Certain snarling dismissals aside, the practice of quoting at length some bits from Liberal Fascism and opening up a thread for argument has, to my way of thinking, proven rather fruitful — though I remain confused at how certain commenters insist on imputing to me conclusions that are, in fact, Goldberg’s. Whether or not I agree or disagree with certain arguments Jonah makes based upon the history he outlines is beside the point — though for what it’s worth, I tend to believe, as many of you may already have guessed, that the true bulwark against progressive encroachment is less tied to any particular set of ethics in the abstract than it is dependent upon the revitalization of certain linguistic imperatives that would, if properly understood, make it far more difficult for the idea of a “Living Constitution” to gain traction, and make it far less likely that jurists be able to work beyond the clear text of the Constitution.
At any rate, and to keep the conversation going, I’ll share the following, which continues Goldberg’s analysis of the role eugenics played in progressive thought — while seeking to bolster his point about traditional conservative religious morality acting as a levee against the floodwaters of scientific utopianism:
For a variety of reasons, those we would today call conservatives often opposed eugenic schemes. The lone dissenter in Buck v. Bell, for example, wasn’t the liberal justice Louis Brandeis or Harlan Fiske Stone by the “archconservative” Pierce Butler. The Catholic conservative G.K. Chesterton was subjected to relentless ridicule and scorn for his opposition to eugenics. In various writings, most notable Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized Society [which nishi might want to check out, if she gets a chance – ed], Chesterton opposed what was held to be the sophisticated position by nearly all “thinking people” in Britain and the United States. Indeed, the foremost institution combating eugenics around the world was the Catholic Church. It was the Catholic influence in Italy — along with the fact that Italians were a genetically polyglot bunch — that made Italian Fascism less obsessed with eugenics than either the American progressives or the Nazis (though Mussolini did believe that over time Fascist government would have a positive eugenic effect on the Italians [note: positive eugenicists “argued for merely encouraging, cajoling, and subsidizing the fit to breed more and the unfit to breed less. The negative eugenicists operated along a spectrum that went from forced sterilization to imprisonment (at least during the reproductive years)” – ed]).
Nonetheless, progressives did come up with a term for conservative opponents of eugenics. They called them social Darwinists. Progressives invented the term “social Darwinism” to describe anyone who opposed Sidney Webb’s notion that the state must aggressively “interfere” in the reproductive order of society. In the hothouse logic of the left, those who opposed forced sterilization of the “unfit” and the poor were villains for letting a “state of nature” rule among the lower classes.
Herbert Spencer, the supposed founder of social Darwinism, was singled out as the poster boy for all that was wrong in classical liberalism. Spencer was indeed a Darwinist — he coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” — but his interpretation of evolutionary theory reinforced his view that people should be left alone. In almost every sense, Spencer was a good — albeit classical — liberal: he championed charity, woman’s suffrage, and civil liberties. But he was the incarnation of all that was backward, reactionary, and wrong according to the progressive worldview, not because he supported Hitlerian schemes of forced race hygiene but because he adamantly opposed them. To this day it is de rigueur among liberal intellectuals and historians to take potshots at Spencer as the philosophical wellspring of racism, right-wing “greed,” and even the Holocaust.
[My emphasis]
Discuss.
You rascal.
The Nazis started out with the “positive eugenics” also, before ratcheting it up to the “negative eugenics.”
Nor should the general connection between eugenics and progressivism surprise anyone. The notion that humanity can be perfected in the here and now is at the heart of most Leftist modes of thought. The notion that such can be brought about scientifically has a natural allure to that philosophy.
Immanentize the eschaton!
except of course, among the anti-intellectuals of the Right, like Ben Stein and Johnak Goldberg, who prefer to take potshots at Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein.
;)
though I remain confused at how certain commenters insist on imputing to me conclusions that are, in fact, Goldberg’s.
because you are a theocon-panderer, like Dr. Reynolds.
otherwise you would advocate throwing the scoundrels out, instead of giving them a platform.
Nishi
I’m not aware of Goldberg taking potshots at Darwin per se. Where is it you get that idea?
I am all for social Darwinism, for the “state of nature” rule among lower classes…
Now imagine the evolution, how many divergent species inhabiting similar geographical and/or meteorological conditions acquire similar phenotypical features , being genetically quite different.
Now to the frivolous premise of Jonah about liberalism=fascism.
Mussolini was socialist, that is established not arguable fact, but he did not EVOLVE from that to become fascist, he rejected socialism as dead and wrong philosophy and turned to new ideology.
By the same token I think the right way to say will be that Podhoretz, Kristol et al did not evolve from Marxism to neoconservatism, they rejected those theories in complete turn around…
btw, do you know that neocons admire fascists.
Read any Ledeen works at all?
I do think Darwinism led to Nazism, in a sense. But that’s because I see Nazism as one of many responses to modernism. And Darwin, for good and ill, represents the rise of modern science  along with Einstein and others. Nazism and Communism and Progressivism were all impossible without the industrial revolution, Darwinism, relativism, mechanized warfare, mass production, etc. They were reactionary responses to these things. Those responses amounted to an express rejection of the conservative and libertarian vision of society, which is why they were leftwing.–goldberg
Jeff keeps trying to engage nishi in an intellectual discourse.
nishi continues to respond with one of her eight standard talking points.
Odds of nishi reading Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized Society? Zero.
and now we see a reactionary response in the theocons to the advent of the age of bioengineering,
as they desparately try to convolve hitlerian eugenics with biotech.
the right is transforming into luddites.
So Nishi, I saw the passage of Goldberg you quote the day that it appeared on NRO, and it was not then, nor is it now a ‘potshot at Darwin per se’. Nor is it a potshot at Einstein, nor the industrial revolution, etc. per se.
Communism was impossible without the industrial revolution. Just ask Mao.
society will organize itself according to evolutionary theory of culture.
i postulate religious conservatism is about to go extinct.
Replacing the Church with “Catholics” in that passage makes it more true. There was no real institutional opposition to eugenics from any institution. The Church maxed out at the dreaded Strongly Worded Letter, and really, nothing more was possible. The eugenic idea is inextricable from institution-ness itself; they all come to it eventually. It’s not like the Church doesn’t have its self-interested breeding policies. But forget that.
Spencer was indeed the man. But you have to read what he wrote to know what he wrote, and read it as he wrote it, not as if it’s in the voice of that demon of lefty theology who shares only his name. He’s in the running with Nietzsche for most perfectly misread and misappropriated philosopher ever — probably in third place, if you include Socrates, which it’s safe to do, but impossible to do right. Speaking of which…
No problem. You mail me a time machine, I’ll go kill Plato and Pythagoras before they fucked us up. If all goes well, that’ll regain us as about twenty-five centuries of wasted humanity. When I come back, Goldberg’s book will certainly be about something else — the twenty-century history of time machines, for example.
Otherwise — boned.
nishi ignoring that conservatives opposed eugenics historically, as noted in the original post? Check.
Sdferr, obviously you didnt read the days of discourse that followed on the fuckin relativity of the funckin pope.
number of nishi talking points “postulated” = 2.
Still waiting for the escr reference.
nooooooooo!
not Pythagoras!
“number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons.”
Pythagoras FTW!
he will be proved correct in the endgame i think.
;)
#18
ROTFLMAO!!!
pyscho FTW!
oops that was for #15, pyscho
hahaha
Nishi
If you found the source of your mistaken position somewhere else (…the days of discourse that followed…) wouldn’t you have done better to cite that instance instead, rather than the instance that didn’t agree with your position. And, by the way, you are quite right, I did not read the following days arguments about the Pope, as it doesn’t interest me in the least.
karl, german escr? why on earth waste my time?
quit throwin chaff.
irrelevent to the discussion.
How is this different from Marx’s dialectic model of the evolution of society from anarchy to feudalism, capitalism, and, finally, communism? Both are “scientific” theories of how to organize society, and both have as much bearing on reality.
It takes a rather stunning ignorance of history to put forward the same failed arguments as those behind the biggest tragedies in human history.
And note, that like Marx and Hitler, nishi assumes that “science” predicts the future will turn out exactly the way she wants.
as it doesn’t interest me in the least.
nor me.
but that quote does prove my position, as does this quote.
Meanwhile, conservative religious and political dogma  under relentless attack from the left  may be the single greatest bulwark against eugenic schemes. Who rejects cloning most forcefully? Who is most troubled by euthanasia, abortion, and playing God in the laboratory? Good dogma is the most powerful inhibiting influence against bad ideas and the only guarantor that men will act on good ones. A conservative nation that seriously wondered if destroying a blastocyst is murder would not wonder at all whether it is murder to kill an eight-and-a-half-month-old fetus, let alone a “defective†infant.
that is Goldberg’s schtick. religious conservatism. anti-science, anti-ToE, anti-ToR.
homosapiens sapiens will never outgrow the babysitter of “god”.
the forever war isn’t rousseau vs hobbes, its locke vs. hobbes.
the rule of law vs the rule of man.
not the rule of religion or “god”.
Psycho
Why would you want to go back in time to kill Plato and Pythagoras? Why would you blame them for ‘fucking us up’? I thought we were possessed of free will, whereby to save ourselves?
It seems to me that the revitalization Jeff speaks of is precisely what is needed in order to even begin to attempt to understand Plato on his terms, not ours, let alone to succeed at it. Jeff argues for that revitalization throughout this bloggy oeuvre, but if we don’t choose it, that is to say, grant to the author his intent and try to understand it without imposing ourselves upon him, or at least recognize ourselves when we are do so, how else will it come about?
The escr talking point normally follows from the “pandering to the theocons” talking point. Irrelevant? Sure, almost every time nishi raises it. Why would this thread be any diffenet?
Nishi
If you believe “…but that quote does prove my position…” then I’m afraid you’ll get no more out of me.
Translation from nishibabble — “You got me on that one, so I’ll treat it as irrelevant and hope it goes away.”
It’s actually quite relevant, because it torpedoes your argument. The more secular, more “progressive” Germany (in fact, most of Europe) has stricter control on bio-tech than the religious, reactive US. If we were to argue from the evidence, we’d have to say that more religion is what it takes to get the public to support bio-tech research.
(Of course, the sample size is quite small, so the evidence isn’t conclusive. But at least it’s based on facts and not simply your prejudices.)
How is this different from Marx’s dialectic model of the evolution of society
Rob Crawford, or Plato’s model or Aristotle’s model?
Culture is emergent behavior.
I love President George Bush.
Bullshit, nishi. Goldberg is none of those things, and he’s never argued that position.
“but he did not EVOLVE from that to become fascist, he rejected socialism as dead and wrong philosophy and turned to new ideology”
Sashal,
It’s rather odd that you cling to Soviet mythos when the Italians have been working the alternative hypothesis since before Goldberg entered kindergarten.
…
Rob,
It should also be considered that “progressive” Germany has tighter controls on bio-tech as a response to its Nazi, eugenicist past. Call it learning from one’s mistakes, or possibly cultural evolution.
The love that dare not speak its name.
Also, for those keeping score at home, with “culture is emergent behavor,” the number of nishi talking points = 3.
Science-based as she is, nishi missed the class on feedback loops.
I doubt you have any idea what Plato or Aristotle argued, or even what “emergent behavior” actually means.
Or “culture”, for that matter.
Your misrepresentation of Goldberg is just one of the examples of your depth of ignorance, arrogance, and arrogance. I have no doubt you’ve read cartoon versions of the Greek philosophers, glommed onto a handful of poorly-understood quotes, and count yourself quite erudite.
sdferr, you are telling me goldberg didn’t mean what he says there.
he agreed with Stein.
that was the context.
Expelled is just the cartoon version of Liberal Fascism, in lurid, garish techocolor, rendered accessible for the reading challenged.
You think?
Lovely. I understand entire swaths of the formerly liberal Muslim communities are becoming significantly more religiously conservative.
In the end, the only relevancy is what is the higher purpose, goal, principle. What is the destination of your social evolution? For what purpose, aim, ideal, outcome?
I hear you prattling on about endgames yet you habitually ignore that concept. It’s clear why.
Another thread ruined on Nishi Protein.
“i postulate religious conservatism is about to go extinct.
– As so many have done before you. Their dreams of Utopia did not last any longer than yours will.
– And please, oh please do cite Einstein. I knew Einstein. Were he alive today, listening to the catterwalling of beligerent immature children in the genetics scientific community, he’d kick your collectivist asses at every turn.
– Einstein is a singularly bad example to use nishi. The fact you did is so at odds with Alberts personal philosophies it tells me all I need to know concerning the truth of your skewed and incomplete education. Its to laugh. I’m laughing. Not with you. At you….. dur
[shakes head]
Oh, I think she made it to that class. Unfortunately, she understood it about as well as she understands everything else. She now considers positive feedback the proper way to regulate a system.
We’re talking about someone who thinks Jefferson would approve of a “philosopher king”, after all.
like i said.
the forever war is Locke vs Hobbes, the rule of LAW vs the rule of man.
god just doesnt work as a babysitter any more, if he ever did.
religion is just tribalism + a skyfather-babysitter.
But the epiphanies, Another Bob, the epiphanies! Tis but a small price we pay…
In the beginning, society got its act together, mainly as an observation unit, watching actions and outcomes.
After watching long enough, society set down a set of rules, mostly against behavior that led to negative outcomes. Let’s call those rules, oh, The Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments in place, society waxed and multiplied.
Eventually, some members of society, massively enriched by society’s rules, but greedy and wanting more, decided to try to transcend society’s rules.
Their new heuristic, instead of “Thou shalt not…”, became “Thou shalt…”.
They hold to that heuristic, despite tens of millions of deaths.
I don’t trust societal rules not based on observation. I especially don’t trust societal rules based on thought experiments, especially when those rules have deadly power behind them.
So, I just don’t trust liberals. It’s those tens of millions of deaths, mostly.
Sez the Islamo…whatever. I postulate you have no soul, quite regardless of literally any possible definition you’d mistakenly apply to such a thing.
You know less about philosophy than you do about humanity. I guess that follows.
leftism
religionis just tribalism + Gaia worshippingskyfather-babysitter.“his point about traditional conservative religious morality acting as a levee against the floodwaters of scientific utopianism:”
I was right.
The first thing I thought on reading that was ‘The sound you just heard was nisinazi’s head exploding’.
Mhehe.
He agreed with Stein to an extent. His point — which has been pointed to you multiple times — is that fascism and communism were reactions to modernity, and that evolution and relativity are aspects of that modernity. If you actually tried to understand Goldberg, you’d realize that the biggest problem isn’t the existence or scientific correctness of evolution and relativity, but their misapplication to philosophy.
Utter bullshit, nishi. The two are on completely different subjects. You conflate them simply because you think it makes your argument more compelling.
It doesn’t. It makes you look like an ass.
and i did love GW.
he stabbed me in the back like all my heroes.
Well, it is all about you, nuggie…
“Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/8 @ 2:51 pm #
society will organize itself according to evolutionary theory of culture.
i postulate religious conservatism is about to go extinct.”
I pustulate that nishnazi is insane.
Rly.
Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/8 @ 2:44 pm #
You do realize, do you not, that the Nazi’s explicitly rejected Einstein, and most advanced scientific thoughtof the time as “Jewish science”?
Or are you really that abysmally ignorant?
BECAUSE OF THE ESCR!!!
she wants to say it so much, but I pre-emptively mocked her.
You do realize, do you not, that the Nazi’s explicitly rejected Einstein
wow….does that make Goldberg and K-lo and the NRO pithed-by-the-pope gang Nazi’s too?
I love that his “stab in the back” was actually to fund ESCR for the first time in US history.
Heroes disappoint, of course they do:
Lawrence: Did Auda come to Aqaba for gold?
Auda: For my pleasure as you said. But gold is honorable. And Aurens promised gold. Aurens lied.
Lawrence: See, Auda. (He speaks the words as he writes out a promissory note) The Crown of England promises to pay 5,000 golden guineas to Auda Abu Tayi. Signed in his Majesty’s absence by me. (He hands the voucher to Auda) In ten days, I’ll be back with the gold – with gold, with guns, with everything.
Auda: In ten days. You will cross Sinai?
Lawrence: Why not? Moses did.
Auda: And you will take the children?
Lawrence (his voice echoing): Moses did.
Auda (shouting after him): Moses was a prophet and beloved of God…
(To Ali) He said there was gold here. He lied. He is not perfect.
“Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/8 @ 3:15 pm #
Culture is emergent behavior.”
Culture is a survival mechanism.
You stupid fuck.
I still hear you prattling on about endgames, nuggie, yet you habitually ignore the question of intentions and outcomes.
So, give.
To this day it is de rigueur among liberal intellectuals and historians to take potshots at Spencer as the philosophical wellspring of racism, right-wing “greed,†and even the Holocaust.
I call bullshit on that. It is not de rigeur to take potshots at Spencer. It is de rigeur for intellectuals of all stripes to misinterpret and appropriate his writings to suit their specific agendas. I was taught, at the knee, of my Trotskyite masters, that Herbert Spencer was fucking awesome and the father of modern anarchist movements. Georgi Plekhanov wrote a book on anarchy that asserted this very thing (and to this day brooding, black clad students carry it around, stuffed in their messenger bags along side their dog-eared copy of The Stranger).
We practice eugenics every day.
In our selection of mates, in our response to other people as potential mates.
the selfish genes only code for 3 things, reproduction, survial, and death.
outlawing eugenics on moral grounds is just the same as outlawing guns.
eugenics have been misused, so have guns.
you will never be able to outlaw designer babies or personal genetic enhancement.
so you should be thinkin about about how to deal.
Zoom!
No, we practice “free choice”.
Are you deliberatly stupid? I’m just asking.
To what I think is Jeff’s point, I don’t think just restoring intentionalism is enough. Even if we could get back to the habit of asking “what did he mean by that” and actually caring, the genie’s out of the bottle. The corruption of language has dug in pretty well; you’re fighting the same battle started by Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”.
Not that the fight isn’t worth it. I’m just not sure it won’t take another slide into dark ages to undo the damage.
how to accomdate it in your world view.
because, evo theory of culture is just ToE in one aspect.
adapt or die out.
Because, you see nuggie, the mind “codes” for a universe of experiences, motives, concepts, thoughts, abstracts, expressions, reasons, purposes, etc.
Do you have a mind, nuggie? I don’t ask that question to snark; I want you to answer what ultimately motivates you, assuming you are not a mere biological machine.
the forever war is Locke vs Hobbes, the rule of LAW vs the rule of man.
And the source of the concept of the rule of law is?
So? And?
“I was taught, at the knee, of my Trotskyite masters, that Herbert Spencer was fucking awesome and the father of modern anarchist movements.”
Thank Allan(pbuh) I studied engineering.
accomodate
JHoward, tell me how the Holocaust relates to ivy league co-eds selling their eggs.
they are examples of eugenics, right?
#64: Damn Nishi. That is, to quote some rapper, like whoa.
I don’t know that we are practicing eugenics every day. Did you just watch Gattica or something?
Back to the question put of you, nuggie. Sorry.
Zoom!
“so you should be thinkin about about how to deal.”
That’s my reaction to the AGW crowd. Can’t we have a little survival of the fittest anymore sortof Darwin like you know?
For the ignorant and gullible. The assumption that genes somehow code for academic — or personal — success is laughable.
Who is the AGW Crowd? Is that a new boy band?
Because, nuggie, it is utterly beyond you to tell me how, say, JS Bach relates to Kurt Gödel. For starters.
And then there’s that entire universe of experience and expression.
Jhoward, we are witnessin the destruction of the republican party.
natural selection in action.
memes are competitive, just like genes.
the left owns academe, the arts, the judiciary, both houses of congress, science and technology, the media, and will soon get the executive.
all the right has left is talkradio and half the blogverse.
a pretty profound rejection, i think.
Howard Zinn, hack pseudo intellectual and faux historian emeritus of the “dumb as a sack of hammers” wing of the left:
That’s from page 166 of Zinn’s My Forgery of American History.
Heh. Heh heh heh heh. You might want to search my archives a bit, nishi. Theocon pander? Give me a fucking break.
A platform in what way? You mean, letting them make their arguments and then arguing with the positions on the merits?
Why, how dastardly of me! Easiest just to shoot them, I think. Or, should I wish to put a smiley face on it, maybe just moderate them right off the site and out of the comments. So as not to infect people with bad ideas.
For their own good, naturally.
After all, the whole give and take of classical liberalism is so messy. Which is why progressivism is so appealing, I guess.
The assumption that genes somehow code for academic  or personal  success is laughable.
there you go.
Ned Ludd in the flesh.
Actually, you’re the one who should be thinking about how to deal. Accept that the rest of society isn’t going to bankroll your fantasy or organize itself the way you want, and deal with it.
God knows the rest of us have done that. I think it’s called “growing up”.
Not so. He rejected one world socialism for a socialism that had a less diluted scope. Nazism is national socialism for a reason; Mussolini did not reject socialism. He rejected a particular strategy for implementing socialism.
And you stand there, shouting, with not so much as a shred of a clue what any of it means. Zoom!
See, I get proofs by acclaim, nuggie. I just think them the lowest form of “proof” yet invented.
You mean, letting them make their arguments and then arguing with the positions on the merits?
You don’t argue with them.
ever.
Is academe like academia anime?
I think #80 must be on her clipboard for easy pasting.
I have seen you argue, remember?
The concept of the rule of law, nishfong, where did it originate?
So there’s no room in your science for environment? Or personal choice? You’ve never heard of the child of two brilliant parents being a total failure?
If acknowledging the role of environment and free will makes me a Luddite, then, well, count me in.
I’m wondering if nishi is a sociopath. She does not seem to understand the concept of conscience. Or maybe she’s just a bright 16 year old.
I’d settle for you going back and stealing Said’s pencils, to be honest.
Maybe grab yourself a nice falafel while you were there.
So there’s no room in your science for environment? Or personal choice? You’ve never heard of the child of two brilliant parents being a total failure?
There doesn’t seem to be any room for real science. If she has already figured everything out, what’s left to study?
Only a dorky spam-bot like nishi would think that two people failing in love and raising a family is the moral/ethical equivalent to genetically designed “baby making” by a bunch of people wearing lab coats in a sterile room.
Oh, and on this point about how Republicanism is on the ropes… that doesn’t really correlate into your argument very well when you really look at the polls from ’06- despite a large republican defeat- the majority of conservative ballot initiatives had significant majority support.
What are you going to do with all those conservatives that just don’t answer to a particular party logo anymore?
“Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/8 @ 3:53 pm #
The assumption that genes somehow code for academic  or personal  success is laughable.
there you go.
Ned Ludd in the flesh.”
The depths of your ignorance are ….staggering.
Rly.
Oh my.
“Comment by Lisa on 6/8 @ 3:51 pm #
Who is the AGW Crowd? Is that a new boy band?”
Yes. AlGore™ is the lead singer. Won a Noble and Oscar!
The right has successfully passed this turd off as a nugget of truth: The Nazis were just a bunch of dirty socialist hippies.
It is kind of sad, but funny.
Here’s a, well, not a question, but an observation:
nishinazi thinks science fiction is real.
Now, I’ve been reading sci-fi since about the age of 9. Andre Norton. “Star Man’s Son” was my first novel.
At that age I realized it was fiction.
There are no intelligent, evil giant rats.
.
.
nishinazi doesn’t.
Oh Jeff, you are awful..but I like you.
Truth is like that.
“Comment by Lisa on 6/8 @ 4:06 pm #
The right has successfully passed this turd off as a nugget of truth: The Nazis were just a bunch of dirty socialist hippies.
It is kind of sad, but funny.”
Truth hurts, huh?
Stings?
Want some Bactine?
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/8 @ 4:02 pm #
touche
And is it just me, or did nishi just have a Mona moment?
Can anyone identify the point at which the progs made the switch from sterilization to abortion as their preferred method of extermination of the underclass? Did it conincide with the introduction of the birth control bill (1959-1961) or was it subsequent to that?
I’ve said it before.
Give me that time machne.
Jean Jacques Rousseau is stangled in the cradle.
One can hope. One can also hope you know wtf (1) you’re looking at and (2) why it may resemble your narrow, habitual hypothesis.
Prove it. Did natural selection also produce bread and circuses, you dolt? Nazism? Mao’s collective? Tell me, nuggie, did natural selection kill roughly a quarter billion persons by the hand of their various totalitarian governments in the last century?
Aside from having having just tacitly contradicted yourself, does it universally follow then that so to are thoughts? Will? Reason? The arts? It must, no?
“The Nazis were just a bunch of Teutonic
dirtysocialist hippies.”Now it makes sense
Sorry, that wasn’t stated clearly. The progs gave up on sterlization after the discovery that the Germans had become somewhat overenthusiastic in its application – mid ’40’s, say. Did they immediately switch to promoting abortion or was there a fallow period?
pimf but no pimf
It was ahead of that, and it was a multi-pronged sort of thing.
For example, the minimum wage is an attempt to eliminate from existence all those who can’t earn it.
Read up on Sanger.
are you insane?
abortion is not eugenics.
it is an individual right.
abortion is libertarian.
“The progs gave up on sterlization after the discovery that the Germans had become somewhat overenthusiastic in its application – mid ’40’s, say. Did they immediately switch to promoting abortion or was there a fallow period?”
Sorry, Rick, Margaret Snager was promoting it during the Teens a Twenties.
To keep the inferior brown people down, doncha know.
Do you really believe that abortion is a settled issue among libertarians?
By that metric, the French Revolution was a screaming success. Populism = right!
And really, you’ve never seen me argue against theocons? Schiavo? Kid Rock? “Decency” statutes?
Thing is, I recognize that they can have their opinions. It’s not until they begin trying to legislate them that I become piqued. And before you even start, do know that samesexmarriage, as you call it, is rejected not merely by theocons. Or else your whole argument that theocons are going extinct would seem to crumble, given that samesexmarriage is still roundly rejected by the majority of citizens, many of whom have no problem with calling such relationships something else and giving them many of the same contractual perks as traditional marriages enjoy.
prieview is my friemd.
Indeed……
“Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/8 @ 4:17 pm #
are you insane?
abortion is not eugenics.”
Margaret Sanger begs to differ.
“abortion is not eugenics.”
Sanger a eugenics follower started Planned Parenthood. Call them and ask if you can donate money to abort black people.
#92 Rusty
There is nothing to wonder about nishi, she is a sociopath. She has demonstrated it over and over again. All people are just raw material existing to serve her master “science”, but only “science” as she defines it and only NishiScience as Ultimate Monarch .. not beholding to any rule or ethic that cannot be redefined on the fly as long as the change serves NishiScience.
Nishi engages in the magical thinking of a bright but severely disturbed child who self-isolates and spins fantastic tales.
I doubt that any career that has the minimum of psychological testing will ever hire her.
I’m still being unclear. I know that the progs, led by Sanger, encouraged birth control and sterilization early in the 20th century. Sterilization slipped off the screen in the mid 40’s, due primarily to an excess of publicity concerning the German’s zeal. Was abortion immediately supported thereafter (Sanger did not favor abortion, BTW) by progressives or were they forced to stop killing for a bit prior to coming up with a new strategy?
#109
strike dirty: Teutonic socialist hippies
#103: How about the Nazis were NAZIS. And there is no equivalent anywhere else in the world? How about not dumbing down what they did by comparing them to liberals, socialists, conservatives, Nancy Fucking Pelosi or our current fucknut president or anyone? It is really hard to take this shit seriously when everyone is trying to bend over backward to figure out how to tie fascism, Hitler, Nazis, et al can be tied to their current political enemies.
L will post what I posted to Jeff G. in part two of this fascinating/annoying series:
#256: No you aren’t rambling. I get what you are saying. I and I would agree that fascism is notoriously tricky to define. I would posit that because of this, it invites varied and sundry clowns to take a shot at it.
I admit that I am being very cynical and very dismissive. Perhaps I am wrong. But I cannot work myself into any more than an eyeroll when I hear about the new “fascists du jourâ€Â. Perhaps that is why Abe Foxman is so distressed at the idea of smiley-faced Hitlers on books and Bushitler t-shirtsd and all Hitler/Franco/Mussolini comparisons that we lightly toss around. He is afraid that we are watering down our understanding of real evil in our incessant pursuit to prove that our political opponents are bad, bad people.
abortion is not eugenics
Ah, more nishi magical thinking …. two adults consenting to making a baby IS eugenics but abortion is not.
She read Mary Shelley’s cautionary moral tale as a cookbook.
Walter Sobchak: Fucking Germans. Nothing changes. Fucking Nazis.
Donny: They were Nazis, Dude?
Walter Sobchak: Oh, come on Donny, they were threatening castration! Are we gonna split hairs here? Am I wrong?
And really, you’ve never seen me argue against theocons?
not on Schiavo and Terri’s Law.
not on IDT bein taught in science class.
you pander.
i have seen you argue, and this isn’t it.
ill have to look up kid rock.
“given that samesexmarriage is still roundly rejected by the majority of citizens”
<a href=”http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/28/MNOU10U8MB.DTL”riiiiiight
aww
<a href=â€Âhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/28/MNOU10U8MB.DTLâ€Âriiiiiight
“Was abortion immediately supported thereafter (Sanger did not favor abortion, BTW) by progressives or were they forced to stop killing for a bit prior to coming up with a new strategy?”
It seems they waited a bit then used the courts to get first birth control(Griswald) then abortion(Roe).
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
wtf?
riiiiiight
She read Mary Shelley’s cautionary moral tale as a cookbook.
lmao.
Margaret Sanger proposed that birth control and family planning be a way to weed out undesirables.
That does not mean that every woman who gets an abortion is practicing eugenics. If they are, they are screwing something up, since the idiots and the ill-equipped are more likely to go full term and keep the baby than the smarter, more affluent and upwardly mobile.
look at this idiocy, c’mon Jeff.
abortion=eugenics, birthcontrol=genocide?
The minimum wage was supposed to weed out the idiots.
Gregor Strasser: “We are socialists. We are enemies, deadly enemies, of today’s capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, its unfair wage system, its immoral way of judging the worth of human beings n terms of their wealth and their money, instead of their responsibility and their performance, and we are determined to destroy this system whatever happens!”
The hippie thing likely comes from Hitler’s vegetarianism, environmentalism, and new-agey mysticism. Though I don’t recall David Crosby ever firing up his oven for a jew pie.
Lisa
Abe Foxman has his own hands dirty in flogging the Nazi meme.
But the relatively short, violent and clear goals of Nazi Germany are an excellent benchmark that we have subsequently used to measure all manner of other radical ideologies that come down the pike. The Germans kept enough meticulous records, photos, movies that it became quite easy to document the atrocities.
#123 lisa
“And there is no equivalent anywhere else in the world? ”
Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Kim. Oh they’re so called “leftists” so they don’t count right?
Congratulations! You’ve just independently arrived at one of Goldberg’s arguments!
Now, let’s work on the idea that while Nazis were fascists, not all fascists were Nazis…
Are you aware that you can earmark donations to Planned Parenthood to go specifically to abort black babies, Lisa? And the last statistics I saw disagree with your assertion, the rate among black women was much higher. Can’t remember where I saw that.
nishi —
abortion as a project conceived by Sanger is what is under discussion, not necessarily how it is thought of today. These distinctions are important.
Oh, nishi! That’s such a basic logical error I’m almost surprised to see you make it. The flaw in that statement is that:
abortion != birth control
Goldberg explicitly states that Italian fascism was different from German fascism.
I agree with Jeff on samesexmarriage, which insures that I’ll soon be attacked by him. I couldn’t care less if fags or lezbags couple but I see no reason not to differentiate their coupling descriptor, or maybe we can call normal marriage a biocor (biologically correct abbreviated) marriage versus non-biocor marriages.
Language games are necessary.
#138: I have not “arrived” at anything. I don’t spend my time on this fuckery and have never called anyone a fucking Nazi. Nice that YOU had to read the fatboy to realize this. But I never drank the koolaid.
Lisa
The majority of modern American abortions are done in the first trimester and for convenience. They are legal (and should remain so), but not moral (and should be honestly labeled that way). The pressure brought to bear on young women to “get rid” of the “mistake” does have a whiff of eugenics, even it isn’t the prime motivating factor.
I apologize if my comment seemed a bit harsh, Lisa. That was not my intent; I merely wanted to point out that Goldberg says much the same thing, in much the same words. My attempt to make it humorous/sarcastic clearly didn’t come across.
Now, what’s your excuse?
#146: I don’t have an excuse. You just pissed me off. But I apologize for the shitty tone.
I am arguing no such thing. I think the ideology they follow, often without knowing anything about its kernel assumptions, are dangerous — and that that ideology should come under scrutiny.
I scrutinize it, just as I’ve scrutinized other ideologies. I don’t call myself a “conservative” or a “right winger.” These are labels that have been applied to me. I think I track closest to classical liberalism, which today seems to make me a judicial conservative and a social libertarian.
nishi —
I was against Schiavo’s law, wrote so (along with my good buddy John Cole) and was attacked by many on the social conservative side for my arguments. As for teaching ID in science classes, I said I’d be for that specifically to show how ID was not science, and that ID did not trouble Darwinian evolution in any way, because the two really address different questions.
The goal was to demystify the question, and to take away the power of victimhood and “censure” that social conservatives on the side of ID were enjoying.
How any of that is pandering, I haven’t the slightest idea. But then, neither do you, I suspect.
If you are going to point out what I’ve argued, at least be correct about it.
Then feel free, nuggie, to tease out all the intentionalist differences. Kinda like your blinding success making Science! infallible by sheer virtue of it existing, remember?
Like I said on the other thread, nishi could benefit from reading Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Vorkosigan Chronicles”. Think of it as Socratic Dialogue: The Movie.
Oh, and I can tell you what your median “designer baby” is gonna look like.
She will have the intellect, roughly, of an extremely bright dog. She’ll be sexually mature at age 5 (6 for the “conservative” customers), at which point her eggs will be harvested and she’ll be placed into service. At age 10 she’ll be 36DD-22-34, with a nicely rounded butt. At age 16 she’ll be <ahem> retired to bearing the products of the eggs taken from her younger sisters — artificial wombs are expensive; why spend the money when natural ones are available? — and at 20 she’ll be terminated, with some few of her organs recycled into the cosmetic surgery business (breast tissue, e.g.) Because that’s where the money is.
And you and your fellows will be making excuses and going along. After all, you have to get the cash to follow through your grand designs from somewhere, right?
You’ll also be doing a land-office business in cultivating stolen tissue into quasi-adults based on supermodels, female rock and TV stars, and the sisters and (especially) mothers of the rich, but in sheer volume it’ll be dwarfed by sex slavery. Welcome to House Ryoval, nishi. The pay’s good, and you have absolute freedom of inquiry. I’ll just take this tissue sample; it won’t hurt a bit.
Regards,
Ric
nishi can’t do that. Strawmen are about her speed, and she struggles with that.
No problem.
But, again, you’re misunderstanding the argument. It’s not that progressives are Nazis, or even fascists, but that they share intellectual roots. And, FWIW, Goldberg excoriates the right in his book, too — the last chapter is titled “We Are All Fascists Now”, and he particularly singles out compassionate conservatism.
#145: Darleen: I agree. And I don’t know that anyone – in decades of abortion arguments – has ever articulated exactly what abortion is and what it means (and SHOULD mean to everyone) so perfectly.
Thank you.
Also, I’m totally stealing Ric Locke’s scenario for a book. That’s where the money is.
Ric, nuggie the science fiction-becomes-reality fan probably missed an author as organic and essential to the popular genre as Niven…
Ric — I think F. Paul Wilson had something like that in one of his novels. Perhaps “Dydeetown World”? Of course, that same book had the UN turned into a brothel, so…
That’s Niven? Which one?
The goal was to demystify the question, and to take away the power of victimhood and “censure†that social conservatives on the side of ID were enjoying.
which aids and abetts the DI’s attempt to introduce misinformation into the classroom. wouldn’t it be both more efficient and truthful and to tell the social cons IDT is crapology?
no, lets just waste the students and the teachers time.
Don’t recall exactly, Karl, but he had organlegging going on decades ago, about when I first read him. For bonus points, one could argue a fair case for frequent eugenics all over the Ringworld series, among others, IIRC…
i know Ringworld by heart almost.
where’s Niven?
my god, you idiots, Ringworld isnt about eugenics, its about mutation and evolution.
“no, lets just waste the students and the teachers time.”
on self esteem classes or the reason why dodge ball is dangerous and legos are a capitalistic construct.
#152: I really think you guys are lying and shills for Doubleday Press. But you are making this book sound really well researched and delightfully thought-provoking. I just ordered it from Amazon and I am going to give it a go at some point this summer.
I admit, I only read Jonah over at The Corner just to piss myself off. His mother has often annoyed me, he annoys me…perhaps I have underestimated his ability to form a coherent argument due to his piss-poor blog entries (and my feelings about his bitch-hag mother).
Well, even if I hate the goddamned book, he can add my $18.45 to his Cheeto fund.
huh?
or
This is one of many reasons why I write that nishi is operating at the remedial level. nishi is just going to “tell” them, and they will accept her word over the word of God, natch. ‘Cause she’s edgy. Or they ignore her and the problem remains what to do about it.
i give up
How is it a waste of time to teach that the scientific method is a particular thing, that “theory” in science has a particular meaning, and that science and philosophy, while they can ask similar questions, go about resolving things quite differently?
That’s called learning, nishi. What you are after is…something else, entirely.
At any rate, the fact the you say I’ve argued for teaching ID as a pander to theocons is what is being exposed as a misrepresentation, here. Change the subject all you wish.
In fact, revisiting that Schiavo post, I almost sound like you. Only with lots of humility.
Teela Brown, nuggie. Puppeteers. The self-determination of all advanced Known Space species. You idiot.
How is it a waste of time to teach that the scientific method is a particular thing, that “theory†in science has a particular meaning, and that science and philosophy, while they can ask similar questions, go about resolving things quite differently?
because they are already taught that.
it is called the Scientific Method.
JHoward,
I just need to know if the stuff about 10-year-olds measuring 36DD-22-34 is already taken. ‘Cause I’m thinking there’s a market for that sort of sci-fi pr0n.
Heh. And Luis Wu had special reproduction rights, you moron.
No, go for it, Karl.
(And you’re not the moron, obviously. Our resident Niven-saavy futurist is.)
haha, you havent read Ringworld Engineers, Ringworld Throne, and Ringworld’s Children, have you JHoward?
if Teela was a Citizen eugenics experiment, she was a failure.
i have also read all the Known Space series, the Man-Kzin Wars, and most recently, Fleet of Worlds.
im waitin for Inferno.
don’t you dare try to outNiven me.
Well, I’ll probably up it to age of consent, for legal reasons.
No problem, expert. Surely I’ll just never keep up with those goalposts.
For those of you too lazy to click over, here’s my pander to theocons on ID:
Wow. It’s like I’m practically sucking Jerry Falwell’s COCK!
I am completely lost, but totally creepfascinated by ten-year olds with enormous bazongas.
Eeew. Freaktastic.
ok Jeff, here.
You can redeem yourself with me forever.
Just tell all these people here that IDT is crapology.
even Dr. Reynolds will admit that ID is “pernicious twaddle”, also he still feels he must link teh Stupid, “to be fair.”
just say it.
;)
nishi doesn’t want schools that teach thinking, she wants schools to teach HER dogma over any other dogma.
Public schools haven’t taught real science/history/critical thinking in years.
Uh, and teaching them what the Scientific Method is by showing them what it isn’t is a good way of concretizing the whole thing.
But then, I was a teacher, so what the hell do I know.
Best to just demand they accept your postulates at gunpoint. They probably won’t ever reject that once they’re out of your control…
But should you persist, nuggie, I have every early Niven in first printings, soft-bound at the least. Just saying. You know, because that shit counts.
Although by now, my memory is somewhat less spectacular than your reflection, true…
IDT doesn’t belong in a science class
but that doesn’t mean it should be banished from the campus.
For real fun, query nuggie the quantum physicist about origins…
I think the word is “indoctrination”, or maybe “dictation”.
Actually, no. Mutation and evolution are just behind-the-scenes mechanisms. The story is about humanity dealing with an artifact of that immensity and, well, implications. The natives are background, present to demonstrate the sheer age and size of the construct.
Pretty much everything Niven’s written is about people dealing with the implications of technology, not about the technology or the science itself. He’s still interested in keeping it hard science (which places him close to Golden Age authors), but his focus is on the implications for people (which places him close to the “New Wave” authors).
“The pressure brought to bear on young women to “get rid†of the “mistake†does have a whiff of eugenics, even it isn’t the prime motivating factor.”
A whiff? Black women abort 37% of pregnacies. White women 12%. That “pressure to get rid of” comes from those nice people at Planned Parenthood who locate their clinics to achieve the desired results.
#176: Since you were rumored to have shown up at the beach in a leopard skinned banana hammock last week – I would advise steering clear of such imagery.
ric,
well, thing is, if you do that to your own germplasm it will be fine.
Kinda like the FLDS patriarchy daddies breeding up those 13 year old mommies.
No, as a matter of fact they are not.
Dammit, I have been sneering at evolutionists and arguing against them for somewhere between one-and-a-half times and twice as long as you’ve been alive. Successfully. There is a perfectly valid way to promote science as a method within religious doctrine, but nobody uses it because they prefer what you propose — science as doctrine, imposed by decree, which is what the kids are being taught.
And as a result of the declaration of science as doctrine, to be “accepted” by decree, very few people believe it any more, which is why it’s so easy to scare people with “Anthropogenic Global Warming” and the like, and why it’s so easily accepted that it’s possible to Stop The War using the proper tribal rituals, with effigies.
Regards,
Ric
And…zoom!
Back to IDT in the classroom and the DI. Her great windmill.
FWIW, the post-war (1949, I think) Japanese law making abortion legal was/is called the Eugenics Protection Act. The idea was that in a country as impoverished and starving as post-war Japan, anybody that might have a less than able bodied baby should abort it. The name of the act has become controversial.
Why? That book is close to 30 years old. I read it when I was in my teens.
Is it above your reading level?
just say it Jeff.
or don’t.
Christ, I suspected you’d be too lazy to link over, nishi, but I didn’t expect you to be too lazy to read the excerpt if I put it right here in the comments.
ID as a theory of first causes — that is, as a philosophy — is fine by me, and is what keeps me agnostic rather than atheist. ID is not science, and the most commonly used examples — the design (pardon the play on words) of the eye, for instance — rely on viewing the function from the perspective of the finished product and concluding that there was intent, when it is just as possible that we could have evolved in some other way, and “see” like, for instance, bats do, at which time we could make the same design argument based around the development of our sonar.
The purpose of teaching ID in science class is precisely to show how it is not science — but how it can still live alongside science. I find this a valuable lesson to teach.
I’m not responsible for spoonfeeding you, nishi. But I don’t like people misrepresenting my positions.
I definitely reject ID. But I do think we should have way more religious studies classes. In a nation in which 80% of people identify as Christians and somewhere in the high 90s identify as religious, we should make a better stab at teaching our kids what various religions believe. Like a series of anthro classes that focus on belief systems. We would probably end up with people with way more respect and understanding of each other’s beliefs.
that is a different book.
i preordered the niven/pournelle book.
i read all that.
“ID is not science”
then it has no business in science class.
IDT, the representation of ID as “science” is crapology.
right or wrong?
It’s the difference between science and scientism — science as faith. Nishi advocates scientism; those of us she calls “luddites” and “two-digits” are arguing for science.
Question — should I spoil “Inferno” for her? Can I predict which character she’ll take as an approval from Niven and Pournelle (assuming she can figure out who it is)?
Rick
I’m not disagreeing! But a lot of that pressure comes to bear on young white women, too, with the motivation of “you’re too young, you don’t have the resources to raise it” etc. It is a tragedy that so many young black females find themselves with less family resources. The destruction of the black family structure, due in large part to government “feel good” policies with horrendous consequences, continues bouncing downhill, followed by white, hispanic families because of those same government policies/cultural pressures.
Much of PP hates reproduction period, except in its very narrow parameters.
nishi
will you EVER grow up? Or are you congenitally incapable?
nishi should list the people on this board that are proponents of ID being taught as science in science classes.
BTW Karl, etc., go ahead and run with it. I would suggest looking up Bester’s The Stars My Destination first. Stephen Ames Berry’s The Biofab War is worth a look as well, despite being such turgid prose as to make reading it a slog.
regards,
Ric
Should the subject of electroshock therapy be ruled out of psychiatry class?
@193
“Like a series of anthro classes that focus on belief systems. ”
Yea like dress as a muslim day but everything else is verbotten.
Ric,
Thanks for the permission and tips.
BTW, I think “turgid” would work in this context.
Lisa
Public schools are too busy teaching kids to spy on their parents to report less-than-green behavior or taking them on school field trips to learn how illegal aliens are people too and become political advocates for open borders.
Comparative religion class? Math beyond Algebra (or even algebra)? History instead of “social science”?
Don’t let a teachers’ union speaking out loud about such heresy.
BTW, when I took bio in HS, we were taught that spontaneous generation was BS. Guess that was a waste of time also.
As far as I can tell, frogs are not science, either — and yet they can be put to good use in science classes.
Let me make myself clear: I reject your belief that introducing students to one concept in order to differentiate it from another is problematic. I believe the reverse to be true.
Given that ID hasn’t been taught in science classes — and the desire by some to see it taught there has been growing — how does that track with all your fancy bullshit about evolution of culture and memetics? By your logic, the IDers are in the right, and they are beginning to take over.
SCIENCE IS DOOMED, NISHI! RUN FOR THE HILLS!
“because they are already taught that.
it is called the Scientific Method.”
Except when it’s applied to Gobal warming.
There is only one Niven and Pournelle book titled “Inferno”. It’s the same book, nishi. What you ordered is what’s known as a “reprint”.
I honestly would have thought the editorial reviews on Amazon that are quotes from dead people should have made it clear it was a reprint.
that is a different book.
i preordered the niven/pournelle book.
Same book, dumbass. It’s being republished. And I read it 30 years ago as well.
But, then again, I’m a luddite because I’m not a genetic determinist.
Maybe in nishi’s world, the dead review books.
“Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/8 @ 5:01 pm #
haha, you havent read Ringworld Engineers, Ringworld Throne, and Ringworld’s Children, have you JHoward?
if Teela was a Citizen eugenics experiment, she was a failure.”
Ok, ok, I have to say this: snishi, you are a ficking idiot.
Teela Brown was a product of Pupetteer experimentation, you ficking moron, and it was a success.
What was the orientation of the Ringworld in relation to the Galactic Core?
She was trying to be all insider by referring to the Puppeteers as “Citizens”. The term was introduced in “Fleet of Worlds” to differentiate them from the captive human population the Puppeteers were breeding for obedience, known as “Colonists”.
I have a sinking feeling that nishi felt more connection with the Puppeteers in that book than with the Colonists.
“Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/8 @ 5:25 pm #
that is a different book.
i preordered the niven/pournelle book.
There is only one Niven and Pournelle book titled “Infernoâ€Â. It’s the same book, nishi. What you ordered is what’s known as a “reprintâ€Â.”
What’s worse, nisinazi, is that it’s based on Chritian theology.
‘IT BURNS, MASTER, IT BURNS US!”
Rob,
Quote from Dr. Pournelle: “Current work in progress: the long in process Mamelukes; Lisabetta, a novel of the future; and Niven and Pournelle’s Inferno II: Escape from Hell.” AIUI the latter has been announced for release. I’ll probably pass.
Regards,
Ric
“I have a sinking feeling that nishi felt more connection with the Puppeteers in that book than with the Colonists.”
How intelligent do you have to be to sneak up on a leaf?
“Niven and Pournelle’s Inferno II: Escape from Hell.”
The theology comment still applies.
Mhehe.
If that’s what she meant, she should have included the “II”. As it is, the only “Inferno” available for pre-order on Amazon is the reprint.
By the way, nishi, where’s your apology? You misrepresented my positions, and I took the time to go and find links proving you resoundingly wrong.
Give it to me, baby.
Oh, and just to burn you a bit more: ID as science is “crapology” — though I wouldn’t choose that term. I’d simply point out that it isn’t science for very specific reasons, and leave it at that.
BECAUSE OF THE PANDERINGNESS!
And I’m with you, Ric. I’ll wait to find it in the used book store.
Thank you.
That is all i wanted.
Not to be rude, but who cares what you wanted? It was quite evident from everything I’ve written on the subject — including the part where I write that ID is, you know, not science.
Now where’s the apology?
*crickets*
No acknoledgement on how wrong you were with your Teela Brown comment, nishi?
Uh, Jeff, she’s made a habit of misrepresenting people’s positions. Look at her tortured interpretation of Darleen’s position, and of Goldberg’s.
Eugenics, genetic manipulation, and the like have been a staple of science fiction for as long as it’s existed — Verne touches on it. It’s often a throwaway (the badguy’s lab in The Stars My Destination) or comic relief (John Maddox Roberts’s “Vivers”, Alex in Cole & Bunch’s “Immortal Emperor” series). One of the reasons I have trouble with Brin’s Uplift War and associated series is that he pretends to take it seriously but does not even address basic issues — any of nishi’s hobbyhorses, for instance. As an aside, Vance’s “Institute for Historical Study” (which appears in the background in many books, becoming more prominent in The Languages of Pao and the Demon Princes series) was founded specifically as an admittedly Luddite response to that sort of thing. Heinlein’s Friday makes a nice counterpoint to European attitudes toward “Frankenfoods”, not to mention American racism…
Ideas are two a penny. Write it. I guarantee it’ll be different from anybody else’s take on the subject. Good, bad, we can discuss when you finish.
Regards,
Ric
Mencius Moldbug start his 8 part essay analyzing the progressive movement
Are you an open-minded progressive? Maybe not, but you probably have friends who are. This essay is for them. Perhaps it can serve as a sort of introduction to this strange blog, UR.
If you are an open-minded progressive, you are probably not a Catholic. (If you are, you probably don’t take the Pope too seriously.) Imagine writing an open letter to Catholics, suggesting ways for them to free their minds from the insidious grip of Rome. That sort of thing is quite out of style these days – and in any case, how would you start? But here at UR, we are never afraid of being out of style. And as for starting, we already have.
Is being a progressive like being a Catholic? Why shouldn’t it be? Each is a way of understanding the world through a set of beliefs. These beliefs may be true, they may be false, they may be nonsense which does not even make enough sense to be false. As an open-minded progressive (or an open-minded Catholic), you would like to think all the beliefs you hold are true, but you are willing to reevaluate them – perhaps with a little gentle assistance.
the link:
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/04/open-letter-to-open-minded-progressives.html
“open-minded progressives”.
Oxymoron much?
Damn, folks, we forgot science fiction’s most famous eugenicist…
KKKKHHHHHHAAAAANNNNN!!!!
Oh! Who let in the chew toy.
Where shall I begin.
Liberal Fascism, great book by the way.
Eugenics is beautiful madness. But then, the zeitgeist in that era bent left. Everyone was effected by scientific positivism.
By the way, nishi, where’s your apology?
Apology? Apology?! There’s no apologies in science!
Well, science-ism, which is nishi’s own special form of religion.
Science means never having to say you’re sorry.
Comment #232 has to be someone posting under nishi’s name. The grammar and spelling’s correct.
Actually, that would be psychopathology.
***crickets***
I like how the progs slime the RCC after the war for not doing enough for the Jews as they applauded The Stalinist doctors trials.
Own ’em all, nuggie (although I admit not knowing each of them word-for-word.)
Teela Brown was the intentional product of a human breeding-for-luck project. She was entirely successful, as Niven takes great pains to spell out for all those hundreds of pages. In the end she suicides (by cop, as it were) in spite of her obvious superiority.
That’s only half as interesting, as a testament to your ignorance, as the fact that in being so sci-fi and so progressive and so utterly superior, you completely miss two important points: (1) That in the end a very successful experiment in eugenics made a moral choice, one that cost her her life. And (2) that you deny your own genre — what you think is your own mental battlefield and proving grounds — to ignore that the spirit exists, exactly per that fictional construct.
That’s some heavy stuff, nuggie. As I keep asking and you keep ignoring, to what end would we humans endeavor to do anything whatsoever? Apparently that simple logic escapes you. Or you elect to deny it.
The point isn’t your eugenics and isn’t your observing what you hope is the just and deserved obsolescence of a particularly obese political polarity, it’s that you simply cannot point to a reason to do anything. Anything that doesn’t exalt your agenda, that is, such as it may be.
I hate when a new thread is started on a subject when I’m paying attention to the existing one; it’s happened to me twice with this series. On the other hand, I like Nishi-bait threads to keep her out of the other discussions.
Thanks, Rob, for carrying out my end of my argument in my absence. Specifically, at least according to Wikipedia, Germany prohibits all ESCR research.
Arguing with Nishi is pointless, but fun. She exists in her own little independent reality. She debates using what seems like the English language, but the important terms have entirely different meanings. She perceives what she wants, and argues away with her strawmen, and when the debate gets too hard, she runs away from the meaningful comments.
Understanding? Not given the current state of high school education. Any high school level civics class, which is where this sort of thing would fit, is so politically correct as to be useless. We’d end up with some watered down happy feely version of all the worlds religions, rather than a true history. If they could teach the class, honestly, and pull no punches, it would be a great thing to have.
I was lucky I grew up in an area steeped in politics and that was willing to admit it. You grew up with an honest understanding that those people across the political aisle were often equally dedicated to the same general principle, a better America, even if their methods were obviously the wrong way to go about the whole thing. You also had an honest understanding of your opponents arguments and the weaknesses of your own arguments. I normally pride myself on being able to argue the other side of the debate, at least on general principles, especially if confronted by someone on my own side of the debate that does not understand the opposing point of view. I can’t always do it, but I’d like to think that I try.
Then again, when you get into the chat room, and no one knows who you are, the temptation to unload everything attacking someone that seems to be an idiot asking to get smacked down is often too good to pass up.
the nishit and its army of zombie strawmen is in rare form today. At least 4 of its 8 mems trotted out in one thread.
Jeff G – if she ain’t lying about what your position actually is, she’s got nuttin’
Teela Brown was the intentional product of a human breeding-for-luck project
nah, it was a puppeteer project, not a human one.
the Citizens.
I guess you missed the whole part where the Hindmost and Wu philosophized about Teela.
Once she became a Protector, she was programmed.
There was no moral choice, just a mathematical one.
How could genetic luck have led Teela to the Tree of Life?
No kind of individual genetic luck. It turned her into a Protector and removed freewill.
Luck for all the species of the Ringworld?
That is not genetic.
nishi: unapologetic liar.
bookmarked.
to what end would we humans endeavor to do anything whatsoever?
for the Turing Heresy.
that we become as gods, and conquer death and disease.
that we throw off the tyranny of the selfish genes.
Funny how our two most prominent site liars support the same candidate, innit?
oh, there’s that liar again.
Apolo for what Jeff?
I just wanted you to display intentionalism.
All your talk about “using” IDT in the “discovery of the scientific method”….
was just the wrong signalling.
words have meaning.
crapology is so much more appropriate.
;)
…and now lying to try to wriggle out of the lying.
I have nothing further to say. The prosecution rests.
And scifi is simply how we test drive the paradigms of the future, today.
I would add that lying is crapolgy.
The liar is back, but I can’t make out what it saying.
Because of all the lying.
BTW, I have the coolest flying car. The talking apes are totally awed by it.
How about apologizing (the correct spelling, btw)for being an ignorant asshat, you poor deluded creature.
And for the lying.
The denial is strong in this one, Master…
Scifi is fiction, asshat.
And an easy way to make money.
I have apparently had a post zorched by the random laws of the ‘net.
Short post, to Lisa:
In reference to your position on Nazis, we need to study them to recognize when they come again.
Regardless of what symbols they march under.
The rising tyranny of contemporary totalitarianism isn’t even a coherent philosophy. There is more philosophical and intellectual rigor on display right here any day of the week than what you might find in any prog headshed or political party board room.
Today’s creeping American totalitarianism is a flock of vultures feeding on the muscle and oh – so – much fat of the still breathing but comatose carcass of what was once a great nation. “Progressive” isn’t so much an idea as a convenient pirate flag the polyglot wreckers sail under. Where there was once a desire for “common good” is now found only “what can I take?”.
Cheers.
I like Lisa. Liberal she may be, but she doesn’t lie about other people here.
Also, Lisa makes an effort tohave a conversation, as opposed to typing out the same old talking points.
fancy bullshit about evolution of culture and memetics?
because, IDT cannot compete as science, the Discovery Institute is attempting to legislate it into the classroom.
which would be, forced instruction of crapology.
or social engineering.
voila! The lying, walking talking point reappears, still unapolgetic. With a bonus reappearance of the Discovery Institute.
actually JHoward, i get my argument style from Speaker To Animals.
…first you scream, and then you leap.
here, let’s save some time:
blahblahblahmemeticsblahblahblahtheoconsblahblahblahxtians
blahblahblahcultureisemergentbehaviorblahblahblahToEToR
blahblahblahlokitmelookitmelookitmeimsosmartblahblahblah
escrblahblahblahgrieferblahblahblahlielielieblahblahblah
I forgot:
blahblahblahvisualcortexblahblahblaheugenicsisneatblahblahblah
muslimmenareimmaturewontdatemeblahblahblahscreamblahblahblah
Science has jerked the teleological tablecloth out from under our crystal rights regime and we’re left trying to put it back without breaking anything.
throw off the tyranny of the selfish genes
you leap
Please, do.
You misrepresented my position on Schiavo and on ID in schools. I linked both. There is no pandering. In fact, I was very publicly delinked by certain sites for my position on Schiavo. On ID in schools, I state very clearly that it is not science as I understand science, and to the extent it should be taught in science classes, it should be used (like, say, Lamarckian evolution or spontaneous generation) to show how the scientific method works, and why ID does not work in that context.
It would also be useful to clear up confusions about evolution that bother certain religious types, namely that evolution does not answer the question of first causes, and so leaves open the possibility of a universe by design. What you call the designer — a Blind Watchmaker, God, pure materialism, etc — this are the kinds of thing, too, that is beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and so would make an excellent object lesson for distinguishing between science and philosophy, and for differentiating between a scientific theory and other kinds of theories.
You stated that I was a pander on ID and Schiavo. I showed otherwise. You’ve continued to ignore that trespass. That makes me sad, really, because I believe I’m more than generous with this space, and with letting people make their arguments.
Arguing in bad faith is so…Greenwaldean. And that’s a stench not easily scrubbed off.
#205: Darleen –
And the kids spying on their parents thing is waaaaaay too 1984 for my comfort. Maybe if someone involved in public education actually read a fucking book every once in a while they would see how creepy, yet eerily predictable they have become. But then again, probably not.
I gotta wonder if nishi really stands behind her genetic determinism. She seemed to drop that thread of discussion pretty damned quick.
Ooh. This is going to be FUN!
When I was in grade school we had to read 1984. Of course, it was 1984, so there you go. But we also had to read “Harrison Bergeron”. We also had sections of some classes that covered things like recognizing propaganda/advertising techniques.
I wonder, sometimes, whether kids are getting that kind of education these days.
(And I went to tiny, tiny high school. In the country. That took in the learning disabled from around the county in order to bring in more funds.)
Jeff, Jeff do that trick again.
Use “global warming” this time.
Jeff G – Consistency is not part of her belief system. The only apparent governing rules are 1) if the nishit believes it, it is good and must be forced upon everyone, and 2) if you disagree with the nishit, you are an anti-science, godbothering theocon, and likely the next target of her purges.
#270: Trying to get someone the right to get married is equivalent to mandating some shit-for-brains pseudo-scientific theory? Yeah, the tactics are similar, but if two dudes get married, so fucking what. However, teaching that ID is actually a viable scientific theory will actually produce idiots we will then expect to work on a cure for cancer. That would suck. But at least we would know that our future doctors and scientists know the Wonders of the Lord’s Creation.
So special.
#’s 262, 263, and 269 are insta-classics.
#137: No, there is no equivalent to the Nazis. There is no equivalent to Pol Pot or Stalin either. Go ahead and be stupid with your “McGovern = Pol Pot” and “Hitler = Nixon” shit. That is a game for idiots. But you seem to be enjoying yourself, so good on you.
Is there any way to filter out the posts to avoid ones with the current sociopath Nishit in them?
I don’t have a lot of spare time, and every thread she’s in is all about trying to dodge around her idiot pathologies.
Um Lisa,
Would you jump to Prov. 2?
Lisa,
#270 is really a comment on the fact that nishi refuses to apologize for misrepresenting Jeff’s position on ID.
#270: I see. I kind of suspected that and I was trying to make sense of the thread. It is hard to follow as Jeff/Nishi’s back and forth is like a fucking car chase/shootout in a Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster. Lots of explosions, crashes, jumping off of buildings, etc.
Woops: #280 is directed at #279.
From reading nishi’s blathering about Known Space I’ve come to an epiphany…
Nishi is like Otto from “A Fish Called Wanda”. Specifically:
Otto: Apes don’t read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, they just don’t understand it!
Numbers are hard.
The tactics are what is at issue here.
Again, I’m not for teaching ID as science; I’m for teaching it alongside evolution to show students what science is and what it is not — and at the same time, demystify ID as a viable scientific theory that scientists and teachers are Afraid To Let You See!
Having said that, I see no reason why believing that the eye was designed for a purpose vs believing the eye came about after billions of years of trial and error through selection of a thin, light-sensitive membrane has any bearing whatever on how the thing is currently constructed, and what needs to be done to heal it.
Something to keep in mind, Lisa. Not all those who believe in creationism are snake handlers who, when God ain’t a-lookin’, fuck the hell out of their comely first cousins in the hay loft of pappy’s old barn.
Something to keep in mind, Lisa. Not all those who believe in creationism are snake handlers who, when God ain’t a-lookin’, fuck the hell out of their comely first cousins in the hay loft of pappy’s old barn.
Hee hee. I don’t believe that though. Some of my best friends are believers. I am not some wild eyed atheist. Yes, I have contempt for those who would try to replace reason with forced faith (or vice versa). But I have no problem with faith, nor do I think that faith is the enemy of reason. I just think that one should not try to rip one out at the roots to replace it with the other when they can both flourish happily together.
Jeff, it’s simply a matter of recognizing the situation for what it is. nishi is simply not interested in a discussion of the issues. She just wants to state her case again and again and again and wig out on anyone who disagrees with her. You’ll recall, I’m sure, how she responded to this.
I know you have a certain fondness for her, and frankly so do I, though it’s definitely waning. But the fact of the matter is that she is not going to reasonably engage. She’s just going to grief you and troll your blog, mostly because she likes the attention.
It is what it is.
“It is what it is.”
A chronic anal fissure.
Pablo:
Attention-whoring is a very old profession. I heard it is legal in Nevada and Amsterdam.
Anyway, this triple thread of philosophical madness has been a hoot – and very enlightening. You all continue to educate me as you share your fascinating experiences; favorite books and movies; and nuggets of wisdom from your various professions, travels, and formal (and informal) educations.
Somehow I was actually convinced to order fatassed Jonah Goldberg’s book which will be here in 5-7 business days. After being resolute about what a fucking Book of Boneheadedness it MUST be (because Goldberg is annoying), I am convinced by you that it is at least compelling enough to blow $18.45 plus shipping on. And Jeff’s post included a piece from the book that was a defense of Herbert Spencer. I recall a fairly well-known quote by him that kind of stopped me short:
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
So Goldberg is on the summer reading list. The bitchass.
As always, it has been a pleasure, ladies and gents.
“But he was the incarnation of all that was backward, reactionary, and wrong according to the progressive worldview, not because he supported Hitlerian schemes of forced race hygiene but because he adamantly opposed them.”
Or maybe it was because Constitutionalizing his economic policies got in the way of terrible fascist progressive reforms like limiting Bakeries to having their workers work 60 hour weeks.
“This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain. If it were a question whether I agreed with that theory, I should desire to study it further and long before making up my mind. But I do not conceive that to be my duty, because I strongly believe that my agreement or disagreement has nothing to do with the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law. It is settled by various decisions of this court that state constitutions and state laws may regulate life in many ways which we as legislators might think as injudicious, or if you like as tyrannical, as this, and which, equally with this, interfere with the liberty to contract. Sunday laws and usury laws are ancient examples. A more modern one is the prohibition of lotteries. The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the same, which has been a shibboleth for some well-known writers, is interfered with by school laws, by the Postoffice, by every state or municipal institution which takes his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he likes it or not. The 14th Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.”
“ID as a theory of first causes  that is, as a philosophy  is fine by me, and is what keeps me agnostic rather than atheist”
This may be because I don’t understand your terminology, but I dont see ID as a ‘first causes’ explanation of life. Since we don’t know where the Intelligent Designer came from, it’s not quite ‘first.’ It seems aimed at stopping inquiry, rather than guiding it. That sounds like a poor philosophy.
It’s a great philosophy, andrea, as it places the Unknown outside the Universe, right were one would expect such an entity, quality, process, or what-have-you to exist. What’s annoying as a well, philosophy, is the “science” that spontaneous existence originated itself. That’s not scientific simply because there is no scientific process there.
“God”, which is the core of ID, is at It’s most basic definition, the Unspeakable Unknown. Not being beholden to physics — the known — the Unknown is indeed just that. And a great philosophy.
“It’s a great philosophy, andrea, as it places the Unknown outside the Universe, right were one would expect such an entity, quality, process, or what-have-you to exist.”
Thats exactly my problem with it. If the unknown is outside the universe, what are we to inquire about? Frankly I’d expect there to be plenty of unknown in the universe.
The point is, science does not pretend to investigate the first cause (and where the intelligent designer, or the blind watchmaker, or what have you, came from, to infinite regress, is the first cause; God is just a name some have for it); ID deals with the why of the known universe, which science does not, concentrating as it does on the how. As such, ID can be placed in the realm of metaphysics.
Thing is, many people are interested in the why, and they continue to ask the question. Darwinian evolution doesn’t deal with that question, and so is perfectly at home within that paradigm. Or rather, it would be, if people understood this. I don’t see how any of this stops inquiry. It’s just that, when dealing with the question of first causes, inquiry itself can only be met with faith of some sort — be that a faith in God or a faith in some sort of self-generating materialist mechanism that will forever remain unprovable.
Whether or not you think the question of first causes makes for poor philosophy is up to you. I didn’t make any value judgment. I simply noted that some things are unknowable, and, given that, I remain agnostic.
Start calling it intelligent configuration instead of intelligent design. That really seems to fuck them up.
I prefer “progressive vision in the works, made possible by a wealthy anonymous donor”.
If that catches on, somebody owes me a beer and a soft pretzel.
Now see what you’ve done, nishi? You’ve made Jeff a sad pander…
– As a scientist, and a spiritual individual, I watch this back and forth with a mixture of bemusement and quiet alarm. That is because I see the disconnect between the arguments, both sides playing a game based on their indefatigable belief that they , the two ideas, are mutually exclusive, which of course they are in many regards.
– Eugenetics, and the scienclogs that fervently seek its growth, insist that ID be judged on an impossible bench mark, something it was never designed to do. It is of course, impossible to judge a value based system of thought using a yardstick of purely results orientated enterprise that eschews all questions of providence, which is exactly what eugenetics is. Its practitioners want to argue such a misinformed position in order to shift the questions of oversight and decision making over to a faux argument to cover their tracks and avoid questions of unbridled determinism so they can proceed unimpeded. Thus the synthetic battle with religion.
– Its a sort of slight of hand to distract from the real issues. Science, quite aside from any other comparisons or arguments, faux or otherwise, must be held to account for its actions in exactly the same way as any other human endeavor, in fact because of the potential for mischief, even more so if anything. Thats what is being clouded over by the ID/ToE argument. Which of course is just fine with the scienclogs.
– The key reason that Progessives find the worship of science so attractive is for the very fact that it labors to avoid all questions of morality and providence. In other words responsibility avoidance, which is the hallmark of almost everything that informs the Progressive portfolio. I can abort my baby without guilt, or reservation, as long as I’m careful to dehumanize the fetus, and I can do that as long as I can deny the idea of spirit. Thus, any value based system needs must be my enemy outright, and therefore my ability to perform in certain ways within a given society depends entirely on how well I can frame the argument to disenfranchise all value based critical thinking, and by that gain a free unencumbered hand to accomplish my goals, sans the messiness of responsibility.
– As Jeff touches on, the two ideas have totally different social purposes in goals, application, and intended results. By commingling the two the materialist is able to provide cover for their real intentions.
– Society needs to be careful not to fall in that trap. It remains to be seen if we will. Using Ric’s example, clients may be perfectly happy with their sex toys, until they find out the girls suffer from a slight problem of loving the taste of human blood. Oh well, back to the drawing board is no way to run a world, Ring or otherwise.
– Totally aside from any questions of religion, the nishis of the world need to be tightly supervised for a myriad of common sense reasons that have very little to do with ID or religion.
#85,Jeff, sorry for the late response, wicked thunderstorms knocked the power down.
So, what was that particular strategy which was rejected? curious….
Nope, ideology was rejected;
as far as the Germans using that word, -yeah for the masses, to combat popular communist party,- socialism=paradise(“you Deuchen like that word, have it”-Adolf) for only us- ubermenchen.
I’ll tell you what, I will defer to Jonah that fascism evolved from socialism, I do not basically care if the two totalitarian ideologies are bunched together( I will give up on my statement, that the two divergent thoughts/ species of socialism and nationalism evolved to acquire similar features) as long as we, including Jonah, proceed to acknowledge the evolution of neoconservatism from Marxism. That the fuck ups like Ledeen, Kristol at al are indeed nothing but trotskyists in disguise…
BTW, here is an idea for not language challenged people.
Why not write a book titled “Neoconservative Marxism ” ( with the description of relationships between Marxism , fascism and neoconservatism).
I bet as many if not more , as in Jonah’s frivolous exercise , connections can be dragged out of a thin air..
Sashal,
You keep using these words. I don’t think they mean what you think they mean. We’ll keep it simple: can you define Marxism and Trotskyism for me?
roceed to acknowledge the evolution of neoconservatism from Marxism.
You’re gonna have to flesh that one out for me, Sashal.
It’s easy, Carin — sashal doesn’t like the idea of liberating people from a dictator, he doesn’t like neo-conservatives, and he doesn’t like Troskyites. Therefore, neo-conservatives who advocated removing a dictator are Trotskyites.
Oh, he’ll try to dress it up a bit — claiming that removing Saddam was “interfering with the will of the Iraqi people” or some such nonsense — but that’s the gist of it. He’s a one-trick pony, a Buchananite with a Slavic accent.
“As such, ID can be placed in the realm of metaphysics.”
I think you cause a bit of confusion when mention ID being taught alongside evolution. Usually people understand to mean it to be taught as a competitor. Rather it should be taught that it is not. If mentioned in a scientific context, an important detail that should be mentioned is that it is wrong.
“The point is, science does not pretend to investigate the first cause (and where the intelligent designer, or the blind watchmaker, or what have you, came from, to infinite regress, is the first cause; God is just a name some have for it);”
Science investigates natural causes. If the first one is natural, it’s the subject of science. Intelligent Design, as JHoward seems to understand it — as more than just ‘first causes’ — takes certain things out of the natural and puts it into the supernatural.
“I don’t see how any of this stops inquiry.”
It stops inquiry to the extent that it reaches a “false first.” If you get the idea that homo sapiens was intelligently designed, it stops inquiry into what came before homo sapiens. Its a theory of remainders — clearly what we don’t know yet is still a “first cause” but then more inquiry may reveal a natural cause of that. If we were to think, as JHoward wants, that was is unknown is outside the universe, then there would be no inquiry.
Rob, i am a liberal, just like Jeff (you can attach the word classic to it if you prefer), and who unlike Jeff, did not buy into neoconservative BS.
Yes, who is against interfering in other poeple’ affairs being that a my fellow citizens or the citizens of other countries, because such interference or naively called “help” brings with it predicted destruction and death, unpredicted consequences.
“Means justify the ends” in the neocon parlance is not the liberal expression, is not what I would like to hear again after the years of same approach under totalitarian rule…
#296: LOL!!!
The US, according to your stand, should have ignored the USSR, since helping the folks under its rule and the rule of its puppets may have had unintended consequences. We should have ignored slavery, because the lot of our fellow citizens was none of our business.
Must be nice to be an island, utterly unattached and utterly uninterested in the fate of others.
I really have no idea what you’re talking about here. I suspect you don’t, either. You might want to investigate that saying, BTW.
And, honestly, a self-declared classical liberal who supports Obama? You have got to be joking. The man got his political start working with ACORN, for crissake.
If you get the idea that homo sapiens was intelligently designed, it stops inquiry into what came before homo sapiens.
No it doesn’t. Unless you are claiming that all scientists researching early hominids – from mitochondrial DNA to migratory patterns – are athiests. I am an ethical monotheist and I am thoroughly fascinated with anything science, with special attention to archeology and where modern man came from.
Andrea, you simply illustrate why ID should be taught, because your criticism as it stands is completely off base. Proponents of ID will simply look at one another and say, “what’s she talking about? That’s got nothing to do with us.” You cannot refute any proposition by citing irrelevancies. Criticizing a snake for having too much fur just gets you blank looks.
Jeff’s point stands. A central feature of modern cosmology is singularity — a point in spacetime beyond which it is impossible to ask questions using the tools of physics. The Big Bang is the prototype of all singularities. It is the origin of everything; you cannot ask “what were things like before that” because the word “before” doesn’t mean anything in that context. I don’t think anybody exists who can actually visualize that — we can’t help thinking of something like a black unpopulated void in which a spark occurred. But that isn’t physics. That “void” is space, “occurred” is time, and before the Bang “space” and “time” were meaningless.
So if you ask what “caused” the Big Bang, you are applying a physical concept (specifically entropy, which is the deep meaning of Time) that simply does not apply — that is, you have left the realm of science and gone off into metaphysics, which is the province of philosophy and religion. It’s not that science doesn’t have any answers “beyond” the Big Bang. It’s that it doesn’t have any questions.
ID is a metaphysical theory. As such, it would serve as an ideal example for an honest teacher to use to teach the difference between metaphysics and science. Unfortunately what your and nishi’s approach looks like from here is an attempt to create a competing metaphysics called “science” which has nothing to do with real science, and sees ID and creationism simply as competing metaphysical doctrines. As such, it falls into the modern Leftist paradigm of “I disagree with what you say, therefore you ought to be shot.” Calling it “liberal” or “scientific” is simply ludicrous.
Regards,
Ric
Untrue. Jeff notes that ID is located within metaphysics, but BBH observes that ID is therefore yet “judged on an impossible bench mark, something it was never designed to do.” I use the Unknown/known construct not to perpetuate endless turtles lying outside of the Universe, but to point out that using science to analyze origins must do precisely that.
Science — existing as it does within this paradigm — cannot analyze origins. The mind can at least entertain that the alternate paradigm exists and that in that sphere lies the prospect of origins and fundamentals. This does not limit exploration, it merely places exploration of the ultimate origin in a useful domain.
As an example, an irony to me is that within the quantum level we have potentially one of two states: One is composed of a an infinite number of reductions under which lies the God Particle, if you will, that we’ll never find lying at…infinity. And faithfully so, because all we’ll ever thereby “know” is the direction or trajectory of knowledge, never its fact and finality.
The other is that the fundamental particle simply exists at some level and state, like a superstring, doing what it does because it always does what it does — the how is somewhat graspable but the why is stripped entirely away. With nothing motivating it whatsoever, it is itself also the ultimate expression, ironically, of faith.
Not being a mathematician or physicist, I’m sure that’s an entirely questionable construct, but I think it points to how science itself isn’t equipped to elaborate upon ultimate origins, fundamentals, causes. At the same time it puts to the mental test the nature of the Universe while evoking a question about what lies beyond, below, behind, or outside of the physical universe.
There is no halting the exploration incumbent in questioning origins in this way.
To be fair, Ric, there are some who are trying to push ID as the mechanism of evolution, primarily through the “irreducibly complex” argument — that some structures and mechanisms are so complex that removing a single element breaks it, so mere chance couldn’t have produced them.
Which is utter crap; it’s not just an argument from personal incredulity, it’s also a blatantly pointless claim. For one thing, such systems could be derived from even more complex systems that have been “simplified”. In fact, such systems would be very resistant to further changes, because of their “one change and it breaks” nature.
It wasn’t intended to. Science is about “how”; the “why” is a question for philosophers and theologists.
“Eugenetics, and the scienclogs that fervently seek its growth, insist that ID be judged on an impossible bench mark, something it was never designed to do.”
?? wtf does IDT have to do with eugenics?
But if it isn’t science, then it simply doesn’t belong in science class.
That is why i wanted Jeff to explicitly state “IDT as science is crapology.” I know he doesnt believe in it.
It is simple revenge. I wanted Jeff to say the C-word, so that BBH and B Moes and everyone else here couldn’t weasel word their way out of it.
IDT is crapology, dishonest social engineering, and doesnt belong within a thousand yards of any high school science class, in any guise, even as a counter example.
If you read Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, the 7-16 development stage of homosapiens sapiens is a crucial learning period. Exposure to wrong or bad information is particularily damaging during this period, because learning is absorptive and uncritical.
IDT is not science…so don’t teach it in science class.
Teach it in philosophy class or bible college where it belongs. Even discuss it in cosmology with origins of the universe. But to pose IDT contra ToE in any fashion is just bad information.
Shoehorning IDT into a biology curriculum is like advocating teaching geo-centric model in cosmology.
Science is a succession of orthodoxies that are subsumed by heresies.
ID was the orthodoxy….ToE is the heresy that subsumed it.
Science is the ultimate free marketplace of competing ideas.
A better model will always win out.
With IDT, you are trying to force the scientific community to buy last years model when we already have this years for free.
and Jeff is right with his judicial activism analogy. The DI has developed legislative templates to facilitate the “strengths and weakness” crap. In several cases the S&W on evo is explicted tied to also teaching AGW crap. A “way for misinformation to enter the classroom”.
But the way that samesexmarriage is different, is eventually it will be accepted as a social more, and even become a cultural norm. I don’t think any of you doubt that. I just have to look at my teenage cousins and it is apparent. It is being socialized in schools, the whole bi-curious, i-kissed-a-girl-and-i-liked-it subculture.
That is the whole pander thing. You try to persuade with gentle, elegant argument when i just want u to wap them upside their thick skulls with a cluebat.
Like you do the clueless on the Left.
ZSShocka. The nishit continues to lie.
ekshually, JHoward, all good scientists acknowledge “the-god-of-the-gaps”.
the theory of consciouness guy, Stu Hammerhoff believes that exists in the q-space between the maths and quantum biology.
But there is no place for the-god-of-the-gaps in ToE.
What you call “pandering” is what most people call “treating people like they’re fully human”.
I suspect you have no idea what BBH and B Moe think, let alone “everyone else” here. In order to know what they think, you’d have to actually read what they’ve written and approach it as if they’re people you’re trying to understand. Instead, you just hare off and attack an imaginary position.
Ya know, I remember science texts mentioning “phlogiston”, “caloric”, and Lamarckian evolution as alternate theories, and even explaining why those models didn’t hold up. Having an example of a non-falsifiable theory wouldn’t hurt.
Of course, they could always use “Teh Singularity” for that.
Sure there is. If you postulate an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent intelligence, then that intelligence could quite easily have directed what to us appears to be a random process.
Seriously, nishi, learn to consider the consequences of your own beliefs. Islam doesn’t even allow for natural laws; it’s all Allah’s Whim, and to claim Allah is bound by consistency is shirk. Christianity posits a rational, consistent Creator, knowable through His works as well as through revelation.
But the way that samesexmarriage is different, is eventually it will be accepted as a social more, and even become a cultural norm. I don’t think any of you doubt that. I just have to look at my teenage cousins and it is apparent. It is being socialized in schools, the whole bi-curious, i-kissed-a-girl-and-i-liked-it subculture.
Another reason to homeschool. I’d rather not that my children had their sexuality socialized into them.
#316: Many scientists believe that. But what is the point of trying to shoehorn it into actual scientific thinking? It is wonderful to be a person of faith, but pointless to try to make that faith scientific theory.
Scientists have said that the more they know about the universe the deeper their faith in a magnificent higher power grows. Very nice. Still has no place being “taught” along side scientific theory. It belongs in an anthropology, theology, or religious studies course.
Nishi is a muslim? Hmmmm. I thought that those Islam posts were a faux-nishtroll.
Of course it is, wrongly or otherwise.
The ones where the faux-nishtroll said Mohammed’s rape of Aisha was acceptable were. Nishi would never admit to that.
And, for the record, she claims to be a special, super-secret type of Muslim that believes only what’s convenient for her.
– Well not exactly Ric. Science, from the time Einstein first proposed both theories of relativity, and the subsequent devising of the Big Bang, to the discovery of the background remnants of same, has visualized “the Big Egg”, which is poorly named because it is anything but big. So there was a “before” of sorts, but your comments stand, for a different reason, we believe, than the ones you gave, but never the less they stand. Before the big “inflation”, time and space held no meaning.
– Heres what we believe currently, (and BTW, Einstein died quite miserable that he could never resolve this issue), all physical manifestation that exists is quanta, including distance, size, and time, Einsteins dreaded “ether”, something he went back and forth on several times in his life, and at one point declared “the biggest mistake of my life”. For a time he was like a John Kerry of science. Near the end he had settled on the ether in a slightly different form as being the correct interpretation of “everything”.
– Think of everything that exists that you can sense as being a physical quantity of unimaginably small quanta that exist on the “canvas” of space. But heres the rub. The canvas is also quanta, quanta of time. The canvas goes in and out of existence at an unimaginable rate of speed,. Think of a hyper fast “eat at Joes” sign, blinking at a rate that far exceeds anything known. Unfortunately we will never be able to “see” or detect that canvas, because we can’t know the framework within which we exist. Moreover, even if we could devise a way to do such a thing, because we are a part of it, whenever we tried to look it wouldn’t be there for just the exact time we looked. Think of the position and speed paradox when observing the electron, and just extend that to all forms of these fundamental quanta, including time.
– All of that said, it changes nothing about your points. You are still absolutely correct. In describing a “before”, the usual yardsticks of physic are meaningless because you can’t make the measurement without changing what you’re viewing. Something like an extension of Schroedinger’s cat, except in this case you can’t even detect the black body box, let alone determine if the cat is alive or dead.
– I’m surprised no one has cited “The Mote in Gods eye” books, when discussing the intersection of science and religion. Even Hawkins has shaken things up on occasion, light heartedly suggesting that “since Black holes can theoretically radiate anything, including a big gulp soda, with ice, or any living creature, maybe we should be worshiping them”.
– I seldom talk to this idiocy on the part of materialists, because it just gets their hopes up. Like dogs bark, its what they do.
Look, none of you have a clue about Islam, so please don’t lecture me on what I believe.
God ain’t in the gaps. He’s everywhere.
What about ‘creator and sustainer of the world’ is unambiguous?
The how perhaps, but that’s not what that statement is about. It’s not a magic formula for getting what you want.
None of us would accept ID being taught as science. But if the reasons it’s not science were taught, in a science class, that’s a different matter.
#322: Heh, I would take it that you have chosen Sufism, nishi, since it is basically Islam without being Islam at all.
BBH: sounds complex, or just very, very simple. Kind of like this Canvas is the Logos, or Tao.
Just sayin’.
A spectacular irony, that. Then kindly return the favor, troll.
Oh, look, it can actually write proper English!
Nishi, so long as you feel free to lecture us on what we believe — quite often getting it as wrong as is possible — I’ll feel free to lecture you. Particularly when I know I’ve got solid facts on my side.
“Sure there is.”
Just what point do you insert the-god-of-the-gaps?
the life spark?
some god-code for evolution?
i think drosophila experiments are pretty good evidence of random mutation.
This illustrates why nishi is useful.
She has absolutely no concept of the difference between “process” and “result”. And because of that, she ends up endorsing processes — in fact, demanding them — that will not produce the result she wants.
This was blatant in the FLDS case. Nishi wants the “babyrapers” hammered, and never figured out that what we were arguing about was the process; she is perfectly happy with an arbitrary decision completely outside the rule of law, because she fancies that doing it that way will Bash the Badguys, and violently protests when we argue against arbitrariness because she sees it as a mechanism for letting the Badguys go free. It never occurs to her, in fact she violently rejects, that we (or some of us) might be just as interested in hammering the Badguys as she is — we simply want it done according to established procedure, lest the same arbitrariness be applied to us. Or her.
Same here. She wants ID defined as “crapology” and excluded from education; but the process she advocates for doing so has the effect of establishing “science” as an arbitrary Doctrine. “My Doctrine is TRVTH! Yours is false! You must be punished for adopting it, and excluded totally from social intercourse!” Which is the rallying cry of every shaman in history and before. As a result, she ends up accomplishing the major goal of the ID movement, which is to make “science” and “creationism” equivalent to one another.
Regards,
Ric
haha, well i was a catholic.
so i do know what you believe.
Think of God as a placeholder. Someone noted (I think it was R. Rorty) that ‘whenever you bring God on the scene, you can make Him do anything you want.’
i don’t care.
…i know its wrong, but i won’t stop.
–Samara, The Ring
thank you again Jeff.
it felt very good to have you say that.
Ha. It’s akin to the vast nishi-tension between a professed “faith” apparently adopted as a barb, and a “science” adopted as tantamount to religion. The nuggie, the veritable master of domains, she is consistently inconsistent.
Yeah, “it is simple revenge”.
-#330 – Which of course summerizes perfectly that which I{ labored to say earlier, and something that Lisa made note of also. That the two ideas can exist perfectly happily without ever colliding.
– I work every day in an atmosphere of pure materialistic results orientated endeavor – science. I do so under the rules of common sense and the laws of society, and I do not seek to usurp those laws for the sake of my own ego. I do not because of my faith, but my faith teaches me humbleness, providence, and responsibility to my fellow man, and says nothing about science.
– “Render onto Science that which is Science, and render onto God that which is Gods.”
Nishi – you are officially lame in my book. I tried. I really tried.
hahaha
Dr Reynolds swings the cluebat.
this applys to Liberal Fascism aour continuing discussion.
See? Expelled is just the cartoon version of Liberal Fascism, a crude gaudy comic strip for the reading-impaired.
Again, the acts of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent intelligence could very well appear to us to be random chance.
Which of those words don’t you understand?
Nishi – were you Confirmed in the Faith?
No, you don’t.
Again, you’re missing the point. It’s almost as if you refuse to consider the point. Of course, if you granted that the argument you’re attacking may be more subtle and involved than someone simply saying “Darwin BAD!”, then you might have to think.
You’re clearly not equipped to do that.
And, nishidiot, that article was only linked to by Instapundit. It wasn’t written by him.
– BTW nishi, I can tell by the things you aver approximately where you are at in your life journey of learning and maturation. You will find in time, what almost every really excellent scientist has found before you. At some point the true perfection of the beauty of nature will manifest to you, and at that point you will understand the value and reality of faith. I promise.
I still want to see nishi’s list of who on this site wants to see ID (DI’s version) taught as science in HS classrooms.
I specifically want to understand who she thought Jeff needed to hit with a cluebat of intentionalism.
can heroes ever unclay their feet?
i wonder….
I am not at all concerned that Nishi will eventually find her way back. It is important during development of the mature person to ask many questions. Nay, it is normal to do so. Rebellion for rebellion’s sake is just a mark of coming of age.
I guess I am just expecting Nishi to grow up a bit more quickly than she is able. In many respects, it is difficult for the adolescent to accept that the old farts really don’t want to go drink beer at the cool bar down the road… lest they have to travel over all of the tired and worn out “discussions” they themselves explored among essentially the same people in the same bar, in the same city with the same bartender. It is, as it were, completely outside of their field of vision.
“can heroes ever unclay their feet?”
– God clays our feet in spite of our best efforts to resist. This is only fitting, since he is the keeper of the clay.
yes Enoch, all the sacraments, and immaculate conception parochial school, until i got kicked out.
;)
I think Chesterton described in Orthodoxy the condition of people who live an entirely consistent, closed off world: Insane people are the most reasonable, rational people. They’re just missing most of reality. In order to see things as they do you must accept certain assumptions that remove massive parts of reality. It is said that Poe went mad through rationality, not romanticism. (Romanticism tends to get you diseases of the body instead of the mind.)
This is the condition that nishi has. Until she desires to get well, there’s no point in reasoning anything with her.
By the way, since you admit to having been a Catholic of sorts, the kid gloves should be off (to any Catholic here.) I’m not a Roman Catholic, but I can play ball.
A thought which very well could have led to the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
andrea —
I linked this way up thread, then excerpted it at #175. This if from my original post on IDT and evolution, and it should clear up your confusion. I proceeded as if people in this discussion had been reading the prior comments:
all the sacraments
really? so, might I ask if you were coerced to Confirm? Or, did you Confirm out of laziness? Or, did you actually believe?
The first cause is by its very nature unknowable. Which is why science has no interest in it. It could be that what we are experiencing is naught but the limits of our own mechanism of thinking and narrativizing, this need to ask, z’yes, but how did THAT come to be.” But we do so, and it is on this point where science and metaphysics diverge.
Believing that there is possibly something that came before all else that had some sort of “plan” (to anthropomorphize things) does not stop inquiry — and in fact has NOT stopped inquiry. If anything, it’s given us books like, eg., Roger’s Version, and shows like “The X Files.”
Isn’t priesthood a sacrament, as well as matrimony? Or is that only for the Orthodox…
– Obama and his youthful supporters are a prime, and current, example of “impulsive rebellion of the young”.
– He orates at length, with pearl like prose, but says nothing of essense or specitivity, leaving the listener puzzeked as to just what he is capibla of, and what he actually intends.
– We are left with the impression that he has no idea what to change, nor any notion of how to change it, even if he had goals, he just knows he wants to change things.
– Change for change sake without purpose is called chaos, the bane of the youthful mind without experience or aim.
River –
yes. You are correct… that is why I was astonished to find that Nishi is a married Priest who has also seemed to received the Sacrament of the Sick (blessing/so-called “last rites”)
Oh. I see Ric has already answered, and in far more depth. J Howard, as well. So go revisit their responses.
BBH – yes. it is required reading… not unlike The Stranger… which then leads to The Cure… which leads to all manner of curios.
“…until i got kicked out.
– You don’t get “kicked out”. You chose to turn your back on the faith. It is entirely up to you, a conscious choice you yourself make, and a luxury, making a choice, your youthful unformed intellect cannot afford to extend to your detractors.
Hey, the liar acme back for more lying today.
BBH – I don’t think she intended “excommunication”… but rather something trmendously MORE IMPORTANT (I am sure)… being kicked out of school. To which I say, BFD. Join the club you rascally rebel!
Then to Nishi I’d say, “You put your soul at risk with your foolishness. Go back and repent.”
It is just sad that we have to add parochial school to the long list of places where nishi wasn’t accepted.
Come on, nishi. Who on this blog wants to see ID taught as science in HS Science classes? Who did Jeff need to set straight?
Lisa —
I’ve several times now explained my reason why I think introducing students to the field of IDT alongside Darwinian evolution is a good idea pedagogically. You — and nishi — continue to respond simply by saying that, because it isn’t science (like, for instance, Lamarckian evolution, incidentally, or spontaneous generation), it shouldn’t be taught in science classes.
What you want to do now, so we stop talking past each other, is to explain where you think my arguments fail. That’s how this back and forth thing works.
Nishi wishes to coopt what I’ve said. Yes, I believe irreducible complexity is faulty because it uses what it postulates is an end point as the premise upon which the entire theory is built. It is a scientific question beg, if you will. But as a theory of first causes — as metaphysics that poses questions science can’t ask — it is valuable, or at least useful.
I believe response theoretics, when they are taught with a mind toward post structural assumptions, are also completely faulty from a linguistic perspective. But I introduce those theoretics all the time to show why and how they are faulty. Which I think is better than giving them a mystic cachet by banning them from my classes on interpretation.
River – the Lord she Confirmed herself in the service of is thankfully infinite in His Mercy
That which is beyond the knowable is the essence of God. In saying that the first cause is unknowable, you implicitly admit God, whether or not you believe or care. If not, you must do as Dennet or whomever did in ‘Expelled’ which is to run an infinite chain of causality.
River – Thomas Aquinas has NOTHING on the Brain that is Nishi.
I preemptively accuse myself of being a TheoconBushitlerZionistCrusader!
Aquinas? I’m rolling with Maximos the Confessor, but Doctor Tom is okay, I guess. ;)
Quoting Carin-BONC in Dan’s ‘I Love This Headline’ thread, and replacing Dan in her statement, with Nishi: “…I suppose we should just be grateful Nishi didn’t add ‘NOW DANCE, MONKEYS’…”
Summa, man… it’s all the rage! River, get with it, man… the Doc is where it’s at…
– I noticed the glaring absence of any response from nishi to my question about Oppenheimer’s thoughts as he stood with his finger poised on that chrome switch.
– Materialists simply cannot think in terms of societal regulation, Fortunately it all worked out. Only a few hundred thousand souls perished as things turned out, and as best as can be determined was necessary. But oh how things might have gone awry.
– Picture the same moment of potential crisis, played out multiple times a day in labs across the globe. The question isn’t “whether”, its “when” some biological disaster will occur, sans effective societal control.
– nishi’s contention that if “we don’t do it, someone will”, is no comfort, and certainly no reason to permit her to proceed.
BBH – she also did not respond to inquiry re her Confirmation. Which, I think speaks for itself. What are we to make about a critic who points to hypocrisy… but who seems to find no cause with herself. And, if she is young, we should not press her on her lack of experience! Lest we bring up The O! No, we can discern a pattern… she confirmed. She went to college. She attended all the right classes and read all the right books. Then one Thanksgiving went home to eat her parents food, became offended at how un-enlightened her folks were… and then set about pissing off daddy… though keeping in his good graces enough not to be cut out of his will. Oh, and she still eats their food. Although their politics and religion are repulsive!
BBH?
“…But oh how things might have gone awry…”
How does this mean something? I missed the 2′ putt but you should just give it to me anyhow, since in my imagined world, I made it?
Doctor Tom? Baker? “All curls and teeth”?
Fnord.
Sdferr — a number of physicists believed an atomic chain reaction wouldn’t stop, and would consume the planet.
Nishi also dropped the nature/nurture conflict. It’s like she can’t defend her genetic determinism.
But I’ll say it again: the assumption that genes somehow code for academic  or personal  success is laughable.
Rob
I’m aware of that. That does not change what happens ‘back in the real world’ though, now does it? Believing, imagining what ‘is not’ is easy, as the real world golf example shows. But what counts?
Beck – when you posted that, I suddenly felt like I was back in college… it was the late 80s/early 90s… the thought police were all over the fucking place… and all I can remember is being mesmerized any time I tried to employ critical thought in the presence of those massive BRAINS!
– Sdferr – Read anyone of the well written accounts of the “Manhattan Project”. Its been years since I reviewed them myself so just google it.
– Basically what I was speaking to is a potential problem that was only spoken of among the Los Alamos scientific community at the time. Many scientists were leery, with very good cause, that any detonation of an atomic device could possible trigger a chain reaction of the molecules/atoms in the air, engulfing the earth in a fire storm, and destroying every living creature on the earth.
– Today of course, we know all the reasons that can’t happen, but when Oppenheimer had to decide to throw that switch, he had about a 50/50 split among his peers. Imagine what it must have been like at that moment, knowing you very possible could end the entire species in a single act, or what you would say to Gabriel if things went badly. He writes of such things in his journals. riveting reading, and should be required for all nishi thinking students.
BBH – SCIENCE – so are you saying that 50% of the SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY was wrong? Good Lord, quick… someone write Fnord so I don’t start reflecting on teh Globular Climit Changitudiness!!!!!!!!!
Si, Se Puede!
You  and nishi  continue to respond simply by saying that, because it isn’t science
no i gave solid reasons for not including IDT in highschool science curriculum.
this is the crux of the three liberal fascism quotes, and bailey says it better than me.
Goldberg argues for judeoxian ethics as a bulwark against “eugenics”(a blanket term wich seems to include atrocities like pogroms and genocides and forced sterilizations, but not ivy league coeds selling gametes). Like Ron Bailey says, and i pointed out in the case of slavery, judeoxian ethics dont do squat for a whole of other things.
The ploy to shoehorn ID into public schools is simply an attempt to resist secularization, targetting a vulnerable stage in cognitive development. IDT is different from Lamarck and Lysenko and ontongeny recapitulating philogeny, in that those theories have been proven wholly and utterly false and IDT is simply not falsifiable. The scientific method argument will escape many kids at that age and they will come away giving credibility to IDT.
BBH
I’m not in need of the history of physics lesson just now, thanks. Maybe I haven’t made myself clear, though I thought I had used simple enough English to get the point across.
(Sorry if this is beginning to sound a little harsh. Maybe I should tone it down a notch.)
To return: those imagined outcomes of the first nuclear weapons test were, in the event, wrong about the world. So saying “…things might have gone awry…” where someone means ‘gone awry’ in the world we live in, is likewise, demonstrably false. Or to put it another way, the statement is a ‘boogie man’.
– Wrong yes, but fortuitously in this case. With the level of understanding that existed at the time, would you have wanted to flip that switch? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Its always the snakes you don’t see that nail you, but in this case it was even worse, since the snake was possible just on the other side of the sage brush, waiting to strike, and he had to live with that and take the step forward into the unknown.
– He himself describes it in exactly those terms. It occurred to me when I read that, that it seems we are always faced with the paradox of the snake.
– I am not prepared to allow the nishi crowd to play craps with our future, either as a scientist myself, or as a member of society.
oh jezus-h-christ-inna-handcart, i had all the prescribed catholic stuff until i escaped to college.
yes, i was very religious as a child and contemplated being a nun, and left space on my chair seat for my guardian angel.
the essential silliness of the scarestories they told me just got to me.
that and censuring my reading.
i also objected to the unfairness of limbo.
Now, as an Orthodox Christian I don’t believe that limbo exists, but if it does exist no objection to its fairness or unfairness holds water.
Also, as for many of the silly things Roman Catholics do – I may object to them for various reasons, but obedience itself is good for the soul, even if it is obedience to a maroon. Hopefully one reaches the point where one recognizes one has ‘nothing left to learn’ (in the case of serving an idiot) but hopefully that comes along with the message that it was the obedience itself that benefits you, not the quality of the tasks, per se.
Not to say that it being bad enough won’t wreck that benefit, but many complained that their abbot or priest wasn’t perfect enough. Hogwash!
BBH, some ppl thought flippin the switch at CERN would open up mini-black holes that would destroy the earth.
dint happen.
i fail to get the point of ur history-of-physics lesson also.
Actually, the demise of slavery is because of Christianity. But most miracles happen so slowly you can’t perceive them, so I can hardly blame anyone. I mean – evolution is clearly one of those things, ya know?
– I take nothing you’ve said as harsh. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear either. the problem at the time was there was nothing “demonstrably false” about the contention. Not enough was known really to make that sort of determination.
– with that in mind recall we’re not talking about a larger than expected detonation, or some such limited extention of the results. Serious scientists with every bit of acumin as those that disagreed were postulating the chain reaction theory. If they had been right we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It wasn’t a matter of “oops”. It was a matter of potential total disaster, which they lacked enough data to decide properly. He decided to take a chance.
– Are you prepared for well meaning, unsupervised people, to “take a chance” over and over with your future?
some people still have that concern about LHC. A possibility, I suppose, but I think theory has any generated black holes evaporating nearly instantaneously.
Actually, someone wrote a book about a possible consequence. Cosm, by Gregory Benford. Scifi, of course.
haha, igtg
great thread Jeff.
;)
River – my Brother. Do tell, as an Orthodox Christian… I take to mean Eastern Orthodox. With that in mind, pray tell, what “silly things” do I believe?
Hey nishidiot.
When are you going to apologize to Jeff for falsely accusing him of “pandering to theocons”? Especially after he went to the time and trouble to demonstrate that your accusation was crap.
Well? We’re waiting…
BBH
I have little to no concern with Nishi, sorry.
‘Boogie men’, ‘snakes’, what’s the difference? Oppenheimer pushed the button, flipped the switch, what have you. Deed done, act accomplished.
Boom.
The air did not burn. What is true? Did the air burn? Or did it not? What is true is that the air did not burn.
What is imagined? The seas are going to rise two feet. The seas are going to rise two inches. The seas are going to recede eight inches. The seas are going to stay right where they are. And all of it because that is what the placemarker wishes it to do.
Who is this Gabriel I’m supposed to talk to?
– nishi, you simply don’t want to “get it” because it screws up your desires. I could care less. I will ardently oppose your idea of running unsupervised.
As for Limbo… do you mean Purgatory? why do we pray for the Dearly Departed? Why do we beg for Mercy on their behalf if the case is closed to the possibility of eventual reconciliation?
still holding for the married near-death priestess to disown her parents… and not to spend any more of their money on books that prove how numb they are in the skull.
Oh, the papacy, Mr. Enoch.
There are other things… but mostly they all end up rolling down to the same valley. There are also things like the immaculate conception of the Theotokos, Original Sin, Purgatory, etc. There’s also the matter of considering the Church an institution and having a legalistic view of the commandments as well as sainthood.
But.. side notes, really.
Yes. I countered them. And then you repeated your “solid reasons” (which I don’t believe to be solid at all) without answering my objections and counters.
It’s as if the argument ceases when you decide you have solid reasons. Nothing else penetrates. And that’s a shame.
On the plus side, I’m off to the crapper. Which means another of these threads is likely to be started soon.
“The air did not burn. What is true? Did the air burn? Or did it not? What is true is that the air did not burn.”
– All of that is true. It is also true the man took a chance with the fate of the planet, something he decidely had no right to do. That it worked out in no way excuses his actions. It only means we all lucked out this time.
– Throwing the dice with humanity is not a very good way to run an airline. Sooner or later you’re going to come up “snake eyes”.
Oh. River are you Eastern Orthodox? Before I speak to any of your concerns, I just want to make sure we will be employing the same language… and well, the prods (present company excluded) know their bible versus, but of the 2000 years of illumination… sadly, not much. In this manner, it becomes difficult to bring them to speed. SO, Eastern Orthodox is it?
But I would prefer a Roman Catholic to be true to their tradition than to abandon it for utter madness.
(Or, they should become Orthodox! Eh, heh heh.)
Indeed. The Sun Rises in the East, yes?
I find it fascinating, River, that you can agree with the beauty of killing of the self through service and sublimation to authority… but when it comes to that final act of killing of the self… that of the Supreme Pontiff… you have difficulty.
River – and in the Spirit of ecumenism between our sibling “traditions,” I will just say this: I would prefer the Orthodox Brother to the “recovering Catholic” any day of the week. Especially the ones who themselves Confirmed with full knowledge what they were getting into.
Discuss.
YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!
Which, coincidentally, is my answer to Nazis and other totalitarian fucks as well.
BBH
“Are you prepared for well meaning, unsupervised people, to ‘take a chance’ over and over with your future?”
And how would this be any different than what has always taken place? (and I hope will always, to the extent that liberty remains on the earth) For instance, minimum wage laws are passed like clockwork, ‘well meaning’ laws passed by self-interested rent seekers. I don’t vote for such people. They get elected anyway. Unlike you though, I guess, I don’t count myself as one who would know when to restrain Oppenheimer and when to let him go. And as I neither have nor want to have control over him, he will do what he will do on his own (how’s that for tautology?). And so will all those other self directed human agents out there in the world, with their 6+ billion personal interests.
No, it’s just that Peter was both a Bishop at Rome and Antioch.
The only supreme pontiff is the incarnate Lord Saboath. He is real and the church is his body. There is no ‘vicar’ of Christ – if this were the ten days between Ascension and Pentecost (which liturgically, it is right now – gotta love the Julian Calendar) it might make sense, but the ‘another just like Christ’ – the Paraclete, the Breath of God, is present among us, and through him the Church of Christ is real and incarnate through its members.
Or it is not, and we require a placeholder until he comes back.
Which is it?
“But it shouldn’t be taught as science.”
– I believe Maybee already pointd out that no one, of faith or otherwise, has suggested such a thing.
– I myself, as a scientist, would be most pissed if that were attempted. I see no benefit from such an awkward, and unnecessary marraige.
Er, I don’t mean to make this a re-enactment of 1054 AD, it’s just..
I mean, why limit yourself to one pope? We’ve got several.
No. What is currently labeled first cause is essentially unknowable. Science cannot have a directed interest in it because it falls beyond the purview of science.
Believing an intelligent designer created the knowable universe is different from some fundamentalist interpretion of the Bible.
With respect to Darwinian evolution, I’m a Dawkins kind of guy — though I think he, like others before him, takes the fact of evolution and extrapolates from it lessons in other spheres of inquiry that are dubious.
Just sayin’, Amen, sista.
“And as I neither have nor want to have control over him, he will do what he will do on his own (how’s that for tautology?).”
– True enough, as far as it goes. But by the same token you can’t flip your hair and glibly blow off the responsibility you have to act as well as you might, as any other member of the many in society, to establish a set of laws governing reasonable behavior in the sciences, just as you would, and do, in any other human enterprise.
– In other words you can’t just blow off responsibility to your fellow human beings because you think independence is all there is worth discussing. I’m surprised at you Sdferr. Truly. We’re not talking theories about individual rights here. We’re talking the fate of mankind. You don’t sound very interested in the subject. Interesting.
Fundies for the most part will think of God as essentially knowable, and thus able to ‘replace’ science. But then they’ve manufactured the Demi-Urge, the gnostic Demon-God.
Er, not that I’m calling millions of erstwhile Christians closet Gnostics.
Bad religious conservatism, no biscuit!
wow! step back, my Brother in Christ. You should actually get the Theology which you protest correct before you protest it!
Of course, the Christ is among us. And yes, the Body of the Christ are His Servants The Church. And yes, through the work of the Spirit and the Eucharist he works through us and is alive in us to the extent we are “in Him” (soliciting Him to Live and work in us).
Who indicates that the Successor to Peter, the Rock, is a “placeholder”? By which of course, you intend to convey that he is a ‘replacement for’ (which is your misunderstanding of Latin Rite Theology).
There are at least Two successors to Peter, so it’s a moot point.
Antiochian Archdiocese, by the way. Them brothers know how to kick it old school!
River – yes, we will have to agree to disagree until you have your Paulian moment. I am sending you a helmet.
Kidding, Love to you. I’d rather kick some Muslim ass. Where’s Nishi? Did I say that aloud?
Jeff – this blog is broken or something… makes me say things that are not so hopey changitudinal unity and all.
Andrea, you are mixing up dissimilar things — or, more precisely, reducing what is in fact a fairly wide range of opinion/belief down to a single point. Intelligent Design is not the same thing as Young Earth Creationism. It does not reduce to Bishop Usher’s calculations. When you come up with the “six thousand years” you tend to discredit yourself. Nuance, y’know?
ID has been disparaged as an attempt by creationists to get a foot in the door, and there’s much to be said for that argument. Nevertheless the “theories” are distinct. Many IDers have about as much use for YECs as any scientist does — after all, the only possible interpretation consistent with YEC is that God is both a liar and a brick-in-the-hat practical joker, setting traps for His miserable creations.
Nor does ID require Special Creation — it isn’t necessary for God to have specifically created the eye, for instance; only intervened, perhaps in very small ways, so as to push development in the right direction. For this reason the original name for what we now call “intelligent design” was “guided evolution”; the name was changed specifically because IDers didn’t want to be associated with the Young Earth crazies.
Regards,
Ric
BBH
“…the fate of mankind…”
As they say at the DoD, ‘that’s way outside my lane, man’.
I believe I can seek to understand my own condition and to conduct myself with as much dignity as I can muster without “blowing off my fellow human beings etc…”.
also BBH –
I don’t think they refer to it as “Mankind” any longer… because of the sensitivities. We now refer to it as “Carbon-Emitting Herd”… you know, those evil fuckers that make this place… so full of … humanity… shit… shit… shit…
Enoch, re your last comment, I think we’re both already in past that depth. My sincere hope is that we arrive at the same door on that bright morning.
currently referring to 15th edition “Change your language, Change your thinking! A 10 Step Guide to Relativity.” by: O!
– Sdferr – Its not about you. If it were there wouldn’t be any issue to deal with. Its about all of us. I guess thats easy to forget.
– I never caught the post-modern waave of the “reader as judge of the signing”, as Jeff might put it.
– I will live my days and pass, decidedly non-PC.
– I’m jiggy wid it.
Big Bang
That’s starting to feel a little collectivist to me. Homey don’t play that game.
So you really knew Einstein?
River – HA! Me… less dramatic… more of a Garden-Variety Augustinian moment.
I’ll meet you at the gates. I’ll even bring along a couple extra plenary indulgences in case we are one or twelve short. If I can even get close enough to get in line for consideration… I’ll be thankful. Just a POS work-in-progress here. Lots of stuff to set aright yet.
Seriously, though… nothing but Love for my Orthodox Brothers and Sisters, dig?
Fair enough, although the question of intent plagues many of these discussions. What’s more, one can easily argue the case for science as religion, and the 800 lb version thereof, why particular brands of science — easily as much as a philosophy as a discipline — are so exclusive to hidebound government schooling.
(I question government schooling when it’s philosophy of science, tacitly even, displaces all else. Nuggie gives a pile of added weight to this concern, prattling on about the sanctity of science and the impregnability of such an educational system as if both were wholly comprehensive and objective, especially when joined in tandem. Nothing could be further from the truth as a few simple mental experiments in origins quickly establish.)
Why can’t the chant of the thousands: “FREE MUMIA”, become instead “FREE INQUIRY”????
Enoch: May the Lord, protector and sustainer of all, watch over and keep the souls of his faithful servants, now and ever, and unto ages of ages, amen.
“So you really knew Einstein?
-Well certainly not in the biblical sense. “Egads …Watch your phraseology young lady!”
– I met him at a garden party in NJ once long long ago. So if that constitutes “knowing” him, I guess so, although I knew some of his colleges on a much more friendly basis. He was a very gentle affable man. Totally unlike the way he is portrayed. He laughed a lot about the foolish things that were said about him. I can say I shook his hand. I can say he just laughed when I asked him if he was still working on that “ether”. Not that much really, but certainly he was anything but anti-religious, and I wanted to drop the hammer on nishi for suggesting such a wrong-headed thing. Not true. Very definitely not true. His arguments with Bohr were legendary in his adamant defending of the spiritual aspects of nature.
But did Al know Niven, BBH?
“What is currently labeled first cause is essentially unknowable.”
I’m talking about when people incorrectly label things as first causes based on what they know of hte natural world then. But then science gives us more natural explanation. So the first cause has to be found elsewhere.
So here’s the example:
“Nor does ID require Special Creation  it isn’t necessary for God to have specifically created the eye, for instance; only intervened, perhaps in very small ways, so as to push development in the right direction.”
If one day science comes up with the full, natural explanation for the development of the eye, the IDers are going to go have to find a first cause elsewhere.
When you all refer to ID’ers, who are you talking about? The Discovery Institute? Behe?
“So you really knew Einstein?
-Well certainly not in the biblical sense. “Egads …Watch your phraseology young lady!â€Â
Sorry. Of course I was curious about how far you’d go to hunt for a big bang.
That’s really cool, BBH.
Amen
BBH, where would you point the bbh for a state-of-the-art view on such things? Agreed, that’s really cool…
– Well I do know by the accounts of his close associates that he liked the occasional SiFi classic, but of which I’m not aware JH. But not Niven certainly. His body of work did not start until long after Albert was passed, the 1964 story “The Coldest Place”. The “Ringworld” series was in the later part of the 60’s.
– My own personal favorites are the Asimov’s “Foundation/Empire” series, particularly “The Mule”, and “Tau zero” by Paul Anderson, although the “Ringworld” series, and the “Mote” group are high on my list.
– It all depends on how deeply you want to get into things JH. You can go from struggling you way through tomes such as “Physics Today” to the more palatable reviews found, in of all places, “Scientific American”. Beyond that the Library shelves are crammed with notable authors on all things pertaining to great moments in Science/Physics. Bibliographies on the best known scientists can be a gold mine in research also. Hawkings papers, are of course, a wellspring of his thinking, as are his published works. Just don’t expect to understand him easily, but worth the effort if you stick with it.
– The thing I like about him the most is he readily admits he was wrong sometimes. In the world of science, regardless of your discipline, that is charmingly refreshing. Not that there are many who could catch him on much anyway, but still refreshing.
Appreciated, BBH…
But if our understanding of the process even has the same relationship to that future knowledge as, say, Hipparchos does to our present-day understanding, that’s impossible.
Quantum mechanics boggles most people because “mechanics” is a misnomer. It is distinctly missing, in fact denies, any mechanistic explanation. Things just happen. We can cope with it, sort of, using statistics — X% of the particles in a particular category can be expected to do Y, and that’s how it works out — but if we look at any particular particle, there’s no telling what it will do because as far as we can tell there aren’t any “causes” involved. We say “random”, but that’s avoiding the question, not answering it — it would be just as valid to ascribe it to the whim of Allah.
And it is quantum. At some point in the past, a particle went <spung> (or failed to do so on schedule), which resulted in a particular atom being available or not for DNA synthesis, which resulted in a particular gene, which encoded for the transparency of the cornea. We can point to all the steps after that, we can show how evolution conserved the trait resulting in the eyeball, and we might someday be able to list the specific steps and describe the particular DNA change that occurred, but we cannot, and if present-day understanding is correct we cannot ever, specify why that particle went <spung> in the first place. It just happened, and the whim of Allah is just as good — or, rather, just as bad — a pseudoexplanation as any.
So science can never truly elucidate a first cause. That is the province of philosphy and religion, and will always be.
Regards,
Ric
Organlegging figured prominently in Niven’s Gil Hamilton stories.
“So science can never truly elucidate a first cause. That is the province of philosphy and religion, and will always be.”
– We think, therefore we are. We can’t deny our existence, but we can’t explain it either. Therefore faith plays a part in our thinking, no matter how much we try to avoid it.
– If you choose to avert “faith”, then stay an agnostic. That at least makes some kind of sense.
– Declaring yourself an atheist demands denying your own existence. You’re taking the ultimate gamble using the pen-ultimate faith in the idea of absolutely “nothing”.
– Foolishly unnecessary if you just want to establish your independence. The Intellectual equivalent of driving thumbtacks with a 20 pound sledge hammer.
BBH
“…We think, therefore we are…”
What, man? You don’t actually want to go off on another 400 year long blind goose chase? Sorry, Descartes just doesn’t cut it.
– Well self awareness….the act of living, thinking being a single, if important example of those acts, only one of many ways we know we exist. You’re free to use any example you like. I’m always amused by the supposed “bravado” of people who declare themselves “atheists”. I don’t think they think through just what that actually means.
Because whatever thing they profess to believe can become, ta-da!, an ex-post-facto Deity?
#452: in part because the Shang Ti is inherent to the cosmos, whatever form we attempt to give it.
The thing that does amuse me about all this is the vague parallels to the teaching of geocentric versus heliocentric theory in school. I, along with I imagine many others, learned the geocentric cosmological model in school, usually as a way to introduce the heliocentric cosmological model.
The bit that tickles me is that Nishtard cited the teaching of heliocentric versus geocentric as an example of good science being taught instead of bad. They are both models, the geocentric model being less accurate and verifiable than the heliocentric model.
The problem lies in the fact that the heliocentric cosmological model is absolutely wrong. That starts getting back to the much longer history of astrophysics and creation of ever more sophisticated models in an attempt to more fully and accurately model and describe the world around us.
By the argument of the Nishtard – that things that are not “good science” shouldn’t be taught, how would she suggest teaching about the origins of the universe? I would submit that trying to dig into the competing schools of brane theory at a junior high level may not be a very effective way to point out that yes, indeed, the Earth does orbit the Sun.
BRD
Actual Ptolemy BRD or generic geo-centric?
Ptolemy
So BRD, St. John’s or other?
?? Hmm? I’m not sure what you mean?
That’s ok. I was guessing at the place you were taught from Ptolemy, and St. John’s College is one of those sorts of places.
Oh, sorry. No, I got a pretty good introduction to astronomy and astrophysics from the Adler Planetarium as a youth. I didn’t tackle that much of the Ptolemaic stuff in college.
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