Tolerance Begins with Common Sense

By Michael David Rawlings

In the piece "Religious 'tolerance' doesn't include dissent" (see below) printed in the religion section of the Arizona Republic, Scott Hunter demonstrates precisely why liberty is so difficult to maintain in a fallen world.

He begins his op-ed  with the silly assertion that "[r]eligious freedom is a misnomer", presumably because religions tend to make exclusive claims about reality. But only nitwits go about their business pretending that mutually exclusive ideas are simultaneously true. If it's sensible for Hunter to argue that there exists "no freedom within religions" then it's sensible to argue that no organized group formed around a specified system of thought about anything, religious or otherwise, is free from within. Hunter's assertion is meaningless. The title of his op-ed is redundantly meaningless.  Moreover, the construct of religious freedom pertains to free association, not to any obligation on the part of others outside any given religious group.  Hunter's not defending freedom at all; he's a multiculturalist thug asserting an obligation on the part of others with regard to his idiotic worldview.

Is Atheist-Think "Hardwired" for Irrationality and Statism?

by Michael David Rawlings

Is atheist-think "hardwired" for irrationality and statism?  In other words, how do we explain the fact that the vast majority of atheists embrace the inherently irrational, self-contradictory supposition of relativism, which almost invariably leads to the oppressive or even totalitarian politics of the statist?

Abiogenesis: The Unholy Grail of Atheism

By Michael David Rawlings
Supplemental Information
Related Article

Years of experience have shown me that most atheists are more obtuse than a pile of bricks. They are either breezily unaware of their metaphysical biases or are unwilling to objectively separate themselves from them long enough to engage in a reasonably calm and courteous discussion about the tenets of their religion: namely, abiogenesis and evolution. While science's historical presupposition is not a metaphysical naturalism (or an ontological naturalism), most of today's practicing scientists insist that the origins and compositions of empirical phenomena must be inferred without any consideration given to the possibility of intelligent causation and design. The limits of scientific inquiry are thereby reconfigured as if they constituted the limits of reality itself, the more expansive potentialities of human consciousness be damned. In other words, if something cannot be quantified by science, it doesn't exist, regardless of the conclusions that any rational evaluation of the empirical data might recommend. Hence, should one reject what is nothing more than the guesswork of an arbitrarily imposed apriority, one is said to reject science itself, as if the fanatics of scientism owned the means of science.

Another Atheist's Unexamined Thought Processes: A Close Encounter of the Raw Kind

by Michael David Rawlings

Ever notice that the vast majority of atheists are statists?  Seriously, out of all the many atheists I've encountered in my life, only a small handful were not.  But more to the point, have you ever noticed how many of them don't seem to realize it themselves, as they inexplicably perceive the Christian's defense of Lockean natural law to be an apology for theocracy?  Theocracy?  Lockean natural law?  Ever notice how many of them never seem to really grasp the sociopolitical implications of their slogan-speak?  But that's giving them the benefit of the doubt; that's assuming that they're really not as sinister as their expressed thought processes would suggest, just stupid.

Check out the following statement recently made by an atheist on Yahoo! Answers who considers herself to be really, really smart and "an open-minded person" who "believe[s] in equal rights for all":

Another benefit [of religion] is that for some people, religion is the primary reason for doing good deeds such as volunteering and charity work. Obviously these are misguided motives, but at least the outcome is good! —Catherine 

Note the casual arrogance: "Obviously these are misguided motives. . . ."

She continuous:

Many of the negative outcomes of religion stem from organized religion. Religion and government[,] and religion and education don't mix. . . . —Catherine

"[N]egative outcomes" of "organized religion"? She might as well talk about the negative outcomes of organized political parties, organized fraternities or organized sports. Name one formal group of individuals formed around a common belief or purpose that is not "organized". Further, any person with an IQ above that of a gnat and knows his history understands that beyond the whims of nature, the biggest threat to humanity is organized government, informed by one ideological system of thought or another. In the real world, no institution exists in an ideological vacuum.

But what are these mysteriously unique, negative outcomes of organized religion? In what sense are they different from those produced by other kinds of organizations? Never mind the logical fallacy of generalization, never mind that in the real world a myriad of different religious perspectives collide. This is important. We'll just lump all religions together as if they all ascribed to the same system of metaphysics and moral philosophy.

Wait! Wait! Eureka! Religion promotes charity!

But, no, that's not a negative . . . just a misguided plus.

False alarm.

Moving on. . . .

Now, we may quickly dispatch the atheist's delusion that religion and government don't mix; after all, human beings do not just throw their ideological biases, regardless of their nature, to the four winds when they enter the political arena. There most certainly is an intrinsic relationship between religion and government, for in fact human beings just so happen to be the very essence of that relationship!

I think we just stumbled across one of those sociopolitical implications of atheistic slogan-speak that its practitioners routinely and mindlessly overlook. Apparently secularists in general and atheists in particular are operating under the delusion that they don't drag their ideological baggage—including its morality, such as it is—into the political arena. And if they did, so what? It's supposedly not the stuff of religion! And it follows that the theist may not enter into the political arena with any legitimate expectation that the law of the land reflect his sociopolitical concerns, for obviously he must defer to the secular humanist in all things governmental.

Well, gee wiz, someone has to govern!

(Is there an atheist in the house who can explain precisely where in his godless and, therefore, meaningless universe this imperative exists beyond his thuggish, self-serving rhetoric and irredeemably convoluted mind?)

But then we've already been down that road before. Wherever atheistic and invariably totalitarian regimes have prevailed—in spite of the typical atheist's depraved indifference to the historical record—the wholesale slaughter and imprisonment of not just thousands or even tens of thousands, but tens of millions of dissenters, especially unrepentant religionists, have always followed.

But surely Catherine doesn't mean that theists should be effectively disenfranchised or perhaps slaughtered and imprisoned as they were in the Soviet Union and continue to be in the People's Republic of China . . . just for starters.

Moving on. . . .

Religion and education don't mix?!

And what are the sociopolitical implications of this arbitrary rash of madness?

How exactly does one attain a credible understanding of the history of ideas and events without examining the pertinent cultural , societal, political and, yes, religious aspects of that history? Are the pertinent professors at her school only partially trained in history and the humanities?

From what planet did Catherine's saucer fly in from? Her statement is essentially meaningless. Inscrutable.

But what she's really getting at ultimately goes to the abolition of parental authority over matters of education and socialization. And If not, why not? Clearly, she would apply this nonsense to public schools at the very least, the educational philosophy of religionists be damned. That's what leftists are doing in the public schools now, shoving their rubbish down everybody's throats in their one-size-fits-all trash cans. (See "Revisions and Divisions".)  And if religionists don't like it they can educate their children at home or in a school of their choice. Really? Is that before or after they are fleeced of the tax dollars they pay into the system out of which they are driven by disgust? As for the others who do not artificially compartmentalize their approach to education, but cannot afford to pay for it twice: well, their children will just have to accept whatever lefty allows.

Of course, this assumes that lefty allows anyone to leave the public schools. There's no guarantee, as leftist activists incessantly use the courts to attack homeschoolers, for example, in states like California, Oregon, Minnesota, New York and others. The plight for ideological liberty in education is even worse in Canada where Catherine lives or comes from. It's likely that since she was knee-high to a grasshopper her mind's been thoroughly conditioned to think that such violations of natural law by the state are perfectly normal and just.

Who are these people who casually prattle about what does and does not constitute a legitimate regiment of education as if they were articulating some kind of self-evident absolute to which we are all beholden? Who are these people, these perfect strangers, who would essentially invade our families and the minds of our children via some instrument of the State with their filthy, atheistic blasphemies of secular humanism? Who are these people who would that are children essentially be the property of the State, chattel of whatever educratic oligarchy they deign to erect and dictate to the rest of us what we may or may not teach? More to the point, by what authority other than brute force do these thugs first eschew the existence of God and then elevate themselves to His position above the heads of their peers? In short, who are these putatively open-minded, freethinking enemies of ideological liberty?

Stop sputtering, Catherine. There is no other logical end to your mindless utterances.

The truth about the atheist is that he worships himself first and then inevitably some demagogic megalomaniac like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or Kim Jung-il.

Catherine reveals the agenda or her worldview, though it's doubtful that until this very moment she's ever come face-to-face with the conclusion that resides at the other end of the logical chain of thought premised on the rhetoric she's been spewing all her life—regurgitated by rote, clearly planted in her head by others, ideas never once truly her own. Well, that is, unless she really has consciously been a monster all your life . . . chomping at the bit to get her Seig Heil on.

But Catherine does lay here finger on two of those supposed negative outcomes . . . or maybe not.

[B]ut when . . . [religion] causes people to discriminate against one another or to disregard science, it quickly does more harm than good. —Catherine

While Catherine's statement is of the sort that gives leftists that weepy, snot-infested-hanky feeling, this stunningly obtuse asseveration is littered with logical fallacies. It contains (1) an obvious and thoughtlessly irresponsible sweeping generalization that (2) a priori begs the question and (3) implicitly appeals to authority without qualification. It also contains (4) the fallacy of affirming the consequent which proceeds from (5) a fallacy of essence and leads to (6) a multilayered fallacy of false cause (specifically, cum hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e., because X and Y simultaneously persist, X caused Y). The latter fallacy, at least in part, most likely stems from (7) the genetic fallacy that prescientific biblical exegesis, for example, accurately represents the essence of the biblical narrative, or that contemporary biblical exegesis does not conform to the demonstrably or reasonably incontrovertible evaluations of scientific modernity.

In short, her statement is a mess, but it would take volumes to thoroughly untangle it. I'd be moving way too fast for the minds of Catherine and her ilk anyway, minds whose cognitive faculties have been artificially stunted by years of reductionist conditioning, wherein cognition is reduced to the accumulation of disconnected constituents, bits and pieces of information.  The process is more technically assimilative than imaginatively analytic or systematic. It tends to stifle intellectual curiosity and passion. That is why so many secularists—typically leftists—think and speak in slogans.

Hence, I will simply make a few incontrovertibly self-evident observations.

Discrimination, in and of itself, is not evil or bad or wrong. On the contrary, it is an inherent, inescapable facet of human consciousness. Cognitively, it is the necessity of identifying or distinguishing the difference between characteristics or modes that are incompatible, a matter of differentiation. Duh. Ideological discrimination goes to the differentiation of cultural or sociopolitical beliefs and actions within the collective. These differences can either be suppressed by force or permitted to peacefully coexist by way of untrammeled free association. Choose.

All those who believe that Catherine does not discriminate against the ideology of Judeo-Christianity and its adherents (would happily welcome a group of us Bible thumpers into the hall of her atheistic ho down, not "discriminate" against us, but happily allow us to impose our ideological values on her group—extinguish it by way of forced assimilation) raise your hands. The rest of you, being sane, behold the arrogance, the pretentiousness and the veiled totalitarian threat of multiculturalism.

Once again, assuming that Catherine's rhetoric is nothing more than another page out of the book The Glaringly Obvious Gullibility of Unexamined Suppositions, it is essentially meaningless, another absurd example of her indoctrination. All she's really saying is that only those who disagree with her discriminate against other people. . . . Her discrimination against other people is not discrimination against other people, but merely the rejection of the beliefs and behavior of those who discriminate against other people (even though the nature of the discrimination of those with whom she disagrees is the rejection of her worldview and its values), as she does not discriminate against other people. . . . Oh, never mind.

Who made Catherine the arbiter of truth, the knower of the difference between good and evil forms of discrimination? On what uncontestable moral authority does this atheist stand?

Sure religion is a comforting thing but when it causes people to . . . disregard science. . . . —Catherine

Like the adherents of the religion of materialism?

See "Abiogenesis:  The Unholy Grail of Atheism" by Michael David Rawlings.

Secret Sauce on Your Shirt

By Michael David Rawlings
Related Article

(See links to Labsci-Rawlings debate:  Labsci and I Discuss Evolution, The Debate Continues. . . .)

 

If it's about Labsci's point about the Creationist misuse of the terms "micro-evolution" vs. "macro-evolution" ... your response seems to be little more than obsfuscation.

It is trivial to demonstrate that "microevolution", not "microspeciation" (with or without the hyphen), is the term used extensively in Creationist sites, in rebuttals to these Creationist sites, and in the scientific literature. "microspeciation" is almost nowhere to be found. —secretsauce (author's user name) 

The word is spelled o-b-f-u-s-c-a-t-i-o-n, no s after the b, and my comment about terms merely went to the Creationist's perspective, and nothing more. You're arguing with phantoms.  I was merely alerting Labsci about the distinction between our perspectives and the subsequent difference in terms. From the theoretical perspective of Darwinism, I'm well aware of the fact that instances of microevolution are but the intermediate and accumulative steps within the larger dynamic of a continuously branching process of microevolutionary speciation. See. I even use your terms.
 

The Debate with Labsci Continues. . . .

By Michael David Rawlings



The problem here is, that you continue to make assertions as to the bias and dishonesty of those who understand evolution. Most scientists understand evolution, and realise that it is the best explanation of the differences and similarities between all living things on Earth. It meshes neatly with other sciences, such as genetics, medicine, dentistry, paleontology, archeology, geology, chemistry, physics and any others you could name.  —Labsci

Actually, anything can be brought into line with the theory.  There’s really nothing “meshy” about it. Anyone of those fields could do without it, especially physics. Evolutionary theory makes few predictions, and in truth the sort of predictions it makes are historical in nature. They are made in hindsight, wherein something or another is observed and then (viola!) the evolutionist proclaims that's exactly what the theory would expect or predict. (The expectations of Creationism can do the same thing, and you might see that if you were to rid yourself of certain assumptions about the nature of the biblical record and the baggage that has been piled on top of it without due consideration.)  Anything can be brought into line with a tautological mechanism of “what survives, survives”. Both environmental change and mutation are random; the product of two random variables is a random variable. The arguments that have been made by some including the likes of Dawkins to the contrary are nonsense. And that’s problematical for any attempt to account for the conservation of any ensemble of genetic characteristics that might affect transmutation.

Labsci and I Discuss Evolution

By Michael David Rawlings
Related Article

I appreciate the reasonableness of your tone. The typically sneering attitude that most evolutionists exhibit in the vicinity of those with whom they disagree is tiresome. I prefer the former, and I’m always happy to respond in kind. Moreover, I appreciate the subtle sarcasm of the following:

Sorry, but I agree with her. Except the 99.9%. It's probably just 99%. But I think you get the picture.  —Labsci

Followed by. . . .

Most creationist sites do, in fact, give false information about science, in particular evolution. Claims that micro evolution occurs but macro evolution does not just display[s] an ignorance, rather than dishonesty, about the fact that there is no difference between them apart from the time over which they occur. Many micro evolutionary steps equals macro evolution. Sometimes little physical change is evident, sometimes a lot of change. —Labsci

First, with regard to the Creationist’s perspective, the correct term is “micro-speciation”, not “micro-evolution”. And while millions of fruit flies have undergone micro-speciation in the laboratory, not a single one of them ever underwent macroevolution. They remained fruit flies. There's a vast difference between the changes that occur within species and the transmutation of species. The rest is just talk, the party line of evolutionary theory.

And that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? We have before us the idea that all species evolved from a common ancestor. That’s all you’re really saying; i.e., you’re merely restating the theory’s fundamental assertion, one that is driven by yet another idea, the underlying metaphysical presupposition of a materialistic naturalism. It's absurd to call the rejection of these ideas an “error”; they go to the very essence of the dispute.

Some Random Thoughts on Classical Liberalism

By Michael David Rawlings

John Locke (limited government, self-determination, private property, natural law) and Montesquieu (separation of powers, checks and balances) are the preeminent influences on the Founders—especially Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton and John Jay. 

John Locke extrapolated his political theory from Judeo-Christianity's concept of free will.

Jefferson was a Deist who frequented Baptist services for some reason, not an atheist as some claim. 

The overwhelming majority of the Founders were Christians. Adams and Washington were Christians, for example, though Washington's Christianity was apparently influenced by Masonic philosophy.

It is true that most of the more prominent among them were Deists, something out of which dishonest or ignorant leftist ideologues think to make a lot of hay. But it's all nonsense. The sense in which America is a Christian nation goes to the fact that its founding sociopolitical philosophy is derived from the ramifications of Judeo-Christianity's ethical system of thought, with its unique conception of free will, entailing a negative liberty (individualism), rather than a positive liberty (collectivism, i.e., lefty's agenda).

Though the Founders bickered among themselves, sometimes bitterly, over the extent to which individual liberty should prevail, though some were Deists and some were Christians:  all of them rejected the democratic theory of classical republicanism in favor of constitutional republicanism precisely because the ethical system of the classical Deist of the Enlightenment Era and that of the Christian were one and same:  hence, the sociopolitical philosophy of the classical liberal are one and the same.

Among the Founders preeminent concerns was to protect the Republic against the instability of democratic collectivism's "majoritarianism" (i.e., "mob rule"):  hence, the rule of law, not the rule of men; the rule of the unbridgeable, inherent human rights of life, liberty and the security of private property against an overweening State driven by the mob. Jefferson's "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is merely an eloquent paraphrase of Locke's triadic construct.

The rights of man do not legitimately flow from the State, but are endowed by the Creator. Statism is idolatry, the tragic state of man when he gives himself and his God-given rights over to the collective will. These rights may not be legitimately abridged without creating a state of war with the God of nature and His natural law. Within nature—pre-society—men are free to believe and decide, to dispose of their property as they would within the moral constraints of free will. Men form societies and governing bodies "in order to secure those rights" against the fallen condition of man's beastly inclination to violate the moral constraints of free will.

The only legitimate form of government is that which is erected by the consent of the governed, wherein the fundamental rights of man are protected from those within the body politic who would violate the terms of the social contract (criminals or domestic enemies) and those from without who would destroy the infrastructure of the social contract (foreign invaders).

Hence, the purpose of limited government is to protect the fundamental rights of man, including the protection of private property, which is the foundation of liberty and the bulwark against tyranny. The fundamentals of the sociopolitical philosophy of America's founding are individual liberty, self-determination, the promotion of private enterprise, private religious decision and the free and open practice thereof; freedom of association, freedom of the press. . . .

Leftist academicians and the brainwashed among us (those churned out by an illegitimately collectivized public education system) will tell you that are nation's governing principles were derived from classical paganism. The only thing we take from the Greeks is the basic concept of democratic government, as opposed to monarchism or oligarchy, and the exposition of the three, distinct aspects of government—the executive, the legislative and the judicial. The rest is purely the natural law and the science of government constraint expounded by the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment Era for a stable and just democracy.

Do not be deceived by the statist collectivists of secular humanism. That is the road to tyranny.

Bogeymen

By Michael David Rawlings

 

 

The only things that prevent a world of plenty as they produce a world of hurt are bloated, corrupt governments and the thieves who run them.  —Michael David Rawlings

There's plenty of room and resources on earth to sustain current and future populations. It's not a scarcity of resources that threaten us, but a scarcity of human liberty. In other words, the real threat is the invariably incompetent interference of governments with the management of the production and distribution of resources.

The hysteria over climate change due to carbon emissions is politically driven—a hoax comprised of pseudoscientific blather hastened by government grants.

Of course the hoax is unraveling, increasingly seen for what it is, just like the other hysterias of recent decades came to be known for what they were: the population bomb of the '60s, the global cooling of the '70s (LOL!) and the impending nuclear winter of the '80s, that is to say, President Reagan's determination to end détente with that monstrous paper tiger and bury it with our economic and technological might.

(Leftists will never forgive Reagan for defeating the Soviet Union and demolishing their fabled "perpetual coexistence.")

But real science, commonsense, socioeconomic realities, the true nature of the human condition, the lessons of history and the real motives of those who agonize over the "chaos" of free markets: all these things are lost on the tree huggers, the earth worshipers, those who would reduce the human race (the divine spark) to a pack of beggars.  These are the "enlightened" ones who live in the fantasy world of the zero-sum-gain.  Their heads, full of the mush dispensed by leftist media and academia.

They're idiots.

The fact that the resource-multiplying advances of technology—the essence of food production, for example—are virtually unlimited is lost on them. They are the sheeple following the elites who would dismantle the intellectual and economic infrastructure of these advances.  They are the self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and gloom in the midst of plenty.

Visionless, unimaginative slugs.

The most immediate threat to the West, other than the government policies behind the most immediate threat, is the failure of its indigenous peoples to adequately reproduce themselves, to resupply the human resource needed to sustain their culture, the world's epicenter of scientific, economic and political progress.

The real danger is underpopulation!

More Ice Or Less Doesn’t Matter, It’s All Causing Global Weather Disasters

Delusions and Duplicity

By Michael David Rawlings
 

While not sure, I gather you believe it impossible for the government to remain neutral in matters of religion. I see it differently. A government can refrain from promoting any religion, whether Christianity or any other, without thereby necessarily endorsing secular humanism or, as I've heard others assert, atheism. Though you voice support for the principle of separation of church and state, your argument appears to negate the possibility of separating church and state and suppose instead that we are doomed to a perpetual competition over which religion(s) will enjoy the government's favor. —Doug Indeap, commenting on "Revisions and Divisions"

I'm saying something that has apparently never occurred to you in all your life. Drop the rhetoric. Stop the rote regurgitation of formula.

Think.