Vox Popoli

Dissecting Divine Hiddenness

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:08:00 +0000

This is one of the more feeble arguments against the existence of God I have seen, but I haven't actually critiqued it before. From Wikipedia:

The argument from nonbelief (or the argument from divine hiddenness) is a philosophical argument against the existence of God, specifically, the God of theism. The premise of the argument is that if God existed (and wanted humanity to know it), he would have brought about a situation in which every reasonable person believed in him; however, there are reasonable unbelievers, and therefore, this weighs against God's existence. This argument is similar to the classic argument from evil in that it affirms inconsistency between the world that exists and the world that should exist if God had certain desires combined with the power to see them through. In fact, since ignorance of God would seem to be a natural evil, many would categorize the problem of divine hiddenness as an instance of the problem of evil.

1. If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
2. If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur.
3. Reasonable nonbelief occurs.
4. No perfectly loving God exists (from 2 and 3).
5. Hence, there is no God (from 1 and 4).

This argument is a dreadful one because it manages to be unrelated to the Biblical God as well as logically fallacious. Even if it wasn't outright admitted in the very description, it is trivially easy to demonstrate that the argument cannot possibly apply to the Christian God by simple reference to the Bible. Contrast these two statements:

a) If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
b) "“Because of all their wickedness in Gilgal, I hated them there. Because of their sinful deeds, I will drive them out of my house. I will no longer love them; all their leaders are rebellious." Hosea 9:15

Since perfect love both proscribes hatred and is not equal to conditional love, the argument clearly fails to apply to the Biblical God at the very first step. As can be readily verified, the verse from Hosea is only one of the many verses in the Bible that describe, in some detail, those whom God hates, in some cases, with a self-described passion. Therefore, it is patently obvious that the argument from Divine Hiddenness has absolutely no relevance to the Christian God.

As is so often the case, the atheist argument is dependent upon an intellectually dishonest bait-and-switch. The argument doesn't, and can't, apply to the Christian God, and yet is presented as an argument against the Christian God, thus relying upon the failure of the interlocutor to notice the substitution of a hypothetical and nonexistent "perfectly loving god" for the actual God worshipped and described in the Bible.

Moreoever, the argument against the imaginary "perfectly loving God" even fails in its own right for the following reasons:

1. It is false to say that God must be perfectly loving since the available evidence, both observable and documentary, indicates that God is not.
2. "No reasonable nonbelief" does not follow from "perfectly loving".
3. There is no evidence that reasonable nonbelief occurs. There is, to the contrary, considerable evidence that most nonbelief is both unreasoning and unreasonable.

To understand how astonishingly illogical the argument is, consider the following variant utilizing the same "logic".

1. If there are frogs, they are purple.
2. If a purple frog exists, no ribbetting will be heard.
3. Ribbetting is heard.
4. No purple frog exists (from 2 and 3).
5. Hence, there are no frogs (from 1 and 4).

Thus by the Argument from Ranine Hiddenness we are able to conclude that no frog exists, even though our conclusion flies in the face of the observable fact that something out there - though clearly not a frog! - can be heard going ribbet, ribbet. And frankly, I think I'd be more impressed with the intellectual prowess exhibited by the average frog's ribbets than by the cretins who produced this illogical drivel.

So, I will now pose the obvious question to Smiley, who was good enough to bring this argument to our attention earlier this week. Do you still find the Argument from Divine Hiddenness to be "infinitely more convincing than any argument ever proposed by any Christian?"

UPDATE: In the interest of spelling things out more slowly for those who are too ignorant to realize that the Christian God is the God of the Old Testament as well as the New, and are too lazy to bother looking up the various other references I mentioned, I will point out the obvious. "But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." - Revelations 2:6.

In which I quote Instapundit

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:30:00 +0000

HE’S A SCIENTIST — you can’t expect him to be good at math:

Heh. Of course, in fairness, given that Gleick only has a B.S. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from Berkeley, there is a very good chance that he never took much in the way of math or statistics courses.

As I've previously noted, one of the dirty secrets of science education is that most science majors study very little in the way of logic, history, math, or statistics, which is why they so often reveal themselves to be every bit as clueless as the average individual whenever they venture outside their very narrow areas of education and professional expertise.

A dance of desperation

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:05:00 +0000

In addition to proving the old adage about scientists finally struggling up to reach the final peak of knowledge, only to find the philosophers already ensconced there, this latest attempt to dance around The Great Why shows the increasing desperation of the scientific godless:

It is, perhaps, the mystery of last resort. Scientists may be at least theoretically able to trace every last galaxy back to a bump in the Big Bang, to complete the entire quantum roll call of particles and forces. But the question of why there was a Big Bang or any quantum particles at all was presumed to lie safely out of scientific bounds, in the realms of philosophy or religion.

Now even that assumption is no longer safe, as exemplified by a new book by the cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss. In it he joins a chorus of physicists and cosmologists who have been pushing into sacred ground, proclaiming more and more loudly in the last few years that science can explain how something — namely our star-spangled cosmos — could be born from, if not nothing, something very close to it. God, they argue, is not part of the equation....

Dr. Krauss delineates three different kinds of nothingness. First is what may have passed muster as nothing with the ancient Greeks: empty space. But we now know that even empty space is filled with energy, vibrating with electromagnetic fields and so-called virtual particles dancing in and out of existence on borrowed energy courtesy of the randomness that characterizes reality on the smallest scales, according to the rules of quantum theory.

Second is nothing, without even space and time. Following a similar quantum logic, theorists have proposed that whole universes, little bubbles of space-time, could pop into existence, like bubbles in boiling water, out of this nothing.

There is a deeper nothing in which even the laws of physics are absent. Where do the laws come from? Are they born with the universe, or is the universe born in accordance with them? Here Dr. Krauss, unhappily in my view, resorts to the newest and most controversial toy in the cosmologist’s toolbox: the multiverse, a nearly infinite assemblage of universes, each with its own randomly determined rules, particles and forces, that represent solutions to the basic equations of string theory — the alleged theory of everything, or perhaps, as wags say, anything.

There is, of course, a fourth type of nothingness. And that is the amount of scientific validity contained in Krauss's desperate attempt to use a fraudulent veneer of science to avoid the obvious conclusions driven by the relevant philosophic logic. This isn't even science fiction, it's just purely evasive fantasy. If I were to seriously propose that full-grown unicorns, little rainbow-colored horned equines, could simply pop into existence, like bubbles in boiling water, ex nihilo, people would rightly dismiss me as a fantasist and a possibly insane one at that.

But substitute "universes" for "unicorns", and suddenly, we're talking science!

Guilty of what?

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:17:00 +0000

John Derbyshire points out that New Jersey is dabbling with throwing out the rule of law on behalf of a sexually aberrant minority and doing so with the full blessing of Republican governor Chris Christie.

[A] year last September, Dharun Ravi and another freshman, Molly Wei, used a webcam to secretly watch Clementi kissing a young man Clementi had picked up.... Three days after that, Clementi committed suicide by jumping from the George Washington Bridge. Whether this had any connection at all to the webcam incident, is not known. That Dharun Ravi thought his prank might drive Clementi to suicide is preposterous; that he intended that result is preposterosity squared.

The homosexualists were up in arms none the less, and every damn fool politician in New Jersey joined in the hue and cry. Chris Christie, who I think less of every time he opens his fat mouth, quote: “I don’t know how those two folks are going to sleep at night, knowing that they contributed to driving that young man to that alternative.” They don’t know that, Governor, and neither do you, and neither does anyone. They played a trivial prank; Clement killed himself; cause and effect are not obvious, certainly not established to any fair evidentiary standards.

I find it no little amusing that a suicide three days after a minor, if potentially emotionally upsetting event is supposed to be conclusive evidence of "murder by reckless manslaughter" whereas when a doctor injects poison into an infant, who goes into seizures and dies within 12 hours, it is considered impossible to determine cause and effect and the very idea that the poison injection might be responsible is scoffed at as unscientific.

This is little more than a show trial, meant to publicly communicate the message that homosexuals are innocent victims of society and injuring their feelings by failing to approve their actions at all times is evil, bordering on criminal. The irony is that Dharun Ravi is obviously far less culpable for Tyler Clementi's suicide than those individuals who repeatedly urged a psychologically unstable young man to not only indulge his abnormal sexual desires, but to identify himself by them.

The military supports Ron Paul

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:00:00 +0000

It's strange, how the candidate who is supposed to be crazy because of his "insane" foreign policy is so strongly supported by the military, who actually have to carry out the dangerous tasks that are so cheerfully set for them by Republican and Democratic chickenhawks alike:

Current and former service members staged a rally outside the White House today in support of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Several hundred troops and their supporters attended the event. The veterans were men and women, young and old, some in uniform and some in plain clothes.

The demonstration was a mostly silent affair, with the veterans standing calmly at attention in rows. An organizer bellowed that each second of quiet was for every military suicide since President Obama took office. A second moment of silence was for each soldier to die abroad under the current commander in chief.

The ironic thing is that many members of the military openly despise their slobbering Republican "supporters" who are so eager to show their enthusiasm for the military by waving flags as they send its members off to die for Afghan democracy, Iraqi oil, the national security of Israel... and whatever the purported rationale for being in Somalia was.

The NFL on Tebow

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Michael Silver, who was never inclined to be a natural Tebow fan, nevertheless put together a short and interesting history of the Denver quarterback's remarkable season, beginning with his first start against the Dolphins:

I don't have a problem with what Tim Tebow's doing with [his outspoken Christianity]. I've seen him try to articulate why he has the belief and why he believes the things he does, in a very easy way to understand. He's not the guy, when the cameras are put in his face, saying, you know, "Praise to God, because he supernaturally let that ball hit my receiver!" You know what I mean? But he's up-front with it, and he makes many people uncomfortable. I do have a problem with what the Christian community is doing with his faith, that they are almost becoming a cult following. I think it's an "us" problem, not a "him" problem.

Like Dilfer, I have no problem with Tebow whatsoever. I still very much doubt his long-term future as a starting NFL quarterback, but I like him, wish him well, and have thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment he and his team provided last year. He is an excellent role model as a person, a player, and a competitor, but he is not a theologian, a prophet, a pastor, or a proof of the existence of God.

There is no reason why Christians shouldn't cheer for men like him and Jeremy Lin and wish them continued success. But rather than pray for their sporting success, pray for their ability to resist the temptations that will inevitably be presented to them. It doesn't matter if the world that the world sees Christians are good athletes. It does matter that it sees they remain strong men of good character, regardless of what fate throws at them.

Kurt Warner: "Often we want to focus on the individual and the great things he's done, kind of like Tim Tebow, and rightfully so. But the thing you always notice in the Bible is that the result of those things is other people believing."

The grand climate climb-down begins

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:07:00 +0000

It looks as if the global warming scammer who hoped to concoct a reverse Climategate may have been identified:

FEBRUARY 20, 2012: Earlier this evening, Peter Gleick, a prominent figure in the global warming movement, confessed to stealing electronic documents from The Heartland Institute in an attempt to discredit and embarrass a group that disagrees with his views.

Gleick’s crime was a serious one. The documents he admits stealing contained personal information about Heartland staff members, donors, and allies, the release of which has violated their privacy and endangered their personal safety.

An additional document Gleick represented as coming from The Heartland Institute, a forged memo purporting to set out our strategies on global warming, has been extensively cited by newspapers and in news releases and articles posted on Web sites and blogs around the world. It has caused major and permanent damage to the reputations of The Heartland Institute and many of the scientists, policy experts, and organizations we work with.

A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage.

In his statement, Gleick claims he committed this crime because he believed The Heartland Institute was preventing a “rational debate” from taking place over global warming. This is unbelievable. Heartland has repeatedly asked for real debate on this important topic. Gleick himself was specifically invited to attend a Heartland event to debate global warming just days before he stole the documents. He turned down the invitation.

Gleick also claims he did not write the forged memo, but only stole the documents to confirm the content of the memo he received from an anonymous source. This too is unbelievable. Many independent commentators already have concluded the memo was most likely written by Gleick.

We hope Gleick will make a more complete confession in the next few days.

There are several interesting things about this action and subsequent confession, which it appears may soon be followed by further confessions. They are as follows:

1. Contra their feverish insistence that the Climategate emails didn't reveal anything significant or do any serious harm to their cause, it's obvious that the global warming scammers believe that they did. Hence the document theft and release.

2. The stolen Heartland documents that were released didn't actually do any harm to the anti-AGW cause or it would have been unnecessary to forge any documents.

3. The global warming scammers understand that they have failed to convince enough people that the scientific consensus is settled. In fact, they've now reached the point that so many people reject these assertions that they're doing damage to the credibility of science and scientists by association. This is why Gleick is, as the Heartland press release correctly points out, ludicrously trying to claim that it is HEARTLAND that is attempting to stifle "rational debate".

4. They're getting seriously desperate. Which makes sense. In times of severe economic contraction, there will be significant pressure to stop funding all science that isn't of immediate practical benefit, to say nothing of obvious junk science like what passes for climate science.

The consequence of this is that more scientists - who are herd animals, after all - are going to find that they cannot participate in the scam any longer. We'll know that it's over when clueless science fetishists like PZ Myers belatedly admit that because there isn't any global warming, Man isn't causing it and the science that they claimed was definitively settled never existed in the first place.

Losing the next war

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:30:00 +0000

I don't care how much the USA spends on its military. It's all but guaranteed to lose its next major war:

The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training. This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers.

Army enlisted leaders all over the world are being ordered to take the Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course, or PPPT, according to U.S. Army Medical Activity Japan health promotion educator Jana York.

Developed by the Army in 2008, the course includes aerobics classes, pool sessions and classroom studies on the physiology of pregnant women. The NCOs learn special exercises for pregnant women, who shouldn’t push themselves too hard or participate in high-impact activities such as snowboarding, bungee jumping or horse riding, York said.

I don't know if you've noticed this too, but it seems to be me it's been years since I last heard some Republican attempting to justify the latest federal encroachment by babbling "we are at war". In light of this nonsense they'd bloody well better hope we're not.

Portrait of a facepalm

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:00:00 +0000

This is an actual dialogue from the comments that I felt deserves to survive the heat death of CoComment:

Agnosticon: There's a lot of mens rea in this argument. [The Divine Hiddenness argument.] It is basically a legal analogy. A rational disbeliever allegedly does not have "guilty mind" and should therefore still be worthy of salvation, however he isn't, a contradiction. Rational justification here is equivalent to non culpability, while that may not be full justification, it is not unjustified either, it occupies a gray region. I think the argument rests on the assumption that God would be wise enough to perceive this and avoid it, but He doesn't, hence no God.

VD: It is a stupid and logically invalid argument, as I will demonstrate when I get around to it. And, as I have pointed out on many occasions, legal and moral culpability are two very different things. Regardless, arguing about the fact of God's existence on the basis of Man's law is self-evidently stupid.

Agnosticon: At least it doesn't question beg, as does arguing for the existence of God based on God's Law.

VD: There is no "at least", it's simply invalid. And who is arguing for the existence of God based on God's Law? If you still think I'm doing that, you're simply demonstrating your intellectual limitations again.

Agnosticon: I'm not saying that. I'm just anticipating some circularity in the rebuttal to the [Divine] Hiddenness argument, but I'll wait until you give it.

As a general service to commenters here, let me recommend that you read this and contemplate the wisdom of not publicly attempting to defend an argument that you have made by comparing it favorably with an argument that someone else has not actually made, but that you anticipate them making. Even if an argument is intrinsically flawed, you can't burn a bloody strawman until the straw is gathered and assembled.

And on a tangential note, I'd be curious to know what the regulars here deem the over/under on the percentage chance that Agnosticon can successfully anticipate the structure of my arguments, much less the actual argument itself?

Introducing Hypergamouse

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

JartStar and I are pleased to announce the introduction of Hypergamouse, a new comic strip that will run weekly on Mondays at Alpha Game. It may, nor may not, be the first Game-related comic strip. I can't be bothered to look into it and I'm really not interested in determining if Garfield actually qualifies as such.

It also may, or may not, be amusing. This isn't a format I have tried before, and like most creative endeavors, it may take a while before we really figure out what we are doing. So, I hope that the regulars will enjoy watching the evolution of the comic strip as well as the weekly vicissitudes of the Hypergamouse ensemble.

The sins of the Dawkins

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:31:00 +0000

It would appear that Richard Dawkins is only the latest in a long line of societally destructive assholes named Dawkins, as there has been a Dawkins on the wrong side of history for centuries:

He has railed against the evils of religion, and lectured the world on the virtues of atheism. Now Richard Dawkins, the secularist campaigner against "intolerance and suffering", must face an awkward revelation: he is descended from slave owners and his family estate was bought with a fortune partly created by forced labour.

One of his direct ancestors, Henry Dawkins, amassed such wealth that his family owned 1,013 slaves in Jamaica by the time of his death in 1744. The Dawkins family estate, consisting of 400 acres near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, was bought at least in part with wealth amassed through sugar plantation and slave ownership. Over Norton Park, inherited by Richard Dawkins's father, remains in the family, with the campaigner as a shareholder and director of the associated business....

In 1796 the oldest son James Dawkins (1760-1843) voted against Wilberforce's proposal to abolish the slave trade, helping to defeat it by just four votes. In 1807 he was one of a small rump of die-hards opposing the provisions of Slave Trade Act, which abolished selling slaves in the British Empire. He is believed to have been among just 18 MPs who supported an amendment to postpone the act's implementation by five years. They were defeated by the votes of 174 MPs.

On religious matters James Dawkins was throughout 1813 an opponent of 'Catholic relief', one of the acts which lifted restrictions on freedom of worship, property and electoral rights for Catholics.

I note with no little amusement that there is a material overlap between those who are defending Dawkins against the sins of his fathers and those who previously attempted to attack me through my father, who is presently enjoying a 15-year, taxpayer-funded retirement at a minimum security campus in a sub-tropical location courtesy of the Federal government.

Pity the poor Dawkster. He can't help it. His obnoxious behavior is only the consequence of his selfish, selfish genes.

UPDATE: What a cowardly little bitch he has become.

Remarkably, Dawkins stipulated that his Sunday Times interview must be carried out by someone who is ‘not religious’. This reinforces the suspicion I’ve always had that he wishes only to preach to the converted and sneer at the rest. There is no real attempt to engage; like so much of the evangelistic, atheistic, liberal left it is simply fashionable attitudinalising and means less than a handful of dust.

I suspect what is bothering Dawkins most these days is that is beginning to suspect that he's going to be trashed unmercifully for years, if not decades, after his death. I don't think he anticipated the way in which Christians were initially holding their fire or that his side would be so badly intellectually outgunned.

This is kind of cool

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:58:00 +0000

A Russian programmer who was a fan of the Rebel Moon series hit me up with some questions about Rebel Moon Revolution a few weeks ago - I still have to get back to him - and in the process of digging for some information I came across a bunch of demo files. I sent them off to him and he managed to get everything working under Windows XP complete with a mission launcher he sent back to me, so it's been fun to see what we did back then. It was remarkable to see how advanced the AI was, as it's 15 years later and I still haven't seen NPC-squads showing much in the way of overwatch movement. Actually, for that matter, I don't see it very often when playing multiplayer.

Mailvox: an ironic failure of reason

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:31:00 +0000

Smiley reaches a logically erroneous conclusion:

So how is the average person who did not have the same experiences as you, and does not find the logic convincing, supposed to believe? Elsewhere, you, like most christians, indicate that non-christians intentionally choose hell over heaven as though they deep down know that christianity is true.

This also seems at odds with a claim you made once, that you believe that it is rational to not believe in Christianity. So if it is rational, how can one be held accountable for not believing?

The Divine Hiddenness argument against the existence of the biblical god, uses that precise fact, as its core. I find that infinitely more convincing than any argument ever proposed by any Christian.

1. God sincerely wishes with all his heart to believe in him (I know VD's God is much more cruel and indifferent than most Christians' ideas, but he still does desire every individual human to believe in him)

2. It is rational to not believe in God

3. So there is no biblical God

Most Christians deny 2. But they are wrong. And you, VD, appear to agree.

First, it is both absurd and petty to avoid capitalizing a proper noun. Regardless what one thinks of Marxism, Buddhism, or Christianity, they all merit capital letters. This is basic punctuation. Second, I think this is a very common and reasonable line of thought which nevertheless reveals several logical errors on the part of the questioner.

The answer to the first question is simple. Observation. Even if we do not have certain experiences ourselves, we can reach valid conclusions by observing the effect those experiences have had on others. Indeed, this is both how science operates as well as being one of the primary forms of transmitting Christian beliefs from its inception; the observed transformation that took place in the life of Saul, to say nothing of the cowardly disciples, no doubt played a large role in the subsequent beliefs of others, just as an observed transformation in one of my friend's lives made a major impact on my own thinking about Christianity.

To say that non-Christians choose Hell over Heaven is not quite the same thing as saying that "they deep down know that christianity is true". While some consciously do make such a choice, most do so by rejecting the choice, but of course, the refusal to make a decision is tantamount to making a negative decision when a choice must be made. Also, what most Christians actually mean in this regard is not that most non-Christians deep down subscribe to the Nicene Creed, but rather that they understand, deep down, that they are flawed and fallen beings in need of salvation from their sinful nature.

As the vulgar expression has it, they are aware there is a Jesus-sized hole in their hearts. While one can certainly quibble about the size and shape of the hole if one wishes, it would be very difficult for anyone with any experience of humanity to altogether deny its existence, even though the materialist has no choice but to do so. This, of course, is why so many people instinctively, and correctly, reject material reductionism regardless of whether they possess religious faith or not.

Now to get to the errors.

A. To say that it is rational to not believe in the tenets of Christianity is not tantamount to saying that it is justifiable to not believe in those tenets. Nor does it mean that belief in Christianity is irrational. (For the sake of the pedantic, I will point out that I used "belief in Christianity" in the sense of "being a Christian"; obviously it would not be rational to insist that Christianity does not exist.)

B. When has the rationality of an action ever excused one from accountability for it? It is perfectly rational to print your own U.S. dollars from a laser printer and one can even present a sound mainstream economic argument for doing so, complete with a utilitarian moral justification, but that will not prevent one from being held accountable should one actually attempt to buy something with them.

C. The Divine Hiddenness argument is both deeply stupid and theologically ignorant, so the fact that Smiley finds it "infinitely more convincing than any argument ever proposed by any Christian" tells us very little about anything but Smiley's knowledge base and capacity for reason. The number of questions being begged in the argument are downright embarrassing. From Wikipedia: The argument from nonbelief (or the argument from divine hiddenness) is a philosophical argument against the existence of God, specifically, the God of theism. The premise of the argument is that if God existed (and wanted humanity to know it), he would have brought about a situation in which every reasonable person believed in him; however, there are reasonable unbelievers, and therefore, this weighs against God's existence.

I will address this argument in detail in a future post, but for now, Job 38:1-2 is sufficient to demolish it.

Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?

D. As to the syllogism presented, it is hopeless from the start.

1. No. The Biblical God clearly does not "sincerely wishes with all his heart" for people to believe in His existence. In fact, such belief isn't even enough to ensure one is not His enemy. "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder." And God knows perfectly well that some people genuinely don't believe He exists. "The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

2. Yes, but as was already pointed out above, so what?

3. The first step is false, the second step is irrelevant, and the conclusion is therefore false. But even if both steps had been true, the conclusion still wouldn't follow.

Why do you believe?

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:26:00 +0000

Invictus asks the question at In Mala Fide:

What beliefs do you have and why? Let’s start with religion. I think it’s safe to say that the majority of the world’s population was brought up in some form of religious community. If that’s you, do you still subscribe to those beliefs? If so, your reasoning should be more than just “That’s how I was raised.” As a man, able to reason and make decisions for yourself, you should have a deeper rationalization. If you’re Christian, why do you believe in God? Jesus as your savior? Is it because the Bible says so? Have you ever studied the origins of the Bible or how it was assembled by just a small group of men who basically picked what they thought should be included? What about Jesus? Is there any historical evidence that he actually existed? What about eyewitness accounts (the Gospels are hearsay at best)?
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If these questions have you doubting your beliefs, you may have some soul-searching to do. Do some research. Find out the facts. If you’re still standing firm, you might just be stubborn and ignorant, or you might have other deeper reasons. Maybe you’ve experienced first-hand a powerful interaction with God or Jesus. Maybe you’ve witnessed a miracle or a prayer that was answered with no other explanation but God. If so, I both respect and envy you.

Since I've answered this question concerning why I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ before, I'll respond with an excerpt from one of my letters to Luke of Common Sense Atheism:

Why am I a Christian? Because I believe in evil. I believe in objective, material, tangible evil that insensibly envelops every single one of us sooner or later. I believe in the fallen nature of Man, and I am aware that there is no shortage of evidence, scientific, testimonial, documentary, and archeological, to demonstrate that no individual is perfect or even perfectible by the moral standards described in the Bible. I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ is the only means of freeing Man from the grip of that evil. God may not be falsifiable, but Christianity definitely is, and it has never been falsified. The only philosophical problem of evil that could ever trouble the rational Christian is its absence; to the extent that evil can be said to exist, it proves not only the validity of Christianity but its necessity as well. The fact that we live in a world of pain, suffering, injustice, and cruelty is not evidence of God's nonexistence or maleficence, it is exactly the worldview that is described in the Bible. In my own experience and observations, I find that worldview to be far more accurate than any other, including the shiny science fiction utopianism of the secular humanists.

I don't concern myself much, if at all, with the conventional extra-Biblical dogma that you describe and in which many Christians believe. I am dubious about the concept of the Trinity as it is usually described, do not await an eschatological Rapture, have no problem admitting that the moral commandments of God are arbitrary, and readily agree that the distinction between the eternally saved from the eternally damned appears to be more than a little unfair from the human perspective. On the other hand, I know that evil exists. I have seen it, I have experienced it, I have committed it, and I have loved it. I also know the transforming power that Jesus Christ can exercise to free an individual from evils both large and small because I have seen it in the lives of others and I have felt it in my own life. Now, ever since St. Augustine wrote his Confessions, it has been customary for Christians to exaggerate their sinful pasts; Augustine was hardly the Caligula that he portrayed himself to be. I find dramatic personal histories to be tiresome in the extreme, so I won't say more except to note that as an agnostic, I enjoyed a sufficient amount of the hedonistic best that the world has to offer across a broad range of interesting and pleasurable experiences, only to learn that none of it was ever enough. It may amuse you to learn that one girl who knew me only before I was a Christian happened to learn about The Irrational Atheist and wrote to me to express her shock: “The fact that you wrote this book proves there is a God.”

And one with a sense of humor, no less. Now, there's no reason this would mean anything to you or anyone else who was not acquainted with me before. But it meant something to that woman, just as an observable transformation in one of my close friend's lives made a distinct impression on me.

I certainly do not deny the experiences or revelations of those who subscribe to other religions. I merely question the specific interpretation ascribed to them by those who lived through or received them. After all, the Bible informs us that there are other gods and that those gods are capable of providing such things at their discretion. Among other things, I studied East Asia at university and have spent a fair amount of time reading the sacred texts of various religions, including a few fairly obscure ones. I have yet to encounter one expressing a religious perspective that can be legitimately confused with the Christian one, nor, in my opinion, do any of these alternative perspectives describe the observable material world as I have experienced it as well as the Christian one does. I think it is astonishing that an ancient Middle Eastern text is frequently a better guide to predicting human behavior than the very best models that the social sciences have produced despite having an advantage of two thousand more years of human experience upon which to draw.

I suspect that unless you can understand why the first book in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy is called Out of the Silent Planet, unless you fully grasp the implications of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, you cannot possibly understand much about Christianity or the degree of difference between it and other religions. Fortunately for many Christians, intellectual understanding isn't the metric upon which salvation is based.

Fascist America and the technostasi

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Big Brother is spying on you through your laser printer:

A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document.

The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known.

"We've found that the dots from at least one line of printers encode the date and time your document was printed, as well as the serial number of the printer," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth David Schoen.

It must astonish those who have spent the last fifty years worrying about the establishment of a White Christian Fascist America to realize that they're on the verge of getting a Rainbow Progressive Fascist America instead. No doubt plenty of them still believe things are progressing in a positive manner, but I suspect there are a few glimmerings of nausea in more than a few progressive stomachs.

Here is the list of the printer companies who secretly agreed to serve as technostasi for the Secret Service.

A teachable moment

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 10:34:00 +0000

I was driving to the post office today, listening to the pure essence of awesome that is Rock Sugar, when it occurred to me that a previous attempt to "correct" me served as an ideal example of the frustration regularly experienced by more intelligent individuals forced to deal with the regular attempts of the mid-witted to demonstrate their intellectual "superiority" to all and sundry.

In my experience, those of very average or sub-normal intelligence seldom attempt to correct people. They simply don't dare. And with the exception of the socially retarded sub-set, those of high intelligence also seldom bother, either because it's so much more trouble than its worth or because they view one isolated correction as being akin to attempting to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon. But mid-wits love little more than demonstrating that they know more than somebody else, especially in public, and they will readily leap at any opportunity to do so.

Anyhow, some time ago, I mentioned that Shook Me Like a Prayer was one of my favorite Rock Sugar mashups, and that I particularly liked the way it incorporated Hell's Bells by AC/DC. Someone, I don't recall who, immediately took the opportunity to jump on that statement, explaining that it wasn't AC/DC's Hell's Bells, but rather, You Shook Me All Night Long that was the song that had been mixed together with Madonna's Like a Prayer.

That was both true and false... and this is precisely why I hate midwits. First, they seldom have a sufficient grasp of the subjects they address, and second, they tend to inadvertently assume a position that requires the assumption that the person they are correcting is a complete and blithering idiot. I mean, let's consider the facts that had to be known in this case to the midwit concerned:

(1) The Rock Sugar song is called Shook Me Like a Prayer and Rock Sugar songs are usually named after the two songs most utilized in the mix. Precisely how dumb does someone have to be in order to hear the song and somehow fail to recognize either chorus or the significance of "Shook Me" in the title? 65 IQ? 55? Actually brain-dead?

(2) To quote Wikipedia, "You Shook Me All Night Long is one of AC/DC's signature songs from their most successful album, Back in Black." It also has one of the most recognizable introductory guitar lines in rock history.

(3) Its occasional use during defensive stands in NFL games notwithstanding, Hell's Bells is less well known than You Shook Me All Night Long and anyone who knows the former is almost surely familiar with the latter.

(4) Rock Sugar usually mixes in elements from at least three different songs even if only two of them serve as the primary sources and are referenced in the title. For example, Voices in the Jungle also contains the famous guitar melody from Sweet Child o' Mine in the second and third choruses.

(5) There are freaking BELLS sounding in the middle of the Rock Sugar song.

Any one of those known facts should have been enough to give the correcting individual pause, but as we saw, they did not. Then add to those five known facts the two unknown ones that the midwit might have known, but couldn't be reasonably assumed to know:

(6) AC/DC's Back in Black was the first album I ever bought.

(7) I was a founding member of a band signed to Wax Trax! and TVT Records, and can therefore be expected to pay at least a little more attention to the more subtle elements that go into a song than the average individual.

Now, if you simply listen first to Hell's Bells from the 22 second to the 40 second mark, then to Shook Me Like a Prayer from the 2 minute 28 second mark to the two minute 44 second mark, it should be completely obvious what I was describing. Despite not being one of the song's two primary elements, Hell's Bells is cleverly and seamlessly worked into the mix, which is precisely the aspect of the song I was praising.

The basic problem this example reveals isn't that the midwit has no idea what he's talking about, but that he has a partial understanding he erroneously assumes is a complete one. For those who find themselves tempted to be constantly correcting others, it might be worth keeping this example in mind to encourage a moment's hesitation and contemplation before you leap in and embarrass yourself by attempting to "correct" an understanding that is materially superior to your own. At least on this blog, I have noticed that errors inspired by a combination of trigger words with insufficient reading comprehension appear to be the most common variety.

And on a barely tangential note, I was amused by DL's email this morning:

I was putzing around in my SNES emulator the other day and loaded up "X-Calibur" or some such at random. Imagine my surprise (and triple-take to make sure I hadn't misread) to find your past gig providing the music. Not a terrible little game, either. : )

Psykosonik: like the Spanish Inquisition, only louder, faster, and electronic.

An argument foragainst homeschooling

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:51:00 +0000

If this progressive argument against homeschooling doesn't convince you to keep your children out of public school, your IQ is probably even lower than the average public school teacher's:

“[m]any people, liberal and conservative alike, are deeply offended by critiques of compulsory schooling.” I suppose I am one of them. I benefited from 13 years of public education in one of the most diverse and progressive school districts in the United States. My father, stepmother, stepfather, and grandfather are or were public school educators. As an education journalist, I’ve admired many public schools that use culturally relevant, high-standards curricula to engage even the most disadvantaged students. These schools are sustained by the talents of impossibly hard-working teachers who want to partner with parents and kids, not oppress them.

Despite our conflicting perspectives, I agree with Taylor that school ought to be more engaging, more intellectually challenging, and less obsessed with testing. But government is the only institution with the power and scale to intervene in the massive undertaking of better educating American children, 90 percent of whom currently attend public schools. (And it’s worth remembering that schools provide not just education, but basic child care while parents are at work.) Lefty homeschoolers might be preaching sound social values to their children, but they aren’t practicing them. If progressives want to improve schools, we shouldn’t empty them out. We ought to flood them with our kids, and then debate vociferously what they ought to be doing.

The last sentence perfectly summarizes the progressive argument in a nutshell. The prime directive is to make sure everyone is under government control. Once that's accomplished, then we can debate what's to be done with them.

The fact of the matter is that the public schools are doomed thanks to the combination of declining societal wealth, an increasingly diverse population with correspondingly lower average IQ, and improving technology. And progressive attempts to shame parents back into the schools isn't going to work because those who are most susceptible to progressive arguments, such as they are, are the least likely to have children.

Science has consequences

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:32:00 +0000

The inherent unreliability of science, and the fact that scientists know perfectly well how unreliable it is, is clearly demonstrated by the ongoing court case in Italy:

The courthouse in L’Aquila, Italy, yesterday hosted a highly anticipated hearing in the trial of six seismologists and one government official indicted for manslaughter over their reassurances to the public ahead of a deadly earthquake in 2009 (see ‘Scientists face trial over earthquake deaths‘ and ‘Scientists on trial: At fault?’). During the hearing, the former head of the Italian Department of Civil Protection turned from key witness into defendant, and a seismologist from California criticized Italy’s top earthquake experts....

The hearing also included some true scientific debate when Lalliana Mualchin, former chief seismologist for the Department of Transportation in California, testified as an expert witness for the prosecution. In 2010, when news about the indictment broke, Mualchin was among the few experts who openly criticized — and refused to sign — a letter supporting the indicted seismologists signed by about 5,000 international scientists.

Mualchin said that seismic hazards were not properly assessed in L’Aquila. “Italy is one of the countries with the best seismic knowledge in the world. And yet look at what a 6.3 earthquake has done to this city. That knowledge was not used, and scientists are responsible for that. They were conscious of the high risk in the area, and yet did not advise the people to take any precaution whatsoever,” he said.

One of the reasons that I consider many scientists to be both hypocritical and despicable is that they regularly expect everyone else to accept their scientific declarations as some sort of perfectly reliable magic eight-ball while resolutely refusing to take any responsibility whatsoever for the accuracy of those declarations. Now, the significant gap between the reliability of science and the public's perception of that reliability isn't always the scientists' fault, as there are many examples of the science media and the mainstream media taking a perfectly reasonable statement by a scientist and turning it into an assertive declaration that brooks no possible doubt.

But when the public is paying their salaries, they have a right to expect material results from scientists, just as they have the right to expect that the public bus drivers will, in fact, drive the bus along the bus route. If the best that scientists can do is say "we have no idea what you should do", then they probably shouldn't be funded in the first place. And if they're going to say that something is safe, then they are most certainly liable for any damages incurred if they are incorrect and people were harmed as a result of the misinformation provided.

It's worth noting that scientists are usually at their most assertive when there is little chance of being held to account. But the reluctance of scientists to be held accountable in any way for their vaunted consensuses is further evidence that science should be considered fundamentally and intrinsically unreliable until it reaches a state that is more commonly described as "engineering". Note that one can be held legally liable for the quality of one's engineering, so what does it say of those who do not believe a scientist should be held legal liable for the quality of his science?

The tragedy of the mid-witted

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:01:00 +0000

It is truly remarkable what the moderately intelligent consider to be markers of superior intelligence:

I was a terrific little snob who thought she knew everything, and subsequently, I was about to learn a great deal.

As soon as I started, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. Fortunately, the other cocktail waitresses were quick to make suggestions. My first night on the job, a fellow shot girl offered practical advice. “You have to be a little cold,” she explained. “Make them feel like you’re doing them a favor by letting them buy shots.” But it’s difficult to maintain a Queen of Sheba demeanor while trying to rub globs of green glitter out of your eyes. Instead I became a level of friendly you typically only see at Disneyland, if Disneyland reeked of vomit and spilled appletinis. I doled out shots as people in cartoon costumes offer hugs. The manager would point out that I wasn’t being sexy enough, which was surprising, because I was wearing 6-inch heels and less clothing than I ever had.

It quickly became clear that I was not the first literate person to don a miniskirt. Sometime during that first week, I was hiding in the backroom reading Margaret Atwood. I was sitting on the counter next to baskets of party mix because my feet hurt, which they did for the entirety of my shot-selling career. One cocktail waitress swept in, asked what I thought of Atwood’s novel “Oryx and Crake,” did a tricky little analysis where she compared it to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” mentioned some other female dystopian writers I’d never heard of, and then went out balancing a tray of shots on one hand.

As ridiculous as it sounds, that was the first time I became aware that clever people are buried in every nook and cranny of life. It is astonishing that no one pointed this out to me sooner.

As we often see on this blog, those who possess above-average intelligence and trouble to occasionally read newspapers and magazines tend to genuinely be under the erroneous impression that they possess superlative intelligence. But while having an IQ between one and two standard deviations above the norm is unusual, it is hardly rare, and in historical terms it is distinctly pedestrian.

The astonishing thing about Miss Wright's confession isn't that she was clueless and solipsistic little snob, but rather, that she is still appears to believe that she is highly intelligent on the basis of familiarity with the works of a trivial and silly science fiction writer with a poor grasp of history. If she had any brains at all worth noting, then she wouldn't have needed someone else to point out that clever people are everywhere; in addition to the ease with which this can be observed in the material world, even a basic knowledge of intelligence statistics would indicate that this must be the case.

If this erstwhile pirate wench had simply noted that Mensa, with its 130/132 IQ floor, potentially represents the top 2 percent of the population, she would have known that there are some 6.2 MILLION Americans who are significantly above the "read a book" level that she sets as a significant benchmark.

The difference between the mid-wit and the genuinely intelligent is usually fairly easy to identify. The mid-witted individual tends to compare himself to those below the average and concludes that because he isn't like them, he must be a genius. The genuinely intelligent individual compares himself to the great minds of the past - with which he is familiar, having experienced many of their works - and concludes that for all his intellectual superiority to the great mass of relative retards presently surrounding him - he is nothing particularly special. The tragedy of the mid-wit is that he lives in a world that simply doesn't exist and is constructed flimsily out of his unimaginative imagination due to his failure to either observe the real world or think about it. His is is a very plain and simple world, and because he is not only comfortable in it, but important in it, he reacts with fear and hostility when he is forced, for one reason or another, to confront the fact that it does not exist.

Intelligence doesn't concern name-checking authors nor does it consist of being literate or even well-read. And even if one has been granted unusual cognitive capacity by the grace of God or the roll of the genetic dice, it remains little more than potential until one proves that one can actually do something, preferably something worthwhile, with it. Just as the mere fact of height doesn't make one a basketball player, the mere fact of high intelligence doesn't make one a genius, a philosopher, or anything else except a statistical oddity.

Genius is neither a state of being nor the possession of potential, it is the completion of material intellectual accomplishment. Mozart had enormous musical gifts, but even such a prodigy would not have been a genius had he not troubled to take the time and effort required to compose his music. Newton had one of the most astonishing minds ever possessed by homo sapiens sapiens, but he would not have become one of the most awe-inspiring geniuses of history had he never stopped to think about his casual observations of the material world. Genius is not born, it is self-created.

I suggest that before you can reach a place that requires effort, you must first realize that you are not already there.

The scheduled default

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:51:00 +0000

Amidst all the sound and fury in the media signifying nothing, the banks are calmly going about planning for the scheduled Greek sovereign default:

Senior bankers on Wall Street have been given detailed documentation setting out a timetable to Greek default, including firm dates and technical ‘orders’ about last use of the euro as a currency there. The revelation arrived at Slogger’s Roost last Monday, since when I have been trying to obtain corroboration. This arrived in the early hours of today (Thursday). One of the banks is Barclays Capital (Barcap) run by controversial figure Bob Diamond. The other must remain anonymous for the time being, in order to protect sources. The document asserts that Greece will officially be declared in default by all the ratings agencies after the close of business on Friday march 23rd .

Legitimate? We'll find out soon enough. It's certainly a lot more credible than the multiple announcements of a deal that has miraculously saved Greece, the Euro, the EU, and the global economy. How many of them have we seen generate short-term EU/USD spikes in the last six months, ten or eleven?

I think it's fairly obvious that the Eurobankers and their pet politicians knew from the start that they weren't going to do any more than the initial "bailout". But this way, they can pretend that the process is under control and business should proceed as before.

General Franco is still dead

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:11:00 +0000

As it happens, so is global warming.

Snowfall in the Sierra Nevada has remained consistent for 130 years, with no evidence that anything has changed as a result of climate change, according to a study released Tuesday. The analysis of snowfall data in the Sierra going back to 1878 found no more or less snow overall - a result that, on the surface, appears to contradict aspects of recent climate change models.

John Christy, the Alabama state climatologist who authored the study, said the amount of snow in the mountains has not decreased in the past 50 years, a period when greenhouse gases were supposed to have increased the effects of global warming.

As I have previously noted, the death of global warming also puts a bullet in the head of the concept of "scientific consensus". Global Warming fabulists can either a) admit that they were lying and there never was any scientific consensus, or b) scientific consensus that differs from mainstream consensus is no more intrinsically reliable than astrology.

There is a word we use when science reaches the point of reliability. That word is "engineering".

Speaking of Nazis

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:30:00 +0000

Ever vigilant on behalf of the forces of political correctness, ConWebWatch is keeping a close eye on my WorldNetDaily column:

See if you can catch all the Nazi references Vox Day has dumped into his Jan. 29 WorldNetDaily column.... Day also describes German chancellor Angela Merkel as "Bundeskanzlerin," which, it turns out, is not a Nazi reference; it just sounds like one.

No, it's her actual title, as it happens. And I'm hardly the only one to notice the similarities between the German-dominated EU and their historical counterparts. In any event, I wrote Terry to request a correction.

Hello Terry,

I am writing to correct your January 31st blog post. This is not, by any standard, a Nazi reference: "In Europe and in the United States alike, the heyday of the banks is rapidly coming to a close. The looming revolution is not a battle between capitalism and socialism, or a class war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but between the corrupt bank-government axis and the alliance of pretty much everyone else. "

It is, rather, a Marxist reference.

However, I must congratulate you, as you were absolutely correct to not include the reference to "Das Lied der Deutschen" in the title as a Nazi reference; although it is often considered to be one by the insufficiently historically informed, it is actually connected to the Weimar Republic that preceded National Socialist rule.

With regards,
Vox

The end of the Euro

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:00:00 +0000

I've been predicting this since it was forced upon the people of Europe. Now, the first material signs of its demise have appeared:

Are quasi-drachmas being issued?

These financial instruments are bonds, and have all the characteristics of Hellenic Republic Bonds: they bear international securities identification numbers (ISINs); they are negotiable on the Athens Exchange and they rank pari passu with other Greek debt. The government, in one of its press releases, notes that “bondholders who choose to discount these bonds at the banks will crystallise a 19% discount versus their original claim.”

We would argue, however, that they are more than just another bond issued by the Greek government. To be specific, they seem to us very akin to what economists call quasi-monies. These quasi-monies have appeared in a number of cases, usually put in place by government to find an escape valve out of nominal fiscal rigidities in the face of a financing issue. This especially happens in a case of a government of a monetary union that cannot print money to fund its deficit....

If a country issues a bond as repayment, even temporarily, for a supplier, then there is no withdrawal of money from the private sector as no-one purchases the bond with cash. It is a form of barter in which the vendor provides a good to the administration and receives a financial instrument created ex nihilo from the same government.

There have already been possibly apocryphal reports of Italians using lira and Spaniards using pesetas. But this is the first time that an EU government is printing a new monetary instrument that can be used in exchange for goods and services.

Richard Dawkins, sans pants

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

This is absolutely and utterly hilarious. In case you still don't believe that Richard Dawkins is a cretinous ex-scientist long past his sell-by date, I suspect this will suffice to convince you:

If you were trying to come up with a definition of misplaced intellectual arrogance, you could not do better than having the planet’s most famous atheist issuing diktats on who does and doesn’t count as a proper Christian. Prof Dawkins then announced, triumphantly, that an “astonishing number [of Christians] couldn’t identify the first book in the New Testament”.

The transcript of the next minute or so only hints at how cringingly, embarrassingly bad it was for Dawkins.

Fraser: Richard, if I said to you what is the full title of The Origin Of Species, I’m sure you could tell me that.

Dawkins: Yes I could.

Fraser: Go on then.

Dawkins: On the Origin of Species…Uh…With, oh, God, On the Origin of Species. There is a sub-title with respect to the preservation of favoured races in the fight... in the struggle for life.

Fraser: If you asked people who believed in evolution what that question, and then you came back and said two percent got it right, it would be terribly easy for me to go they don't really believe it after all. It's just not fair to ask people these questions.

It was a golden minute of radio. But as well as being hilarious, it was hugely symbolic.

As I have said repeatedly, Richard Dawkins is a huge intellectual fraud, and perhaps those who previously expressed incredulity at the idea that I would quite easily trounce the old charlatan in a debate will find it just a bit more credible now. This behavior isn't an outlier or a momentary lapse of memory, it is entirely characteristic. The man quite frequently pretends to knowledge that he patently does not possess and assumes he knows things that he obviously does not, which is why he avoids debate with those who are aware of his intellectual pretensions and are capable of exposing them.

It's bad enough that Dawkins couldn't come up with the name of what he considers to be the most important book ever written immediately after claiming he could do so, but in addition to stumbling a little on the subtitle, he even forgot the rather important part of the title that refers to the actual mechanism supposedly responsible! And furthermore, I am very, very skeptical of the assertion that 64 percent of self-identified Christians were not able to identify Matthew as the first book of the New Testament in a multiple choice question with four answers. I'd quite like to see what the other options were, as my guess is that most of the people who got it wrong didn't pay sufficient attention to the question and reflexively answered "Genesis".

Just in case Richard is reading this, the correct answer is: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

UPDATE: Here is the audio recording. It's actually even better than the excerpt of the transcript provided, which I have updated accordingly.

A lost opportunity

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:41:00 +0000

I think Michael Medved could have gotten a lot further with his Nazi Boy theme if he'd known that I not only believe Laibach to be the world's finest Slovenian Nazi-Industrial band, but for a brief while had the distinct and immeasurable honor of being label mates with them at Wax Trax!.

So, in honor of a brief conversation with Spacebunny this morning - I have what must be considered the endearing habit of quoting entire verses of Laibach when certain trigger words are mentioned - I present a true magnum opus. You can keep your Taylor Swift and your Beyonce; this is without question the greatest video of all time.

Actually, I really liked a lot of Wax Trax! music that was being released around that time, particularly Sister Machine Gun. It very much amused me that their main remix of Wired was named the Silicon Satan mix.