Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will soon sign two controversial Bills into law. The first will classify “anti-Semitism” as “hate speech”, and the second will do the same for “anti-Christian” speech.
He will be traveling to Jerusalem to sign the first bill into law next month. His trip will “include a Florida Cabinet meeting”, also in Jerusalem. (Florida venues were presumably unavailable.)
The first law to be signed is House Bill 741, which will classify “anti-Semitism” as “hate speech”.
“Under the bill, the BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] movement is defined as a terrorist group no different than the KKK or ISIS.” This will make a first for Florida, in which legitimate, non-violent political action will be lumped with terrorism.
“Anti-Semitism” will be defined “‘as a perception of the Jewish people, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jewish people,’ through such acts as:
“Calling for, aiding, or justifying violence against Jews.
“Alleging myths about a world Jewish conspiracy or that Jews control the media, economy, government, or other institutions.
“Accusing Jewish people as a whole of being responsible for real or imaginary wrongdoing by a single Jewish person, group, or the state of Israel, or for acts of non-Jews.
“Accusing the Jewish people of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
“Accusing Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel of being more loyal to Israel than their own nations.
“Demonizing, applying a double standard to, or delegitimizing Israel.”
Senate Minority Leader Audrey Gibson, D-Jacksonville, was the only lawmaker to cast a negative ballot against the measure during its committee rounds, objecting to potential freedom of speech challenges — which it is likely to draw — in SB 1272’s one and only committee hearing.
For that, Gibson was vociferously skewered by Republicans and Democrats and, within two days, had issued change-of-heart statements.
It is not yet known whether Gibson will travel with DeSantis to Jerusalem to collect for his change of heart any new shekels, the official currency of Israel.
Asked to define exactly what “Demonizing, applying a double standard to, or delegitimizing Israel” means, an ADL spokesman called our reporter an “anti-Semite.”
Asked if the act of passing this law and signing it in a foreign country could be construed as giving oxygen to the theory that Jews have out-sized control of government, a question which will soon be classified as hate speech, Governor DeSantis called our reporter an “anti-Semite.”
Questioned on if the passage of the law making political speech about Jews and Israel illegal would, because of resentment over their special treatment, cause an increase in dissension, suspicion, a hate against Jews and Israel, a spokesman for AIPAC called our reporter an “anti-Semite.”
Not all Floridians were as dismissive. The Florida House realized that the bill could backfire badly, so they quickly introduced House Bill 742, which would make anti-Christian statements also into hate crimes.
Governor DeSantis will travel to Rome to sign this bill, using a special pen gifted to him by Pope Francis.
Under this bill, the ACLU will be defined as a terrorist group no different than BDS, the KKK, or ISIS.
“Anti-Christian” will be defined as a perception of Christian people, which may be expressed as hatred toward Christian people, through such acts as:
“Calling for, aiding, or justifying violence against Christians.
“Alleging myths about a world Catholic-Vatican conspiracy or that Christians control schools, the abortion debate, government, or other institutions.
“Accusing Christians as a whole of being responsible for real or imaginary wrongdoing by a single Christian person, group, or the Vatican state, or for acts of non-Christians.
“Accusing Christians of inventing or exaggerating the Resurrection.
“Accusing Catholics of countries other than the Vatican state of being more loyal to the Vatican than their own nations.
“Demonizing, applying a double standard to, or delegitimizing the Holy Roman Church.”
Asked by a reporter for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science if signing this bill into law in the Vatican would only fuel conspiracy theories that the government is forcing religion on Americans, Governor DeSantis called him an “anti-Christian.”
A spokesman for the ADL asked the Florida House spokesman whether a denying the Resurrection was not in fact “anti-Semitic”, for all Jews in fact deny the Resurrection. The House spokesman called the ADL spokesman “anti-Christian.”
At the time of this reporting, the Florida House is also considering hate-speech laws against Muslims, furries, vegans, and stamp collectors.
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The Koran presents the reader with an immediate conundrum within the first three Suras (chapters). The first Sura is composed of only one page, with only seven statements, which praise Allah and ask for guidance on the right path. No problem here, assuming Allah is who he says he is; that is, he is the same God as the God of Abraham. Oddly, Allah is not named as ‘the Creator’, among his other titles. I think this is a hint of something.
The second chapter starts out speaking in the plural grammatical voice of Allah, saying ‘This is the Book…for those who believe…what WE have given them’ (verses 2 & 3). The WE is paramount in understanding the problem. The rest of the book does this hundreds (if not thousands of times), with Allah speaking in the plural voice (‘Us’, ‘We’, ‘They’, etc.) . Only a few times does Allah speak of himself in the singular voice (‘I’, ‘Me’, etc.).
Right off the bat, for someone familiar with either the Old (Hebrew) Testament or the New (Christian) Testament, they might presume that the godhead of this one called Allah might indeed be the same as the three-person God of Abraham. Or at least in a Godhead that contains more than one person.
Yet in the third chapter the speaker (supposedly the archangel Gabriel) begins to speak to Muhammed of Allah as ‘HE’ (verse 3, ‘there is no god but He..). And then, in verse 64, we get to the heart of the matter. Allah, speaking to Mohammed, tells him to ‘Say: O People of the Book! Come to agreement between us and you; That we worship none other than Allah; And that we do not place partners with Him…’ Houston, we have a (math) problem.
Allah says he has no ‘partners’ here, and throughout the rest of the book Allah is quoted as saying he has no partners, no siblings, no equals, no mates, and no children. He is singular, alone, self-sufficient, and most importantly, inscrutable. Simply put, he stands alone and cannot be understood, by anyone, in any sense of the word. He can only be obeyed. And he can change his mind at any time, for no reason at all. This is repeated hundreds of times. To make the point clear, the book curses, time and again, anyone who says otherwise!
This is repeated throughout the book. Except for the ‘Satanic Verses‘ found in chapter 53, (‘The Star’, or ‘the Cranes’) of course, wherein Mohammed speaks of the three female goddesses who are Allah’s consorts. Later, Mohammed’s biographers said this inclusion was to be blamed on the devil, and not him. Talking about this is what got author Salman Rushdie in hot water in the Muslim world, because this chapter exposed Mohammed as either an unquestioning idiot or a compromising political hack. Yet throughout the entire book, Allah also continues to speak with a plural voice. The dissonance is palpable. Something is disturbingly wrong here with the mind that spoke this.
The Koran insists that ‘Allah is one’, yet he continuously speaks as more than one. What gives? Why this grammatical confusion? As I see it, the primary purpose of this claim to be ‘singular’ is simply a means of denying the Trinitarian nature of the Christian Godhead. I’m not drawing this conclusion from a few isolated instances. The Koran pounds this theme, ad nauseam, throughout the remaining 330 pages. In fact, it becomes a central part of the ‘hypnotic’ effect I mentioned in Point 4 last time.
It soon becomes clear that this claim of singularity is the central theme of the book. Which is to say, it is designed to deny the divinity of Jesus, the (second person of) God in the New Testament. Considering that Christianity was the dominant religion of the time, it is a natural claim that has to be made if someone is trying to sell a competitive religious belief. So, to cover up the insult to the divinity of Jesus (so as not to offend too deeply the Christian audience he sought to convert), Mohammed then ‘elevates’ Jesus to the same status of Moses.
Which is to say, Jesus is just another Messenger sent by Allah in the past, whose message was corrupted over time just like the message of Moses. Again, we are never told exactly what passages of the Bible that we have today are corrupt. Nor does Mohammed tell us what the original message was. It seems to me that if God wanted to reform the New Israel (or Old) all he had to do was to give Mohammed the original revelation so he could publish it abroad. Or at least tell us which passages were changed, and what the original verses said. Instead, all we have in the Koran is the claim that the two books of the Bible of that day were corrupted. This claim is packaged within a bunch of praise-phrases of Allah, and the claim to singularity (even though it is expressed time and again in a plural voice).
Say what you want about the Christian concept of God, which also claims to be both singular and plural, at least it confronts the issue head on. It claims a singular Godhead, but explicitly packages it in three persons. It never claims singularity of person, only the singularity of the unified Godhead. Just think of it as a family, and they all have the same last name: God. They are all essentially of one substance (although that word is as close as we can get towards describing the essence of God. Think of DNA).
In the end, the Christian story allows rationality to exist alongside of mystery. We can conceive of this arrangement, but not fully understand it, due to our finite nature. But in Islam, there is absolutely no room for rationality, as Allah is, by the definition laid down in the Koran, unknowable in any sense of the word. All you can know is what he (or someone) said to Mohammed, and you must accept it without question. No thinking allowed. Just like public schools.
What do we make of the use of the plural voice then? If Allah is one, why speak as ‘We’ or ‘Us’? Well, there’s the matter of familiarity for those who are conversant with either the Old Testament or New Testament. If you’re selling a product to a group that already has an earlier version of the new and updated Operating System you promise to deliver, you can’t get too far outside the marketplace definition of what is being offered, which in this case is the concept of ‘One God’.
Xenophobic
The Koran, as we are told time and again in the text, was delivered in Arabic, which according to the Koran is the only ‘pure language’. Muslims claim the original Arabic words of Allah have suffered no corruption whatsoever over the past 1400 years. Normally, we think of a xenophobe as someone who is fearful, perhaps paranoid about strangers from other nations or tribes. We think of it as a defensive mechanism. Here in the Koran it becomes an offensive weapon in the ‘war of translation’ that every religious and political document undergoes as people try to understand it across the world-wide divide of tribes and tongues.
By saying that Arabic is the only pure language, it would seem clear that those who speak it have an insurmountable advantage over anyone from any other linguistic group that seeks to ‘understand’ the Koran’s meaning. Even if you were bi-lingual and spoke fluent Arabic, it becomes impossible to render an acceptable version to any other group via translation. Or does it? According to the Imams who interpret it in the Arabic world today, it certainly does. This alleged singular purity of Arabic also allows these same Imams to dodge the schizoid nature of the singular/plural grammatical problem covered in my point above. In other words, their xenophobia allows them to simply ignore their evident schizoidal nature mentioned earlier, by claiming the non-Arabic reader simply can’t understand the nuance of Arabic.
In a way, this claim that Arabic is the only pure language is almost racist in nature, as it separates not only all believers within Islam (Arabic vs. all the rest), but all non-Arabs outside of Islam are thereby separated from the Arab-speaking world. It posits that there is a pure language that isn’t penetrable by any non-Arabic speaker, and therefore, if there is any nuance in the original, it is inexpressible to non-Arabic readers. Since the Arabic language has supposedly delivered the true word of God, what’s that say? It says, to me, ‘go to the back of the bus’.
Robotic
The next basic structural problem I see with this text is the robotic (versus human) presentation of the Koran’s contents and the robotic reaction that its believers acquire. There is no room for thought, whether rational or mysterious, in this system of belief. In fact, you could even say it is not a form of belief but simply a script demanding unquestioned acceptance (submission?). It leaves no room for human discernment at any level. All human action is completely programmed out by the commands of the author (whoever ‘Allah’ really is), and this reduces humanity to the status of a computer. One with only Artificial Stupidity. Think of Facebook. Which is to say, think of a robot.
All actions are either black or white. All people are either good or bad. No room for people who are both good and bad. No Adams allowed. All commands are to be followed without question. It sounds like Stalinism to me. A lot like it. There is no room for human thought, no room for human contemplation, let alone decision making, and certainly no room for mercy. All of this is in total contrast to the Bible, where many are led to question God. Think of Job, for example. Or Moses. And Abraham.
By the way, have you noticed that the desired end (Islamic paradise) has no description of any reward that goes beyond the enjoyment of earthly pleasures? Food, wine, sex. That’s it. I’ll admit that’s a pretty powerful combo for a lot of people, mostly men. But there is nothing mystical about this version of heaven, because there is absolutely no possibility of comprehending even the smallest part of Allah, who we are told innumerable times, is inscrutable, unknowable and certainly not ‘human’ in any respect. Certainly not one you can reason with.
Therefore, the only things we can enjoy in the Islamic heaven are earthly things. What of this allowance of wine in heaven when it is proscribed here on earth? Weird. Unless of course, you simply want those seventy-two virgins. Just a thought that occurs to a Barbarian. The Koran spends absolutely zero time on the fate of women, good or bad. I think women are just accessories in Islamic heaven. Just like Islamic earth. By the way, it never says what gender the virgins are. Is there a surprise waiting for us, guys?
All throughout the Koran readers are told repeatedly to act without question. Now, to be fair, this happened a lot in the Old Testament of Judaism as well. See Abraham, for example. But in the Old Testament, men actually were able to plead and even reason with God, especially when they hadn’t done what they were told to do. Moses was often reduced to pleading with God not to destroy all of the Chosen Ones who time and again failed to do as God had instructed. Several times Moses used logic and reason to ask God to relent of His expressed desire to stomp the ever-lovin’ crap out of Israel.
Meanwhile, in the New Testament, Jesus makes many demands of his disciples, but each time, he tells them of the pain and suffering they will experience if they actually do what he tells them to do. This type of exhortation is not the best way to get people to follow you blindly. The New Testament also counsels believers to ‘test the Spirit’ (1 John 4:1) when we are urged to do something by some unknown spirit. Mohammed missed this part of the syllabus.
I conclude that Jesus was telling his followers to think hard, very hard, about what he was commanding. For it could only be through a reasoned acceptance of his theological construct that his believers could truly be said to be freely accepting his message. It likely was the only way to steel them against the persecution that would come, thus inoculating them from the danger of apostasy. In any event, it was a far cry from the cold dictates of Allah, who never offered any insight into his reasoning when he made demands of his ‘submissive’ followers.
In any event, the robotic nature of Islam can best be seen by the willingness of its most submissive members to willingly strap on highly-explosive underwear for the purpose of killing infidels. And themselves, of course. But before you can activate the robot, it has to be programmed. In the case of humans, we call that programming process ‘hypnotism’, and that’s what we’ll look at next.
Hypnotic
The last structural problem with the text of the Koran is the hypnotic nature of its composition. The book makes very few theological claims, and the same goes for the historical context it is set in. (Read my book for a more in-depth analysis of those factors). These elements are secondary, if that, and are simply window dressing to the main element, which is the continual repetition of the three main themes.
These themes are pretty simple: God is one (never mind the syntactical problem noted above when Allah refers to himself in the plural), Mohammed is his prophet (forget Moses and Jesus), and all opponents will be un-mercifully crushed. Period. Each of these themes is repeated hundreds (if not thousands) of times from beginning to end. Sprinkled in between them are a few historical blurbs, many of which contradict the historical context of the Old and New Testament, and often themselves. (See the parts about Mary and the elders in the Temple). That’s not the point. The point is the repetitious nature of these themes that becomes, effectively, a hypnotic mantra. This mantra then commands that the believer mindlessly absorb the programming that Allah has given (Jihad), all without a single thought as to the effects they will have, on believers and non-believers alike. Including your own spouse and children, as you blast them to smithereens. Just look at Sri Lanka on Easter if you doubt me. What great parents.
This observation of the hypnotic nature of the presentation of Islamic belief has nothing to do with the commands themselves. Rather, the hypnotic state is the result that a reader falls into if they accept the repetition of these basic themes. Once the reader succumbs to the repetition, then the underlying commands of these themes will become firmly embedded in the sub-consciousness of the reader. Or, in most cases, the listener, as so many Muslim’s have never read the Koran (as most Christians today have never read the Bible), because they only hear the Imam chant these verses at the mosque.
Think of a glove, where the hand has been removed. These repetitious themes have deadened the hand, and it then unconsciously slips out of the glove. Another, unseen hand inserts itself. This is the heart of hyp-gnosis. Anything in the outside world that conflicts with any or all of these heavily repeated and deadening themes must therefore be dealt with by resorting to the underlying commands the Koran contains about what to do when there is anyone who questions them. The response? Jihad.
Anyone who has studied hypnotism (as I have) knows that repetition is one of the key elements of successfully inducing a trance. The purpose of inducing a trance is to implant a command in the sub-conscious mind that will override the decisions of the conscious mind. In other words, programming. Bottom line, Islam is a very effective Operating System, but it takes me where I don’t want to go. I like my boxers without the extra baggage. Semtex is not really very comfortable clothing.
Islam is a pretty closed system then, totally unlike Judaism or Christianity (in their original forms) both of which give great weight to the concept of ‘contemplation’. The Koran tries to hijack this thought, but since man is unable, by definition of the Koran, to fathom God’s thoughts in the least, then there’s nothing really to contemplate. And so, the real comparison of Christianity vs Islam is contemplation vs. repetition. One leads to further understanding of God and his creation, whereas the other is a replacement for thought, for the Koran claims man cannot understand anything about Allah, let alone the creation.
The ‘moderate’ believers of this Operating System claim that these ‘extremists’ are simply that, fanatical extremists who have misread the Prophet’s intent. I believed that, until I read the Koran myself, and saw that the Prophet talked out of both sides of his mouth. This then allows both ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’ to claim with equal sincerity that they are following the Prophet’s words. Because they are! If you are hypnotized, you’ll never notice this dichotomy, will you? Not until the Queen of Diamonds comes up in the deck. But then it’s too late, candidate. You’re already toast. Ka-boom.
(End of the slightly edited Excerpt)
I asked earlier why Islam can see no humanity in their enemies. It’s easy to see when you understand that they see no humanity in themselves. How can they, when they’ve been reduced to automatons? Do you also see why the post-Christian man would choose a religion that guarantees his own destruction? It’s so simple, fella. They’re automatons too. Look at their lives and tell me they haven’t denied their own future. They don’t want to accept children from God because they don’t want to be children of God. They just want to be children unto themselves, with their lattes and lovers. Since they’re multi-culti, any flavors will do. The modernist mind can easily conclude that the only solution to their existential boomer-angst, of how to avoid growing up while growing old, is to accept Islam. That’s the only way to defeat that oh-so demanding tyrant named Jesus, and his ‘corrupted’ followers.
Which persona would you like to choose? What fits your mood today? Do you want to be Isaac, or do you want to be Ishmael? Who do you want to die for? You are going to die. You do understand that, don’t you?
You’re not keen on this Christian idea of self-denial? Great! Let me show you our latest line of designer martyr-vests. They come in all shapes and colors, and will nicely compliment any robe or burka. Nothing bulky. So graceful, no one will notice you’re wearing one. Full body motion is guaranteed. All sizes. Including children’s. All detonator buttons are fully concealed, and come in an array of colors. No one will notice till the end. And the end will be so glorious. Guaranteed.
Just the thing for any true Modern Islamic believer. The modern response to the intolerance of Jesus. So then, fellah, don’t wait till tomorrow. Order now, while supplies last! Be the first one, mom, on your block, to have your boy come home in a box!
Go ahead. Embrace the Prophet. Go ahead and push that button. But before you do it, be sure and remember your real name. And remember your real fate.
WarningThe links and scenarios have disturbing imagery.
The consent argument is so strong in our culture that its truth is almost self-evident. It says as long as two people consent in an act, that act is therefore moral. Or, if not moral, then it’s none of your business. The consent argument is often amended by changing “two people” to “two adults”, but this swap is becoming less frequent. The acts in question are usually sexual, but not always.
The consent argument, however, is an abysmal failure, which in no way can be used to justify the morality of any act. Consider first these scenarios. All are drawn from actual sources; which is to say, none are fictional and represent acts that occur and in which consent is used, by some, to justify them. If you are current with the state of the culture, each will be recognized.
Man One wants to masturbate into the rectum of Man Two.
Man Two says, “I consent.”
Man Three then says, “Do what you want, but leave me out of it.”
Men One and Two then say to Man Three, “Your response is insufficient. We appreciate your allowance, but you must also acknowledge the goodness of our act.”
Man Three replies, “No, I cannot: it’s disgusting.”
Men One and Two react, “Then you are a homophobe.”
Man Six says, “Come here, Fido. I have a new game to teach you.”
Man Seven says, “That’s animal abuse, for Fido did not give his consent.”
Man Six replies, “I dispute the claim of abuse, for I did not ask the chicken for its consent before slitting its throat and roasting it. But, if it bothers you that much, I will slit Fido’s throat and then teach him the new game.”
Man Nine says, “What you say saddens me intolerably. Please point this at my temple and push that button. This will end my life, which I no longer want.”
Man Eight answers, “I will be happy to help. But I fear the authorities will punish me, even if you provide written consent.”
Man Nine replies, “Then put on this white lab coat and drape this stethoscope around your neck, and all will be well.”
Man Ten says, “As you know, I am a professor with many credentials. I have determined that children as young as four can understand the acts which occur to them.”
Man Twelve says, “You are my daughter, but I want to have sex with you, with the hope of reproducing.”
Girl One says, “I consent.”
Scenarios Endless
None of these scenarios, which can be multiplied without end, will be recognized as conclusive arguments against consent. They might be appalling to you, which is to say, I hope they are. But consider these scenarios:
Man Thirteen, “I would like to place this wrapper on my apparatus and so prevent your pregnancy.”
Women One, “I consent.”
Man Fourteen: “I will ingest these substances, recreate via fantasy the act of Onan, and lie quietly for several hours.”
These almost certainly will not horrify most of you, but they would have frightened your ancestors, who incidentally are your ancestors because they did frighten them.
The problem with the scenarios is culture creep. Because consent is recognized as the sole or commanding moral test, as soon as a sufficient number or vocal minority of people engage in a practice, that practice will longer be called immoral.
The Consent Fallacy thus is associated with the Current Year a.k.a. Wrong Side Of History Fallacy, though of course they are not identical. It is much closer to the Voting Fallacy, which says acts become moral once a majority agrees on them.
The Consent Fallacy is not that consent is required between parties for some acts. If requiring consent were fallacious, then there would be no such things as contracts or handshake agreements.
Instead, the Consent Fallacy says that because people consent to an act that therefore the act is moral, ethical, or good. It is not that consent is required, necessary or preferred in an act, because consent is often sensible, like again with contracts. But it’s that consent confers upon an act a sort of blessing. It transforms an act from bad or neutral to good. That is the fallacy.
This may be better illustrated with these two scenarios.
Man Fifteen, “I am a woman and you must agree I am.”
Men Sixteen and Seventeen, “We are married and you must agree we are.”
The act of Fifteen was to pretend or to believe falsely that he is a woman. The consequence of that act was that you must agree with his false conclusion, because he has self-consented and because certain agencies have officially consented to his delusion.
The act of Sixteen and Seventeen was to pretend or to believe falsely that they are married to each other. The consequence was the same: you must agree with their false conclusion because not only did they consent to the act, but the government consented, too. You must Bake The Cake.
These scenarios make clear that acts have consequences beyond the individuals directly consenting to an act. What people do in “private” plays out in public; even if the effects are minor, they are never absent. A man killing himself, even if by the hand of a white-coated executioner, consents to the act, but surely all can see that his action has profound reverberations.
A boy told masturbation is healthy and being fed a diet of free porn will not be the same in public as the boy raised without these devices. (Why free?) Consent does not lessen the weakening effects. A boy told he is a girl has as many cultural sequela as a building-sized meteor crashing to the earth.
A diabetic consents in eating a six-pack of donuts, and then consents in the lie, to herself alone, that the donuts won’t do harm. This kind of harm is frowned upon, whereas if the lady eats herself into a diabetic coma with instructions to pull the plug, society smiles. In either case, her actions have reverberations.
Every act in which you partake not under duress or obligation is consented to, at least tacitly. This includes everything from sitting still to smashing an ax into your neighbor’s skull. Every acts affects and changes you in some way, even if the change is minuscule; therefore, if you ever again interact with any other, each of your acts thus affects these others, and they in turn are changed and affect still more people. And so on. It is also impossible to gain consent from everybody else for every act in which you wish to engage. Standards of behavior, including knowledge of good and evil, thus must rely on something besides consent.
Now this is not an essay on why the acts in each scenario above are themselves immoral. I only demonstrate that consent by itself is not what makes an act moral or immoral. To judge any act, we have to look outside consent. Naturally (a nice pun), I advocate natural law, which says simply that acts in accordance with human nature can be moral, and those which are not are not. Even if you (wrongly) reject natural law, you still have to justify each act without regard to consent as its basis (though, of course, consent may be required in any act, even in natural law).
Sin, acts contrary to natural law, Christians say, can be repented of. That is not only a repudiation of genuinely immoral acts, but the creation of a new person cleansed of a corrupted soul. This too has public consequences.
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I might have got the title wrong (click link for actual), but it’s correct in spirit.
The authoresses (and one author) of this piece are Danielle F. Lawson, Erin Seekamp, Kathryn T. Stevenson, M. Nils Peterson, Sarah J. Carrier, Renee L. Strnad [sic], and Erin Seekamp. Their departmental affiliations are Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences, and Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, all at North Carolina State University.
This is important because the propaganda the authoresses (and one author) wish to push is global warming, a field in which none of them has any expertise.
Quoting the abstract “Because climate change perceptions in children seem less susceptible to the influence of worldview or political context, it may be possible for them to inspire adults towards higher levels of climate concern, and in turn, collective action.”
Reality would say, Because children are absolutely ignorant about the physics of fluid flow on a rotating sphere, their opinions of this matter should not be heeded by anyone.
Them: “Child-to-parent intergenerational learning—that is, the transfer of knowledge, attitudes or behaviours from children to parents—may be a promising pathway to overcoming socio-ideological barriers to climate concern.”
Reality: Children annoying their parents with state-sponsored propaganda may deceive the parents into accepting anything. Nice euphemism, though, for the corrupt and immoral practice of using the kiddies to spread misinformation: “Child-to-parent intergenerational learning”.
Them:
Here we present an experimental evaluation of an educational intervention designed to build climate change concern among parents indirectly through their middle school-aged children in North Carolina, USA. Parents of children in the treatment group expressed higher levels of climate change concern than parents in the control group. The effects were strongest among male parents and conservative parents, who, consistent with previous research, displayed the lowest levels of climate concern before the intervention.
Reality: A bunch of arbitrary questions with ad hoc quantified questions were given to a handful of folks in a highly controlled setting, the result of which was a “climate change concern score”, which, when put into a complicated regression model, with missing data filled in with guesses, spit out some small numbers.
But—and I have hand it to these ladies (and one man)—there are no p-values! Only regression parameters and their standard errors. This still exaggerates evidence, as all parameter-focused analysis does. But it is a step, a small one, in the direction of Reality.
Them: “Daughters appeared to be especially effective in influencing parents.”
Reality and also Them (now in body of paper): “Sons delivering the survey may trigger parents to think more about the topic as they associate science more with boys than with girls”.
Them: “We chose middle school children as the target age group for this study because early adolescence represents a developmental stage in which children are capable of understanding complex topics, such as climate change, and are still in the process of forming their own opinions on controversial subjects.”
Reality: Kids don’t know jack about these topics, but we thought we might be able to addle their wee minds so as to push our ideology.
Them: “The compulsory nature of primary and secondary education in the United States and similar systems elsewhere represent an opportunity for curricula to increase the reach of climate change communication.”
Morozov, you will recall, is celebrated as the boy who ratted out his own parents to the Godless commies and was martyred for it. There used to be a statue of the rat, but it disappeared. We’ll put a new one up in honor of these ladies (and one man).
Now I say “and one man”, because I thought at first all the authors were non-males, and only discovered late that M Nils Peterson was a male. He’s a busy guy:
–“Educational attainment predicts negative perceptions women have of their own climate change knowledge (2019)”,
–“Predicting development preferences for fishing sites among diverse anglers (2019)”,
–“Developing a model of climate change behavior among adolescents (2018)”,
–“Are we working to save the species our children want to protect? Evaluating species attribute preferences among children (2017)”.
Science only progresses.
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The readings for Sunday, 12 May (Acts 13:14, 43-52):
Paul and Barnabas carried on from Perga till they reached Antioch in Pisidia. Here they went to synagogue on the Sabbath and too their seats. When the meeting broke up, many Jews and devout converts joined Paul and Barnabas, and in the talks with them Paul and Barnabas urged them to remain faithful to the grace God had given them.
The next Sabbath almost the whole town assembled to hear the word of God. When they saw the crowds, the Jews, prompted by jealously, used blasphemies and contradicted everything Paul said. The Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, “We had to proclaim the word of God to you first, but since you do not think yourselves worthy of external life, we must turn to the pagans. For this is what the Lord commanded us to do when he said: “I have made you a light for the nations, so that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth.”
It made the pagans very happy to hear this and they thanked the Lord for his message; all who were destined for eternal life became believers. Thus the word of the Lord spread through the whole countryside. But the Jews worked upon some of the devout women of the upper classes and the leading men of the city and persuaded them to turn against Paul and Barnabas and expel them from their territory. So they shook the dust from their feet in defiance and went off to Iconium but the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.
We might as well toss in Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
The historical passage highlights that those Jews who believed were Jews no more, but Christians. While those Jews who did not believe, stayed Jews and tried to talk others out of believing. Not so much breaking news.
Yoram Hazony, a notable conservative Jew, wrote, “there is no such thing as ‘genetically Jewish.’ Jews are a nation, not a race. Anyone on earth can join the Jewish people, as Ruth the Moabite did—by accepting our people as her people, and our God as her God.”
I had an exchange with Hazony and asked what the terms were for joining. He clarified his original point: “The Orthodox rabbinical courts would not accept an atheist into the Jewish people. As I said, the basis for becoming a Jew is embracing both the people and it’s God.”
Yet he also (earlier) said “Atheist Jews remain Jews.” I agreed with him that Jews are not (now) a race. Yet I suggested that given the religious requirement the term “atheist Jew” made no sense, since in order to join, and seemingly to remain, one had to embrace God. He never replied to that.
Saying “atheist Jews remain Jews” is like saying Catholics who become atheists remain Catholics. Well, such things happen in the sense that those who have abandoned the faith do paradoxically claim to still be Catholics: some of these people are even priests!
That means we have at least a double-meaning to both Jew and Catholic. Both have a religious definition in which they label a distribution of certain theistic beliefs shared by followers, short of atheism, where everybody doesn’t necessarily believe all the same things.
The second meaning is ethnic, where again there is a distribution of non-theistic cultural beliefs shared by followers, beliefs orthogonal to religion, where again not everybody shares all beliefs, except for the ethnic identity.
There is certainly no single race of Jews nor Catholics, however the terms are interpreted, religious or cultural. Nobody I am aware of thinks Catholics, religious or cultural, are a race. Yet some ethnic or religious Jews, and some non-Jews, believe Jews are a race.
Now there are, in certain concentrated geographic areas, Jews and Catholics who are mostly or predominately of one race, such as in some regions of the USA for Jews (genetic Khazars1, or Ashkenazi, i.e. a Turkic race) and Poland for Catholics (Poles, a slavic race, like your host, in part). Within those concentrated areas, it can make sense as shorthand to speak of race where the context is blatant. The problem is that one man speaks in shorthand and the next hears generalities. It is dangerous.
Dangerous? For instance, we saw earlier “that the Israeli Rabbinate…is using DNA testing to verify a person’s Jewishness. Since a person who isn’t Jewish can’t marry a Jew in Israel, which has no civil marriage, the rabbinate is using the DNA test to deny people they consider non-Jews the civil right of marriage.”
Doubtless such tests can be made, but they would be entirely arbitrary in concluding this man is a Jew and this man not, since Jews are not a race. Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, who had a conversation with Jones recently, also believe Jews have a unique and unshared-with-gentiles genetic component which allows them to bring a certain enlightenment into the world. Laitman agreed that his views are not shared by all who he is calling Jewish.
Jones is a Catholic in the religious sense, a point which he takes pains to emphasize, though he acknowledges the ethnic characteristics of Catholic neighborhoods of old. Jones insists he does not identify as white, for instance, but as Catholic solely. Brown is a Christian who calls himself a Jew. This can only take an ethnic meaning, since it makes no sense for a Christian to say “Christian Jew” in a religious sense. Catholic CC Pecknold recalled for us the words of St Augustine, “What is now called the Christian religion existed of old and was never absent from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh. Then true religion which already existed began to be called Christian.”
Brown and Jones met in mid April for a discussion, which can be watched here, on “antisemitism.”
That term, as in plain, is racial, and it is often employed in the same way as calling somebody a “racist.” But since not all Jews are Semites, and not all Semites are Jews, and Jews are not a race, the term makes no sense in its intended form (well, most charges of “racism” make no sense, either). It should be eliminated. It encourages and causes error.
One can say “anti-Jew”, which is plainer, but which is still ambiguous because it’s not clear if the religion or the culture that is in play. Context matters.
The Encyclopedia Brittanica calls the 1879 term a “misnomer”, created for historical reasons Jones recounts. Jones argued “anybody who criticizes the Jews is [called an] anti-Semite.”
Brown was worried that if non-Jews used the term “the Jews” (he allows Jews its use) it can lead to “anti-Semitism”, because the term “the Jews” paints the false impression of a monolithic group up to no good. Brown is correct that people have used the term in that way, which Jones acknowledges.
Of course, if one is accused of “anti-Semitism”, it must mean there exists the group one is said to be against, which is to say, the Jews. (It can’t be Semites, because etc.) Both men danced around this theme, and much effort could haven been saved by simply jettisoning a word that is unhelpful to the nth degree. If you mean “anti-Jew”, say anti-Jew. If you mean to criticize an item or religion or culture, than make that plain. Say what you mean!
Jones does insist on use of the term “the Jews”, much as anybody else would agree on “the Catholics”, or else how can you say and find useful sentences like “Every year the Germans pay the Jews reparations”? Notice that that sentence carries with a context not applicable everywhere.
Jones’s favorite example: “Jews are responsible for gay marriage”, a sentence which some say is anti-Jew when a non-Jew says it as criticism. But when a Jew says it2, or a non-Jew says it is praise as then Vice President Biden did, it is taken as praise and not anti-Jewish (in either sense).
Brown does allow and uses the term “the Jews” when it is used neutrally or with praise, but he bridles when it is used with criticism. On the other hand, as Jones uses the term, it’s not always clear if he is speaking of it in religious or cultural terms (I’m guessing he’d say both). Also, as recent news coverage shows, nobody takes it amiss when criticizing Catholics as “the Catholics” (I’m thinking of the appalling behavior of priests “oriented” toward other men).
The debate was also theological. The Catholic Bible makes reference to peoples called the Jews, as above, which Jones interpreted in it plain sense, but which Brown countered meant “Judeans” or “Jewish leaders”. The reason for the contention is clear. Brown finds these passages vexing, and tending to impute ill motivation to all Jews. Jones agrees these passages do not mean all Jews, but says they do apply in a specific sense to the Jews as religion and in a general sense as a culture. (The Jews as a religion do not, after all, accept Jesus Christ.)
Brown says that most traditional Jews (and I assume he also meant in Israel, as he has traveled there extensively) “spend as much time thinking of Jesus as Catholics think of Buddha.” And that the revolutionary Jews are those that “cast off traditional Judaism”, which he appears to associate with study of the Torah and not Talmud. It is these Jews who are engaged in, for example, pornography, which was their “way of pushing against Torah and throwing off traditional Judaism”. These revolutionary Jews (Jones’s term) are not acting against Catholicism per se. Again, Brown is fearful of blowback to (he says) the Jews, which shows the term has use.
And so it went, back and forth, with the language being a sticking point. It is surely useful to speak of “the Jews” as it is to speak of “the Catholics”, in praise, neutrally, or in criticism. But doing so always brings a context which must be very specific, a context that can be swept behind or confused when using these terms jumping from context to context. As I have said before, equivocation makes the best jokes but worst fallacies.
After the debate, as you might have expected, both parties went on in other forums to “clarify” their points (ahem). These comments attracted interest, such as this article, so much so that Brown recently tweeted, “An appeal to @EMichaelJones1. I believe your views are antisemitic, a charge you strongly deny. I propose a formal, moderated, full-length debate with a neutral moderator where we air our differences. Shall we? (I recognize that you repudiate violence against the Jewish people.)”
This is a debate I’d like to see, run by someone who is a stickler for language.
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1From the paper “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses” in Genome Biology and Evolution, “Our findings support the Khazarian hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Near Eastern-Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry.”
2Tikkun: “How Jews Brought America to the Tipping Point on Marriage Equality: Lessons for the Next Social Justice Issues”. “In a few short years, same-sex marriage went from being an untouchable political hot potato to a broadly accepted civil right in eighteen states and the District of Columbia. Jews, and their social justice organizations, helped make that happen.” What did the authoress of this mean by “Jews”? What is her assumed context, I mean, which even she was not careful to explicate.
Incidentally, even the New York Times “that to write ‘a Jew,’ even in a positive article by a Jewish reporter, would strike some as offensive.” The author continues “We Jews, too, recoil from calling ourselves Jews…I frequently edit articles that mention ‘Jewish politicians’ or ‘Jewish artists’ but not ‘Jews.’ Like our non-Jewish friends, we Jews have been conditioned to think of a ‘Jew’ as something bad.” He’d like to change this.
1 We should attend to the fact that two things are required for providence: the ordering and the execution of the order. The first of these is accomplished by the cognitive power; as a consequence, those who have more perfect knowledge are called orderers of the others. “For it is the function of the wise man to order.” But the second is done by the operative power.
Now, the situations in these two functions are contrary to each other. For, the more perfect an ordering is, the more does it descend to small details; but the execution of small details is appropriate to a lower power, proportionate to such an effect. Now, in God the highest perfection in regard to both functions is found; in fact, there is in Him the most perfect wisdom for ordering and the most perfect power for operating. So, He Himself through His wisdom must arrange the orders for all things, even the least; on the other hand, He may execute the small details by means of other lower powers, through which He Himself works, as does a universal and higher power through a lower and particular power. It is appropriate, then, that there be inferior agents as executors of divine providence.
2 Again, we showed above that divine operation does not exclude the operations of secondary causes. But the resultants of the operations of secondary causes are within the scope of divine providence, since God orders all singulars by Himself, as we showed. Therefore, secondary causes are the executors of divine providence.
3 Besides, the stronger the power of an agent is, the farther does its operation extend to more remote effects. For instance, the bigger a fire is, the farther away are the things it heats. But this does not occur in the case of an agent that acts without a medium, for whatever it acts on is adjacent to it. Therefore, since the power of divine providence is the greatest, it must extend its operation to its most distant effects through some intermediaries.
4 Moreover, it belongs to the dignity of a ruler to have many ministers and a variety of executors of his rule, for, the more subjects he has, on different levels, the higher and greater is his dominion shown to be. But no ruler’s dignity is comparable to the dignity of the divine rule. So, it is appropriate that the execution of divine providence be carried out by diverse levels of agents.
Notes Every manager knows this.
5 Furthermore, the propriety of its order manifests the perfection of providence, since order is the proper effect of providence. Now, it is pertinent to the propriety of order that nothing be left in disorder. So, the perfection of divine providence requires that the excess of certain things over others lit reduced to a suitable order. Now, this is done when one makes available some good for those that have less, from the abundance of those that have more. So, since the perfection of the universe requires that certain things participate in divine goodness more abundantly than others, as we showed above, the perfection of divine providence demands that the execution of the divine rule be accomplished by those that participate more fully in divine goodness.
6 Besides, the order of causes is more noble than the order of effects, just as a cause is better than an effect. So, the perfection of providence is better manifested by the first order. But, if there were no intermediary causes carrying out divine providence, there would not be an order of causes in reality but only an order of effects, Therefore, the perfection of divine providence demands that there be intermediary causes as executors of it.
7 Hence it is said in the Psalm (102:21): “Bless the Lord, all His hosts; you ministers of His who do His will”; and elsewhere: “Fire, hail, snow, stormy winds, which fulfill His word” (Ps. 148:8).
Item I have it on good report a high school has eliminated its year-end speech by the Valedictorian and substituted one by the “most popular student”. (I am not naming it to protect the source.)
At this same high school’s prom they cast ballots for Prom King. But then they put the names into a hat a draw one out to crown.
The Matriarchy grows in strength daily.
Item Item removed, because original tweet deleted. Sad!
Item
Ya'll, I'm not sure how to feel about this…
I got another email this morning from someone I slept with in college who has now transitioned. It's kinda becoming a thing where the people I dated/slept with eventually transition at some point and it's kinda getting to me.
In a followup tweet she continued, “It’s getting to me how common that’s been for me. that now I know over 5 or so people that have transitioned. It only gets to me because I am exclusively attracted to men and it’s so common that it has me wondering what it is about me that makes this so common.”
Here we have a matriarch boasting of having sex with a multitude, but the experience was so bad for her transient “partners” she drove them to insanity.
That’s the face reading. Demonic possession is even more likely. Laugh if you like, but the lady continued “I guess I’m really tired of being someone’s spirt guide/inspiration. One of the things I’m coming to terms with in life is that I am going to be seen as this amazing inspiring fascinating person to a lot of people and that’s as deep as any relationship they have with me will go”.
An internationally renowned researcher on tax avoidance is believed to be the first person in Britain to lose her job for saying that transgender women are not women.
Maya Forstater, 45, was told by her managers that she had used “offensive and exclusionary” language.
She was accused of “fear-mongering” for tweeting her concerns about government proposals to allow people to legally self-identify as the opposite sex.
Forstater has begun employment tribunal proceedings against her former employer, the London office of the Centre for Global Development (CGD) think tank. She hopes it will be a test case establishing that “gender-critical” views — which hold that being a woman is a biological fact, not a feeling — are protected beliefs under equality law. She is starting an appeal on…[The ellipsis leads to a paywall]
Reality is exclusionary. Reality is offensive. Which is why Reality is rapidly becoming illegal.
Slaves are forbidden to speak the Truth. We are now slaves. (Not all slavery is chattel slavery.)
This Forstater continues her tale in a series of tweets, in which she says she’s fighting back. “I have begun employment tribunal proceedings for discrimination. This will be a test case to establish that ‘gender-critical’ views are protected beliefs under the Equality Act 2010, as a philosophical belief.”
A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.
He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control…
The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.
This article appeared in 1989. Everybody died by 1999.
A Maryland man is facing a felony charge for the attempted carnal knowledge of an animal after allegedly soliciting an undercover Loudoun County Animal Services officer in Leesburg for the opportunity to have sexual relations with a horse, according to Loudoun County authorities…
“Loudoun County has zero tolerance for criminal acts that include cruel and heinous behavior towards animals,” LCAS Chief of Animal Control Chris Brosan said in a prepared statement. “We routinely conduct investigations to protect all animals in Loudoun.”
Clearly Loudoun County hasn’t got the word that zoophilia is now a sexual orientation, which will be protected under the Equality Act.
They had better watch their analogies, too. If it’s “cruel and heinous behavior” to bugger a horse, a large animal, how much worse is the same thing happening to a man?
Converse announced that they have “partnered” with folks “connected to the LGBTQ+ community” to promote their new line of shoes known as the company’s “Pride Collection.” An 11-year-old child named Desmond Napoles, a so-called “drag kid” who goes by “Desmond is Amazing,” is one of the featured promoters
Then came the backlash. Progressive activists launched a counterattack against Lindsey on social media. Local journalist Erica Barnett claimed that the story drew attention because Lindsey is an “attractive blonde woman” and dismissed the victim’s “many tears” as theatrics serving a false narrative that the homeless represent a danger to the community. She demanded that the media temper its reporting and be mindful that “graphic descriptions of violent rape may be triggering for survivors.”
Feminism is raw power politics and nothing more. About women not vying for power, feminists care nothing.
Couple of new surveys. One from Pew shows that only about one out of five Europeans attend services “monthly or more”.
Now this is very crude, usable only with caution, and varies by country greatly. Forty per-cent of Italians are church-going, the country with highest attendance, but (says the survey) only 9% of Finns (tied for lowest with the Swedes) make the Sunday trek.
Even though the one-in-five figure is loose, we can use it to make a sort of prediction in the following way. It turns out that, across Europe, only a bit under two in three church-goes also believe in God “as described by the Bible”. The rest believe “in other higher power or spiritual force.” Like Hollywood, say? Lucifer as envisioned by Freemasons? Or their own selves? Well, whatever. It isn’t God.
Pew only gives this two in three as an average across Europe, which is how we can use the crude one in five. Multiplying gives an imprecise estimate of 13% of church-going Christians who believe in God. That’s close to a definition of traditional Christianity, though it probably exaggerates prevalence of true believers.
Given all we’ve seen and read about western Europe, this doesn’t seem like such a bad guess, though. It’s doubtful any would double this number: in particular countries, perhaps, but not across Europe.
The number could be lower, too, but likely not too much lower, given faith still has strong pockets in Italy and Portugal, for instance. One in ten is thus likely not far off.
Pew also tracked the percent agreeing to “Science makes religion unnecessary in my life.” The average of church-goers agreeing was 17%. It’s a reasonable guess that most or all of these people believe in that odd “spiritual power” and not God.
The answer to the science question should be 0%, though (Norway is closest at 5%; France is highest at 22%) for church-goers. For if you believe in God as described in the Bible, you know science is not incompatible, except where science is in error. This bolsters the one in ten prediction.
The survey continues, showing church-goers are more likely to oppose immigration, support traditional national life, and the like. Interesting stuff, but not to the point here.
The next two questions imply we might push the one-in-ten lower. They are the percent of church-goers who favor killing the lives inside would-be mothers, and supporting gmarriage (government-defined marriage): 52% and 58%, respectively. Those are, of course, larger than the one-in-three spiritual-power believers (still among church-goers). Support of either of these pushes you out of traditional Christianity and into the camp of the enemy.
We’re down to about, oh, say, 7-8%. Again, as an average across all Western Europe, a figure with mighty uncertainty to it.
It doesn’t seem too off, though, does it?
There is no indication the situation is improving; not in Western Europe, anyway. (The East is, however, rising.) Every country Pew tracked had fewer people identifying as Christian from 2002 to 2014 (the last year numbers were available).
Enter the second survey, from PRRI, which is of the USA and about support for non-procreative sex-like activities.
First is percent who “favor laws that would protect LGBT people from discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing”, which is 70%. Protect “from” “discrimination is, as all know, to punish the religious by discrimination; thus, the traditional Christian should be against these laws.
Sadly, breakdowns by religion show what we all know: Unitarians, New agers and Jews are least opposed; and no religion, not even Jehovah’s Witnesses, comes higher than 29% opposing (only 23% of white Catholics oppose).
Then come in the survey more pointed questions about allowing small businesses to refuse to Bake The Cake based on religious objections. All traditions would favor these kinds of laws.
Alas, only 36% of Catholics do, only 43% of protesting Christians do, only 27% of Jews so, and, perhaps surprisingly, only 25% of Muslims do.
Of course, as above, all of these numbers have sizable plus-or-minuses. But, if it were put to a vote, it is more than a good bet that Bake That Cake would become law. (It would be called, maybe, the Pinch Of Incense Act of 2020.)
Lastly, and PRRI does not break this down by religion, only 14% of all Americans are strongly opposed to gmarriage. A similar number just oppose it.
That 14% figure must be our proxy for the approximate fraction of traditional Christians in the USA. It will be high because some non-Christians do oppose gmarriage, but not, of course, on theological grounds. But we have to add to that subtraction those who just oppose gmarriage, who, when pushed, might recall their theology better.
This varies greatly by region, here and abroad, but a cautious summary, acknowledging the uncertainties, and admitting there are far more tests than these for traditionalism, might conclude that Western Europe has about 7-8% of traditional Christians remaining, while it’s maybe 14-18% Americans. Two to one, Americans over Europeans, sounds about right.
