Get one! Buy Uncertainty: The Soul of Modeling, Probability & Statistics today!
Featured
People’s Fundamental Objection to the Catholic Faith
Damian Thompson asks “Can anything stop Catholic infighting?” in the Catholic Herald. A call to both sides to wake up and smell the incense.
Says things like, “First, liberal Catholics must accept that they’re not going to get women priests or gay marriage. Ever.” And that “traditionalists must stop fantasising that one day the whole Catholic world will return to the ‘timeless’ Latin rituals of the pre-conciliar Church.”
Whatever you think of those, it was his last point that is of general interest.
Finally, the Church needs to face up honestly to people’s fundamental objection to the Catholic faith. It has very little to do with sexual scandals or styles of worship. The problem is that doctrines such as transubstantiation and the Virgin Birth are hard to believe. These teachings are not negotiable — but, at the same time, they are less plausible to modern people than they were to our ancestors, whose imaginations were formed by societies that were naturally receptive to miracles and metaphysics.
It’s my impression non-Christian readers have little trouble believing in the Virgin Birth; or, rather, in believing that a woman who has not had sexual intercourse can give birth. With today’s daily reports of medical marvels and prodigies, human parthenogenesis can’t seem especially amazing.
Of course, that Jesus was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and not from some crude First Century form of IVF, atheists don’t believe by definition. Atheists and agnostics would, or should, acknowledge that if God existed He could very well impregnate whomever He chose; so that saying “I don’t believe in the Virgin Birth” is little different than saying “I don’t believe in God.”
Although I’m sure many scoff (weakly) at the Virgin Birth, my guess is the real sticking point is and always was transubstantiation. From John, Chapter 6:
[Jesus said, “]I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats* my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him…”
Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”…
As a result of this, many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.
That asterisk led to this fun footnote: “Eats: the verb used in these verses is not the classical Greek verb used of human eating, but that of animal eating: ‘munch,’ ‘gnaw.’ This may be part of John’s emphasis on the reality of the flesh and blood of Jesus, but the same verb eventually became the ordinary verb in Greek meaning ‘eat.'”
That a chunk of unleavened, non-gluten-free bread is held up by a priest, some hocus pocus (hoc est corpus meum) is uttered, and God miraculously transforms that bread into the actual flesh of Jesus, and the same for some wine into blood, is what strikes most as preposterous.
Yes, a hard saying. Who can believe it?
When confronted by it the three choices are: leave, like the would-be apostles did; pretend Jesus was kidding and was speaking in a symbolic way, as we moderns do. But if what Jesus said was meant to be symbolic, why did so many run off? Why didn’t Jesus say, “Come on back, guys! I didn’t mean it literally!”?
Of you can believe that the substance of the bread is changed at the level most fundamental, at the level below the quantum, below strings, below every physical thing. It is no longer bread substantially, but the quite literal body of the living God, with only some “accidents” like color and so forth remaining.
Well, substances must exist, as we proved in this series. And since substances must exist, they must be brought about somehow, and that somehow, given these are universals, can only be God.
Again, I don’t think any atheist would object that if God existed, He could certainly change whatever substance He wanted. So we’re really back to the more basic question. Which means I’m not positive Thompson is right. But I’ll let the atheists tell us.
Incidentally, I can hear the jokes already. I answer with another joke. It’s only cannibalism if you’re eating a member of your own species.
Trump’s Tranny Ban: Discrimination Is Good
Apple’s Tim Cook signaled his virtue in a tweet: “We are indebted to all who serve. Discrimination against anyone holds everyone back. #LetThemServe”.
The debt is real, but the rest if false. Discrimination does not hold “everyone back.” It only holds back the person discriminated against. Indeed, “holding back” is a definition of discrimination.
Discrimination is a good. People used to know this. They have been made to forget it.
When I served in the early 1980s, men who could not pass the fitness test were discriminated against and not allowed to join. Marginal men who made it later washed out for various reasons, some physical, some mental. These too were discriminated against. And thank God for that.
Even back then, the mandatory “Diversity” quotas driven by Equality were coming into being. The military cheated for the women. And then lied about the cheating. Persons entering the service had to do so many push-ups. I can’t recall the number; it wasn’t large. Unless you were fat, sick, or grossly out of shape, you could do them.
The men had to do push-ups the normal way. The women were allowed to do them from their knees. These non-push-ups were called push-ups because, as is obvious, otherwise the number of women passing would be too small to meet the quotas.
This cheating happened. It happened routinely. It never stopped happening. It happens today. Women are nowhere near as physically capable as men. The performance margin is not small. It requires no sophisticated statistical tools to see. It is common knowledge, and used to be encapsulated in the homey phrase “the weaker sex.”
Because they are the weaker sex, and because quotas must be met, standards must be weakened. Thus, standards are weakened. And when they are weakened, those deluded by Equality but still retaining some notion of Reality, people who are thus at least vaguely aware that a non-push-up is not a push-up, say the standards were not needed or were too harsh. Or they lie. And require others to lie, too.
To meet modern-day quotas, recruiters lie to women about “disproportionate health risks“.
(This happens everywhere Equality insinuates itself, not just in matters physical and not just in the military.)
Well, that’s women. What about trannies? These are largely men who pretend or who actually believe they are women, and to a lesser extent it is women who pretend or who actually believe they are men. Psychiatrists say these folks suffer from “gender dysphoria”, which is only a label, after all, for a certain mental illness. And another name for mental illness is insanity.
So trannies are insane. Perhaps it is a mild insanity, or perhaps it is more devastating, but it is not sanity. You do not want to arm the insane. You do not want to be in a fight next to a man who is trying to fix his lipstick and who calls himself Sue.
Johnny Cash’s Boy Named Sue knew he was a man, and the men who fought Sue knew Sue was a man. “This world is rough, and if a man’s gonna make it he’s gotta be tough.” A man who thinks he really is a Sue is not going to be tough.
Cash’s Sue knew the label did not make a woman. He never slipped on a skirt and begged some quack with a knife, “Cut me!” And Sue never insisted the United States Army give him a lifetime supply of expensive drugs to alter his mental state and weaken his body.
The insane ought to and must be discriminated against. They must also be helped. And help does not mean encouraging them to indulge in their insane fantasies. If we would have allowed trannies to serve, the same weakening of standards as happened with women would have occurred, only more so, because trannies are unsound in body and in mind.
Would-be Presidential candidate Mark Zuckerberg signaled his virtue “Everyone should be able to serve their country — no matter who they are.”
An idiotic statement. Are we to have brigades of infants armed with explosive pacifiers? Or should we discriminate against babies? Or should we give the keys of the M1 Abrams tank to a group of men who think they are infants and who wear diapers? These men exist.
By Zuckerberg’s logic, we shouldn’t discriminate against them. Jack Dorsey of Twitter agrees. He signaled his virtue, “Discrimination in any form is wrong for all of us #LetThemServe”. This was from a man (who as far as I know isn’t yet pretending to be a woman) who on his platform routinely discriminates by banning and shadow banning non-leftists.
What this culture needs is more discrimination, not less.
Addendum After writing the main article, I saw Drudge, which linked to “Transgender Navy SEAL slams Trump for banning servicemembers: ‘Let’s meet face to face and you tell me I’m not worthy’“.
Trump is probably busy, so I’ll tell him. Brother Beck, you’re not up to the job.
Beck is a retired Navy SEAL who won various medals, and God bless him for it, during which “[he] kept [his] gender identity a secret”. Meaning, he was a man acting and fighting as a man.
After retiring, he became insane, or at least became outwardly insane. Now I have no information on the status of his pertinents or what drugs he may be taking, but even assuming the only manifestations of his insanity are long hair and lipstick (as per the newspaper photo), and thus allowing he still may be in terrific physical shape, his mind has clearly blown a gasket.
He is not worthy to fight under these conditions. We don’t need men who think they are women engaging in hand-to-hand combat worrying if they have a tear in their nylons. Even stronger, we don’t need the men fighting beside the insane worrying if the insane are worried about tears in their nylons.
Beck, who became a voice for transgender servicemembers to several media outlets Wednesday, added that [he] does not approve of the flippant way that Trump announced his decision on social media.
“There are a hundred different ways to make an announcement that are better than a tweet. It blindsided millions of people. It’s disrespectful,” [he] told CNN.
I don’t know the status of his “transition”, but at least he has sounding like a (social justice) woman down pat.
We can’t have kids remaining normal in an abnormal world.
Stream: Researchers Want Kindergarten Teachers to Train Kids in Perversion
It was early morning one day in 2017 when the Lord’s Angel Longsuffering said to the Satan, “Where have you been?”
Then Satan answered Longsuffering and said, “Well, I had just set about my daily round of going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it? You know, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom I may devour? Standard stuff.
“But I made the mistake of starting at the Department of Sociology in the University of Michigan. Ask me why starting there was a mistake, radiant Longsuffering.”
“Oh, very well. Why was it a mistake starting to devour souls in a major university’s sociology department, dark Satan?”
“Because they stole my job! Not only do I not need to devour many souls at this or any elite university, but the people at these places are corrupting souls on their own! They’ve even sinking their fangs into children. They don’t need me any more! It’s, like, Farewell, Othello’s occupation’s gone. And after all I’ve done for them.”
Perhaps the Father of Lies had in mind UM’s Heidi M. Gansen, who has written the peer-reviewed paper “Reproducing (and Disrupting) Heteronormativity: Gendered Sexual Socialization in Preschool Classrooms” in Sociology of Education.
Gansen thinks that normal children acting in a normal fashion with each other and their teachers in preschools “facilitates the construction of gender”.
So perplexed was Gansen by normal, sane behavior on the part of kids and their teachers, that she set out to discover sources of, as she called it, “pervasiveness of heteronormativity”. Yes, “early socialization messages,” like allowing little girls to kiss little boys, “may contribute to the larger rape culture”.
In Gansen’s paper we learn scientists, working as only elite, well-funded scientists can, have discovered “Schools are heteronormative social contexts that often mirror the dominant beliefs and structures of society, including and especially the norms and behaviors associated with ‘acceptable’ sexuality…As a result, schools are critical sites in which dominant beliefs about sexuality and gender are (re)produced and enforced”. Who knew?
This stuff is scary. Indeed, “Hidden curricula” exist. There are “covert lessons that often act as means of social control,” Gansen warns.
Since “we know very little about how teachers’ practices inform or disrupt heterosexualizing processes in schools”, Gansen sat and watched what happened in several preschool classrooms. Here’s what she discovered.
In one class, “teachers often talked about two children, Carson and Lydia (both three years old), as if they were in a relationship.” Later, these two were observed playing house. We might be concerned that these two grow up to be adults and play the game for real.
[…]
Like the Guardian says, “children do not belong to their parents.” So click on over while you are still allowed.
How Do We Stage A Coup In The USA? Part I
I ask the titular question in the same spirit as that posed in Edward N Luttwak’s Coup D’État: A Practical Handbook, a classic which was revamped and reissued last year, a book packed with dry humor and good advice on how to throw off the shackles of tyranny. Update If you find yourself “troubled” by this article, ask yourself: should Luttwak withdraw his book?
Reactionaries of all stripes ought to pay the closest attention to this book. These folks are full of thoughts and words most glorious describing the ills which plague us and of which of all forms of government is best. But they are relatively, or even wholly, silent on how to get from here, from the Hell to which we are descending, to the sunny uplands of monarchy.
Well, you can’t fault them. Nobody really knows how. Or rather, we do know how, we just don’t know the details.
Here, then, is a sketch—a prediction—of how such a change might be brought about; or may be brought about by forces who are as yet unknown to us. These “forces” probably won’t be anybody we’ve heard of. Men at the top of the current regime’s hierarchy won’t be too interested in toppling it, unless their love of God and Reality is overwhelmingly strong. And if it was, they’d scarcely have reached the top of system, unless they were heroically and exceptionally devious and patient. No, look for somebody like an Army major, a Southerner with a strong network of brother soldiers who, say, snaps after being ordered to treat a tranny as if the tranny was sane.
Take this article as an outline of what might happen. Except for the form of the main strike, which I insist is the only workable mechanism, I emphasize sketch, because much of the plan lacks flesh. Readers are invited to supply this flesh.
First strike
We speak of a coup and not a revolution or civil war. We’re discussing a direct seizure of power by elements either in or close to government. The techniques for this move vary, as the Handbook details, but I’ll be blunt and suggest that while there are many paths to revolution or civil strife, there is only one clear possibility for a successful coup in the USA.
We must clancy the government.
In his 1994 Debt of Honor, Tom Clancy has a rogue pilot crash a 747 into the Capitol building during a joint session of Congress. Everybody in the building, including the Supreme Court Justices, Cabinet, and Joint Chiefs, was killed. Clancy’s hero, Jack Ryan, who is Vice President, happened to be absent and so became President.
To clancy, then, is to kill all potential enemies at once, a true decapitation, thus creating a clear path for our ascension. I say “kill”, because this is war and there is no point to squeamish euphemisms between we compatriots, and also because that is the sole solution. (It is also Luttwak’s word.)
Nothing less than killing every Senator, Representative, Cabinet member and a few token military leaders like the for-show Joint Chiefs (the theater commanders have the real power) would work, and the reason is simple. If any group, comprised of members in or out of the current government, were to seize, say, the White House and declare itself in charge, the entire media, people and military outside that group’s control would fall in behind the highest ranking Federal politician who has escaped that group’s knives.
Say we waited until the President was undergoing surgery and we incapacitated or isolated the Vice President and Secretary of State, while simultaneously barricading ourselves in the White House supported by whatever local brigade we have backing us. Everybody would watch television for the spectacle, waiting to see how we were destroyed, and absolutely nobody would take our claim seriously.
Even if we killed the President, VP, and the Cabinet, say by sneaking a device into Camp David during some important retreat, the Speaker of the House would assert his right and we again would not be taken seriously. Of, supposing we had the Speaker killed, too, then some Senator or Representative would say he rightfully holds power and he would be believed, even though the right of succession only officially runs through the Cabinet.
It has to be everybody, all at once. The people and media know who the government is, which is why everybody in it not with us must be killed. The government that people know must be rubbed out in its entirety, because the form and structure of the current government is too ingrained in the thoughts of minds of citizens, who would latch onto and support any remnant of the old regime that slipped past our dragnet.
It would be best, for the “optics”, if we could have as a leader or a front some current high-ranking official with us as part of the coup. We could trot him out in front of the smoldering ruins of the Capitol and his claims of succession would be embraced by most. (This is clearly not the current VP; but perhaps General Mattis sees himself in this role; or perhaps President Trump himself, though this is extraordinarily doubtful, because these men were promoted within the current system.) There would probably be other minor officials making or disputing our claim of succession, but these people can be quickly arrested or otherwise dissuaded.
The Mechanism
Now it does not have to be a plane that does the clancy, but the coup has to begin at the State of the Union address. Nothing else is as big a draw, nothing else gathers the government in one spot. This makes planning easy and difficult. Easy, because the dates and many of the details are known in advance; difficult, because when the word of a potential coup leaks, which it will, the annual address will fall under the hazy gaze of the intelligence services. Of which there are at least nineteen and growing. (Luttwak lists them: “That more is less when it comes to intelligence will no doubt be recognized one day.”) More on them later.
We might try to make the incident appear as an accident, but nobody will buy a “gas explosion” or “electrical fire” or whatever; besides, people will ask how come some people did not escape a simple fire? No, we need either an aircraft laden with explosives, a missile, an in-place explosive device, or something equally devastating (biological weapons are far too iffy).
A plane or missile requires extensive planning and cooperation with either the Navy or Air Force, and for a device probably the Army. But it’s not as bad as it sounds. We only need those men in charge of the particular weapons, men who can ensure they have loyal soldiers, sailors, or airmen under them. A device is best, because its origin has the best chance not to be positively identified quickly (don’t forget the military will be under our control at this point). Long after we seized power, it doesn’t matter much that people figure out we planted it, and indeed this could work in our favor. A missile or a plane will be seen (as in tracked), and their origin can be identified easily. We wouldn’t want it known that the missile was shot from a Navy ship, for instance. A true clancy with a civilian aircraft is workable only if the Air Force commander in charge of the planes protecting the Capitol airspace is with us.
Getting the device inside the Capitol won’t be too hard. Not if we have at least some of the security forces working for us. Since we will have planting rumors of potential attacks by foreign entities (Muslims), we can call the device “protective electronics” or whatever. The real work will be in co-opting the normal security procedures and radiation sniffers (we can admit our device has radioactive material; science demands it, or whatever). You can see how quickly membership in the coup must grow. (We don’t want too strong a radioactive device, anyway, because we must occupy the White House for the symbolism.)
The Event
We’ll have to ensure that the particular Address we pick packs them in. We will have planted various rumors, and caused some small incidents not too far in advance that will heighten the interest of government to be there, either to hear something “important”, or to be seen. We won’t get everybody. Somebody always has a reason they cannot attend. That means the closer we get to the coup, the more we have to pay attention to attendees. We will have to have enough members in our team that we have sufficient manpower to go after whoever does not attend—but we must remain small enough so that we are not exposed.
For instance, a politician could be back in his home state for some reason and miss the Address. So we’ll have to have in our bag flexible plans to arrest these members after the coup. This will require a lot of thought since the places the absentees can be are various.
Arrest, not kill. Why? Because the incident we stage which takes out the Capitol must be made to look like it was carried out by an external or internal enemy that is not us. We need to act in the controlled media blitz aftermath as bewildered as anybody else about the cause (about that control, more later). How could this unknown enemy attack the Capitol and the stragglers? We would fall under suspicion too soon. Of course, if we can get to the absentees before they can make public statements, then they can be killed.
Those arrested must be watched by especially zealous or loyal troops working for us. By definition these men will be leaders, well used to commanding and “bending people to their will.” Luttwak has great insight to the psychology of these men, and shows how often coups are lost by careless guarding of them.
On that same line, we must be most suspicious after the coup of the members we recruited from the current regime, because, of course, “it would be unusual to have the complete loyalty of those who (since they joined our coup in the first place) must be to some extent inherently disloyal”. And somebody has to be boss. As the movie said: there can be only one. Kerensky should have killed Lenin on Day Two. “Assertions of loyalty will usually be worthless because they are made by men who have just abandoned their previous…masters.” This is the most dangerous time.
In Part II, we discuss recruitment, various technical details necessary for implementing the coup, the media, what to do about foreign powers, and more.