James A. Donald said:
A more martial religion could have adopted the cause of forcibly ending slavery, and still remained true to itself. Christianity could not.
Must “Forcibly ending slavery” be our litmus test for legitimate religion?
Author Archives: Matthew
A More Martial Religion
Adaptation versus Common Descent
Either WordPress has classified me as a spammer, or everyone in the orthosphere hates me. Every comment I’ve made to WP blogs in the last few weeks has gone straight into moderation. Poor me.
Normally I’m only scattering one liners of dubious value, but I just now tried to leave a more substantive comment on Thrasymachus’s post about evolved morality. Here’s what I wrote:
As a creationist, I find it highly annoying how stupid most creationists are, and how inept so many are at fighting evolutionists. A large part of the problem is that evolutionists play fast and loose with words. “Evolution” is a sack full of associated but not necessarily entangled connotations. Walter ReMine spends a fair amount of pages in The Biotic Message demonstrating the sleight of hand used by evolution propagandists so he can establish a consistent and non-equivocal terminology, so he can go about the business of arguing for a fascinating theory of creation.
Where this is relevant to your post: any creationist who believes that dogs, foxes, coyotes, dingoes, and wolves all descended from the same original beast ought to have no trouble with the idea that creatures change form, diversify, adapt. They evolve, if evolve is taken strictly to mean “unfold”, and not the creation of new genetic information. What I perceive to be the non-negotiable objection held by most creationists (smart or stupid) is an objection to common descent. This is fitting. Common descent is prima facie ridiculous. Future generations will catalog the idea alongside spontaneous generation and the bodily humors.
So: even the most recalcitrant young earth creationists ought not to have trouble with the concept that God’s creatures change and adapt, including humans. But some do, as demonstrated. The problem’s source, as with so many other diseases of modernity, is in Universalism. It is offensive to the Universalized mind, yea even the fundamentalist churchian creationist Universalized mind, to contemplate that some races of mankind may be degraded, incompetent, beastly, in a word: devolved.
You, too, can contribute to the Great Susan Walsh Ban-athon
Word on the street is that Aunt Giggles (a.k.a. Susan Walsh) is now deleting any comments which mention Dalrock, Rollo, or Yohami. Truth will out. Groovy.
Obviously the best response is to see how many people can get banned this weekend from Hooking Up Smart. We’ll call it the The Great Susan Walsh Ban-athon. The goal: 1000 bannings by Monday.
Here’s the plan:
Go to Hooking Up Smart, pick a post or three, and add a comment containing the names Dalrock, Rollo Tomassi, and Yohami. Save the link to your particular comment and, if you know how, take a screen shot and upload it to some image host.
Then come back here and report your contribution in the comments. Include the link to your comment and to the screen shot, if you have one. To keep the banning total honest, anyone we don’t recognize as an established member of the mano/ortho/roissysphere will be asked to provide a link to some comment or blog post proving his existence before this week.
Spread the word. Give Aunt Giggles the bird. The success of The Great Susan Walsh Ban-athon is in your hands.
Father Knows Best: Scattershot edition
Texas now has a gin. Also a pecan rum.
Ethics, game theory, and social engineering. Bruce Schneier’s analysis.
In depth video analyses of cinematic action sequences. The Dark Knight, Salt, and the classics.
Plus-sized bikinis for your fat wives
I missed this excellent comment by Haley the first time around.
Ancient engineering and mathematics expressed in engines of war.
An Ars Technica article about climate that isn’t credulous moonbattery. Gaia be praised.
Oh my Roissy! They killed Kenny! Those manboobs!
Shame the Beta Month. Heck, make it a year.
Adventures of Fake Justin Bieber
Not All Wall-hitters Are Like That
Archive.org’s preservation of inchoatus.com, a dead website that used to publish conservativish, libertarianish, Christianish reviews of science fiction and fantasy. Orson Scott Card is lazy. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is deep and profound. Michael Flynn’s Firestar series is brilliant (it really is). Cryptonomicon is more gold than gold. If you like those, you should read all of the Gene Wolfe reviews. Then you should read all of Gene Wolfe.
Father Knows Best: The Cowardly Edition
The Main Attraction:
John Derbyshire: The Talk: Nonblack Version
An interview with the Derb: I May Give up Writing and Work as a Butler
Attempt at a Google Bomb: Rich Lowry is a Coward
I like this Google Bomb better: Rich Lowry
Joe Sobran on a different coward
Vox Day: A Purge Too Far
Thrasymachus: We Need to Talk…
James Donald with a characteristically incisive comment on a post at ESR’s blog.
James Donald in a comment on his own blog.
latte island: Schadenfreude of the Week
Sideshows:
SF author Gene Wolfe: The Best Introduction to the Mountains. Reflections on Tolkien and civilization.
Old Vox Day posts, brought to light by Vox Popoli commenter Daniel: Jesus Christ and Leadership, Quality of Evidence
Thrasymachus: Christianity and Leftism
Anonymous age 69, a comment on a PMAFT post
Ten Foured: I Guess I Am A Single Dad Now
The marvelous deti, in a comment at Ten Foured.
The Last Psychiatrist: What’s Wrong with The Hunger Games
Professor Mentu: Experiment Shows Women are More Productive than Men. But there’s a twist.
Black Swans on Your Picnic Table
This war is going to turn out badly. We are wasting lives and resources while the United States decays and other threats emerge
Now, the towers have fallen
So much dust in the air
It affected your vision
Couldn’t see yourself clearFrom the fall came such choices
Even worse than the fall
There’s this chain of consequencesAction, cause and reaction
Never follows to plan
Black swans on your picnic table
Knocking over the jamPlease don’t preach me forgiveness
You’re hardwired for revenge
War is just about business
Within, without…
The dead live on within us
Keep your fingers crossed
We were choking on the smoke and the dust
And the lives that were lostScratch the surface of liberals
There’s a beast underneath
Others hiding their Jekyll’s
Within, without
One of these men is not like the others
I swear I don’t actually read aintitcool.com. Only maybe a glancing approach every other day. And I’m always disappointed at the lack of interestingness. Mostly because Massawyrm is effectively done writing there.
Anyway, the point of this post is that Massawyrm, my all time favorite movie reviewer, is one of the men in the included image, and he has Succeeded!, at least to the extent of co-writing a movie that Ethan Hawke will act in. Hawke may be a slut for indies, but he knows how to pick them.
Try to guess which man is the actual successful one. If you have any doubts, google “massawyrm”.
This is the worst thing ever in the entire history of all of it
I do not have, and there do not exist words for this. Are we sure the Ring was actually destroyed? This is a three-shot video, and I don’t mean it was filmed in three shots. Every half minute or so I had to stop the video and stagger around my house like Young Frankenstein in a casting call for Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.
“The same preacher counseled her through all four divorces”
From a comment at Dalrock’s
She was never a “bad person” although she did have a couple of LTRs that “didn’t work out,” between her marriages. She’s generous and loving, and devoted to her children and her parents. Heck, the same preacher counseled her through all four divorces.
As opposed to kicking her ass out of the congregation and snubbing her in public. What part of “go and sin no more” is it that churchians have trouble understanding?
Patriactionary 
