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Faith, Science, and Reason. The Pomposity of Atheism.

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Pompous and self-deluded Atheists…of various degree.
John Cleese, Penn Jillette, Bill Nye, Stephen Hawking, (above) Frederick Nietzsche, (below) George Carlin,, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Charles Darwin, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Adam Savage, Michio Kaku
(I exclude Carl Sagan…. as though he was an evolutionist he was an honest Agnostic not an atheist)

Without wasting too much precious time, I wish to hack off another limb from the Mythical Atheist Beast.
It is connected to that absurd delusion that reason and science are the preserve of Atheism…

Many Atheists rationalize that the theistic mind is given wholly over to Superstition and Mysticism, and as such opposes Naturalistic explanations and scientific progress. They love to quote the common interpretation of Galileo’s conflict with the Roman Catholic church re The Heliocentric model of the Solar system as being typical of The Religious mentality, and other such gems as ‘American Farmers superstitious attitude towards Jefferson’s scientifically designed Steel plow replacing the wooden Old world style plow ‘proposing the steel ‘would poison the soil’.

It is via such arguments that Atheists sit smugly in their assumed intellectual and rational superiority, and further argue that with the advance of Naturalistic science God himself will be increasingly squeezed out of existence… there being nothing left for him and his hocus pocus to do.

Now I of course understand that superstition and myth has always been a problem for mankind and that it does thrive in ignorance, yet I would argue that Atheists are not immune to either.
I suggest that atheism is itself a form of Anti-scientific superstitious Ignorance!
Yet let me show you that contrary to the Atheist assertion that Theists are quick to accept Superstitious explanations for phenomena , that Judeo-Christian theism has always maintained strong opposition to superstition, and condemned it, and that The Judeo-Christian cosmology embraces the idea that the Natural realm obeys Natural Laws.

First of all The Book of Genesis states that after the six days in which God had restored the Universe to order and created Man, that on the seventh day he rested from his work.
…and yet the Universe continued to function!
This shows that not only is God distinct from the universe, but also that it does not require any ‘work’ from God to function. Ie He has set it up so that it maintains itself and operates independently.
Thus while Egyptian and Maori myths may say that The Sun rises and sets according to the ‘work’ of deities and spirit beings, the bible does not say this.
The Bible says The Universe operates according to the Order of God’s design.

It was in appreciation of this Divine order that Einstein said that the Natural Laws inspire Awe and reveal super intelligent design.

“God is a Geometer”. “God forever arithematises” saith other Mathematicians.

Now let’s see how the Bible disproves the Atheists idea that Biblical theism corrodes the mind and renders a believer susceptible to superstition and mysticism by looking at biblical accounts and personalities.

Let’s consider the Birth of Isaac, which was a Divine intervention into the Natural order.
Now The Book of Genesis lays out the strict Natural Laws of Kinds… Humans give birth to Humans, fish to fish, Sheep to sheep, etc.
Furthermore in 2000 BC, it was understood by Experience that a woman’s natural ability to bear children was limited to her youth.
This was Natural.
And so when Abraham told his aged wife Sarah that God was going to ‘open her womb’ and that she was going to bear him a son… she did not automatically… superstitiously believe Abraham.
Instead she laughed! (Isaac means Laughter)
This is because she knew that ‘Naturally speaking’ she was too old to have children, and that though she believed in God, still she did not expect ‘Divine intervention’ to step in and alter the natural order of things.
Yet She did fall pregnant, and History was forever altered.
This shows that Sarah’s Naturalistic rationale, though understandable was wrong!
That God can and does intervene in the natural order when it suits his purposes to do so.
This is what miracles are.
Rare and exceptional interventions.

What is important to appreciate in this historic account is that Sarah displayed what we today might call ‘a healthy skepticism’ towards miraculous interventions of the Natural Order.
This attitude explodes the atheist notion that Theists are Brain dead morons given to swallow suppositious and mystical ideas and fables.

We find this same attitude… a resistance to accept supernatural explanations… in the events that surround the incarnation. When Righteous Joseph discovers his espoused Woman Mary is Pregnant with Christ, Knowing how woman get Pregnant he naturally assumes she has had sex with someone else and was thinking about ditching her.
It was only when he is visited by an angel whom explains Mary’s miraculous condition that he accepts Mary has been faithful and that the Child she is carrying is very special.
Again this account shows that the Jewish Theistic mind does not leap to supernatural …’Superstitious’ conclusions.

When Miracles do occur Theists can be very stubborn and slow to accept them.

When The woman returned from Christ’s tomb declaring he had Risen from the dead the response of the Disciples is a natural incredulity, not belief.
They check the tomb themselves, and discuss it as a mystery. Thomas Refuses to believe it point blank…unless he puts his fingers in Christ’s nail holes!
Christ Obliged him.

The Miracle of the resurrection changed World history. The Disciples of Christ, and the Apostle Paul were willing to die for the testimony that Christ really did rise from the Dead.
This was not something they herd.
This was not an ideological ‘faith’.
It was something they witnessed as really happening!
A real time event… an Extra-ordinary Empirical Fact!

The reality is Miracles only have the power to amaze if the person recognizes them as deviations from the normal nature.
The miracles of Christ we see this truth.
Ie whenever Christ performs a miracle it creates a sensation!
People are well aware something unusual has occurred.
That is why Miracles are considered ‘Signs and wonders’ because they violate what is known to be the understood Natural Order of Things!

The Narrow Atheist mindset is a throwback from the ignorant past when Materialists assumed the Universe was Eternal. Though this cosmology has been overthrown, Atheists have clung to their superstitions, and would still have you think that The Natural order is absolute, and thus to believe in a supernatural realm is to be utterly deceived, yet the reality is That The natural order is a temporal, and finite, and dependent orderly system, which exists within a greater Super-natural/ primary reality… ie It is within the bounds of modern science to say that there was ‘a time’ when this universe did not exist, and neither did the Laws of physics as we know them.
True Science has caught up with the Bible!
The Universe is a created thing, and there is no good reason to say that super-natural events can not or have not ever taken place within the universe.
Statements such as ‘Miracles never happen’ are articles of blind faith… an unsubstantiated dogma which contradicts some of the Greatest milestones of recorded History.
To maintain this they enter into far fetched and convoluted attempts to explain away these recorded miraculous events of history like the celebration of the Passover, or the disciples belief in the Resurrection of Christ… in Naturalistic terms… eg they conjecture that Christ faked his death… or that his body was stolen… and one of their chestnuts they like to employ is thir delusion that ‘primitive theistic minds’ were ignorant of nature, and thus quick to accredit mystical causes for things they experienced.
Yet as my post has shown. Jews living 2 millennia ago were not ignorant of the natural order, nor were they quick to claim miracles or other supernatural explanations for things.

Thus the Atheist notions that theism necessarily corrupts the mind is proven false… It is their arse which is hanging out in the breeze!


Isaac Newton.

Their delusion is also exposed by the reality that most of the greatest scientific Minds have been also men of Religious faith.
Science owes a great debt to Theists.
Thus it is the atheist whom is found to be self-deluded and irrational with their false dichotomies between Religion and science, between Faith and Reason.

I have encountered several times the Delusion of atheists that men of faith like myself are incapable of understanding how the Natural world functions and so have expressed that they would not trust in my capacity as an engineer!

Again Reality shows up just how Pompous these atheist delusions are.

My religious faith makes me a better Engineer than many of my contemporaries, not because I am more intelligent, but because it imposes ethical standards of behavior.
God is not the Author of confusion.
I aspire to emulate his Reason, and Purpose, and Art.
In environments of Laxity and poor work culture, my Christian Ethics drive me to resist the flow of apathy and maintain High Order discipline and Methodology even when I am Tired, or angry, or see that nobody else gives a damn.
This results in a consistently superior quality of workmanship …Better Engineering.
Christian Ethics inspire me to do an Honest Job, to go the extra mile to provide Good value to those whom employ my service, and not to cut corners to maximize my personal profit.

Consistent adherence to these ethics helped Me out perform hundreds of others to win ‘Contractor of the year 2012’ at Fonterra Te Rapa.

As a scientist, Christian values ought to keep your integrity to objective truth, as a higher priority than serving corrupt political agendas… like Global warming, etc… resisting the urge to provide Pseudo scientific endorsements of Ideas which may Bring personal wealth and Status via, government funding and pandering to popular delusions.

“… whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men…”. (Col 3vs23)

Thus it is that not only does Theism *not render me stupid and irrational*, It actually inspires Betters Engineering, Higher standards of scientific Rigor, etc… the very opposite of what Atheists assert.

Thus it is the Atheist whom today suffers superstition. They have deluded themselves as to the Efficacy of Theistic faith in stimulating, integrity to objective truth, and superior prowess via self-discipline in the Secular arts and in reason.

We live in a secular society which has actually Banned the teaching of Creation science and Christian values in our schools, thus is their any surprise that Today Science is in Disorder?
That Scientism and Atheism dominate our centers of learning and permeate the values and ideals of our society?
Secular Science has not saved us.
Science has been corrupted by Politics, Profit, and Atheism, and Atheist Pseudo science has in turn corrpted our politics and ethics.
Materialism has ‘successfully’ exorcised Man of his God given inalienable rights and unchained the Totalitarian secular state.
Materialism has destroyed Moral absolutes and rendered all ethics to be merely culturally relitive or Evolutionarily ‘expedient’.
Every type of phobia and crackpot idea is served up to us on a scientific dish.
The result is chaos and confusion… mass supperstition and delusion!
This is what the result of Materialism has been.
Divorcing Science from Theistic ethics.
Tim Wikiriwhi
Christian, Libertarian, Dispensationalist, King James Bible believer.

ACT, ALCP, Apartheid, Ayn Rand, Christian Libertarianism, Democracy, Freedom, Hope, Justice, Libertarianz, Live Like It's Legal, Prohibition, Propaganda, Revolution, Sheeple, Slashing Bureaucracy, Treaty of Waitangi, Uncategorized, Vote Wikiriwhi!

Liberty Conference. Auckland 2012.

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Dakta Green recieved a standing ovation for his speech and activism for freedom and Justice in regards to ending cannabis Prohibition.
He spoke about his experiences as a political prisoner, and the fact that he faces yet another stint in Jail because of his refusal to be broken and ‘Living like it’s Legal’.

Last Saturday (6-10-12) I attended the Liberty Conference in Auckland, convened by the Libertarianz Party for the propose of considering the best possible ways of furthering the cause of Liberty in New Zealand, and in particular to formulate a new strategy for getting Freedom loving Advocates into Parliament.
The Libertarianz were facing up to the Sad reality that their Party had failed to attract anywhere near enough support to make it an effective political player.

My personal opinion is that the Libertarianz party did many things wrong… many mistakes hurt the parties chances of gaining a more popular base, yet The Party …morally speaking….also did many things right… which also had a detrimental effect upon it’s popularity.
Simply put it set about to slay too many sacred cows to be borne by the Superstitious sheeple.


Peter Cresswell.

Now Galloping to war with sabers bristling and slashing away was fun indeed, yet such a zealous onslaught spooked the cattle… Peter Cresswell said something to this effect in his speech… and he is right.
This zeal springing from a steadfast rejection of the idea that politics requires compromise… and the conviction that populist politics is the domain of unscrupulous power hungry scum… like Peter Dunne and John Key.

The Hard arse faction within the Libertarianz Party had spent 16 years fending off ‘the soft cocks’… and their desire to water down our message… and though they had prevailed in maintaining the principled integrity of the party (to the limited degree of perfection that it’s Objectivist handicap was capable)… none the less as PC described it… we were trying to eat an elephant in one gulp… The Malicious Press absolutely ostracized us from the public debate, and the fickle and brainwashed Sheeple whom had the misfortune of coming into contact with us… washed their hands of us as if we were an infectious disease. Not even our own families supported us!… yet as rugged individualists we soldiered on alone…being upheld only by the shear faith that we were right, and that we really were the Bearers of the Sacred flame of Liberty… of the Political Holy Grail from which all whom drink behold the secrets of Peace, Civilization, and prosperity!

We Libz still believe this!
We have not given up upon our dream!
Yet we need to rethink how we set about making our vision a reality.
Many suggestions were presented by the various speakers.
A common theme was that We freedom lovers need to stop backstabbing each other and work together as a ‘band of brothers’.
Another suggestion was that we modify how we go about our business… be positive, abandon personal jibes and malice… leave that for the socialist’s…. Lead by example, and master the lost art of persuasion.


The Mighty Lindsay Perigo

Now these suggestions sound great in theory, yet as the saying goes…you cant teach old dogs new tricks… and I seriously doubt you will be able to tame Rabid Hounds like Lindsay Perigo … whom relishes delivering such judgments as calling John Banks a “Leering Gargoyle!” … and “The Whore of Epsom”… to the Glee and hysteria of almost every Libertarian present (including myself!). Maybe some of the Non-libz found such comments to be in poor taste… Yet my point being that such disregard for pandering to the sensitivities of the wowzers is such a fundamental trait of many of us libz… we sincerely consider it a virtue!
And I wonder whether or not the whole idea of always being positive, and PC, and taking care not to offend… is anything more than weasely Used car salesmanship… and that such an approach is transparently slimy… untrustworthy, and in the end not a solution to the Libz woes at all!
Me thinks That Libertarians ought to be of good character, be tolerant, and well mannered, yet still be Dangerously capable and willing to deliver a well aimed bombardment of Invective when the moment calls for it. I believe this is good/ righteous/ honest politics!
Read Lindsey Perigo’s speech Here:

Peter Cresswell (PC) after diagnosing why the Libertarianz Party has failed, then went on to prescribe the remedies.
Firstly he suggested that instead of trying to eat the tyrannical socialist Elephant whole, that instead we set about consuming the beast… by slicing it up into portions… and devouring it one manageable bite at a time! (Genius!)
PC points out that such an approach does not involve any compromise at all, but in fact takes better cognizance of reality!
Eating the elephant is to be achieved via several different stratagems.
1. via transitional policies which spread the reforms over small steps, with the design of reducing the terror of the sheeple, minimizing the pain of transition, and hopefully gaining popular support as each step proves the reform works.
2. By reducing the Policy focus of the Party down to 5 policies that Polls already suggest have popular support.
This is a strategy which has worked for other minor parties, and the wisdom of it ought to be obvious!
I am very excited about this suggestion!
Personally I believe this to hold real potential for gaining at least 5% of the votes and getting Freedom lovers into parliament.
PC talked about separating the ‘Educational wing’ , from the ‘Party political wing’, by establishing an Independent ‘think tank’ to focus upon the cultural revolution.
Now I am happy about this if it translates into less encroachment of Objectivist dogma into the parties policies. I still have my reservations about what such a think tank would be like, yet I will leave criticism about this for another time.


Libz Legend Hooch Hellen, and her son Jay. Behind them is Muso Graham Clark, behind him Dakta Green, Behind Him ‘Eternal Vigilante’ Reed.

By the end of the conference several options for the future were on the table, and it was agreed to form a working group to busy themselves communicating with other parties and putting together a presentation of what options were possible, and the pro’s and con’s of each option, to be put to the vote when all interested parties convene again in the new year to make a resolution for the future.
The options were.
1. Dissolve the Libertarianz party and form a New Party with founding members from the dissolved libz, and Ex members of Act, and ex members of Aeotearoa decriminalize Cannabis party, and others. To do this would require the formulation of the ‘Five policies’ which would have an overlapping consensus between the various factions whom would unite as one.
2. Should the other parties prefer it… Maintain the Libertarianz party as a going concern, yet enter an agreement with the other parties (Like the ALPC) to form a coalition for a united challenge at elections. The terms and conditions, and the five policies would have to be agreed upon for this coalition to work, and the Libertarianz party may or may not re-brand itself, and modify its policies to the new strategy.
3. If no consensus of cooperation can be reached with Act, ALPC, True Liberals, etc then the Libertarianz party could continue to exist, yet implement the new strategy, and re-brand when a worthy Brand and logo can be agreed upon.
This requires the formulation of the five policies, and the creation of a Good brand and logo.

PC suggested for the five policies.
1. Tax reform…
2. Balance the budget
3. Legalize Cannabis
4. Legalize Euthanasia
5. End Waitangi Apartheid. One law for all. Get rid of the separate electoral rolls and racist seats, laws, and institutions.
He suggested these because they were both principled and already have popular support amongst the NZ people.

Now these are not written in stone, and vigorous debate and dialogue needs to take place… and options be prepared before the 2-2-13 conference.

Another benefit of picking the policies wisely is that there may be existing politicians and celebrities whom may wish to join us, and this would increase our chances of success.

There was heaps more than this said. The speeches were excellent.
Yet this will suffice for now.
Much discussion at the conference was in regard to Local body politics, including several fantastic speeches… one by NZ sporting Legend and Super city councilor Dick Quax.
Because I have much to report on this aspect of the conference, I will leave it for my next blog post! Say tuned folks!
Tim Wikiriwhi.
For More Pics go here:

PART 2 HERE:

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Jumping up and down and running about in circles

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There’s a common perception (well expressed by one of our regular contributors here and here, for example) that jumping up and down and running about in circles is all that libertarians (when they’re not asleep) ever do, especially at conferences. That the liberty lobby men are a lot like the wibbly wobbly men in Spike Milligan’s poem (which goes something like this).

Oh!
The wibbly wobbly men
They don’t get up till ten
They run about and give a shout
Then back to bed again!

It’s a perception that has – or, rather, had – some veracity. But, finally, after 15 years of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results each time, the Libz have finally woken up to the fact that they need to try a different approach. Which just goes to show that even the bat-shit crazy Objectivists who form the backbone of the party aren’t totally insane.

I could say, “I told you so,” because I already did after the Libz electoral defeat of 2008. (That no one took heed of my advice at the time is one reason I hopped waka and joined the equally electorally unsuccessful ALCP). But I won’t, because the liberty movement in New Zealand is a band of brothers, not a band of backstabbers. 🙂 Instead, with heartfelt relief I say, “Thank God for that!”

All being well, the Libertarianz Party will soon morph into a second beast. A beast with a new name and a new logo to replace the old, dead brand. A beast with as many new people as old people. And a beast pushing new populist <gasp> policies to advance the old utopian principles.

What are the new populist policies? They will number (up to) five, and could include

  1. Cannabis legalised
  2. The 4:20 tax plan
  3. A Christchurch Enterprise Zone
  4. Voluntary euthanasia decriminalised
  5. A balanced budget

Others have been suggested (see here, for example). When the idea was first mooted, “legalising” gay marriage was near the top of the list. That’s how populist these policies are meant to be. Please feel free to suggest your own populist (but principled) policy candidates for the “tight five” in the comments.

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Dumbfounded Dipshits vote Left/Right.(updated)

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“…On reasoning and emotions: Libertarians have the most “masculine” style, liberals the most “feminine.” We used Simon Baron-Cohen’s measures of “empathizing” (on which women tend to score higher) and “systemizing”, which refers to “the drive to analyze the variables in a system, and to derive the underlying rules that govern the behavior of the system.” Men tend to score higher on this variable. Libertarians score the lowest of the three groups on empathizing, and highest of the three groups on systemizing. (Note that we did this and all other analyses for males and females separately.) On this and other measures, libertarians consistently come out as the most cerebral, most rational, and least emotional. On a very crude problem solving measure related to IQ, they score the highest. Libertarians, more than liberals or conservatives, have the capacity to reason their way to their ideology…”

Haha I don’t put too much weight on these sorts of ‘Findings’.
I certainly don’t believe Woman empathise more than Men, or that Libertarians Empathise less than socialists. I think this conclusion shows a failure to appreciate the Christian Libertarian belief that Liberty and self reliance tends to greater prosperity for everyone, and thus less poverty, and a greater voluntary spirit of community, and benevolence…. all things which socialism destroys. Thus Liberty fosters a more Christian spirit. Yet of course the Objectivists have done their best to destroy this understanding of Freedom and empathy, and instead promoted Selfishness… thus again they have done their best to undermine the Libertarian cause…
As for the IQ Part… well I don’t put much weight on thoses things either as there have been plenty of high IQ Morons!
Apparently plenty of Hi IQ folk believe the theory of Evolution!
So that proves IQ is no Guarantee of intelligence/ wisdom!
Yet I do Believe Socialists are stupid!
That is an empirical Fact!
Ha!
(I guess I stand convicted of Lack of Tact! Yet I dont believe Being PC shows empathy either… really it’s cloaked Malice)

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God is the Font of Morality. Why Objectivists Hate Ron Paul. (updated)

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Some surfers may wonder at the title of this blogpost.
Does it reflect malice on the part of the Author?
I would say it does! Some malice can be justified, and there are so many reasons to dislike the irrationality of the bulk of Objectivists… those whom emulate their Icon to the greatest degree.
I must take care not to collectivize all Objectivists into one lump, as this type of oversimplification is a great error to be avoided … way too mechanistic… and thankfully humans are not machines…and thus there are always exceptions which must be given the credit they deserve… Such Mechanistic irrationalism is endemic to Objectivism… most believing such Ideas that “All Muslims are Evil”… “All Christians hate Gays”… Etc, yet there is a moderate minority who avoid this error, and I give these Libertarians their due.

I am angry about the amount of effort the Objectivists put into undermining the Campaign of Ron Paul, whom was by Far the best hope for saving America from Economic ruin and for implementing Libertarian reforms across the board.
The source of this Irrational hatred has been hidden to a large degree and has left many people wondering why Objectivists hate Ron Paul..

Read what ‘Cornell’ has written on this subject on the Lindsay Perigo Objectivist Blog Solo….

Quote:
“It’s odd to me that so many Objectivists dislike Ron Paul. Of all the mainstream presidential candidates out there, his platform is by far the most consistent with Objectivist principles. The only points of major disagreement that I can think of between his politics and Rand’s and Peikoff’s politics are:
1. Abortion — he doesn’t see abortion as a right to be protected by the Federal government; although he does not stand for banning it outright (he takes the “leave it up to the states” stance), and
2. Foreign Policy — Rand and Peikoff take a much more hawkish stance.
However, (1) most states are not going to ban abortions, so I don’t see his stance on abortion changing much of anything, except that he will take away federal subsidies for abortion, which Objectivists would be for anyway, and (2) the truth is that we need to take a less agressive stance towards foreign policy, if for no other reason than that we simply can’t afford to be fighting all these wars accross the globe — we just don’t have the revenue to support it anymore; and I think that Rand would agree with Paul on his strategy, if not on his premises, with the possible exception of Iran.
So am I missing something, or does the Objectivists’ objection to Paul really just boil down to Iran?
If so, then I’m not that worried about Iran. If America leaves Iran alone, you can believe the Israelis will pick up the slack. And you can’t tell me that the American private security firms won’t help out the Israelis with weapons and man-power should all hell break loose; there’s too much to gain by Israel winning another war in the Middle East unhinged from American intrusion. “ End Quote.

Let me tell you Cornell what is Ron Paul’s anathema in the eyes of the Bulk of Objectivists…
He Breaks the First Commandment of Objectivism… “Thou shalt not love the Lord God in any way shape or form..”
This is the unpardonable sin in the eyes of Objectivism.
Objectivism is a Religion.
Atheism is it’s First principle.
And Objectivists willingly sacrifice the principles of Freedom for the sake of halting any Theistic champion of Liberty or justice taking the limelight… thus in spite of all their claims to reason.. they prove them selves to be irrational religious zealots/fanatics.
In their minds It is unthinkable for them to accept the Idea that a theist could be the champion of Liberty and justice.
To accept this they would have to abandon Objectivism because Objectivism is based upon Anti-theism… and it is this which attracted most of them to the faith.

Peter Creswell clearly indicates this *Here* when he says Ron Paul cant be a Libertarian because he’s a Creationist… who will not draw a line between his religion and the State.
Comming from a Randoid this is shear hypocracy… and not true, ie Ron Paul maintains a separation between his Religion and the state, and the fact that He is a Creationist whom rejects the theory of evolution does not render him irrational at all!
PC speaks from his own Bigoted Anti-reason superstition.

Thus The Title of my Blogpost and the Meme explains everything… why Objectivists helped the Powers of Evil in undermining the Greatest champion of Liberty in America today.

Many Libertarian minded Kiwi will be gathering next Saturday to discuss the formation of a New Libertarian orintated Party to gather together the remnants of the Act Party, The Libertarianz, and others like the legalize cannabis party into an Electoral fighting force. It will not be an easy thing to achieve, esp if Objectivists hope to contaminate the constitution with their personal religion, and to put out Anti-theistic blogs and press releases in the name of the New organization. The only hope this New Paty has is that it establishes a true separation between personal beliefs and the constitution, and operates via a libertarian spirit of toleration… for mutual benefit.
I have my own view about how such a party ought to be constituted and I hope to produce a blogpost in this subject before Next Saturday.

Ayn Rand

Praise the Rand!

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If you understand what happened to [Rand] after “Atlas” was published, then the condition of her non-fiction work comes into perspective. In her non-fiction, she reads like no other philosopher that I’m aware of. It is not the most organized work you’ll ever see—and I think that this is a big part of why many people sneer her off as a “philosopher”: it’s because she simply doesn’t write like any of the rest of them, in terms of organization, and there is a good deal of assembly required. (In an almost perverse way, however, I think this is also why she really works in some peoples’ minds: they’re the ones who have little or no problem with abstraction and integration, and a presentation like Rand’s non-fiction is very exciting to them.)

– Billy Beck

Feel free to add your own glowing tributes in the comments.

[Hat tip: Joe Maurone]

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The Parasites

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Why is there no entry Parasites in the Ayn Rand Lexicon?! Nor Looters, nor Moochers??! (I almost clicked Entitlement, Age of but then realised I’d misread it.)

It ain’t right. ‘Parasite’ was one of Rand’s favourite words. A search for ‘parasites’ delivered the goods, though. Here are some excerpts from The Ayn Rand Letter, filed under Welfare State.

Morally and economically, the welfare state creates an ever accelerating downward pull. Morally, the chance to satisfy demands by force spreads the demands wider and wider, with less and less pretense at justification. Economically, the forced demands of one group create hardships for all others, thus producing an inextricable mixture of actual victims and plain parasites. Since need, not achievement, is held as the criterion of rewards, the government necessarily keeps sacrificing the more productive groups to the less productive, gradually chaining the top level of the economy, then the next level, then the next. (How else are unachieved rewards to be provided?)

There are two kinds of need involved in this process: the need of the group making demands, which is openly proclaimed and serves as cover for another need, which is never mentioned—the need of the power-seekers, who require a group of dependent favor-recipients in order to rise to power. Altruism feeds the first need, statism feeds the second, Pragmatism blinds everyone—including victims and profiteers—not merely to the deadly nature of the process, but even to the fact that a process is going on.

[A] real turning point came when the welfare statists switched from economics to physiology: they began to seek a new power base in deliberately fostered racism, the racism of minority groups, then in the hatreds and inferiority complexes of women, of “the young,” etc. The significant aspect of this switch was the severing of economic rewards from productive work. Physiology replaced the conditions of employment as the basis of social claims. The demands were no longer for “just compensation,” but just for compensation, with no work required.

So long as the power-seekers clung to the basic premises of the welfare state, holding need as the criterion of rewards, logic forced them, step by step, to champion the interests of the less and less productive groups, until they reached the ultimate dead end of turning from the role of champions of “honest toil” to the role of champions of open parasitism, parasitism on principle, parasitism as a “right” (with their famous slogan turning into: “Who does not toil, shall eat those who do”).

Well, what’s there to say, except that Rand was right on the money? This stuff is razor sharp, and remarkably prescient, given that she wrote it in the early 1970s. And chilling. But I wonder if even Rand would have envisaged a President of the United States who, on the campaign trail just four decades later, would say to his audience

If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

The obvious implication being that if you didn’t build it, it’s not yours, and the government is entitled to take it and “redistribute” it to “somebody else”. The entitlement mentality is endemic and infects the highest levels of government in a country that was once a shining beacon of capitalism.

Death metal is the soundtrack to the End of the Age.

Here’s Brain Drill with The Parasites from their debut album Apocalyptic Feasting.

Atheism, Ayn Rand, Bogus Science, C S Lewis, Cosmology, Evolutionism, Faith, Freedom, Genesis, King James Bible, Laws of Nature, Materialism, Monism vs Dualism, Paul, Physics, Science, Theism

God is a Trinity, so is Man.

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St Paul. (2Thes5vs23)
“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the comming of our Lord Jesus Christ”.

St Paul clearly teaches that we are more than mere Material beings, more than mere machines.
We are Not Robots! We are not Computorised Automations!

Ayn Rand, Propaganda, Semantics, Totalitarianism

Politics and the English Language

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Politics and the English Language is an essay written by George Orwell in 1946.

Here are some excerpts.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder—one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying … And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

The present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and … one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

  1. What am I trying to say?
  2. What words will express it?
  3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
  4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

  1. Could I put it more shortly?
  2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you—even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent—and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright,

I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.

Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find—this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify—that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

The pen is mightier than the sword

Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier—even quicker, once you have the habit—to say

In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that

than to say

I think.

If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry—when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech—it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style.

This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. … There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could … be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible … to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable.

If you’ve read this far, then you’re probably chomping at the bit to start applying Orwell’s rules for writing—and thinking!—in clear, fresh, plain language.

Here are a couple of sentences from a well-known political writer.

Language is a code of visual-auditory symbols that serves the psycho-epistemological function of converting abstractions into concretes, or, more precisely, into the psycho-epistemological equivalent of concretes, into a manageable number of specific units.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to reverse engineer them into plain English.

[Model answers are here.]