The general consensus is that language and belief co-evolved as the earliest of modern human traits. It is impossible to know for sure at this point, but the logic of belief and language evolving together is easy to grasp. In order for humans to communicate abstract concepts they would have needed language. Belief, even crude beliefs like animism, are useful in communicating abstract concepts. Stories are excellent containers for transporting concepts over time and space.
The point is, belief seems to have been with us since the beginning, which means it is probably a necessary part of human society. One of the oldest large scale man-made structures is Göbekli Tepe, which was constructed when humans were just beginning to settle into fixed communities. Once we were able to organize ourselves into large, coordinated groups, we build a religious site. Some have argued that human settlement may have been driven by the need to worship.
Whatever the origins, belief plays an enormous role even today. In fact, it can be argued that belief plays a bigger role today than a century ago. Mysterious forces like privilege and institutional racism drive the public debate. These are not things that can be seen or even described. They just exist. Lives are being changed and public policy is being written on the assumption that these things exist. A century ago, everyone agreed heaven was real, but it did not drive public policy.
Not all beliefs are the same, of course. People who think the natural phenomena of the world are controlled by spirits are going to live different lives than people who work from a fixed set of religious doctrines. The spirit gods are fickle and unpredictable, while the book of rules is less so. The unpredictability of the holy book is due to the people holding it, not the book itself. It creates a standard of truth that everyone can understand and, more important, uphold collectively.
This is an important advance in human belief. In a world where the truth is whatever the guys doing magic say it is at the moment is a world of miracles. What was true yesterday can be heresy tomorrow. When the truth is written down and made permanent, the guys doing magic can always be checked against what is written on the stone tablets or the sheets of leather. Life becomes less mysterious and miracles recede to the world of fantasy, legend, and folklore.
Modern societies, despite the explosion of information from the human sciences, seem to be in reverse on the belief scale. The cult of antiracism is a good example. No one bothers to define racism and why it is the forever enemy of man. There is no effort to root it in some source of authority. The closest we get is the claim that the Founders really believed that all men were literally created equal, despite their acceptance of slavery and their writings to the contrary.
Antiracism, like so many beliefs whipsawing the modern age, is the product of the general will, this mysterious force that drives democracy. We get a glimpse of it on occasion during an election or an on-line mob. Even then we cannot know for sure, so magicians and astrologers from the court have to come in and explain how the results of the market explain the general will. You see, sometimes elections go against the general will, while other times they reflect it.
The belief system of democracy, much like communist systems, can have no text or accepted traditions, because those rely on fixed truths. In a world where the truth is fifty percent plus one, the past is always open to debate, so there can be no traditions or even fixed rules. Just as no legislature can bind a subsequent legislature, no general consensus can bind the future consensus. In communism this was perpetual revolution, while in democracy is just called the will of the people.
Interestingly, communists seemed to grasp this. They embraced the idea of perpetual revolution as a way to maintain the revolutionary energy. Even when it had burned itself out, they maintained the language of permanent revolution. Liberal democrats lack the self-awareness to grasp even this tiny bit of reality. They maintain that their revolution is constrained by the abstract principles of liberalism, even as they violate them in the name of some new mystery force like white privilege.
The power of this primitive spiritualism cannot be dismissed. The most powerful people in the world truly believe they are surrounded by dangerous forces. They have surrounded themselves with razor wire barricades and army troops. Fools insist that this is just a show and the people inside those walls know the truth, but that is just a bit of self-deception to avoid facing reality. Thye cling to this deception because they fear what will be required of them in the future.
One other aspect of this is that this new primitivism is taking hold at the time when the human sciences are opening up the natural world like never before. This new primitivism could very well be a reaction to both material prosperity and the further defining the natural world. Maybe humans need the mystery of life to remain and any attempt to unriddle it brings out our primal rage. Perhaps the more we know the more inclined we are to smash the machines and return to the past.
The last great democratic empire was fond of mystery cults. The Ancient Greeks had the Eleusinian Mysteries. which was the cult of Demeter and Persephone. It gets its name from its location at the sanctuary of Eleusis. The origins of this cult are unclear, but it prevailed well past the golden age of Athens. Roman emperors would go to participate in the mysteries. Note that moderns fell in love with things like Buddhism and Kabbala before picking up this new antiracist mystery cult.
Regardless, this is why the modern age sounds so primitive. Without some well-defined moral authority, the believers are left to conjure whatever moral authority they can from what they can observe. Like primitive man observing the winds, liberal democrats look out and try to unriddle the truth from the general will. Like the wind, its direction is ever changing, so the truth is always changing. Life in liberal democracy becomes more mysterious and frightening with each election.
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“One of the oldest large scale man-made structures is Göbekli Tepe, which was constructed when humans were just beginning to settle into fixed communities.”
It was contructed (9,000BC) thosands of years years before humans began settling so it may have been built as a final remembrance–we were once Kings– of a civilization that died quite some time before in the cataclysmic changes of the Younger Dryas. Not a mythical super civilization but one not so dissimilar to the later trading civilizations of the Mediterranean 1,000BC.
This is why we cannot allow the idiocracy to persist unabated.
Where is the vibrancy in this video? Nowhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnOODl5gxtI
Ah. Just they way they do it back in ol’ Zimbabwe.
The white man stole this technology and that’s why vibrancy doesn’t have it anymore. Same reason they don’t have liberal democracy. We stole it from them.
I watched the video.
Amazing.
…and then I left a sarcastic comment.
Couldn’t help myself!!
Superb column as usual. A comment to the Taki’s column, specifically the part about Jen Psaki being a middle school teacher 40 years ago, rather than a power player like she is in today’s clown world. If this meant this leaves a gap for a decent person to teach middle school, that wouldn’t be so bad. But the reality is, there are Jen Psakis there as well. So we get the schoolmarm in all areas of life now. Still OT, a jogger killed a 61 year old white grandma with a punch. The woman surely never read Derb’s Talk and… Read more »
Smarter, not harder.
Yes, you could focus on removing just one violent criminal from the streets, or you could focus on the root of the problem that recycles a myriad of criminals back to the streets ad infinitum. The former may save one life. The latter may save an entire society.
Step 1
Check your local Karen brigade.
When the truth is found to be lies, all the joy within you dies.
This rings a bell. I think there is a connection that is not discussed in today’s post. They don’t believe a word of what they claim, the purpose is absolution. ANY cult belief will do.
The last thing they want to do is face their self-inflicted meaninglessness. We can make them face it.
“You don’t believe a word of what you just said. It’s all cover for your wasted life. You are trash, and your (insert cult here) beliefs are just there to cover the stench.”
Jared Taylor recently debated Whitney Dow on the subject of reparations. Mr. Taylor was invited by Dow for his “Whiteness Project”. At one point, they seem to come to terms with the fact that racial conflict has proven to be too great to overcome. Mr. Taylor makes an objective, rational and thoughtful case for a mutually agreed upon peaceful separation. Dow insists that “we just need to keep trying”. Presumably, many who listened are followers of his anti-White “Whiteness Project”. Even still, it’s difficult to imagine that anyone within earshot of that discussion couldn’t have been slightly persuaded by Mr.… Read more »
There is big money in being the next Robin D. I would go for that sweet cash too if I wasn’t a cis heteronormative white male. Oh, and also I’m not a self loathing jackass in addition to being a grifter either.
Jared was great as he always is. When Dow said he lives in NYC while Jared lives in a whitopia, our guy just shrugged it off and said we all make our own choices. He was too kind to give Dow the jugular treatment, by answering ‘NYC eh? Would that be Harlem or Bed-Stuy?’
I grew up walking distance from Taylor’s PO Box. Nicer area of DC Metro area, but a far cry from its quality of life in 1970.
I was born and raised in Northern VA, as well. It was a wonderful place to live.
link for those interested: https://bit.ly/3tdA7OZ
sadly , this is correct about the current collective madness, and this is where it always leads. https://vimeo.com/378689989
I watched that movie recently. It really made me think about the Aztecs. Same vibe
Someone here posted about that movie a couple of weeks ago. Hard to follow.
the movie depicts the chaos and madness of russia post revolution . the low level thugs in the communist party were suddenly all powerful . they were rooting out “enemies ” of the revolution , and it shows hao there is not a limiting factor on this madness and hoe huge swaths of the population were swept up by the Cheka, forerunner of the KGB , and murdered. many for no discernable reason, of trivial reason. To understand what is going on you have to have that background in mind . the Russian audience the movie was made for after… Read more »
These belief systems drive lots of things, some are good in the realm of furthering human achievements, like space exploration.
Others not so much. My teenage son came home after school yesterday with egg yolk all over his new shoes. Apparently some young metizos decided to throw eggs at him on his walk home since he is considered a rich white boy.
Why the Saxon begins to hate is becoming more and more clear to me.
Start him in martial arts class now, and then in a few months graduate to firearm safety training & range practice. And moving to another neighborhood should also be on your radar.
At this point, anyone White man who is not home-schooling his children is committing a mortal sin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_sin
zMan has NEA/AFT union trolls watching his site?
Any White man who is not home-schooling his children is committing a mortal sin.
This is not a place for shit posting on the JT. We try to maintain some standards in the comment section.
Faith in space exploration yielding anything we didn’t already know 50 years ago is facepalm stupid.
Musk was broker than Trump ever was and is propped up by tax payer programs and the proggiest of financial paymasters, as well as evil corp. media, but somehow he and the mars financial boondoggle get a pass.
Ok.
Ps – Russian rockets are still the best rockets.
Justine Musk – for those who are not up to speed.
https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-elon-musk-i-ran-out-of-cash-2010-5-2
“Perhaps the more we know the more inclined we are to smash the machines and return to the past.” – said every Luddite. Interestingly enough, the Luddites were not against the concept of progress and industrialization, but instead simply against the machines that threaten their livelihood and the skills they had spent years acquiring. Eventually, the British military was used against them in compliance with the elite industrialists. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Luddites/ Sounds all too familiar. I believe we are entering the age of the modern social Luddite;. when our values and belief systems are disregarded out of hand in our workplace, our… Read more »
The people in charge are the Luddites though. The primary purveyors of oogily-boogily are in charge of our countries, so your analogy does not hold up very well.
They want us dead. Pretty obvious now. Become the people who got you here in the 1st place. Crush them like bugs. Have no mercy, those days are gone.
This fits with my recent thoughts that we have surpassed the optimal level and type of technologies for the human animal.
To me, the most obvious issue is how modern school, work, and leisure activities lead to ridiculous amounts of screen time.
“What would ‘future-shock’ look like?”
*looks out window*
“That’s disappointing, I was expecting more Bladerunner and less Idiocracy“.
“We have surpassed the optimal level and type of technologies for the human animal.” Well said. I am a high school teacher, and even my itty bitty private school is in the process of switching all our assignments and assessments over to Google Docs. The more tech savvy teachers at my school are giving all their assignments this way. Now, the cheating at my school has reached epic proportions. The students have figured out how to share their on-line work, and they pick the best writers and math students among them to do the assignments. Then they just hand in… Read more »
Are you allowed to confront a student for plagiarizing?
If you have evidence?
We are allowed to discipline the students for this. However, I have become so cynical (since the problem is so pervasive) that the only kids I will get on to are the smart ones who are being taken advantage of.
This could be solved by having an adaptive AI “tutor” for each student, which would allow them to proceed at their own pace. Group projects would be used to develop teamwork skills, after the basics have been (provably) mastered.
They always call their shots in advance. The DC situation is going to start happening in every city… Then eventually the whole country. I hate to sound like Whiskey but we might be in boxcars sooner rather than later.
They’ve basically vaxxed everyone that they can vax and now they’re looking for heretics. That might be the starting point.
Who is “whiskey” . I tuned into ferfal and matt brackens youtube this weekend and they were full ” flee the country ” mode.
Flee to where? We already tried fleeing in the 1960s onward and it did absolutely nothing.
Whiskey is an occasional poster here and at Sailer’s blog.
He’s pretty based, sometimes he gets a little carried away.
Thanks . there used to be a blog called ” whiskey’s blog” that was pretty good , but it has been gone for several years.
Before you roll up your sleeve, do a quick search on “spike protein”. The vaccine instructs your own cells to manufacture this stuff to trigger an immune response. However, recent studies show that spike protein *alone* can cause serious cell damage in the lungs, blood vessels, etc.
One would think such studies would have been performed before approving the mass vax campaign. What happened to “follow the science”?
Maybe they were?
You assume the reason for the “vax” is to prevent the disease. god knows (more likely satan) what the real purpowse may be.
I have to agree. Their enemies got inside the gate and now have to be located and destroyed. Certainly an offshoot of the Vaccine Gospel is to sort heretics.
These mass delusions almost always end with mass suicide or mass murder. It could go either way.
I have been reading John Gimlette’s the Garden of Mars about Madagascar. The culture on that wretched island leans heavy on ghosts and evil spirits. When I used to read about cultures that had those primitive beliefs and their neverending series of calamities, I was glad I lived in a first world country one that had problems but also great achievements. I am about half way through the book and am getting bored. Reading about basket cases offers no hope or mystery. I now feel the same about the US. I don’t know how the story is going to end… Read more »
Before all the newspaper sites went behind the paywall there was a spate of crimes in New England news involving graverobbers https://bit.ly/3h24wNu. All charges against all parties were ultimately dismissed. Now these sorts of crimes aren’t even publicized, because the US *needs* more graverobbers, and if you don’t want your ancestor’s remains used in the recently arrived peoples religious ceremonies YOU are the bigot.
Sorry, but once I’m through abusing it I don’t much give a damn what happens to my meat suit. Of course I write this secure in the knowledge that when I go I will end up down the way from my folks at Ft Sam Houston National Cemetery in a by god SEALED CONCRETE VAULT! San Antonio has more’n a couple of Santeria devotees living in its environs. The poxy bastards’re welcome to any part of me they can dig up.😉
In a democracy, liberalism is always a reaction to the last reaction. Each impulse creates a greater and opposite reaction, as there is no vested, multi-generational, traditional authority to cool and balance the population. Just as the 1970’s liberals were a reaction to the 1950’s, today’s liberals are a reaction to the very anti-authoritarian late 20th century. Therefore the next reaction will be an anti-woke, Death Race 2000 (the original) type of environment. I’m looking forward to it.
I remember “Deathrace 2000”. Never much of a Stallone or David Carradine fan. Did enjoy the quick shot of Louisa Moritz’ knockers, though. She did have a nice set of knockers!😉
The disdain AWRs exhibit toward science is very much a function of their postmodern roots. The postmodernists, partially from extreme relativism and partially from anti-white racism, view science as nothing more than an arbitrary white metanarrative with no more claim to truth than scapulamancy. What’s more, science is inherently racist because it denies the fundamental otherness of the Other, and seeks to bring non-whites into the white civilizational fold, destroying their identities in the process. To use the pomos’ own language, science is a hegemonic discourse. All of which is to say that science is a white thing, and that… Read more »
Well stated. Communism is nothing if not materialistic. Quotas were never achieved of course, but Production was at least an objective function. There is an ineffable quality to this new Leftist vision, as it actively rejects science and thermodynamics – eg. print up money and debt and call the result “GDP”. The atavism of the new Left is what galls many on the DR. I can sorta understand being forced to meet a pig iron or coal production quota; Dirt People understand dirt after all. But being forced to chant magical “anti-racist” slogans to bring about some eschaton boggles a… Read more »
The distinctions drawn between post modernism, anti whiteism and communism are blurry. The movements have much overlap.
Anti whiteism is more of a tactic than a strategy. It is not a sustainable ideology as eventually white people are replaced, thus the tactic of welcoming immigrants and their drugs in order to “help” suicidal white people.
Meanwhile, we are losing our freedoms and government is gaining ever more control over our lives, our thoughts, the media, education, and the economy. Marx would approve.
I agree with them. Science is white. I’ll keep my science, others can keep their voodoo.
Applied kinnectics study highly recommended. As it seems likely to be used sooner than later,
On critical thinkers.
It’s maddening. No mo’ POMO! My attitude has become that if you can’t speak the Truth with a capital “T” (objective and reality-based), then STFU. The Spanish have a saying, “La palabra es plata y el silencio es oro.”
That is a new one to me. In Spanish Lit I did learn “Las moscas no entran en boca cerrada.” Flies do not enter a closed mouth. 😃
And yet their rallying cry is often ” follow the science. ” Unlike the old days of the Enlightenment, who knew that science came in versions tailored to one’s beliefs, as it does today?
It took a lot of jujitsu to make people believe embracing rank ignorance and stupidity meant they love science. Throw out some garden variety element like “falsifiable” and you will be met with a blank stare. Claim gender is fluid and you will be applauded. THOSE are tge folks you can send to go kill ymthe kulaks.
Much of the mythopoeic behavior Z describes is a function of Leftism more than democracy or communism, per se. The Leftist can never admit that any given status quo is good enough. In doing so, he would put himself out of business and cede away most of what lends meaning to his paltry existence. He must, therefore, conjure new evil spirits to exorcise from the body politic. To the extent Leftists gain control of society–and in AINO their authority is nearly absolute–all of society becomes a ritualistic casting out of the unclean, i.e. so-called “white supremacy” and “systemic racism.”
That, incidentally, brings up the advantage of monarchy, for within that system the leader can certainly decide they something is good enough. The flaw of democracy is excessive discontentment; the flaw of monarchy is excessive complacency. Thus the one is always leading into the other…
If that is the case–and I’ll grant you it may be–perhaps a constitutional monarchy would be best. In theory, neither complacency nor grudge would be decisive. In that scenario, however, I would favor a strong monarchy and a fairly weak parliament.
Are you sure? The UK has had just that for a couple centuries and they’re pretty far down the chute, don’t you think?
Pardon my error. I just realized that the UK like most Western European monarchies, the modern monarchy is purely ornamental just like our President, Congress and Judiciary. 😠
Like the US.
Similar systems similar outcomes.
“Antiracism, like so many beliefs whipsawing the modern age, is the product of the general will…” Not sure I agree with that. There is no “general will”driving this madness. For decades Antiracism has been cultivated in the universities, in Hollywood, in the media, in board rooms, even in the churches. This has been a systemic propaganda/PsyOp campaign from the leftist-run institutions. Anyone with common sense (which left to their own devices most people have I believe), can see there are differences between races, genders, nationalities, etc. But in order to swallow all this woke garbage, people have to be endlessly… Read more »
It should be tell a lie while pointing a loaded gun and eventually it becomes reality
My daughter likes to say, “Naked emperors everywhere.”
You raised her well.
Macro-scale societal pathology is a form of colony collapse, and is simply a consequence of the ongoing DNA contamination that results from the extinction of natural fitness selection culling. But more to the point of this post, the current mass media driven anti-racism campaign is a deliberate psyop being waged against the remaining sane fraction of the US population. The main goal is to put us on the defensive so that we do not otherwise use our energies to proactively fight back against Elite Inc. & its Deep State allies. If you keep your enemy constantly dodging racism accusations, they… Read more »
I look at it this way. When the (now inevitable) collapse comes there will be a.massive culling of the unfit. Our kind will what they have always done. Mohammedism’s followers will starve EN MASSE because no no Muslim country today feeds itself. As for Blacks, those outside of Sub-Saharan Africa with a sufficient admixture of.White genes will survive those without will die off. Those in their ancestral homeland will die back to more.traditionally sustainable levels.
Whites will experience a die back but we’re survivors. We made it through a couple of ice ages; we’ ll survive this.
Actually, if we do get a complete collapse down to hunter-gatherer level, it’s the blacks (and r-selected races in general) who will fare better then the more k-selected whites, at least until environment starts selecting for high-IQ again. If there are no roads, a beaten up but solid pick up truck is a lot more useful then a Lamborghini…..
“The power of this primitive spiritualism cannot be dismissed. The most powerful people in the world truly believe they are surrounded by dangerous forces….” ———————- I am not so sure, Z. You have to remember that every political enemy of the Donks can be labelled with one or a couple possible tags: -racist -homophobe -sexist -antisemite. We all know that these labels are largely nonsense; you can literally rape a woman without touching her – with a rude joke, or an improper glance, or inappropriate laughter. The truth of such accusations is unimportant; what is important is the weapon of… Read more »
Trans children and anti white racism seem to be the red line for me. I can even deal with living in a third world shit hole (billions do daily) but pedos and perverts turning my kids trans, that’s too far for me. It draws up such a feeling of primal disgust and rage.
Some day, for no reason at all, AH got voted into power….
Progress being a cult of perpetuity means even a stationary man will eventually find himself across the other side of his red line. The prog world is wont to spin against his grain whilst punishing him for the sawdust on the floor. My red line first came to me when the threads of my good man uniform snagged on a coffin nail of Progress. Trannies are low hanging fruit compared to those who dared to not find attractive a masculine whoring strong independent woman. But that was so 2012! The spoils of the war on boys and men come at… Read more »
My girlfriend asked me once why I was so racist. My reply was that, as a white guy, I was just making the crime fit the punishment. The problem leftists have created by preemptively judging and punishing normies as racist misogynistic homophobes is that normies now have no reason not to be. Once you’ve paid for a crime, you might as well commit it.
I’ m not a “racist” I just refuse to genuflect when Holy Negro walks by. I’m not racist, I have two minimally functioning eyes and more than a couple of brain cells to rub together. I have yet to hear an answer to my question of “If races are merely a social construct then why do they breed true?” I’ m not homophobic. Queers do not frighten me at all. Like most men the sight of faggots snogging creeps me out! No fear involved. I do not hate women. Hell! I’ve been married to one damned near FIFTY YEARS! I… Read more »
Just remember, never join any group to plan anything against the regime. The group will be full of Feds. Even the Proud Boys were full of Feds.
The fastest path to promotion within the Stasi is to infiltrate a “white supremacist” cell, lead them into an entrapment, and then pull the trigger for arrest & persecution.
Hmm, maybe join the Feds for higher ends?
Democracy makes the people both the authority and the governed. It pits the public against each other, and in its fullest expression, the individual against himself. This can only end in madness and destruction. Maybe that’s why the commies grasped perpetual revolution: they like wrecking things. Being open about it turns out to be good cover.
Just brainstorming here but could it be a crisis in Christianity? America founding is from European Christianity On the conservative side of Christianity we have been hit in the face that evolution is real and we are having a nervous breakdown about it. On the Progressive side we have found that men are not truly equal and there is biological differences between races and genders. And a nervous breakdown is occurring there also. I think there are reasonable answers to how to solve this on the conservative side as Z said a week or so back. The book of Genesis… Read more »
My notes on Eden as a metaphor: the evolution of man Chapter 4, “The Dragons of Eden” by Carl Sagan 1. Adam and Eve eat of the fruit. 2. Eve and her descendents are punished with painful childbirth. Only humans have painful childbirth. Gen 3:16 connects the evolution of intelligence to the pain of childbirth. Modern humans have brain case 2x larger in volume than Homo habilis. The fontanelle is an incomplete closure of the skull to allow the skull to partially collapse to allow birth. Specifically they ate of the fruit of the knowledge of the difference between good… Read more »
Thank you
I have to say that the commenters on Zs site are the most thoughtful and thought provoking on the web.
Good stuff indeed.
Thank you! Forgot to add: The first city was built by Cain, the murderer, the inventor of agriculture which requires a fixed abode. His descendants, the sons of Lamech, invented artifices and brass and iron and musical instruments. Inventing metal gizmos also requires a fixed abode with a steady source of food supplied by agriculture, to allow the free time to think and invent. It’s almost as if the Bible has layers of complexity: simple on the surface, getting more complicated as you dive deeper. User interface designers call it Progressive Disclosure: the basic interface is simple and self-explanatory, with… Read more »
The bible is just jews telling you how it should be. Like tv today, same shit. different day.
One more and I’ll shut up. This is from Sarah Salviander, PhD Astrophysicist and Christian. Her published scientific research: https://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Salviander/0/1/0/all/0/1 @sarahsalviander Here are some of the scientifically-verifiable claims made by Genesis: The universe was created (Gen 1:1) Earth initially did not exist (Gen 1:2) Continents appeared first (Gen 1:9) Then oceans formed (Gen 1:10) First life was plant life (Gen 1:11) Seed-bearing plants appear (Gen 1:11) Sun and Moon become visible from Earth (Gen 1:15) Animal life starts in the oceans (Gen 1:20) Flying creatures appear (Gen 1:20) Giant aquatic animals appear (Gen 1:21) Other aquatic animals appear (Gen 1:21)… Read more »
Ex-Pralite Monk, I grew up in a very strict, ultra-fundamentalist group but it occurred to me that the Bible could not possibly answer all the questions one might have about almost anything. No room for it all. Then I stumbled upon John 20:30 & 31 and I decided that principle was pretty much applicable to everything from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21. Instead of giving us the answers to every possible question our fertile brains might come up with, The Creator gave us just enough to believe, and by believing have life eternal. Now these days I’m not sure eternal… Read more »
G; One key for Christians having confidence in the face of the towering edifice of The Church of Darwin is to grasp that it is founded mostly on bluff and intellectual stolen bases. It works like this : ‘So it *might* be possible to explain all the biosphere through natural selection of small random mutations.’ Reply: ‘Maybe, but it does *not* follow that that these two forces, alone, *do* explain the entire biosphere.’ Bluff: ‘OK, so what’s *your* (solely material) explanation_?’* The stolen base is to exclude any and all non-material causes a priori. The plain fact is that non-material… Read more »
In keeping with this, there really isn’t much of a crisis in Christendom over this. Some theologians simply say that the big bang and evolution are true and using Genesis to argue over it misses the point of Genesis. Others, like you, point out that the current scientific orthodoxy of origins is unfounded (in an evidential sense) and can mostly be ignored. ( As a side note, evolutionists still have yet to answer the first mover problem in material terms. Spoiler alert: it’s because they can’t.)
David Berlinski crushes Darwin in several widely available videos. He’s a mathematician and an atheist. Entertaining also. Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy, worked at the American embassy during the Civil War and beyond. Darwin came visiting to see if he could be aided in spreading his work in America. “Henry Adams was a Darwinist because it was easier than not, for his ignorance exceeded belief, and one must know something in order to contradict even such triflers as Tyndall and Huxley. He felt, like nine men in ten, an instinctive belief in Evolution, but he felt no more concern… Read more »
I enjoy debating here. But rarely have I seen such a nest of creationists. For my part I will live and die by science and that means (Neo-)Darwinism.
We ridicule the Absurd political ideas of our opponents yet some here apparently swallow Hook Line & Sinker the mysticism of a theology thousands of years old? You laugh at Voodoo and other primitive beliefs yet claim to believe the various Miracles of Christian tradition? You don’t see the slightest bit of intellectual dishonesty there?
I have benefited, on multiple occasions, from what can only be termed divine intervention, and in a specifically Christian context. I KNOW God exists and I need no further proofs.
Henry Adams remained an atheist. David Berlinski pointed out the utter failure of Darwins grand claim mathematically, and points out that it, unlike other major theories, farther from being proven than 150 years after it was posted. He does not offer or have have theories of his own, he and others simply point out that academic sinecures and research depend on embracing Darwin’s theory for their livelihoods, no differently than they embrace whatever is woke at the moment.
As Adams wrote, it is you who have a religious dependence on Sir Charles, a safe, conservative, practical, thoroughly Common Law deity.
Al,
Had an old fashioned hard-shell Baptist for a high school Biology teacher. She taught us that what is now called “micro evolution” – i.e. species changing over time in response to changing environments was the truth. What is called “macro evolution”, Miss Mary Lundeen taught me was ” Bunk!”
That was in the fall of ’67 and she’s long gone to her (well deserved) rest. I can still close my eyes and hear her tell us that “the origin of species is bunk!”
Depends what you mean by evolution. Adaptation is an intelligent process. Credit God or the organizing principle of life, which a person can believe God created, or not.
The notion of random mutations being put through the ringer, seems to me, would take more time than we have and rack up quite a body count along the way.
I’ve often wondered if viruses aren’t God’s way of tweaking the code.
Religion stems from the efforts of men who know more than their peers taking advantage of that fact to live in relative luxury and control sexual activity in their society. Sexual behavior is always a primary concern of any religion, in practical terms more so than life after death. One of the issues roiling religious belief in contemporary times is feminism. For millennia, with a few exceptions, women have been subservient to men. It’s only in the last few generations that they’ve been able to evade that status, one that was accepted both in Christianity and Islam. The change in… Read more »
> They don’t, as yet, try to control sex and women’s visible behavior.
They do though. Divorce laws, sexual assault laws, and our educational and financial institutions are all designed to get women to work outside the house and to sleep with as many men as possible, all while forgoing children. It’s just soft power.
It’s a complete inverse of traditional social norms.
“The closest we get is the claim that the Founders really believed that all men were literally created equal, despite their acceptance of slavery and their writings to the contrary.” Jefferson’s phrase “all men are created equal” has to be understood in the context of Lockean political philosophy. Yes, all men are created equal because they have “natural rights,” but then Jefferson goes on to say that “to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” So he is really saying that all men are created equal insofar as they have the right to create their own governments to live… Read more »
Facts, truth, logic.
In the current game being played that’s 3 strikes – yer’ out
Pardon me a minute – sudden urge to wax philosophic which may seem impertinent to some. Man. What is a man? Maness occurs on a continuum. Some men are smart, strong, loyal, friendly and brave. Some men are dull, weak, disloyal, unfriendly, and cowardly. A smart chimp may be as smart as a dull man, stronger, loyal, friendly and braver too – more manly? How to make sense out of the claim that “all men are created equal?” In having claims to Unalienable Rights perhaps? Does it matter where you are on the maness continuum in validating your claims to… Read more »
you are waxing something alright…
I’m not sure if yo are being serious. But all men are equal in that they all are men; that is, they have rational souls in Aristotle’s way of looking at things.
Chimps do not have rational souls, if they did, they’d be men.
This great divide is intimately tied up in religion and speech. Did homo erectus have religion and speech? If so, he was one of us; if not, he was one of them. Simple as.
John;
It’s the “their Creator” part that you’re missing in your philosophizing. As in “… all men are endowed by *their Creator* with certain inalienable rights…”.
The founding of the US is inescapably linked to its being (once) a Christian nation. It is the Christian doctrine of the Imago Dei:
‘All men are formed in the image of God.’ *That’s* the source of the founders view of human equality.
IOW, it’s spiritual equality, not material equality. We are wasting our time looking for material equality, either then or now.
I always thought this ‘men created equal’ business was TJ throwing a bone to the French whose support he needed. But the frog revolution happened after. Could it be that TJ infected them?
Men who are free are not equal. Men who are equal are not free. – A.S.
Without passing judgment on the content of the essay which, to me, is similar to some other Zman essays – he certainly did put some deep thought into it.
One takeaway from this essay – and for anyone who has read, or is aware Fukuyama’s book on the end of history – it strilkes me as to how far wide of the mark he was.
Fukuyama had come to a conclusion about the Enlightenment that doesn’t stand up to reflection these decades later. Dissidents have come to conclusions about the Enlightenment and democracy that are profoundly at odds with the current age.
It is a very costly conclusion.
The End of History and the Last Man didn’t age well, to put it mildly. And really, Fukuyama should have known better. All he had to do was look at the Soc Sci/Humanities departments in academia to see the intellectuals’ raging disenchantment with rationalism. From there, it was only one short step to understanding how the institutionalization of irrationality could be accomplished and how it would incinerate white civilization. But perhaps hindsight is 20/20. I certainly wasn’t making that criticism of his book when I first read it in ’94.
If you create institutions, they will grow to their maximum potential. The thing about institutions, of all stripes, is that they all diverge from their original raison d’être into power competitions.
Limited liability corporations, immunity and qualified immunity are great ways to create unlimited risk for all of the people who are passive actors in the institution. I would go so far as to say these arrangements can only end in disaster.
Maybe so. Or maybe we’re just a pack of braindead automatons, sophorifically stumbling through life, entranced, barely conscious gas bags on a senseless quest in the void.
I look at this bleak swamp and feel utter disgust. Is this mankind? Is this all we are?
It’s Ooga Booga. All the way down.
But with Technomologies ‘improving’ the Ritual Experience and reinforcing the FeelZ.
Electrons driving Elections… for The Elect.
Somehow I found this applicable to our present times from Well’s Time Machine. “The Time Traveller theorizes that intelligence is the result of and response to danger; with no real challenges facing the Eloi, they have lost the spirit, intelligence, and physical fitness of humanity at its peak.” Nothing new to many here but there are many reasons why we are where we are. How to deal with it? Nature has a way of resetting the game board but also human history has shown we are going to have interesting times. The progressive nuts are part of an interregnum in… Read more »
Right side?
Sounds like you’d better get all the jabs and triple mask!
/s
I’ll show myself out…
More to the point, the sane side. Right probably not a useful term.
I think you are correct david , we are at an inflection point where Idiocrasy meets mad max. and the future is lookin like “the road”
Hey, I like those movies. Maybe I will be prepared.
“The last great democratic empire was fond of mystery cults. The Ancient Greeks had the Eleusinian Mysteries. which was the cult of Demeter and Persephone. It gets its name from its location at the sanctuary of Eleusis.” greek/roman gods didn’t have a habit of rewarding humans after they died, the reason for the earth goddess mystery cult & for the christian cult was the hope they provided for a good afterlife, Demeter celebrated cyclical rebirth, while Christ actually went to Hades & pulled virtuous people from its depths. I really don’t get what’s the reward for progressivism, other than feeling… Read more »
nietzsche argued Rome was about master morality (patriarchical, hierarchical, androcentric) while Christianity was about slave morality (equality of everyone including slaves and women). Many have argued Christianity was created by Jews specifically to destroy Rome by forcing a switch from master to slave morality; in that sense we are seeing a repeat of it again where CRT was created by Jews to destroy western civilization.
So far as Rome goes I’d heard that the explanation was far more mundane. Being only able to feed a handful of kids, pagans would “make sure” that most of those kids were sons, while Christians did not, having the regular mixed bag of male and female. Repeat for a couple hundred years and the vastly outnumbered Christians aren’t so vastly outnumbered anymore. “The future belongs to those who show up for it”, and the pagans didn’t show up. (Now that being said, the theory sounds a little too clean to me and I’m in no way married to it).
For an excellent discussion of how the demography of the Roman Empire changed to make it more Christian, I recommend the relevant chapters in Rodney Stark’s book “The Triumph of Christianity, How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion”.
Nietzsche also was a weirdo opium junkie who went mad, so I wouldn’t give his take on that too much weight.
But Rick, check out his power moustache! Nothing says “will to power” like that moustache.
When I was a philosophy major, the scuttlebutt on Nietzsche was that he went mad from syphilis that he contracted from a prostitute. Stories like that are too good to fact check.
Nietzsche also said “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” That’s bullshit. As one who was once diagnosed with an invariably fatal disease (which somehow spontaneously went into remission) I am here to testify that what did not kill me most definitely DID NOT “make me stronger”. Make me stronger?! Hell! It liked to have FEKKING KILLED ME!!! I never did regain my strength or endurance. Cut my appetite back to near to nothing. I used to have a powerful speaking and singing voice! I had a 3 plus octave range. Now my voice is thin and reedy and… Read more »
Shit-tier take, I’m afraid. Our side really needs to get past this sort of thinking.
I’m just saying that reciting dogmas from over-educated degenerates is what got us in the mess we find the West in today. Marx and Nietzsche are opposite sides of the same coin.
“Perhaps the more we know the more inclined we are to smash the machines and return to the past.”
Best line I’ve read anywhere in a long time. The ability to process information is quite limited and an overabundance leads to madness. Pardon, it has led to madness, and the digital guillotine never can get rusty.
The best historical analogy I can think of is the late Renaissance. The dawn of truly systematic natural science was also the age of the great witchcraft persecutions — a guy like Thomas More would marvel at the latest astrolabe in the morning, then go burn some heretics in the afternoon (then teach his kids, including his girls, all the valid forms of the syllogism in the evening). Meanwhile, even the guys on the cutting edge of the new science spent a LOT of time trying to shoehorn their discoveries into the old paradigm. Newton’s writings on science — physics,… Read more »
Discovery requires thinking outside of convention. Crazy people are bets at this, which is why we have that old chestnut about the difference between madness and genius. The break down of the old rules at the dawn of the Enlightenment unleashed great genius but a fair bit of madness as well. Then again, we had a larger and stronger smart fraction at that point, so reason was able to overcome madness. Today, the smart fraction is smaller and weaker, so it is madness holding sway as the rules collapse.
All progress depends on the unreasonable man (GB Shaw).
Wonder if what now passes for progess is what he contemplated.
The feminist correlate of that is, well-behaved women seldom make history. Of course, when women begin making history, civilization dies.
Agreed, lots of these guys were kooks. Hobbes, for instance, as much as I love him, and compared to a guy like Paracelsus he really had his head on straight. But I’m trying to argue that not only is the return to primitivism not new, but it’s even a rational career move for lots of them. If Copernicus is right, for instance, then astrology is wrong, and if astrology is wrong, then medicine is wrong, the two being indistinguishable in the Renaissance. Lots of very lucrative careers are over if Copernicus is right. Not only that, but Copernicus is not… Read more »
Thinking out loud: “That Severian guy is great, he should have his own blog, wait a minute, he does!”
Thanks for saying so.
I keep.asking egalitarians a very simple question. To wit: if “races” are merely a “social construct” then why do they breed true? I follow that up with a mention that a forensic anthropologist can racially type skeletal remains with GREATER THAN 95% accuracy. I had one today answer me that the fact that skeletal remains can be so accurately racially typed DOES NOT prove that races are real. I asked her what evidence she would accept. I suspect there is nothing she would accept. All the evidence for the genetic differences between the races, according to the egalitarians, has been… Read more »
This is a good point z , the sage of our age, the great john derb has said ” science progresses one funeral at a time” . It is pretty well known in the medical field that doctors used to be proud of how bloody their clothing and tools were because i showed how many people they had worked on that day. a young doctor once observed that the first few patients they did each day always did a lot better than average and concluded that it was because the tools were clean. it was before germ theory and he… Read more »
Worse: the germ theory (existence of microorganisms at least) had been known for a century or more.
I would like this to be true for no reason other than it would offer an explanation. Yet the French Revolution was stark-raving mad and worshipped the God of Reason. In fact, the insanity then almost was inverse to intelligence. Something additional is at play here that seems correlated to the explosion of information due to the digital age and the inability to ptocess it all. I don’t think fractions quite explain it although your essay (and this comment) make a powerful argument. If there had been a digital guillotine my guess is things would have been even bloodier back… Read more »
Good post. Would love to see you do one on the mentality of the deep state, which seems as far as I can see to be the following: deep state: “lol we got retards to inject themselves with an experimental unproven vaccination. lol all mrna vaccine trials have failed because they’re dangerous as fuck but lol let’s stick the masses with them, lol we used a pcr test as a diagnostic tool even though its completely inappropriate to do so per the pcr test creator & we pushed cycle rate maximums to rates with huge inaccuracies, lol we just took… Read more »
This too shall pass.
This is idolatry, and those “pass” in a painful way.
Anti-racism IS a cult to it’s followers. Like communism, it calls for equity of outcome.
Luckily, unlike communism, this new idolatry can’t produce it’s idol. AOC is the only candidate for the role.
Mandela was closest to it and succeeded in SA.
Communism had Lenin and Stalin as successful idols, so it persevered for long 70 years.
Successors of Stalin were despised (Khrushev) and then ridiculous (Brezhnev,Chernenko).
We immediately went to the ridiculous stage.
No successful idol, no long lasting successful idolatry.
This is probably pretty close to the actual discussions in the Oval Office these day.
Followed by “Shhhh, here comes Joe…”
Have faith, the reasoned arguements of the principled “it’s not who we are” conservatives will ultimately prevail.
Thus Z’s point about the barricades, people get tired of “Simon Says” suddenly, not gradually.
“The most powerful people in the world truly believe they are surrounded by dangerous forces. They have surrounded themselves with razor wire barricades and army troops. Fools insist that this is just a show and the people inside those walls know the truth, but that is just a bit of self-deception to avoid facing reality. Thye cling to this deception because they fear what will be required of them in the future.”
Yeah, this quote was spot on. When your opposition makes a public act or statement, it’s best to believe that they’re serious.
At the peak of the British Empire, the watchword was “Imperialism abroad, liberty at home.”
It would seem that as the US Empire collapses, they are following the same model as the British did: concentrate on imposing it’s will on the only people it still can…their own.
(Of course, it took the UK 50-70 years to become what it is; the US is on track to devolve much, much faster.)
we are not that much faster , we have been devolving for quite a while, It was not noticed as much at first.
Good point. We have been past “gradually” a long time
The UK had stronger cultural bonds. The UK in the bad old ’70s was a Western country the US ,today, is not.
Also, the period of cultural decline in the UK was matched by US cultural decline. The UK declined economically and militarilly but the US when at it’s peak was collapsing culturally.
False analogy.