Comes the Word, Comes the Day

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

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

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

Shadow to Light: Are “Gender Affirming” Procedures Doing Harm?

Atheism and Infanticide

Shadow to Light: Atheism and Infanticide

Shadow to Light: “As Coyne’s reasoning makes clear, the legalization and normalization of abortion has provided the slippery slope toward infanticide. I can’t be sure, but I bet if you look at the arguments of those opposed to legalizing abortion back in the 1960s and 70s, you’d find people warning about this exact development and you’d find such warnings being dismissed.”

Ilíon: I can be sure, I remember it. And it wasn’t just in the 60s and 70s. I wasn’t really aware of the abortion regime until about 1980 … and at least into the 1990s, if not into this century, the pro-abortionists were pooh-poohing the argument not only that that “the legalization and normalization of abortion has provided the slippery slope toward infanticide”, but that it *must* lead to infanticide.

At some point in the very recent past, the pro-abortionists totally switched it up — whereas previously they had pooh-poohed the argument that “the legalization and normalization of abortion has provided the slippery slope toward infanticide”, they began to actively argue that *since* there is no moral difference between a pre-birth human being and a born human infant and *since* the killing of a pre-birth human being is legal, that *therefore* the killing of a born human infant must also be legalized.

You know, exactly as we anti-abortionists had argued they eventually would and must.

Here is an exchange from Facebook occasioned by the post at Shadow to Light --

Ian Bibby: The "Slippery Slope Fallacy" - the one "fallacy" that somehow results in correct predictions 100% of the time.


Bradley Nartowt: Strictly speaking, the slippery slope States that A does not mandate B as a consequence.

Often, people will misuse this and think "because slippery slope, if A, then B is prohibited." Which, of course, is nonsense.


Ilíon: There is also a Slippery Slope which can be stated as "He who says 'A' must say 'B'", and that's the one that the people who want 'A' and don't really object to 'B' always pooh-pooh.

"He who says 'A' must say 'B'" -- that is, given that 'A' entails 'B', if someone asserts 'A', then ultimately he will assert 'B'.

Here, 'A" is abortion (because that is the moral outrage that our society accepted first), and 'B' can be either euthanasia or infanticide. Here, the Slippery Slope does indeed apply. As Ian said, "he "Slippery Slope Fallacy" - the one "fallacy" that somehow results in correct predictions 100% of the time." The Slippery Slope applies becasue the same *premise* that justifies any one of euthanasia or infanticide or abortion -- denial of the Imago Dei, and thus denial that all persons possess the inalienable right to life -- also justifies all of the others.

Bouncing Checks

Douglas Wilson: A Three Car Funeral -- "... If I might change the metaphor, our federal government is bouncing checks in more areas than just the budget."


Douglas Wilson: Syria in a Sentence -- "I want Congress to authorize something I don’t believe they need to authorize, and which I reserve the right to do anyway whether or not they authorize it, in order that I might defend the credibility of a red line I didn’t actually draw, so that I may take decisive action that will not in any way affect the momentum of the Syrian civil war or, if it accidentally does, al-Qaeda will the stronger for it, in order that I might have a chance to do what I have spent a decade yelling about other people doing."

100% true ... yet a vile lie

Suppose that someone says, "I had a pretty good day at work today ... the boss came in sober". And suppose that the statement is 100% factually true. And further suppose that the statement is a vile lie.

How can that be? How can a statement that is 100% factually true be nonetheless a vile lie?

Well, consider: what is this person *really* saying? He is saying by implication that it's remarkable that he had a good day at work, and he is saying by implication that it's remarkable that that the boss came in sober, and he is is saying by implication that there is a linkage between the two. That is, he is saying by implication that he doesn't always have a good day at work, AND he is saying by implication that the boss doesn't always come in sober, AND he is he is saying by implication that the second "fact" is among the causes of the first.

But, the boss *always* comes in sober. He is, in fact, a tee-totaler, and has never once in his life been drunk.

My point is that there is more to honesty that simply always making statements that are 100% factually true. My point is that one can indeed lie and slander, one can indeed behave grossly immorally, while always making statements that are 100% factually true.

As I've pointed out somewhere or other, the "best" lies are 100% factual, and the "best" liars *always* speak factually.

And my deeper point is that just as one may be behaving immorally *even as* one is making statements that are 100% factually true, so too, one may be behaving fully morally *even as* one is making statements that are 100% factually false (as, for example, in the famous dilemma of lying to the Nazis that one doesn't know where any Jews are, even as one is hiding a Jewish family in the basement and another in the attic).

Moral realism and anti-realism

Michael Egnor: Moral realism and anti-realism --

... If morality is an adaptive strategy, then morality is not real. It is a delusion. I think that Baggett is right. This debate will come down to classical theists (Christians mainly) vrs. atheists. Moral realists vrs. anti-realists.

I think that the prime motivating ideology of modern atheism is moral anti-realism anyway, so at least the debate will move in an honest direction.

New atheism has always been about morality, not science. Scientism is a tactic, not a motive, for atheist evangelism.

Sentimentalizing Serial Murder

Theodore Dalrymple: Sentimentalizing Serial Murder

(h/t: Denyse O'Leary)

'Minor sins' ... and Judgment

Alan Roebuck (in a comment made in his 'Defining Christianity: Why Be a Christian? Part II' thread) -- "Yes, modern man does not believe in sin, except for spectacular cases such as mass murder. But we have to acknowledge the biblical testimony, that what seem to us minor sins are not inconsequential, but are both offenses against a holy God and, as you say, indications of a radical disorder within us."

A few years ago, a wrote a parable that is about exactly this false idea (and idol) that one can be morally good without being morally pure (Miss Grundy warning: I openly use a certain naughty Anglo-Saxon word many times, which, by the way, one may find used in the Bible) -- Noìli's Custom Ice Cream Shoppe

The modern man, he who denies the reality of sin and the reality of objective moral standards, is always willing to "compromise" thusly: "Well, sure, I guess I'm sort of like a gallon of delicious ice cream which has a teaspoon of dog-doo mixed into it. But that guy over there has a whole pint mixed in. THEREFORE, God has no right to judge/condemn me."

But, of course, God has the right to judge-and-reject the person who is not morally pure, just as anyone has the right to judge-and-reject a serving a ice cream with a smidgen of doggie-doo mixed into it. Not one of us is morally pure -- and God has the right to reject all of us: you/I have no ground upon which to stand to judge God.

Moreover, God has offered you a way to be freed of your impurity, he has offered you a way to be made acceptable in his sight. But you, O Modern Man, will not humble yourself before a loving God, and admit your sinfulness and inability to make yourself morally pure, will not trust in him to make you pure ... however much that you will abase yourself in all ways before a mere human and vicious tyrant.

And, do not think that God will "send you to Hell", as people incorrectly say, because he's anal-retentinve about sin, as moderns like to condem those have not quite so relaxed an attitude toward sin as they themselves. The reason God will "send you to Hell" is that since you will not repent of your sinfulness and allow him to burn the sin out of you, you cannot even continue to live/exist were you to come into his direct presence (that is, were you to "go to Heaven"). You clutch your sin to you bosom, as though it were the most precious part of you, and you will not let it go, you will not let it be burned out of you -- thus, you become sin. "Sending you to Hell" is a mercy, for all that is it also judgment (*).

Those who will not be purified of their sinfulness cannot "go to Heaven" -- they cannot see God face-to-face -- for, having become sin, they would be wholly burned-up in his direct presence, there would be nothing left of them.

All sin, even the most 'petty', as we view the seriousness of these things, must destroy he who will not let go of it. Clutch any sin to your bosom, and it will devour you.

(*) Furthermore, there can be no mercy if there not first judgment-and-condemnation. Mercy just is the setting aside of the full weight of condemnation one deserves. Mercy just is a special form of injustice.

Edit 2012/11/20:
Kristor seems to be having as much trouble posting comments on this (Google/Blogger) blog as I am on The Orthosphere (WordPress) blog. Following is a comment from him --

Well done. I loved this

And, do not think that God will "send you to Hell", as people incorrectly say, because he's anal-retentinve about sin, as moderns like to condem those have not quite so relaxed an attitude toward sin as they themselves. The reason God will "send you to Hell" is that since you will not repent of your sinfulness and allow him to burn the sin out of you, you cannot even continue to live/exist were you to come into his direct presence (that is, were you to "go to Heaven"). You clutch your sin to you bosom, as though it were the most precious part of you, and you will not let it go, you will not let it be burned out of you -- thus, you become sin. "Sending you to Hell" is a mercy, for all that is it also judgment (*).

I’ve been making that argument for years to people who object to the notion of a wrathful God. To the sinner, the fire of God’s love is as a wrathful burning; to the saint, it is recognized as the very basis of his life, even when he was a sinner.

Sin is essentially a disagreement with reality. Lydia McGrew made this point a couple years ago, hammering it into me. As disagreeing with the very foundation of his own life, the sinner cannot but aim at the extinction thereof; the wages of sin is death, and people keep signing up for the gig - because, as sinners, they disagree with existence, and want those lethal wages.
Kristor

Yes, this is what I was getting at -- "To the sinner, the fire of God’s love is as a wrathful burning; to the saint, it is recognized as the very basis of his life, even when he was a sinner."

Now, the sort of Internet Atheist with whom anyone has far too much experience -- you know, the old Village Atheist With Ehternet -- is going to scoff at that statement, as, indeed, they mindlessly scoff at everything.

But, consider, they themselves frequently believe something roughly analogous; though, in their case, what they believe tends to be pointless (and even mindless) navel-gazing and self-worshiping woo-woo. In have in mind certain wide-spread ideas that now seem to be free-floating in popular-and-materialistic culture (such as it is) --

In the movies of popular culture -- informed, as they are, by materialism/naturalism -- the human characters, sometimes even the main characters with whom we are meant to identify, may encounter some "Entity of Light" ... which tends to burn them up; which is to say, given the materialistic or naturalistic presuppositions of the movie, the characters are annihilated by the Light.

Sometimes, as with Nazi soldiers encountering face-to-face the "supernatural" (as that term is misused in materialistic though) Ark of the Covenant in an Indiana Jones movie, this personal annihilation is presented as a horror.

Sometimes, as with a face-to-face encounter with a "higher being" (which is, nonetheless, as fully a natural-and-contingent being in the physical universe as we are), or as with a face-to-face encounter the sun, this personal annihilation is presented as a mystical/spiritual event regarding which the audience is intended to have “woo-woo” feelings.

When are 'vegetables' not?

Shadow to Light: Maybe she felt it -- One may recall that one of the rationalizations for judicially murdering Terri Schiavo was the assertion that she'd not feel anything while dying a slow death of thirst ... as though pain were the criterion of moral determinations.

Michael Egnor: Man in Persistent Vegetative State answers questions via fMRI -- In the comments section, the God-denialists who infest Egnor's blog play to type.

The flaw is in the hidden premise

Jeff Jacoby: Can a conscientious liberal back Obama? -- there is, in fact, no such thing as a "conscientious liberal".

'Using armed violence in any context is flat out wrong...'

CSGV Believes This Girl Was Wrong -- it's logically impossible to reason with "liberals", for they are (at best) willfully insane.

Still, isn't it interesting to see "liberals" making moral assertions of absolutes?

(h/t: Dissecting Leftism)

Bombshell allegations against New York organ procurement entity

Lydia McGrew: Bombshell allegations against New York organ procurement entity

Unfortunately, most people have made a 'god' of their own time-bound physical lives -- while ignoring their eternal lives -- and so do not care about this sort of thing. And, in fact, they will hate those who try to bring this sort of thing to light, rather than hating the guilty parties.

Until, of course, it happens to them; but then it's too late.


Earlier posts on this topic --

The Organ Transplant Industry is Immoral

'Bioethics' and the Houben Case

'Life at the Bottom'

Read Theodore Dalrymple’s "Life at the Bottom" online for free

Only those not paying attention

Only those deliberately choosing to not pay attention will be "shocked" by this development.

Bob Parks: ACLU, Single Mom Gets Father-Daughter Dances Banned

In a society in which "discrimination" -- treating unlike things according to their due -- is the ultimate moral evil, in which (the recently invented) "right" to "self-esteem" is more important than the virtue of self-respect, and consequently it is "immoral" and "offensive" to express disapproval either of the "life-style" of causing children to be born bastards (*) or of the legal and social ease with which women discard the fathers of children, well of course it's going to be "discriminatory" to do anything that could be construed as suggesting that, Yes, Virginia, some little girls do have fathers.

Understand, the whole idea of a father-daughter dance is strange; and depending on the ages of the girls, not too far away from creepy. BUT, it isn't the "dance" the "liberals" are condemning, it is the 'father' in the equation.

(*) Hell! in such a morally twisted and degenerate society, it's "immoral" and "offensive" to use the terms 'bastard' and 'illegitimate birth' correctly.

One of these days

One of these days, you (you know who you are) may finally figure out, or admit, that I'm always right (*). Of course, what you really need to do is not just admit that you erred about a politically manufactured controversy, but that you erred in relying on personal insult to "debate" me concernting an earlier iteration of the same.

(*) There was that one time when I thought I had been wrong, but as it tuned out, I was mistaken.

The Irredentist

The Superversive: The Irredentist

'Its nonjudgmentalism is a synonym for desertion and cruelty'

TheBestSchools: Belmont: Its nonjudgmentalism is a synonym for desertion and cruelty "... Belmonters might, however, serve on a blue-ribbon government committee for criminalizing Grandma’s (*) views—as part of a widely praised effort to combat prejudice against these “emerging family forms.” But one thing the Belmonters would never do is live that way. Or live among people who do."

(*) Who has the audacity to think "it’s a sin (!) that her never-married daughter has children by three different men".

Nothing wrong with anything anymore

I'd meant to link to this excellent essay some days ago -- Venerable Beads: Nothing wrong with anything anymore

A righteous Crude rant

Crude: No, I won't call you intellectually honest -- I've explained the same thing, many times, in many places, though never so well.

The Big Lie and The Big Truth

Recently, Lawrence Auster had a thread in which one of his readers coined the phrase and concept "the Big Truth" on the model of, or as a back-formation of, "the Big Lie." As that reader, Philip M, put it: "... And I think on some level people, particularly conservatives, know this, and it is the enormity of the crime that scares them into remaining silent; otherwise they would be exposing an ongoing left-wing takeover of our entire lives, and then what? Fight? Perhaps you could call it the "Big Truth." A truth so frightening that people dare not admit even the possibility of it?"

Or, as Mr Auster summarized the differences: "What's the difference between the Big Lie and the Big Truth? The Big Lie is a lie so big that it is believed. The Big Truth is a truth so big that it is disbelieved."

Mr Auster has a further post on the matter, in which the reader Bill W gives a Christian perspective on the Big Lie and the Big Truth.

It's a conundrum

The recent news of the (Palin-hating) Columbia professor recently arrested for an incestuous sexual relationship with "a young relative" above the age of 18 -- which is to say, his daughter, whom he apparently began to schtup after her 18th birthday -- (discussed here, among other places) is surely a vexing conundrum for the "liberal" "mind" (as well as for consistent libertarians, though not for exactly the dilemma examined here).

On the one hand, "What's wrong with you bible-thumpers that you can't stand to see others (who are your moral and intellectual betters, in any event) express their 'love' as they see fit?" -- This horn of the dilemma applies to consistent libertarians, as well as to "liberals," for both groups operate with essentially the same intentionally-busted moral compass. The point here being that neither group can stand on any moral ground more firm than "Eeeew!" by which to condemn the incestuous relationship.

On the other hand, on the "liberal" view of reality, there is a very dangerous "slippery slope" involved here – that is, while it is surely as "unjust" to refuse to redefine marriage so as to include incestuous relationships as it is to refuse to redefine marriage so as to include “same-sex couples” or multiples (for, since when is “love” limited to two?), nevertheless it must be admitted that redefining marriage so as to include incestuous relationships would eviscerate the entire estate tax (death tax) regime. I mean, OMG! what if rich white conservative old people married one or more of their children just before they died?