflict I pointed out above between the 14th Amendment and abortion.

IF a pre-born human being is a person (and they are), THEN abortion is murder (and it is), AND thus the US Constitution *requires* the States to prosecute for murder: the abortionist, the abortionist's aides and office workers and financiers and any other persons connected to the abortion-mill, the woman who contracted the murder, and any persons who aided in the procuring of the murder.

BUT, IF a pre-born human being is NOT a person, THEN it is irrational and indeed unconstitutional to prosecute a person who murders a pregnant woman for *two* murders. In fact, IF a pre-born human being is NOT a person, THEN it is irrational and indeed unconstitutional to even prosecute a person who causes a pregnant woman to miscarriage.

TimcastIRL: SCOTUS Must Rule On 14th Amendment For Abortion, Otherwise CIVIL WAR

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?

It's Christmas-time; And That Means ...

It's Christmas-time; and that means ... endless repetitions of popular "secularist" (by which I mean anti-Christian) "myths" (by which I mean lies) about Christmas.  Sometimes, these "myths" are even spread by people who claim to be Christians.

By the way, even as a "fundie" Christian, I was taught as a child -- in church -- that Christ clearly wasn't born on December 25, as there wouldn't have been "shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night" that late in the year.  But we still recognized and celebrated December 25 as Christmas.

Sometime this past summer, I had written a post covering much the same points as in the post linked below.  I can't find the post I made, so I suspect it was made as a comment to some foolish YouTube video spreading the "myth" ... and which was deleted when I decided that I'd had enough of the dishonest and dishonestly applied "community standards" of YT.  

So, anyway, I'll emphasize a couple of the points; but mostly, I refer Gentle Reader to the post linked below.

The "myth" goes something like this -- "The celebration of Christmas, and specifically its celebration on December 25, is actually an attempt by [The Catholic Church and/or Constantine following the Council of Nicaea] to co-opt the pagan festival of [Saturnalia/The Birth of Mithras/The Birth of Sol Invictus] in the popular imagination".

Now, anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of the period from 29 AD (when Christ was likely murdered .. which ultimately didn't "stick", as it turned out) to to 313 AD (the Edict of Milan, which legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire) to 325 AD (the First Council of Nicaea) to 380 AD (the Edict of Thessalonica, which established orthodox Nicene Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire) understands how absurd this "myth" is, in all its variants.

Rather than shooting those individual variants of "The Myth", I shall aim my guns at the root of all of them: the claim that December 25 was chosen by Constantine/"The Pope"/The Catholic Church of popular mythology as the celebration of Christ's birth so as to make it more palatable for the every-day pagan to switch to Christianity.

In 'Adversus Judaeos' (i.e. "Against the Jews" or "Answering the Jews"), believed to have been written before 200 AD, Tertullian says (Adversus Judaeos 8:18): "And the suffering of this "extermination" was perfected within the times of the lxx hebdomads, under Tiberius Caesar, in the consulate of Rubellius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, in the month of March, at the times of the passover, on the eighth day before the calends of April,¹²⁰ on the first day of unleavened bread, on which they slew the lamb at even, just as had been enjoined by Moses."  That is, Tertullian places Christ's crucifixion on March 25, at the time of Passover, in the year we now designate as 29 AD. Also note that Tertullian places Christ's birth as 28 years after the death of Cleopatra, that is, about 2 BC.

There was a common belief in 1st Century Judaism -- and recall, the early Christians were mostly Jews -- that the lives of religiously significant persons began and ended on the same date; that is, that such persons both were conceived and died on the same date.  This belief is often referred to as "Integral Life" or "Integral Age". This belief is why, as is stated at the start of the linked article, the Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated on March 25.  That is, according to this belief, Christ was both conceived and died on March 25.

And what date follows 9 months after March 25?

The point is, irrespective of what we moderns may think of the "Integral Life" concept, the early Christians decided to celebrate Christ's birth on December 25 for Jewish-and-Christian reasons long before it was legal to practice Christianity, when being a Christian was still officially a capital offence, long before The Catholic Church of popular mythology even existed, long before "The Pope" would have cared to import pagan holidays into Christianity so as to cajole recalcitrant pagans to pretend to be Christians.

The point is, Christmas is the celebration and commemoration of Christ's birth, not of his birthday.

Roger Pearse: "March 25 – the date of the annunciation, the crucifixion, and the origin of December 25 as the date of Christmas?"

https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2021/03/25/march-25-the-date-of-the-annunciation-the-crucifixion-and-the-origin-of-december-25-as-the-date-of-christmas/

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

Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide

Sick joke making the rounds: If you’re surprised by Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, imagine how surprised Epstein was.

Alternate sick joke making the rounds: I was stunned by the news of Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, though probably not as much as Epstein himself.

==========
On the one hand, enough is publicly known about the sordid details of Epstein's hobby-group that *everyone* knows that powerful people wanted him dead. This will make some sort of conspiracy theory at least rational and credible.

On the other hand, if I were the sort of person who could be brought down by the full facts coming to light — and being that sort more than implies that murder is never off the table — I’d have had him whacked a long time ago. He became a liability when the "Lolita Express" first came to light.

NBC News: Prison experts are stunned and angry that Jeffrey Epstein was taken off suicide watch

Bob Hood, a former federal Bureau of Prisons chief of internal affairs and former warden at the ADX Florence “supermax” prison in Colorado, said he also was perplexed by the decision to remove the suicide safeguards.

“Under the circumstances, I would have a staff member sitting there or have a camera on him 24/7 while he was in my custody, purely to cover my butt,” said Hood. “I know that sounds tacky, but this is not your average inmate.”

Shoot! I'd have had multiple cameras watching Epstein, and cameras watching the cameras, and people physically watching Epstein, and cameras watching the people physically watching him, and people watching the cameras ... and cameras watching *them*.

======
EDIT 2019/08/13:
New York Post: Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself with prison bedsheet: source

Jeffrey Epstein was found hanging in his lower Manhattan jail cell with a bedsheet wrapped around his neck and secured to the top of a bunk bed, The Post has learned.

The convicted pedophile, who was 6 feet tall, apparently killed himself by kneeling toward the floor and strangling himself with the makeshift noose, law enforcement sources said Monday. He hadn’t been checked on for several hours, sources said.

Now *that's* commitment -- not only to "hang" yourself when merely standing up will abort the hanging, but to "hang" yourself with a sheet that's essentially tissue paper.

====
EDIT 2019/08/14:
OK, the bit about the sheet being essentially tissue paper was a tongue-in-cheek reference to his having been removed from "suicide watch" mere days after allegedly trying to kill himself a couple of weeks ago.

Look, it's impossible to commit suicide in the manner described unless you first ensure that you are unable to free yourself. When the carbon-dioxide level in your lungs passes a certain threshhold, your body automatically enters a panic mode which overrides any conscious decision to kill yourself by asphyxiation.

So, if he did indeed kill himself in the manner we are being told, then he managed to do it only because he couldn't free himself. And that means either:
1) that he had used the sheet to rig a complex system which:
- cut off his air-supply
- prevented him from moving in such a way as to relieve the pressure which was cutting off his air-supply
2) he was already unconscious when the asphyxiation itself began

And 2) takes us right back to a conspiracy

America’s False Religion

J. Frank Bullitt at 'Issues & Insights': Recycling: America’s False Religion

"Though recycling rarely makes economic sense and often burns up more fresh resources than would have been used in making new items, Americans recycled. And recycled. And recycle still."

An old friend from college unfriended me on Fascistbook because I tried to get him to see that truth.

By all means, recycle when it makes economic sense to do so, when the act of recycling does not consume more resources in total than can be recovered. And how does one *know* when recycling makes economic sense? Why, when it doesn't need to be subsidized by using the threat of government violence to take money from you and me to give to the politically-connected few who thereby profit from the scam.

Edit: I recycle aluminum cans. I store them in the basement for 6 months to a year, then toss them in the truck and take them to be recycled. If I fill the truck bed with (grocery) bags of *crushed* cans, I may get about $50 for ... collecting trash in my house for a year. And that's for something that *does* pay for itself to be recycled.

EDIT 2019/08/09: Legal Insurrection: California’s Minimum Wage Rules Kill State’s Largest Recycling Center

California’s largest operator of recycling redemption centers has shut down and laid off 750 employees.

The Mercury News reported Monday that the company, Ontario-based RePlanet, has closed all 284 of its centers.

RePlanet President David Lawrence said the company stopped operating because of increased business costs and falling prices of recycled aluminum and PET plastic.

The move comes three years after RePlanet closed 191 of its recycling centers and laid off almost 300 employees.

The anti-economic wage-hike certainly contributed to the closure, but the greater cause is the fact that most recycling consumes more resources than it recovers.

Not whether, but *which*

The question is not whether our laws shall be based upon some religious conception or other, but rather, *which* religious conception shall they be based upon? The question is not whether we shall be a theocracy, but rather *what sort* of theocracy shall we be? That is, toward *which* god shall our laws point?

Remember: "There is *always* a god of the system."

Brett Graham Fawcett at American Thinker:
Fear Theocracy? Bad News: All Politics Is Theocratic

The mistake of those panicked commentators [concerning recent mildly restrictive abortion laws] isn't that they think the ban on abortion is a theocratic move. That's more or less true. What they've missed, though, is that all politics is theological, including theirs.

The debate between pro-lifers and pro-choicers (and among different pro-choicers) has to do with when a fetus becomes a baby with moral rights. In other words, when does a bundle of cells become a person?

How you answer this depends on how you define human nature. This is a philosophical question - one of the oldest ones - relating to that branch of philosophy dealing with ultimate reality, metaphysics. It also touches on ethics, the philosophical project dedicated to answering the question: what are human persons supposed to do?

In other words, despite philosophy's reputation for abstraction and irrelevance, we find that all political beliefs are really philosophical beliefs.

"What they've missed, though, is that all politics is theological, including theirs."

They "miss" this deliberately. The secularists (leftists, "liberals", libertarians, etc) oppose "theocracy" only when the laws are based upon true/actual morality, and thus point toward the only God. One has only to look at what is going on in the world today to grasp that all their blather over the past century about "religious neutrality in government" was a head-fake: they were for "religious neutrality in government" only until *they* gained control and could impose *their* religious-and-moral conception upon the rest of us.

"... all politics is theological ..."

Religion and morality and politics are just different ways to ask, and to answer, the same questions: What do we *owe* one another? What may we *require* of one another? What may we *forbid* one another? What may we *compel* one another? And why? That is, what is the basis/grounding for the answers?

"How you answer this depends on how you define [i.e. 'conceive'] human nature."

And how you conceive human nature follows, inescapably, from how you conceive God.


EDIT 2019/06/01: Here is an article by Raymond Ibrahim, linking to an interesting discussion by two Scandinavian women -- “Deep Spiritual Crisis”: Scandinavian Women Expose the West’s Root Problems

What's After Infanticide?

KTCat: What's After Infanticide?
"... isn't the right question. The right question is: What isn't?

Society .... and Theocracy!

This post is commentary on this Twitter 'rant', the full text of which can be found here

"In other words, gender is a philosophical/religious concept like the idea of the soul and, perhaps more to the point, soul mates. Can you prove that people have a soul?"

Perhaps he misunderstands what 'to prove' means.

But, yes: depending on what we mean by the term 'soul', I can indeed prove that "people have a soul".

As for "soul mates" ... pffft: that idea is frass for shallow women (and womanly men).

"Not scientifically."

Ah, yes. He has no idea what 'to prove' means.

"If Twitter forces me to do the same, they are engaging in anti-religious bullying--harassing those who reject the new, hip orthodoxy. And if the state hops in, well, that's just flat out theocratic tyranny."

All societies, and all states, are theocracies. The question is not whether, but which --

The question is not "Shall we organize-and-dedicate our society around some religion, aimed (however imperfectly) at some god, and enforce that dedication at some degree or other?" Rather, the question is "Around *which* religion, aimed (however imperfectly) at *which* god, shall we organize-and-dedicate our society; and to what degree shall we enforce that dedication?"

"We normally recognize that organizing society around unprovable philosophical/religious concepts is a recipe for disaster"

All societies, and all states, are "organiz[ed ...] around [allegedly] unprovable philosophical/religious concepts". They are called "unprovable" because many influential people, and perhaps most people, don't want to know the truth about reality.

"But the Selma-envy-riddled youngsters want to play both sides in their civil rights movement LARPing. They want to be the heroes on the right side of history. And they also want to be the guys controlling the firehoses."

That's a good way of putting it.

"All of this is a gentle reminder that:

1. Leftists only value free speech as a tool, not as a concept. Once they've used the free speech tool to assume positions of power, they will burn it lest anyone else use it to take that position away from them."

Until people learn this to their bones, the leftists will always be able to hoodwink them -- with their own cooperation.

"2. When people imagine Christianity to be foolish and cruel, the religions they invent to replace it are a thousand times stupider and more oppressive."

That's because ALL societies, and ALL states are theocracies.

Christianity is a set of sects aimed (however imperfectly) at the One God, the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Sovereign Judge of Mankind. Thus, there are limits to the injustices, and simple social mistakes, that a Christianized society or state can make.

Once a society or state has become Christianized, the organizing religious impulse of that society or state can be replaced only by an explicitly anti-Christian religion. And an anti-Christian religion has *no* limit to the injustice it will impose upon the human beings within its grasp.

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.

The One True Bureaucracy rides again

BBC: Pope Francis declares death penalty inadmissible in all cases

To quote Ian Bibby on Facebook: "Pope Francis declares Catholic teaching to be fallible on matters of ancient Catholic doctrine, and therefore denies his own authority and the legitimacy of the Catholic church itself."

For the past few years (and especially since Francis was elected), I've been telling online Catholic friends -- especially the ones who like to blame leftism and related social ills on the Reformation -- that the day was coming when they'd have to choose between fidelity to The One True Bureaucracy and fidelity to Christ. That day has come closer.

On "Racial Reconciliation Services"

Rev Sam Murrell of Little Rock, AR: Why I No Longer Participate in Racial Reconciliation Services

Rev Murrell makes a very important point, a very Christian point; it is well worth one's time to read the piece.

However, he's just wrong when he says that 'races' -- in the sense that that word has been commonly used since the 18th or 19th century to refer to the broad geographical/continental origins of human lineages -- don't exist. If this common claim were true, then he couldn't use the terms 'blacks' and 'American blacks', as he does, and expect to be understood.

Despite that this is the way it is most frequently used anymore, the English word 'race' does not refer primarily to the broad geographical/continental origins of human lineages; often referred to as "skin color", despite that skin tone is but one of the characteristics in the set which distinguishes this 'race' from that 'race'. Rather, 'race' refers to the many and various ways that one may use sets of common characteristics to group entities into groups distinguishable from other similar groups so distinguished. You will notice that I said 'entities' and not 'organisms'; this is because the word 'race', strictly speaking, is not about biology.

Thus, once upon a time (i.e. before race-mongering was "a thing"), people might at times speak of "the race of fish-mongers". The term, "the race of fish-mongers", refers to all those persons (generally girls and women in times past) who sold seafood (generally caught by their own husbands, brothers and sons) to other persons. For the most part, the persons who comprise "the race of fish-mongers" are biologically related to one another only in the broad sense that they are all members of the larger and all-encompassing race of the "human race".

Similarly, when Darwin named his unreadable tome, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", while he certainly had biological organisms in mind, he was not speaking of the "skin color" of human beings. That was a different of Darwin's books, "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex", which, incidentally, gave the "scientific" imprimatur to what we now denote as ‘racism’.

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

This is your socialized medicine

I'm looking at *you* B.Prokop and Victor Reppert.

Wesley Smith at LifeNews.com: Netherlands and Belgium are Euthanizing Mentally Ill Patients and Harvesting Their Organs

There is *always* a "god of the system" ... and that god will be served. If the "god of the system" isn't the Living God, the God who created men, the God who sustains the lives of men, it will be a god created by men, a god which devours the lives of men.

On Capital Punisment

Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette have new book on capital punishment. Edward Feser links to a review of it: Briggs on By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed

My comment --

All societies have the obligation to deliver justice to their members, and also to non-members who are presently within the ambit or jurisdiction of the society. No society has such an obligation toward persons who are not members of the society *and* who are outside its ambit or jurisdiction.

To *refuse* to execute the murderer -- to *refuse* to deliver justice to her (*) victim(s) -- is to give the murderer to power to declare, by the act of the murder, that justice for the victim(s) is not the responsibility of the society. That is, it is to declare that murdered persons were not *really* members of our society and were not really within the ambit or jurisdiction of our society.

Thus, blanket opposition to capital punishment is profoundly immoral. A society which refuses, as a matter of "principle", ever to execute anyone whom justice demands be executed, is a society that is profoundly unjust and immoral; such a society will inevitably *create* broad swathes of injustice.



(*) in case it's not clear, I used the grammatically incorrect "she" to mock the idiots who do it to promote "gender inclusive" leftist bullshit.