A Timely Rebuttal to St. Anselm

We are, of course, all familiar with the ontological arguments of St. Anselm, in which he uses the existence of something greater than whatever you’re currently thinking about to prove that there must be a single greatest thing, because no one thing is ever greatest because there’s always something greater. Or something. I’m told it logics quite a bit, actually.

As one result of an unfortunate encounter for Anselm, over at Chainsawsuit by Kris Straub I found Anselm’s argument unfortunately demolished by a dick:  [Read more…]

White House Communication Is Doubly Unfortunate

So, no. I don’t necessarily edit what I scribble on the bathroom wall they call the internet. However, I do try to write with some polish, some attention to crafting language that is both informative, readable, and, on the odd occasion, entertaining. I know how much effort goes into this top-of-the-tongue, tip-of-the-brain blather, and I know how much more goes into the work I actually publish.

It’s this appreciation for the craft and work of writing that makes me amused at things like this scene from The West Wing:

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FEEL MY PAIN!

An odd mishearing, a bit of banter, and a child who learned pun-crafting from some demented soul*1 and you end up with this travesty being created mostly by my child, with a small amount of assistance from me that I now, of course, deeply regret::

When you see headlines like,
Global climate change: defining the end of an entire geologic age? Scientists now asserting “holocene” ending in disaster, “anthropocene” imminent…

you know you’re encountering an Epoch ellipse.

 

*1: I can’t imagine whom that would be

Worst Treated Politician in the Ever?

It has been noted many places, not least of which being this prestigious blog, that Donald Trump and cohort have labeled his opponents a “lynch mob” and declared the effort to investigate Russian electoral-interference schemes to be a “witch hunt”. Donald Trump himself said that he could assert “with surety” that he was the victim of the worst treatment and most unfair treatment of any politician in the history of the world in which Donald Trump invented the phrase “priming the pump”.

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I have no words.

Trump wants to rehire the man he was forced to fire because that man broke the law, was being paid by a foreign power while working for the Trump campaign, and had ties still intact when taking up the position in charge of US national security.

Great galloping gorgosauruses! Is there no idea too stupid for Trump to think it brilliant when he himself thinks it?

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The Lamentations of the Women

While PZ focuses on Roger Ailes’ death and the resignation of a truly partisan hypocrite (but I repeat myself), Jason Chaffetz, I have been reading about the end of another career.

The Daily Beast is reporting that

Representative Robert Fisher, the Republican who was recently unmasked as the creator and chief moderator of The Red Pill, one of the internet’s most notorious forums for misogyny, resigned on Wednesday [H/T WHTM]

To be clear: he wasn’t resigning from The Red Pill, he was resigning from his position as a state Representative in the New Hampshire House.

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Yes, I Talked To A Trump Voter

Warning: exact quote from a racist below.

Me: But why?

Them: I didn’t think Obama was fair. After 8 years of Obama, I wanted a fair leader.

Me: Ah. You wanted a Fair Leader. So we’re in agreement then. You voted for Trump because of racism.

Yeah, I don’t think they got it. But if not for definitions 2 & 9, what they said wouldn’t make any sense to me either.

 

 

Fascist Policing: “Betty Shelby Got Away With Murder”

What can I say?

White police officer Betty Shelby killed Black Terence Crutcher while his hands were raised in the air or being returned to a raised position after attempting to retrieve something (we don’t know what, but it was probably ID) from his car. He had raised his hands and kept them raised while walking to the car to get whatever it was that Crutcher felt necessary. He was exhibiting all the typical signs of submission, and though the cops say he disobeyed orders, cops frequently give contradictory orders (“Hands up! Show us your ID!”) especially when, as here, more than one cop is one the scene at the same time. And, of course, even if Crutcher were to disobey a legal officer given by a cop with the best of intentions and training, and even if Crutcher were to disobey for the most venal of motives, the penalty for disobeying a legal order given my a law enforcement officer is, if I understand the law correctly, something less than the death penalty both under state law and under Tulsa’s city ordinances. Of course, it is possible that I’m simply misunderstanding the specific legal meaning of the phrases “Failure to comply will constitute a misdemeanor punishable by a fine not to exceed Two Hundred Fifty Dollars ($250.00).” and “shall be punished by a fine of not more than Two Hundred Dollars ($200.00)”. Tulsa is in an entirely different country from me after all.

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Christianity Versus Personal Responsibility

No deep insights here. Just a big, bold WTF? at the fact that so many conservative Christians continue to profess to be champions of personal responsibility.

Really?

Christians: your god hates personal responsibility. He loathes it. If you believe he exists and if you believe Christian doctrine, then this god has condemned you to torture because of something someone else did thousands of years before you were born. That’s not personal responsibility. If that god believed in personal responsibility, Eve and Adam would have taken some lumps – presumably the snake also – and, well, that would be it. They were cast out of the garden. Their children didn’t return, so no one else ate the forbidden fruit. Nope. Just those two. But the Christian god is happy to make you responsible for events in which you played no personal part.

And, of course, there’s no responsibility imposed on you for your evil acts. Sure, you have to “believe” in the Big J, but even if you don’t commit any evil acts, you’d still have to have faith in order to escape torture. To escape divine condemnation, Stalin must pay the same price (no more, no less) that any child who dies within minutes of being born must pay. No need to make amends to those you’ve wronged. No need to do something a little extra to make it back into the Christian god’s good graces if you ordered water boarding and other war crimes. No need to suck up just a little bit more if you launch a war that kills hundreds of thousands of people.

Nope. This god condemns regardless of your behavior. This god condemns regardless of the amount of evil you harbor. And this god forgives Hitler and Mother Teresa just as quickly and easily as this god “forgives” Charles Hamilton Houston, Sylvia Rivera, Hildegard von Bingen, and Woody Guthrie.

Personalized responsibility? Responsibility where it actually matters what you personally have done, why you did it, and what outcomes resulted? That’s anathema to the Christian god and antithetical to the tenets of Christianity.

And yet so many people simultaneously profess to be devout Christians and believers in personal responsibility. I sometimes wonder: do they even realize that they must of necessity be lying about at least one of those things?

Rice or the Media: Whom do I condemn?

And I swear I’m not trying to pick on Newsweek.com, but it was there that I first saw an article on Condoleezza Rice’s new book. I was laughing from the first sentence:

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that U.S.-led interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia were not about spreading democracy, but about addressing regional security issues.

Her recent public statements both are and are not part of a book tour: it’s likely many would say the tour is to promote her ideas, and the book is part of that effort, though I think that demeans the reasoning and efforts of others who write books, artificially ennobling Rice’s efforts to communicate her ideas and sell books at the same time while implicitly assigning a crass commercialism to others who write books and then accept lectures to speak about the same themes contained within the books. In any case, however, it’s undeniable that the public statements are part of an effort that is equally well reflected by the publication of her book, Democracy: The Long Road to Freedom.*1
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