When Is Speech "Free Speech"?

 On the other hand, fomenting violence -- which is what the French State is trying to prevent -- is not free speech, any more than Drag Queen Story Hour is.

The Founders were not "free speech absolutists", and they very much approved of censorship; for contrary to "free speech absolutistism", not all censorship is the same.

The "free speech absolutists" are as much our enemies as are the leftists who are currently using federal government violence to silence and persecute us. In fact, "free speech absolutistism" was the bait-and-switch tool which was used to get our society to the present state in which actions sexualizing children are called "free speech", but speech opposing the sexualizing of children is called "violence" and "killing the marginalized".

Our civilization is destroying itself because our fathers and grandfathers allowed our enemies to distort the meanings of those constitutionally enumerated rights, and especially of the "Free Speech Clause" of the 1st Amendment, and in fact gleefully joined in that distortion ... because they wanted easier access to porn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGvqv4NsQCs

Jury Duty in the Time of Covid-1984

I have jury duty for the next couple of weeks.  Yesterday, I had to go to the courthouse for jury selection -- and, of course, because all the bureaucrats are still playing the absurd Covid-1984 Game, we potential jurors were "asked" (*) to wear face-diapers and practice "social distancing", and their procedure for processing us  has been stood on its head to play the game of "social distancing".

So, as instructed, 40+ of us (plus at least 10 waiting to go before the other judge for "re-entry") were there in the hallway-as-lobby outside the two courtrooms at 9:00 AM.  You know, practicing "social distancing" ... by sitting and standing next to one another.

I brought a face-diaper, but I did't put it on ... and no one at all gave a damn for an hour, until the bailiff came out to register us.  That's right, we (the jurors, *and* the defendant and some of his relatives, and the "re-entry" people) practiced "social distancing" in that hallway for an hour or more, before anything public happened.

Eventually, a lady sitting across from me, there for moral support for the defendant, noticed the writing on the face-diaper I was holding, and asked what it said.  I told her, "These face-diapers are not helping, Karen" and everyone within earshot laughed.  So, I was cheered by that.  What I mean is, when I go to the grocery store, I see no faces, just face-diapers, and it's easy to begin to believe that the majority of people actually believe this cargo-cult bull-shit that that a piece of cloth hiding your face -- hiding your humanity -- can stop viruses.  Turns out, most people are just trying to avoid being harassed by the Karens.

Eventually, the bailiff came out to register us, and she was a Karen -- she even sported the "I want to speak to the manager" hair-do (**) popular with Karens.  Eventually, Karen said to me, "We need (***) you to wear your mask". So, I put the face-diaper on ... and *pointedly* did not cover my nose ... and that was OK ... because the point of face-diapers is not about anyone's health, but rather about the bureaucrats forcing us mere tax-cattle to understand that they rule us.

Eventually, Karen seated us in the courtroom, entering the room one at a time to assigned seats spread over the room.  You know, to maintain the "social distancing" delusion.  I think it was 11:00 when the judge finally entered, and spent the next hour telling us how important-to-justice our role is ... but mostly, listening to himself talk.  Judges *are* just lawyers, after all.  And lawyers don't really give a damn about *justice*.

So, naturally, with all that talking, the judge eventually needed to take a drink.  And so, of course -- because the demand that we hide our faces has nothing to do with anyone's health -- he removed his face-diaper several times and did drink.  Meanwhile, the (armed) sheriff's deputy, who was sitting directly across the room from me (I was one of the last potential jurors assigned a seat, and I was in the jury-box), sometimes had his nose out of his face-diaper, and sometimes removed it entirely to drink from his thermos-cup.  Surely, you have guessed by now that Karen also removed her face-diaper more than once to take a drink.

Well, noon rolled around and the judge had finally heard his voice for a satisfactory amount of time, and was going to have the prosecution (there were three of them, but the second-in-rank did their part of these proceedings) begin their part of the 'voir dire' stage of the trial. However, she (the prosecutor) convinced him to call a lunch break.

Since I had walked to the courthouse, I wasn't about to go back outside.  So, other than a few minutes to go to the concessions room on the floor below, I sat in the hall/lobby -- face uncovered -- with several others, some also with human faces.  During this hour, I saw *many* employees of the "justice system" walking around without face-diapers: some were putting one on *as* they exited various offices, some (who looked to be mainly cops of various sorts) didn't appear to even have a face-diaper on their person.  I was sitting near the door to the family court lobby; on the door was one sign saying the only one person at a time could be in that lobby (never mind conditions just outside the door), and another sign saying that anyone who entered the room without a face-diaper faced a charge (i.e. an automatic *conviction*) of "contempt of court", with a $250 fine and/or 30 days in jail. Toward the end of the day, they send us out again while the prosecution and defense agreed upon which of us would be empaneled as the jury: again, I saw several "justice system" employees clearly violating the absurd face-diaper protocols and "rules" that they impose on us mere tax-payers.

EDIT: I had meant to mention that as the defence lawyer, a *very old man*, was speaking and asking various potential jurors questions, his face-diaper slipped from his mouth, and he, as a *sensible* old man, ignored that and continued to speak.  Eventually, Karen (who was seated behind him and to the side) noticed that the lawyer's face was uncovered, and so she came out on the floor and interuppted him to "remind" him to hide his face again.

(*) I *loathe* the use of "ask" to mean "demand"; but that is (of course) how they phrased it.

(**) One of the funny things about this 'do' is how silly it looks from the back, especially when it is done the way this woman's was: with the hair less than 6 inches long and relying on product to give it poof and body, but resulting in an amusing void at the crown of her head.  Do these women never *look* at their soul-sisters sporting that same look?

(***) And I really loathe the passive-aggressive "I need you to ..." construction.

Post-Modern Science: The Illusion of Consciousness Sees Through Itself

Denyse O'Leary: Post-Modern Science: The Illusion of Consciousness Sees Through Itself

...
Naturalist philosopher Patricia Churchland puts the proposition most starkly: Evolution selects for survival and “Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”

“Truth, whatever that is”? One sees into the soul of post-modern science here.
...
Gobry [previously quoted concerning the self-evident absurdity of the Naturalists' "consciousness is an illusion" assertion] seems not to grasp that absurdity is no longer an issue. We are animals and animals are never absurd; they live and then they die.

Similarly, literary critic Leon Wieseltier [echoing Darwin (*), whether or not he realizes it] writes, “If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? … Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.” Yes, it can. The power invoked is not reason but the rhetoric of reason, a weapon for those who do not believe in the concept against those who do.

(*) This is referred to as "Darwin's Doubt"

“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? [To William Graham 3 July 1881]”

“But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?”

And -- just as his disciples today -- he didn't let the knowledge that his programme logically entails the denial that we even can reason truly/soundly and acquire real/true knowledge get in his way.

What it's about

Americans of Southern extraction are the single-most patriotic group in America. This is true whether their ancestors were Confederates, or, like mine, Unionists.

The leftist push to obliterate the Confederate past -- the American past -- is not about "fighting" slavery or "racism" or any of the other things the leftists claim; it is about asserting the leftist conquest of America. It is about marking America as conquered territory. It is about forcing the American people to acknowledge that they are a conquered people.

So far, our leaders and the public faces of conservatism have been quite OK with this, which rather calls into question whether they are *our* leaders and just how "conservative" they really are.

Ultimately, it will come down to this question: Do the American People agree that we are a conquered people?

=========
The target of these leftists is not the Confederacy, it is the USA.

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.

Coming Soon to a Christian Music Festival Near You

Jihad Watch: UK: Christian festival to feature Islamic worship chants

How marvelously broad-minded! Pope Francis [along with the muckity-mucks of the Church of England] would be thrilled! But once again we see that this kind of gesture of good will is all one-way. When is the Islamic festival featuring Christian liturgical chant? Why, the very idea would be absurd, of course. ...

Christian worshippers at this year’s Greenbelt Festival will have the opportunity to learn Islamic worship chants – thanks to an organisation which says its primary aim is to ‘guide seekers of Allah’.

Collusion!

In the post Burn in Hell, commie pinko!, I had linked to an article from The Federalist discussing Ted Kennedy's courting of the Soviets to destabilize (sitting) President Reagan's foreign policy so as to help Kennedy's electoral challenge to Reagan in 1984 (*).

Turns out, Kennedy had *also* tried to pull the same trick against (sitting) President Carter in 1980 (**) -- DailyWire: 5 Times Democrats Tried To Work With The Russians [and Soviets] To Swing Elections

(*) As did (Democrat) Speaker of the House "Tip" O'Neill that same election cycle.

(**) Amusingly, that same year, President "Carter tried to work with the Soviets during the 1980 election to improve his chances against [challenger] Ronald Reagan."

What's a poor Soviet dictator to do when his "useful idiots" act like such useless idiots?

===========
There are *reasons* that the Partisans of the Ass are rightly called "the Party of Treason".

Coming Soon to a Street Near You

Jihad Watch: German court: Sharia police may patrol streets

=========
Edit 2017/07/22:

The following links are listed in chronological order --

Jihad Watch: Minneapolis: Muslim cop who shot woman in cold blood had three complaints against him --

We don’t have any indication at this point of why Mohamed Noor killed Justine Damond. There is no evidence now that he is a jihadi or that this was a jihad attack. But with three complaints against him in two years, he seems at very least to be dangerously reckless and/or incompetent. His presence on the force appears to be a manifestation of the general anxiety to avoid charges of “Islamophobia”: Minneapolis officials were so anxious to have a Somali Muslim police officer that they put Mohamed Noor on the force and kept him there when his obvious shortcomings would have had a non-Muslim officer fired or not hired in the first place.

Remember the fact of those three complaints in two years in light of a claim advanced below by the Chief-of-Police of Minneapolis (while also keeping in mind that bogus complaints against police officers are very common).

Also, think about this --

The police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Australian woman in mysterious circumstances after she called 911 to report a disturbance behind her upscale Minneapolis home has been identified.

Mohamed Noor, who joined the department in March 2015, reached over and shot Justine Damond, 40, multiple times from the passenger seat of his squad car while she spoke to his colleague on the drivers side in a back alley.

Both officer’s bodycams were off and the squad car camera not recording when Damond – who was in her pyjamas – was killed ...

Jihad Watch: Washington Post: After Muslim cop shoots unarmed woman, Muslims “brace for backlash”

Jihad Watch: Minneapolis: Muslim cop who shot unarmed woman refuses to be interviewed by investigators

Jihad Watch: Muslim cop tells friends, not investigators, he was “startled” by unarmed woman he killed

Jihad Watch: Neighbor of Muslim cop who killed unarmed woman says killer is “nervous…jumpy…has little respect for women”

Jihad Watch: After Muslim cop kills unarmed woman, Minneapolis mayor reassures Muslims, warns against “Islamophobia”

Jihad Watch: Muslim cop who shot unarmed woman says he was “startled” by loud noise, but no nearby residents heard it

I dare say he *was* "startled" by a loud noise ... his gun ... which, apparently, he already had drawn and pointed.

Jihad Watch: Minneapolis police chief: Muslim cop who killed unarmed woman “very suited to be on the street”

Jihad Watch: Lawyers for Muslim cop who killed unarmed woman call for autopsy to see if victim was on Ambien -- "Like so many Muslims before him, it looks as if Mohamed Noor has opted to defend himself by blaming the victim."

Amusing Contrast

Scott Adams (2017/04/20): Big Red Flag for Cognitive Dissonance

Scott Adams (2017/04/19): You Don’t Have Free Will – but You Might Get It Someday

There *is* no such thing as 'cognitive dissonance' were it really true that "You Don’t Have [as people say (*)] Free Will". Moreover, if "You Don’t Have Free Will" now, then you never will "get" it in the future.


(*) To say that we "have" free will is to use sloppy language, however common it is. The truth is that we *are* free wills; our "free will" is not something we can gain or lose, as though it were a cold or a foot.

The Illusion Delusion

I'd like to share with Gentle Reader a comment/explanation from Kristor at The Orthosphere --

winstonscrooge - "Perhaps consciousness is the universal and the you of waking is an egoic illusion."

Kristor - "It’s an interesting notion. But all the phenomenal evidence we have – that, by definition, we can possibly have – contradicts it, so …"

winstonscrooge - "What specifically?"

Kristor - "All the evidence we have, without exception, is evidence we are aware of. By definition, we can’t have awareness of evidence that we are not aware of. So we can’t have evidence that the only sort of evidence we can have – the sort we are aware of – is illusory. All the evidence we can possibly have points to the suggestion that our conscious awareness is not illusory."

The "interesting notion" (as Kristor put it), popular amongst God-deniers, in particular, and those who wish to do what they know to be immoral, in general, that our consciousness of ourselves is an illusion is an incoherent notion; it is self-refuting.

IF it were true -- if it even could be true -- that our consciousness of ourselves is an illusion, THEN we could never know it to be true; and we could never truly know it to be even a logical possibility.

'Claim-staking'

The useful term 'virtue-signaling' has of late become ubiquitous -- "[James Bartholomew] coined the phrase in an article here in The Spectator (18 April) in which [he] described the way in which many people say or write things to indicate that they are virtuous. Sometimes it is quite subtle. By saying that they hate the Daily Mail or Ukip, they are really telling you that they are admirably non-racist, left-wing or open-minded. One of the crucial aspects of virtue signalling is that it does not require actually doing anything virtuous. It does not involve delivering lunches to elderly neighbours or staying together with a spouse for the sake of the children. It takes no effort or sacrifice at all."

Recently, I read someone asking whether there is a similar pithy term by which to denote the never-ending efforts of leftist cry-bullies to establish for themselves a place of social-and-moral dominance on the leftist hierarchy-of-victimhood totem-pole.

May I suggest 'claim-staking', or, in full, 'victimhood/victimocracy claim-staking'?

Defective tranny

a comment/joke on Vox Popoli

Implications!

In a recent post on Victor Reppert's blog, Bob Prokop explodes the common atheistic talking point that critical thinking leads one to embrace atheism --

"I'm curious what you think would be an acceptable demonstration of the claim that critical thinking leads to atheism. (I do think this is true, but I am wondering what you think would demonstrate it to you, and others.)"

It's not gonna happen, because there is simply no conceivable way that honest, critical thinking will ever lead to atheism.

Atheism demands that one close one's mind to the illogic of something coming from nothing (or else one has to redefine "nothing" to the point where it is actually "something").

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means there is no objective morality, that good and evil are nothing more than subjective judgements of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

Atheism demands that one ignore the fact that 99.9 percent of humanity since the Dawn of Time have believed in, worshiped, and prayed to God (or to gods). Atheists are required to think their tiny minority are "right" and the overwhelming majority of people are "wrong" about the most important of all imaginable questions.

Atheists must insist that all questions can be reduced to matters of empirical evidence and "science" - that art, literature, history, music, architecture, personal experience, all are somehow defective or fundamentally lacking, not quite worthy of trust, ultimately to be (negatively) evaluated against the one-and-only objective standard given the atheist seal of approval.

Atheists must never, ever allow themselves to realize that atheism means that everything is meaningless, that in the end of ends it does not matter what kind of life one leads, or even whether one is or is not an atheist - because a single microsecond after one's death, it is all as though it never happened, so who cares?

Atheists must never face up to the inevitable implication of materialism that individual identity does not really exist - that we are simply complex bundles of matter and energy, which, if its configuration is somehow altered or destroyed, becomes something else.

Atheists must believe that our noblest traits, our highest aspirations, our sublimest thoughts, are nothing more than electrical impulses and chemical reactions in a soulless meat machine, of no greater significance than combustion or sublimation. The love I feel for my family is simply a Darwinian survival mechanism.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Atheism is the very negtion of critical thinking. To the contrary, a case can be made for its being perilously close to insanity

Exactly!

Both the affirmation of the reality of God and the denial of the reality of God are statements about the very nature of reality, of truth, of reason, of morality, of meaning, of love, of beauty, of personhood, of agency, and of our individual selves (and of much else, besides; that list is not exhaustive). The question of the reality of God is the First Question, because everything else follows from the answer to that question.

At the very least, every one of the demands and entailments of God-denial that Mr Prokop lists ought to give one pause regarding one's God-denial if one really is engaging in critical thinking; and some of them are sufficient to demonstrate the falsity of God-denial. Thus, if one really is engaging in critical thinking, then one simply will not continue to deny the reality of God. So, far from critical thinkng leading a person to atheism, in truth it leads one away.

Consider just a few of the above entailments of atheism --

Atheists must never, ever allow themselves to realize that atheism means that everything is meaningless, that in the end of ends it does not matter what kind of life one leads, or even whether one is or is not an atheist - because a single microsecond after one's death, it is all as though it never happened, so who cares?

This is one of the logical entailments of God-denial that ought to cause one to seriously doubt that God-denial is the truth about the nature of reality. That is, this entailment itself doesn't show that God-denial is false (though other entailments do), but it does show that very few human beings -- including one's own atheistic-professing self -- are actually capable of *really* believing that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that *everything* -- including atheism itself -- is meaningless. No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that it doesn't matter in the least what a person believes about the nature of reality. No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that it doesn't matter in the least how a person conducts his life.

Now, of course, the fact that no one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes this particular logically inescapable entailment of God-denial does not in itself prove that God-denial is the false view of reality. But it does expose a very serious cognitive dissonance involved in attempting to assert that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality -- if one doesn't believe the logically inescapable entailments of a proposition which one asserts, then one either doesn't really understand the proposition or one doesn't really believe the proposition in the first place. If one asserts that 1+1=2 and yet denies that 2+1=3, then one either does not understand what one is talking about, or one doesn't really believe what one has asserted.

It's a curiosity: atheism is odd, and possibly unique, in this regard -- atheism is a world-view the truth of which matters not in the least were it actually the truth about the nature of reality; the question of the truth of atheism matters only if atheism is not true.

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means there is no objective morality, that good and evil are nothing more than subjective judgements of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

This is another of the logical entailments of God-denial that ought to cause one to seriously doubt that God-denial is the truth about the nature of reality -- even the people who explicitly and publically assert that there is no such thing as objective-and-transcendent morality continuously demonstrate by their own behavior that they don't really believe what they have asserted!

Consider just one common example of their behavior belying their assertions --

Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') is on very public record of affirming the logical entailment of atheism that there are no such things as 'right' and 'wrong', that is, that there is no such thing as transcendent morality, and of affirming this as a logical entailment of atheism. Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') is *also* on very public record of asserting that this or that (e.g. rearing one's child as a Christian; being a "creationist"; punishing criminals because they have chosen to be criminals; being sexually jealous of one's spouse; and on and on) is 'wrong'. Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') constantly asserts that there is no "way things ought to be" ... and also constanly asserts that this or that "ought not be" -- this is a blatant self-contradiction: either he (and they) does not really believe the former assertion, or does not really believe the latter assertion(s).


Now, consider this immediate topic in light of the prior one.

Suppose it really is the case that there are no such things as 'right' and 'wrong', that is, that there is no such thing as transcendent morality. And after all, this really is a logically inescapable entailment of atheism.

And, suppose it really is the case that that *everything* really is ultimately and utterly meaningless, and thus it doesn't matter in the least how one conducts one's life. And after all, this really is a logically inescapable entailment of atheism.

Now, suppose those two propositions simultaneously -- for, after all, if atheism really is the truth about the nature of reality, then both propositions are true.

Does one now see how it is that so many 'atheists' constantly seek to shape public opinion by means of asserting self-contradictions?

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means [that all our thoughts/judgements/conclusions are nothing more than the output] of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

Atheists must believe that our noblest traits, our highest aspirations, our sublimest thoughts, are nothing more than electrical impulses and chemical reactions in a soulless meat machine, of no greater significance than combustion or sublimation. The love I feel for my family is simply a Darwinian survival mechanism.

If atheism is the truth about the nature of reality, then you cannot reason -- you cannot *know* anything ... including that you cannot know anything ... and including knowing that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

Everything that is coheres, and it cohers in God, and God alone: to deny the reality of God is to deny the coherence of reality. This doubtless explains why 'atheists' so readily retreat into irrationality as a means to protect their God-denial from rational critical evaluation -- contrary to their constant self-promotion, they are not committed to reason/rationality, but merely to refusing to acknowledge God.

Atheists must never face up to the inevitable implication of materialism that individual identity does not really exist - that we are simply complex bundles of matter and energy, which, if its configuration is somehow altered or destroyed, becomes something else.

This is one of the logically inescapable entailments of God-denial which shows it to be absurd, and thus shows it to be false, and thus shows its denial to be true.

When one encounters a God-denier saying such things as "Consciousness is an illusion" or "The 'self' is an illusion" or "There is no such thing as 'free-will'", that isn't just some blow-hard blowing hard (however much that 'atheists' tend to be blow-hards). These claims and other such claims are logically inescapable entailments of atheism.

And when one encounters a God-denier saying something like, "Well, I am an 'atheist', and *I* don't believe that consciousness is an illusion", then one simply is dealing with a blow-hard -- what this or that 'atheist' is willing to affirm does not alter the set of propositions which are logical entailments of atheism.

When one denies the reality of God, then logically and inescapably one has also denied the reality of one's own self: but this is absurd. Since one *knows* that it is absurd to deny the reality of one's own self, and since this absurd denial is logically entailed by the denial of the reality of God, then one *knows* that the initial or grounding absurdity is in the denial of the reality of God.

This is why I say that every 'atheist', as an 'atheist', is intellectually dishonest. This isn't just me being "mean"; this is me "following the logic where it leads" -- atheism is absurd (and thus is false); atheism entails obvious absurdities (and thus is seen obviously to be false); not a single one of the 'atheists' one will ever encounter has any rationally exculpating excuse for continuing to ignore the absurdity of God-denial; that is, every single 'atheist' one will ever encounter asserts the absurdity of God-denial knowing it to be absurd, and thus knowing it to be false.

As the Apostle Paul wrote 2000 years ago: men are without excuse in denying (and failing to love-and-worship) God. Pace Bertrand Russell, men do not deny the reality of God because they have "insufficient evidence". Rather, they deny the reality of God because they refuse to acknowledge the truth they already know.

After all, a rapist is just as likely to look like Bill Clinton as Bill Cosby

V the K, at 'Gay Patriot': Swedish Police No Longer Allowed to Describe Race or National Origin of Suspects -- "... There is a great huge difference between the racist assumption “All members of Race X are criminals” and the equally racist counter-assumption “Acknowledging that some members of Race X commit crimes is equivalent to saying all members of Race X are criminals.” However, this nuance is lost on the Progressive Left.

After all, a rapist is just as likely to look like Bill Clinton as Bill Cosby."

It really is that simple

I've quoted this before, and no doubt I'll quote it again (to make, once again, the same point I'm going to here) -- 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.

As the above quote demonstrates to those willing to think about it, the God-deniers don't scoff at the possibility of miracles for any principled reasons, but only because as they have chosen to deny God, they must perforce deny all things connected in any way with God (*).

What is the difference between the claim that "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" and the claim that an iron axe-head, rare and expensive in the time and place, which had flown off the handle into a body of water, was seen to float to the surface to be retrieved by the people who needed it?

Well, one minor difference is that no one claims ever to have witnessed the former -- and, in fact, the sort of persons who assert that it *could* happen simultaneously assert that the possibility of it actually happening is so vanishingly small as to be non-existent -- whereas the latter is claimed to have been witnessed, and that claim is recorded in a certain famous "bronze age religious text".

But the major difference, the difference that makes all the difference in the world, is that the former, should it ever be witnessed to occur, would be utterly meaningless, caused by nothing and for no reason and signifying nothing (**); whereas the latter not only had a cause, but had a personal cause, was the result of a deliberate act, and signifies, among other things, the lordship of God over "the Laws of Nature".

What is the difference between the claim that at some point in the far distant past, mere undifferentiated and unorganized chemicals became living entities, and the claim to have witnessed the death of a person and then later to have seen that very person alive?

Well, one minor difference is that no one claims ever to have witnessed the former -- and, in fact, the sort of persons who assert that it *did* happen simultaneously assert that the possibility of it happening again is so vanishingly small as to be non-existent -- and further, such an occurrence is contrary to what we believe we understand about "the Laws of Nature", whereas the latter is claimed to have been witnessed, and while such an occurrence is not commonly witnessed, it is not contrary to what we believe we understand about "the Laws of Nature".

But the major difference, the difference that makes all the difference in the world, is that the former, while asserted to have happened, and asserted to be one of the ultimate causes of our existing, is intrinsically utterly meaningless, being something that "just happened", for no reason, and given what 'Science!' has become of late, no cause; whereas the latter not only had a cause, but had a personal cause, was the result of a deliberate and reasoned act, and signifies, at the very least, the lordship of God over "the Laws of Nature".


Now, my point is that God-deniers do not denigrate the possibility of miracles and claims to have witnessed miracles out of any high-minded principles. And they certainly don't do it because miracles "break the Laws of Nature", as they like to accuse. For, as the Sagan quote makes clear to anyone willing to see, in the end the God-deniers deny that there even are any such things as "Laws of Nature".

No, the reason -- the *only* reason -- that the God-deniers denigrate the possibility of miracles and claims to have witnessed miracles is because, by definition, a miracle is the result of a deliberate and reasoned act of God, and signifies, at the very least, the lordship of God over "the Laws of Nature".

God-deniers don't hate miracles because they "fuckin' love science", as so many of them are wont to claim when they imagine that 'science' may be a handy stick for beating God, but because they hate God; it really is that simple.



(*) which is why, in the end, they always end up denying that they themselves, and you also, of course, even exist.

(**) well, it does signify the denial that there even *are* any "Laws of Nature"

Compare and contrast

On the one hand and on the other (also, this).

And on the other, moral equivalency, hand

And a Canadian??

Trigger Warnings: An "anti-feminist"

'Science!'

Douglas Wilson: 3 Reasons the Campaign on Planned Parenthood is Winnable -- Pastor Wilson shares a short description of some of the 'Science!' being done on murdered babies. He gives the description in plain English and in sciencese (personally, the sciencese affected me more than the plain English)

The results of the above research, incidentally, were published in Science. That particular vile experiment was done in Finland, but it was funded by “the Lalor Foundation in Boston,” the “New York State Department of Mental Hygiene,” and, get this, the “Association for Aid of Crippled Children,” also located in New York.

My mother was used as a human guinea-pig -- here in America, in the 1930s -- in ways not too different from what the pre-Nazis and Nazis did in Germany in the 1930s. AND, it was funded in large part by the Shriners. Now, I'm confident that the rank-and-file men who were Shriners had no idea that the monies they raised to help crippled children were being put to such perverse ends; but the people at the top, the people making the decisions, the people working hand in glove with the "Progressives" in Indiana's government and its medical corps, knew.

Pervertitarians never rest

Alexander Boot (from 2015): German government says incest is best

LifeSite News (from 2007): German Government Publication Promotes Incestuous Pedophilia as Healthy Sex Ed

Christian Telegraph (from 2008): Christians stopped sexual depravity of German kids

I think "stopped" is probably too strong a word; "delayed" probably more accurately captures the nuance, for pervertitarians never rest in their quest to pervert all good things.


Now, Gentle Reader has been around the block a time or two. One knows, from repeated experience, that the very people who are continuously promoting this sort of thing -- the very human termites who are intentionally gnawing relentlessly at the roots of our civilization, which is the very thing that makes our comfortable lives possible -- will point to the fact the the German government was successfully shamed into withdrawing this particular publication and then say, "Ah-ha! You conservatives are just fear-mongering!" And the fence-sitters, the people who don't want to see what's right under their noses, will say, "Yeah! What's the big deal? It all woked out."

But, the point is, as Mr Boot put it in an email response to me, "what's staggering here isn't the dates, and not the fact that the booklets were eventually withdrawn, but that the government of a Western, formerly Christian, nation could have produced them in the first place."

The other enormities he mentions in the article are more recent -- because the pervertitarians never rest in their quest to pervert all good things.

And, in the meantime, with respect to Germany, it is still illegal, as per laws left over from the Nazi era, to try to remove one's own children from the open sewer that is "public education".

Does Gentle Reader recall the case, from just last year, of the Romeike family? This is a German family that fled to the US, seeking political asylum, to escape imprisonment by the German government for refusing to send their children to the sort of state-approved cess-pits that would "teach" them that parents ought to diddle their kids, so that they won't "be ashamed of their bodies." And the Obamanation was working with the German government to force the family back to Germany, to have their children stolen from them and to be imprisoned for daring to object.

The last I read of the case, the family had been granted "indefinite deferred action" status -- or, to translate that into English: "this case is presently too 'hot' to deport them back to Germany, so let's decide to not decide anything just yet; see if people forget about them, then we'll decide to decide."


Quoting Mr Boot's article:

For religion isn’t all about what people do on a Friday night or Sunday morning. It’s also about the way man defines himself.

If a father sees himself as the creature God made in His image and likeness, then he’ll raise his daughter to be proud of her humanity, not her vagina.

He’d try to instil in her certain eternal truths that can be best absorbed in a state of innocence, the longer-lasting the better. He’d try to teach the little girl that life has a profound meaning, and her genitals aren’t the place where it can be found.

If, however, a man believes that, when he dies, he turns to fertiliser and that’s it, then life to him can have no meaning - or rather the process of life becomes its own meaning.

Deriving as much pleasure out of every moment from the earliest possible age becomes the ultimate desideratum. In fact, the very definition of pleasure has to be pushed downwards, ideally all the way down to the crotch.

So why wait until the girl grows up and, God forbid, marries, reactionary as such a possibility may sound? Why waste the valuable years between 1 and 3, when she can receive hands-on tuition in what her clitoris is for? No reason at all.

Such is the ledger sheet of our much-vaunted progress, ladies and gentlemen. On the credit side, children operating computers with nothing short of wiz-kid dexterity. On the debit side, fathers encouraged to masturbate their one-year-old daughters.

You can't have "just a little bit" of sin -- as individuals, and as societies, either we must reject sin and perversion, root and branch, or we must become sin and perversion, which is to say, death. The choice before us is the same choice it has always been: life or death. Choose one, because you can't have both.

I especially liked the last one

The Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse Some Fights You'll Never Win