So my brain reminded me I had a Blogger account

And I was very unpleasantly surprised.

I'm probably not gonna do anything significant, here. Not yet.

To a certain cosplayer

Changed my mind. Look for the Cosplay.com account "Cephas"

No April Fools gag here

Sorry folks, move along.

At peace

Times like these, when everything around you is going rougher than planned (a best case scenario) or completely falling apart (worst case scenario), are times when you learn to cope.

It is all a part of the adult life which I have been masterfully avoiding for twenty years now. I sometimes fear for my finances and my grades (especially those, when I am at the twinkling twilight of my undergraduate career) but I learned to say two important words:

Fuck it.

Or, for the more PG-audience, "This too shall pass." But I've heard that one phrase enough to make my ears bleed. That, and the beautiful cacophony of my disyllabic declaration soothe me to the soul, for some very weird reason.

Yes, I know given the temporal proximity of this post to my last one, you may think this is about my essay. It's only partially about that. There are other things biting my ass and the essay is just one of the more "colorful" posterior-hunters. I do know that the final will be a rather easy format that I like and if I study my ass off for that, it may make up for however badly I fuck up on my paper.

Fuck this

It's Essay Time again.

Socratic dialogue with a Naturalist

Yet another problem I have with the atheistic philosophy and paradigm is that of its profession of Naturalism and its simultaneous unprincipled exception (to borrow from Lawrence Auster) towards the behaviour of man.

That is, while everything in the world comes from Nature and operates solely by its laws, humans are somehow special and different. Why are humans special different?

Because of their capacity for speech and higher brain functions.

And how did this difference arise?

Through random mutations accumulating over eons, in a process we know as evolution.

And because of this, Man is special? There are bugs that have abilities unimitated by other species so why don't we give them special rights and privileges?

Because they are not our own species.

So they are not special?

No, they are special. Humans tend to be chauvinistic and not give a hoot-and-holler about creatures that aren't themselves.

If they are special, why don't we care about them?

Every creature is special. We don't care for them for reasons I just mentioned.

But that's weird... if every creature is special, then how can we say any one creature is special?

I , uh...

And furthermore, if all that is special about us happened randomly over events far beyond our history and capacity to change, why call anyone special at all? Surely a bug who can't talk now may in a billion years' time not only talk but gather fruit with telekinesis and regenerate its limbs in a matter of seconds--abilities I think are more "special" than talking and thinking.

You are being absurd. Don't be so evasive with your reductio ad absurdum and get back to the topic on hand.

You're right, right. What I meant to say was that the descendants of said bug would be endowed with all these special abilities.

You are doing it again!

Fine, I cheerfully withdraw my snide remarks. I realize I did not let you explain why any one creature is special.

Each organism occupies a certain niche in our ecology. Maintenance of that ecology is what lets all living things acheive balance in our environment.

Oh, it's just like how we cannot have a country full of lawyers because there will be no one to deliver pizza.

Uhhh, I suppose. In our environment are producers, consumers, predators, prey, decomposers and many other jobs. Take out any one player in the game, and it is all ruined.

Oh, I see.... Wait, let me get this straight--what governing board keeps this ecology intact.

There isn't one.

Is that so? Why use the word "Maintenance?"

That is simply a term to make the whole system understandable to humans.

Oh, so now you're being chauvinistic! (chuckle) I'm sorry, don't get angry with me. You mentioned that this ecology includes decomposers and prey. Well, I'm glad someone out there is willing to eat my shit, but there are critters that need to die?

Haven't you ever stepped inside a McDonald's?

Good point, forget I said anything. But it does stand that there are necessarily some that get exploited and some that do the exploiting, right?

Yes, but as overexploitation rises, the exploiter declines in number until the exploited increases. This is one simple model.

Oh, this must be the "maintenance" you speak of. I'm pretty sure that this whole system is tightly regulated and though numbers flutucate in a microscale, they remain fixed in the macroscale.

No, creatures can evolve to be better hunters or be harder prey to catch.

And they do this randomly?

Uh, well, yes.

So creatures randomly, somehow, become better killers or harder to kill.

There is a direction to this--creatures that mutate advantageous traits will increase in number, while those with disadvantageous traits or neutral traits will fall by the wayside and die. This is natural selection.

Oh, but those creatures are special, right?

That is irrelevant.

But you said that all creatures occupy their niche in their environment, making them special. These critters that can't swing at their own weight class... they must really suck!

Where are you getting at?

Why bother calling creatures special if it is quite probable that they are destined to be replaced by creatures greater than they are, more "special" as it were?

Stop putting value judgements on these things.

Why? because they are not special, or because you are a nihilist?

.....

What is our niche?









And thus, a topic for some time in the future.

War against Christianity?

I was inspired by Lawrence Auster's post here-- http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/007090.html

I find this book list rather compelling. A few of those titles mention "the right" so it may seem that the attack directed more towards the abuses of some people who happen to be Christians.

There is more to it than that. The qualifier "the right" is only there to soften the blow somewhat. Actually, a better way to put it is that the qualifiers like "right" "Republican" etc. are a type of Pavlovian conditioned stimulus that train people to think that all "Christians" are "radical rightist evil Nazis". This crap has been done to Catholics too--is there any secular source that fails to mention the Catholic Church without a mention of the Inquisition, Crusades, Galileo and the American child abuse scandal?

(Note to the reader: I am no liberal or leftist, but for the sake of argument I will assume that "rightism"= "evil". How it came to this in the mainstream setting is the subject of another post).

As long as evil deeds are conflated with Christianity, people will soon make the (erroneous) connection that Christianity is in error. That may either mean that Christianity must be reformed or destroyed. But I doubt that the people who talk about "those dirty Christians" wish to reform Chrisitanity. Many of the people who write and read these books are not only atheists but atheists with a profound hatred of Christianity (not just "religion") or completely irrational and overly emotional dweebs like Sam Harris (redundancy alert). They do not just want to remove a few bad apples, they want to chop off the whole tree.

Actually, "reforming" Christianity can go some ways toward destroying it as well. Well-meaning Christians who do not want to look bad to the people who are criticizing them may go along with what they are saying and "reform" Christianity until it is nothing but a hollow shell like the Anglican Church. (If this happened eighteen centuries ago, Europe may still be pagan).

There is one more thing. Generalized attacks against Christianity by people who are more popular and influential are getting more vicious than ever and more public as well. What madness does Dawkins have to go against the ancient practice of parenting so that children won't become Christians? This is just but one example.

What upsets me is that there is little outrage. There are some like me and Mr. Auster who write against this but I am sure that the mainstream media would ignore it, set up such complaints as strawmen, show brief, out-of-context bits and pieces of dissent or air only opportunistic sound bytes from someone hated by the Left like Pat Robertson. I am sure there would be more people in more places who would speak against this war against Christianity but would not like to speak out too loud for reasons I have already mentioned. That there is little outrage is shows me that the secular war against Christianity is going against us.

The war is real. The abolition of the "Merry Christmas" and other acts are only small bits of the larger reality. I wonder what the future will look like.