Humor too - I’m the man who would be king:

Let me simplify if I may.

When you talk about ‘belief’ in a *transcendent god or deity it means *beyond this world’s totality.

We are all more than the sum of our parts per se (or each one part ‘as if’ alone added up) since we are also *how they all function together. I.e. in each of our microcosm each = our parts’ or ‘our’ totality, how they function together. [Then if a ‘believer’ in the transcendent – chuck in a soul or ‘spark’ of the divine or that which is beyond even the totality.] ?

It is difficult enough to know ourself, and probably impossible, although sages instruct that if we do or can, then such knowledge as that - is the beginning of wisdom.

How much more difficult then is it to know the totality of the world or how all of this world’s parts function together or its ‘totality.’

I’ll go farther in saying that’s impossible at that *macrocosmic level, and thus an *unknowable - since WE ourself/selves are a *part of that which we would attempt to look at or attempt to observe at that level, and thus we ourself can’t see ‘it’ either per se, since we affect it.

In other words it EXISTS big time and we *can’t even observe it because we too are a part of it.

Although the conclusion to ‘get’ or derive from that is *not as the Cartesians would have you ‘believe’, it ‘only’ exists then in your ‘thought.’ That is the mother so to speak of ALL bullsh*t and even blasphemy ‘as if’ one were God.

The Cartesians came to precisely the extreme *inaccurate conclusion.

It--in other ‘words’--exists BIG TIME, even though you also can’t see it in its totality… just like each of us ‘little time’, we too exist, and it’s difficult enough (if not impossible) to see ourselves. Though (good news) we can get close enough for jazz at that level – and those become sages… and sometimes (humor) even classical musicians.  Err, like me.

So I am always befuddled and bemused by those who claim, and/or tell themselves they can ‘see’ by an exercise of their own will/s (alone) that which is even beyond a totality of not only themselves, and us all…

But beyond the very totality of the world as well – into the transcendent.

The very Fact that we *can’t do that is why the ‘word’ faith came into existence in the first place… for if we could *know, there would never have been the need for the word ‘faith.’

However the other ‘good news’ IS it does exist because you exist and so does that which is so much bigger than all of us exist – even when, it is impossible for any one or all of us to see it or observe it per se, at all.

Does that help?  Even if it doesn’t it’s accurate – and is also what we mean by Hard right!  Because we also know you’d much rather ‘believe’ the bullsh*t … and so that is the ‘why’ of why bullsh*t becomes the gold standard.

Having said this let me ask to see if you know – what happens though when the bullsh*t you prefer goes bad inevitably – who do you blame – yourselves for not having the aptitude or stomach for the Hard right. No of course not, you’d want to blame me, but I see it in advance and attempt to adjust.

That’s by the way what I’m doing now.  I’d open it to questions but just because you can ask a question doesn’t mean it’s real.  Though I’d still open it to questions but quite frankly speaking you have not yet even evolved to the place you can ask an appropriate one (except those on a website like this.) Of course for that you’d want to ‘blame’ me too.  So needless to say I prefer invisibility.  Ok?

Usually though long before it’s time to change you do have an elite screwing you unnecessarily and unremittingly, since they are just as stupid or more so than yourselves… and so, you should crush them.  Please do so NOW as you have my permission.  You see, you used to actually ‘like’ or appreciate good kings like me, so we were comfortable enough to be visible.  Today our comfort level is however, not to be seen.  Amen.

Thanks, Paul, for a thoughtful response. Let me explain what I was trying to imply, and what I wasn’t.

I was implying that GIVEN A MATERIALIST WORLDVIEW THAT DENIES PERSONAL IMMORTALITY, it is rather arbitrary to concern oneself about the future of one’s own genetic cousins--that is, one’s race. Indeed, I made the stronger argument that self-sacrifice for one’s own children is probably foolish, viewed from the perspective of personal satisfaction.

Neither of these things are true if God exists. Indeed, I am concerned about the future of my civilization, and will probably make the personal sacrifices required to have a family, BECAUSE of my theologically inspired beliefs about human nature and my own duties. I don’t accept racialism as a philosophy or a program because it seems to me an unhealthy obsession with a partial truth--the natural solidarity of ethnic cousins--which too often obscures deeper realities: man’s moral equality before God, and the universal mission of the Church to redeem souls and bring them into the Mystical Body of Christ. This is obviously more important to me than ethnic kinship--but all things being equal, I don’t want to see Croatia overrun with Turks, or see the U.S. become a country where my descendants would be part of a newly disenfranchised (and thus wildly hated) minority. But I only think it’s worth HAVING descendants because I believe in Natural Law--which depends upon a God, as Nature’s author. Otherwise, it really is just selfish DNA, with our consciousness as a mostly regrettable epiphenomenon. In which case, who really gives a sh*t? Pass the bong.

paul s. your meds are calling you.

Whether Jeff.w or Paul.s, your posts are just as inane.

To repeat: you are not funny

Its very simple.

The Sumerians said we come from space dust.  Put a current to this dust and it forms a helix as DNA does. http://www.itwire.com/content/view/14101/1066/

Science and religion are about to meet headon.

The elite are failing to reproduce, but they are not so much the cognitive elite as much as the arrogant class that say they know better than you (e.g. that mortgage backed securities can be rated AAA so are as safe as treasuries).

The humble go about their lives, play by God’s rules, and reproduce, spread, and eventually dominate, though they tend to lose their humility.

Perhaps God and Darwin are united in this one thing - that the best survive.  God promised so in the Torah.

But God’s definition of the best and Man’s differ.

And survival extends beyond procreation.  We still read Plato and Aristotle, Moses and the Gospels.  Augustine and Aquinas.  Milton and Dante.

There was a lot on nonsense written through the ages, just as there was a lot of pleasant but meaningless music.  Yet today one can ascend on the wings of the St. Matthew’s Passion, Don Giovanni, the Emperor Concerto, and not know of the rest of what was merely noise contemporary to those composers.

Equally so those who would compose their own books of morality instead of realizing the Teacher’s guide has slipped into our hands at Mt. Sinai with all the right answers.  And they have been proven at once correct and impossible to implement.  Yet how old are the cultures that have adopted them and attempt to live by them however imperfectly? 

The Naturalists of old may have been virile, but in a eugenic fashion - they may have wanted to breed, but sterilize too or worse.  The new naturalists are hopelessly sterile.

When this too passes away, at least the fads of this age, the families who might disagree rabidly on the existence or nature of deity, but who practice the ancient rules will go on and barely notice the rises and falls.  They have civilization in their hearts and hearth.

It is just an aside, but on the topic of “I would also suspect that John Z is not quite happy about admitting that DNA has something to do with our intellectual and social capacities.”

The world pays quite a lot of attention to this, and sadly the hermeneutic structure of it is “race,” which if you place in large buckets along the Hernstein-Murry “Bell Curve” lines, can tease out some statistical differences.

John Z. and I share a faith in which God has divinely revealed that he loves each individual human, and created them uniquely, and that even if a single one of them only committed one sin, He still died for them to pay the price of that sin and reconcile him or her to God. Talk about your 30-sigma events!

John Derbyshire is, like myself, trained in mathematics (me statistics, him I think in topology, given his excellent books on algebra and the zeta function).

Even without a God revealing that “race” hermeneutics is a dead end, and even with observations of the *past* that there is some observable difference in IQ under the hermeneutic criteria of “race,” on a purely mathematical basis it cannot explain the future.

Why?

Let’s posit a world without G-d, and leave everything to random chance. It is a cold fact of statistical probability that the random variation of the combinations of DNA going forward (as folks wed spouses from much further afield than the farm next door) and the individual random variation that occurs even within a couple (ever notice that those 13 children from the healthy Catholic couple all look different? And all have different talents and abilities and interests?  Ta da! Random variation of combination of DNA at work) will create a far different world than the past.

Paleo-conservatives need to cease falling into the perpetual drift to de-generate argument. People of ordinary intelligence give birth to geniuses. People of superior intelligence give birth to God’s treasures that are intellectually challenged. The crypto-Eugenics arguments that the best must bred is ignoring the fact that “the best” in intelligence are regularly replenished from the most undistinguished stock. Sure genes explain a lot, but random variation explains more.

I hold as a matter of faith that the hand of a gracious and loving God is directing our future genetic heritage.

In addition, paleo-conservatives would do well to abandon championing the one dimensional hermeneutic tool of “intelligence,” defaulting to IQ tests, and start recognizing the given that human being are at the minimum n-dimensional. Johnson O’Connor had an answer for the Eugenics movement (that had a lot of self-definition of superior moral hazard in it) when he identified that human beings have “aptitudes” in addition to intelligence. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_O'Connor). He also identified that anyone can self-improve simply by increasing their vocabulary. As a statistician and financier, I look at each word on an atomistic basis, as an imbedded option that is always in the money and ready to be exercised by those who pick up as many as they can. Today’s word for everyone at Takimag is “stochastic.”

Is it time for conservatism to divorce from religion?

How seductive religion is.  An army of ready made, dedicated, followers to harness for the Good, whether they understand it or not.

But is it a double edged sword?  Are those so easily led, also easily led astray?  What happens when these allies who swell the ranks are guided to work at cross purposes?  What loyalty will they show for a nuanced philosophy the majority of them cannot even grasp?

Perhaps it is time for a clean break, time for religion to be relegated to where it belongs; the personal life, not the public and certainly not the political.

“In addition, paleo-conservatives would do well to abandon championing the one dimensional hermeneutic tool of “intelligence,” defaulting to IQ tests, and start recognizing the given that human being are at the minimum n-dimensional. Johnson O’Connor had an answer for the Eugenics movement (that had a lot of self-definition of superior moral hazard in it) when he identified that human beings have “aptitudes” in addition to intelligence. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_O'Connor). He also identified that anyone can self-improve simply by increasing their vocabulary. “

All lies.  Different kinds of intelligence correlate with one another.

As Paul suggests, a civilization is in serious trouble if its defenders cannot or will not invoke rational (as well as religious) arguments in favor of self-preservation and fecundity. A purely theistic argument in favor of survival and the sanctity of life turns moral reflection into a leap of faith.  This argument works only if one is already preaching to the converted.  As problematic as materialism is, it is enough to refute it on the basis of theism alone.  The Kantian distinction between the realms of nature and freedom needs rational defense, not fideism.

Correction:  “As problematic as materialism is, it is NOT enough to refute it on the basis of theism alone.”

“All lies.  Different kinds of intelligence correlate with one another.”

At the median cohort, yes, but not at any cohort that is one standard deviation over from the mean. The r-square starts weakening and dispersion itself becomes the explanatory variable, which is consistent with the heat equation and noise expectations.

James N. Ward is, of course, correct in his observations that people of low intelligence produce offspring of high intelligence (and vice versa) and that intelligence is not the only quality that matters.  However, these observations are hardly fatal to the theories underlying eugenics.  I doubt any competent eugenicist would deny them or the vital importance of random variation.  Eugenics is nothing if it is not Darwinian and an important concept in evolutionary biology is that the long term benefits to a species from genetic variation is an explanation for sexual reproduction.  Yet the same evolutionary biologist who will tell us that the mixing of genes in sexual reproduction provides the diversity necessary for a species to adapt and survive will also tell us that sexual reproduction leads to us choosing our mates so as to maximize our offspring’s chances of survival.  These ideas are not contradictary because random variation and human choice influence us at different levels.

When the eugenics movement was at its height in the early 20th century it enjoyed support from accross the political spectrum.  When it met with opposition on the Right it was mostly among conservative Christians who opposed it because of its connection to a view of human origins they believed to be incompatible with the Christian view, its placing control over very personal decisions in the hands of distant planners, and a perceived tendency to devalue human life.  These are all legitimate reasons for conservatives, especially conservatives of faith, to be wary of eugenics.  That does not mean that everything in the theories underlying the eugenics movement needs to be thrown out.  Those who think otherwise would do well to recall that long before Charles Darwin or Sir Francis Galton appeared on the scene people were deliberately choosing their mates (or choosing mates for their children) for traits of character, intelligence, health, and physical strength and beauty that were seen to run in a certain family line.  The Church made no objection to this, and indeed its traditions upheld the practice.  Abraham and Isaac, you might recall, sent their sons to obtain wives from among their own people rather than from the heathen tribes in Canaan. 

Something similar can be said about Malthusian theory and Christian conservatism.  Rev. Malthus was demonstrably wrong in his prediction that population growth would lead to widespread starvation due to the failure of food production to keep up.  Similarly, his famous 20th Century’s disciple Paul Ehrlich’s predictions have largely failed to come to pass.  Further, Christian conservatives are certainly right to point out and condemn the evil use that has been made of Malthusian theory by the the likes of Planned Parenthood and other contributors to the anti-family, anti-life “culture of death”.  Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to throw out the basic truth of Malthusianism, that population growth cannot exceed resources and production capability without producing vast human misery, because of failed predictions and misapplications.  Dr. Virgina D. Abernethy in her book “Population Politics” pointed out that traditional societies, including traditional Christian societies, had cultural restraints that limited population growth to a size the society could afford.  By condemning sexual intercourse outside of marriage as sinful, and imposing heavy social consequences on those who violated that taboo, and keeping men from marrying until they could afford to support a wife and children, the Christian tradition achieved the end of population control without the means of birth control and abortion.  This is preferable by far to the comtemporary pattern of complete sexual license combined with birth control and abortion that is keeping our fertility rates at dangerously low levels.  And perhaps the famous “lifeboat ethics” theory of Dr. Garrett Hardin, an application of Malthusian theory to the questions of immigration and foreign aid, is best applied in the form of Christian conservative localism.

Eh, Derb’s not especially cerebral. More than Novak certainly, but that’s not the highest of bars right there.

You may have noticed that his attacks on stuff he doesn’t like are extremely impressionistic, and rarely have much in the way of evidential or analytical substance.

And a sign of this lack of cerebrality is that he keeps attacking easy targets like Novak, or even extremely uncharitable reconstructions of religious arguments that he made up himself (Case in point: in the recent exchange, he asserted that religious people don’t care about evidence, and that whenever you press them for it, they say “You just gotta believe”. Curiously, he didn’t cite any actual believers saying this, or offer up any evidence that most think it).

Whenever he’s confronted by someone more formidable (and not just on Christianity, but any topic), he’s shown something of a pattern: He punts, and comes up with some excuse for why he doesn’t *need* to know what the hell he’s talking about in order to bash it (in the recent exchange, he actually cited PZ Myer’s “Courtier’s Reply”, for instance).

The reason he keeps taking squishes like Novak as representative of Christianity, and dodging the argument when somebody more substantial comes along, is that he’s too intellectually lazy, or too much an intellectual lightweight, to put himself through a serious mental challenge.

To James Ward
If you knew much about biology you might appreciate that the relevant word is very much “deterministic” and not “stochastic”.

John Derbyshire’s diatribe is juvenile. If he wants to disprove the existence of God, he should take on the serious arguments that have been made for it, rather than the straw man of the irrational believer lampooned on Saturday Night Live and in Obama’s war room.

Mike Potemra is almost as silly for his crude understanding of religious tolerance. He should know that more than just the “occasional edgy blogger” calls into question the enlightenment principle that the state should treat all religions equally.

Let’s leave aside the question of whether it’s even logically possible to treat all religions equally. The Catholic Church still officially teaches that, in states where a majority of the population is Catholic, the Catholic religion should be given preferential treatment. Furthermore, it is argued by more than just the occasional blogger that Dignitatis Humanae is a prudential document which does not nullify the traditional Catholic teaching that the state has religious duties, just as the individual person has.

Enlightenment secularists can’t declare victory yet. Nor do they have the footing to declare, as Potemra does, that “...it was secularists who forced Christianity to be truer to its own general principles.” PUH_LEEZE!

Dear Grant,
Who said anything about Fideism? I was talking about Theism, the Natural Law, and personal immortality, all of which are part of Natural Theology, derived (if not to everyone’s satisfaction) by rational arguments from the evidence of nature. No need for Revelation here--although of course, it helps!

Dear John,
I shall put my cards on the table. As a critic of scholasticism, I tend to believe that the Thomistic use of “nature” ultimately must come down to a leap of faith, since Aquinas must subordinate Aristotelian philosophy to the authority of revelation.  In short, the “Philosopher” does not have equal status to Scripture.  Ergo, faith must trump reason.  Additionally, it is not obvious to me that Aristotlelian reason can provide a defense for the sanctity of life--and so we are back to faith (unless we have a different idea of reason from that of Aristotle).

Low fertility--a temporary phenomenon, until the family-values types outbreed the New Class--isn’t critical per se, as long as you don’t have immigration.  More room on the freeways!  And when it comes to stopping immigration, Christians--who are universalists by definition--are at a special ideological disadvantage.  (Yeah, I know Christianity doesn’t logically imply open borders.)

Or am I missing something?

The appropriate question to ask then, in response to jeff w.’s, is:

Since the totality itself in terms of our *knowing how all of the parts function together is an unknowable, is it moot or *irrelevant whether or not the so-called transcendent--[or that which is *beyond height, width, depth & (time i.e. motion) and how they all function together as a totality]--exists at all?  (Since then obviously it is unknowable to us as well, via an act of our own will/s, alone.)

Jeff points out we can know the totality exists (i.e. his *Other good news) even though we can’t see it per se, because we exist.  But obviously we can’t *know except via a leap of faith if there is anything beyond the totality… Or even *know how or why the totality functions at its level ‘this side of paradise’ as it does.

And so - is it a moot question whether the divine or that which is beyond the totality exists?  One of those questions that just because we can ask it doesn’t mean it’s real?

Or does it become a real question because we exist and many of us have such a faith, in what we imagine to be beyond the totality i.e. in the divine.  (I can sense many of you are on the edge of your seats, preferring to believe in the Divine.)

We know today in terms of our biology that having such a faith releases--(when we allow ourselves such visions of the divine)--the brain’s natural painkillers generically known as ‘endorphins’.  And so it seems we are rewarded for having faith, if it is paradoxically a prosaic but real reward for having an imagination. 
Even if that is the biological reason for faith and/or for human imagination, it still does not negate or even mitigate whether or not there is a transcendent Deity.  For that is the area or arena of belief whether one believes there is, or conversely one believes there is not, it remains also an unknowable for theists and a’theists both in their own way ‘believers.’

I think (e.g. as opposed in this case to belief – since on the other hand ‘thought’ deals with the *knowable) that at the level of the marcrocosmic it is a moot question; however at the level of the *microcosmic or at our level our biology is (obviously, whether we wish to admit it or not) the measure of all things.  If you don’t wish to ‘believe’ me, hold your breath and count to 100?

We in this regard are both trapped and in many ways liberated by our biology.  So my conclusion would be if believing there is a transcendent divine and such attendant deities or Deity or a top Deity as it were, gets one’s endorphins going then one *ought to believe that.  On the other hand if believing that there is not such an additional dimension or reality as the divine, gets one’s endorphins going then apparently one ought to believe that.  Given that the design of the world is what it is, whether of a divine origin.  Or of an origin pertaining only to its own totality and its place in the totality of the universe.  Either way one exists & is *free at least to believe whatever, as it were, floats one’s boat. 

I must say in my personal case I believe in the divine (I notice) only when in physical pain or agony and am begging for help, thus more or less proving in my own case there are no atheists in foxholes?  Or at least in my case there are no ‘wounded’ atheists in foxholes.  Probably prior to that I’m happily and atheisitically firing away at the ‘perceived’ enemy, until I’m ‘hit’ – and begging for divine intervention.  All of this is why I make it a habit to avoid war and foxholes.  But at least I’m honest.  Jeff, I assume you were tongue-in-cheek about wanting to be or being a ‘king’.  If so that was pretty humorous, and if not it was probably more humorous.

I agree though the truth is sometimes difficult to find out in the world but not impossible, when in a sufficient context and so it is a *knowable.  But both totality, and that which is (or is not) beyond it, are *unknowables to us mere mortals herein.  The questions themselves are real enough and *not moot, only when measured in the light inevitably of human biology which both traps us.  While happily enough in other instances within their own limits liberate us.  Divine intervention on the other hand is not measurable and a matter of faith then or in the realm of belief whether believes there is or there is not – I agree.  Long live the king.

Dr.Z.
“GIVEN A MATERIALIST WORLDVIEW THAT DENIES PERSONAL IMMORTALITY, it is rather arbitrary to concern oneself about the future of one’s own genetic cousins”

I’m not sure about this. The future of one’s own genetic cousins is the closest substitute for personal immortality, particuarly if you can’t manage to cultivate much faith in the latter like the Derb. Doesn’t the world of immortality just beyond this one tend to make the future of one’s own genetic cousins rather insignificant?

“I was implying that GIVEN A MATERIALIST WORLDVIEW THAT DENIES PERSONAL IMMORTALITY, it is rather arbitrary to concern oneself about the future of one’s own genetic cousins”

So how is it that given a religious worldview, we have genetic cousins killing each other over some miserable piece of desert?

For a Theist, life after death is in a place called “heaven”. For a Darwinist, it is here, in your children and grandchildren, and to a lesser extent in your kinfolk.

“So how is it that given a religious worldview, we have genetic cousins killing each other over some miserable piece of desert?”

Most Israelis are not genetically related to the Palestinians. Most of the people calling themselves Jews today are converted Khazarians. Only the Sephardic Jews are really Semitic and they are treated as second class citizens in Israel.

To: Tim, whether he’s ‘tim’ or ‘AC’… Thanks, I’m glad you morons read. One day thousands of
years from now - possibly you’ll or your gene pool, will be able to ‘think’ well? I’m hoping
on the other hand, you self-destruct first, making that observation moot. ... Apparently
paul s. thought I was funny whether on his meds or not, you sc#m. I could care less about your
worthless perceptions, whether I’m on target or not, which matters not to me either, fools. It’s
just fun - and apparently taki or taki.com could care less either. Good. Paul s., by the way
even writing releases the endorphins which is why I do it. Why not? Especially if it aggravates
the morons. What more could one ask for - right ‘timmie’ & ‘ac’. Swine.

For a Theist, life after death is in a place called “heaven”. For a Darwinist, it is here, in your children and grandchildren, and to a lesser extent in your kinfolk.

Well that kind of sucks for the Darwinist.
Of course, the only thing that matters is which one of them is correct.

Dr. Gottfried: when will you be converting to Christianity? Some of us have been awaiting this for years. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…

“If you knew much about biology you might appreciate that the relevant word is very much “deterministic” and not “stochastic”. [sic]”

Ssssszzzzzz.

If I had a nickel for ever person who assumed I lacked knowledge of a field, I’d have about ten bucks in a very heavy sack by now.

Gimme your nickel ian.

Okay, biology is not *deterministic* (meaning, for us math geeks, that there is a linear correlation with an r-square of 100) but it may have *slope* and *drift* on….

On…well, whatever hermeneutic construct you care to come up with. I have an old ceramic phrenology head you are welcome to study. And please ian, next you are at my house let me measure your biomass’s phlogiston with my phlogiston detector. I can’t wait to have perfect knowledge in heaven so I can look back and laugh at the crap we believe now is true that will be discredited 100 years from now. I suspect most of what ian believes is true is in that category.

Most folks’ inch-deep knowledge and mile-wide opinions on genetics begin with a vague recollection of Father Mendel and end with them raising the flag for themselves.

We’ve learned a lot since Mendel, and the first and most obvious knowledge is that his experiment with peas is not a universal model that is mapable to all other living things with genes. A common example, if we confine ourselves to plants, is corn hybridization. Basically when you take two superior parent strains of corn the desirable genes only last one or two generations before being washed out again in….you guessed it… random variation. Which is why farmers are always planting a new hybrid virtually every other year and Monsanto will stay in business for forever, or as long as we are hungry for pork (most corn is feed to hogs).

People are more genetically complex than corn, but we also can’t escape the same largest trend: random combination. Ever heard of regressing to mean? Ever hear the old adage “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” for supposedly superior “patrician” or robber baron progeny? Ta da! The random at work.

First, there isn’t a single thing in Hernstein-Murry that I disagree with, and neither do I disagree that IQ measures something, but as loathsome as Stephen Jay Gould’s other ideas are, his criticism of the Bell Curve that the random on all the factors on all the dimensions that make up human beings easily overwhelms currently observable statistical differences over the long term is correct. I will add with the exact same mathematical rigor of Hernstein-Murry.  Therefore, worrying about the Chinese kid next to you in class with a probable 2 to 5 points higher IQ is a waste of time, and feeling smug about yourself because of your probably 2 to 5 points higher IQ over the black guy in the same classroom is hubris at best, and a mortal sin at worst.

And as the inventor of statistics Blaise Pascal would have it, you really need to worry much more about saving your soul.

My point is, as much as we like to focus on minor “race” differences, and minor observable drift or slope in ability or intelligence using that hermeneutic construct, it remains a mathematical fact that the largest explanatory variable is that a random combination of genes is the determinant of ability, not the Eugenicists faux-argument of “breeding” with intention. You can try, but it is a shot in the dark (ho ho ho ho), and the only statistically certain way to ensure the desirable outcome and have a real standard-deviation-over-the-mean of the average intelligence of *your* progeny (you do have superior genes, don’t you?) is to have n >30.

The n > 30 in this case would be thirty children.

God bless ya! And we congratulate you for trying! And we’ll even help the family all get to Mass on Sunday, you mensch of statistical certainty superior breeder you!

But I’m getting bored explaining this to the likes of dialogue partners of ad hominem rhetoric like ian, so unless you can read and understand this book: http://www.amazon.com/Stochastic-Processes-Physics-Chemistry-Biology/dp/3540410740/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222850272&sr=8-3, and this one, http://www.amazon.com/Stochastic-Differential-Equations-Introduction-Applications/dp/3540047581/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222850371&sr=8-1 I’ll stop now.

- James “certified 159 IQ and so pissed at my genes and G-d for missing out on that 160 threshold to “exceptionally gifted” over that pussy-category “highly gifted” grrrrrrrr. Stuck in the Vertex society, and I’ll never get into the Tetra society. Grrrrr

“Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to throw out the basic truth of Malthusianism, that population growth cannot exceed resources and production capability without producing vast human misery, because of failed predictions and misapplications.”

It is pretty easy to throw out Malthusianism by pointing out that “resources” are not finite. Why? Malthus came to his conclusions from simple arithmetic: he took population growth, the amount of food to feed someone, and then the productivity per acre, and “voila!” Instant equation of the apocalypse.

Then a strange thing happened: grain productivity per acre increased because the clever monkeys that we are figured out how to increase agricultural yields. As a result, more people were able to eat beef. And more and more people on the planet have been eating beef ever since.

Cold facts to all Malthusians: there are more people on the planet *right now* than there have ever been, and the average daily calorie intake of humans is the highest it has ever been. Let’s hope the population trend continues but the caloric intake levels off at optimal for our health.

In the Kutursmog of the 60s, Malthus’s ideas were revived, and well do I remember cleaning my plate because of my angry mother’s admonition about “starving children in India.”

It was true, kids in India were starving, and the problem was wheat. Wheat is an interesting grass, because its seeds make this wonderful thing called bread. Trouble is, wheat’s genes, because it was grass after all, instructed it to grow tall, and make some seeds, so most of the energy it absorbed from the sun was spent making the stalk tall, and that left little left over for seed production. Imagine a Miami playboy, or George Hamilton, who spends his days getting a magnificent tan and gravity exercising to grow long and lean, but then spends the night in the bedroom shooting blanks.

Along comes agronomist Norman Borlaug (my former colleague, BTW), and if the world were a fairer place, statues of him would be in every city on the planet. He re-engineered wheat to produce a bigger head of grain and quit wasting so much energy on its stalk.

He quite literally saved billions of people from starvation, and confined Malthus’s ideas to the dustbin of history.

The larger point is: Malthus will always be wrong because we are the clever monkeys. Human beings produce intellectual capital that changes the supposedly “bounded” set of “resources.” Resources are not bounded. We keep getting smarter and using what we have better. Some may argue that the universe’s defined matter will be the ultimate boundary condition and prove Malthus correct then (this would be millions of years in the future, BTW), but even now we clever monkeys are learning how to manipulate matter at the subatomic level, and even further.

BTW, the way God dismisses this fear is: “give us this day our daily bread” and “God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground--everything that has the breath of life in it--I give every green plant for food.”

Malthus is wrong because God has provided everything His children need and always will. It is our sins that thwart His will.

At one time, Christianity advised against the practice of behaving irresponsibly by doing whatever one wished and justifying it with “God will forgive me so it doesn’t matter”.  This practice, of treating divine forgiveness as if it removed the moral limits God Himself had placed on human behavior, was called the sin of presumption on God’s grace by Christian theologians.

Moral limitations are not the only limitations God has placed on mankind.  The same God who called us to trust Him by saying “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself” also advised us to “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.” God’s providence does not justify laziness any more than God’s grace and mercy in Christ justify sinning.

Likewise, God’s command to “Be fruitful and multiply” is not a justification for an attitude of irresponsibility when it comes to reproduction.  God Himself placed limitations on human reproductive activity.  Orthodox Christian morality forbids sex outside of marriage and there is a long tradition within Christendom of parents telling their sons to wait until they are established, ie able to support a family, before taking wives.  In telling their sons such, they were supported by their extended families, local communities and by the Church.  But this advice is simply Malthusianism applied to a much smaller scale than mankind as a whole.  Malthusianism has been wrong about a large number of things but its basic message, which could be distilled into “Don’t bring more children into the world than you can support” is sound advice and just plain common sense.

Resources are limited.  It has always been orthodox Christian doctrine that humans are finite created beings living in a finite created world.  The assumption that our intellectual capital has an unlimited, or virtually unlimited, capacity for resource expansion brings to mind the words “ye shall be as gods” from Genesis 3:5.  The being saying those words did not have mankind’s best interests at heart as I recall.

Yes, we have been able to do amazing things in the way of expanding the production of food. Whether production at current levels is sustainable in the long run is another matter. At the moment the American economy is in the midst of a crisis brought upon largely by an attitude of presumption with regards to future production.  Making purchases on credit is spending what you expect to produce in the future.  When credit is made easily available to everyone from the government down to the lowest income levels so that virtually everyone is spending against tomorrow the system is bound to crash.  Why?  Because it is based on the assumption that because production grew yesterday it will grow tomorrow at the same or even greater rates.  What we are witnessing is what happens when production fails to keep up with past expectations. 

This is why Christianity has always told us to practice the virtues of humility and prudence rather than indulging in hubris and presumption.  Such counsel does not contradict Scriptural advice to trust in divine Providence.  It is merely the other side of the coin.

Great column. So what defines the west? The Mother Church, or the Germanic peoples that filled it’s pews? Or was the west a unique combination of both? Until the anti-left remnants of society who label themselves “conservative” decide on who they are and what they believe in, they will be nothing more than a politically incoherent mass. And hey, I neglected Protestants and Jews and “the Founding Fathers.”
And I’m forgetting all of those self-styled philosopher wannabees.
Fun question for today:
What do you get when you put a few million philosophers together?

A: Zimbabwe

IN response to one of the posters above Paul Gottfried ‘should’ convert to Christianity IMHO as did for exmaple Israel Shamir… not only if ‘for’ himself...The point IS it would be for his kids or if they’re grown already perhaps (err no doubt?) - well for any grandkids who might be influenced?

We are all conceptual creatures and essentially you will either be hammered into submission, when you must go to your conceptual (i.e. cultural level) for info. (i.e. almost all the time), by essentially the the undiluted judaic as exemplified by the philosophy of Philo the JEW; or informed in the other way by that of for example Parimides-(spelling?) & Aristotle etc., even toss in a wee-bit of Plato (sadly, IMHO - but we all also from time to time crave the grandiose as well, in the mundane - Plato with his own Facades ‘parting the Red Sea of the ordinary’ - prior to the Cartesians the other mothers after Moses & Plato of all B.S., ‘as if’ itself--actual))…

And so i.e. it will either be the top down judaic -or- the bottom (or grass’roots) Upward and as
in mother Nature also down again-via leadership from above (even within oneself), be it only the *two-way street of real’ity or the all-sided actual.

Or if more than that, as well-?-inclusive of divine intervention? Regardless, one thing we KNOW, it’s a cultural matter and that ‘makes’ people who they are like a zebra and its stripes - and kids brought up in one or
the other [culture] tend not to be able to ‘change’ their stripes or culture in any meaningful way… unless rather exceptional like a shamir or a gottfried.

I don’t know… that’s IMHO. No, I will venture to say I know...it feels like I KNOW this.

It’s one of those things that is subject to actual thought, since about the knowable and not
about what we already *know is unknowable--and then that--would reside as it does in the realm of belief.

And we know these things since our king puzzled through them and has informed us, and we notice after bringing our own thought to the matter, we agree.

Of course I was brought up xian… and so I’m that culture or cultural mindset… whether practicing the actual religion or not. That’s the point… the lion’s share of the iceberg is the cultural influence below the surface,
and the religious part of it later is ONLY its tip.  The tip of icebergs doesn’t sink ships, but
rather what’s not so readily seen below the surface.

The perfect view of our enemies…

“We are all conceptual creatures and essentially you will either be hammered into submission, “

I have three children. They are real human beings.

NOT conceptual creatures.

Bambi is a conceptual creature.
How did so many of us become so retarded?

GIVEN A MATERIALIST WORLDVIEW THAT DENIES PERSONAL IMMORTALITY, it is rather arbitrary to concern oneself about the future of one’s own genetic cousins--that is, one’s race.

How so?  You’re displaying shallow thinking, John.  (It seems to me that you start by rejecting race-realist arguments, then follow with justifications)

More to the point: GIVEN A SPIRITUAL WORLDVIEW THAT EMBRACES PERSONAL IMMORTALITY, it’s a bit illogical to worry about anything other than that necessary to secure a seat at the golden table.

self-sacrifice for one’s own children is probably foolish, viewed from the perspective of personal satisfaction.

That’s a nice looking straw man you have there, have fun wrestling with him (you define personal satisfaction for us now John?).  Again, your facile understanding of race-realism and the sociobiological mindset is on display.

You seem to make no effort to understand people who show every indication of earnestness.

Is that something Jesus would do, John?

Neither of these things are true if God exists.

Neither are true outside the world you’ve constructed for the purposes of argument, God or no God.

Indeed, I am concerned about the future of my civilization, and will probably make the personal sacrifices required to have a family, BECAUSE of my theologically inspired beliefs about human nature and my own duties.

(Probably?  Now THAT’S dedication!) I’m glad to hear it.  Since the normal, healthy, masculine instinct to sire progeny has seemingly passed you by, any substitute you can find is probably a good thing.

I don’t accept racialism as a philosophy or a program

John, no one’s asking you to accept racialism as a philosophy or program.  You reject racial self-preservation as worthy, justified, ethical, or moral (correct me if I’m wrong); that’s why at least one “racialist” has a problem with you.

because it seems to me an unhealthy obsession

See, there you go again.  This is not the sort of thing Jesus would do, John.  Jesus simply would not tell a man with a gun at his head that his “histrionics” in pursuit of self-preservation were “an unhealthy obsession with the self” or somesuch horseshit.

with a partial truth--the natural solidarity of ethnic cousins--which too often obscures deeper realities: man’s moral equality before God, and the universal mission of the Church to redeem souls and bring them into the Mystical Body of Christ.

Wrong.  This is an excuse that the Church uses to justify its rank betrayal of the race(s) that founded it.  Betrayed for “the world,” no less; betrayed for the fad of liberalism; for Mammon.  Disgusting.

Btw, why did God make us all with this built-in “natural solidarity,” but gave us squat on the “moral equality” and “universal mission” front?  Just for laffs?

This is obviously more important to me than ethnic kinship

Which makes perfect sense, since God gave you an instinct for one but not the other.  Maybe God has his priorities worked out just fine, John, and its you who is all fucked up?

But I only think it’s worth HAVING descendants because I believe in Natural Law --which depends upon a God, as Nature’s author.

That’s funny.  I think it’s worth having descendants because I am a human being and those sorts of desires generally come naturally.  I mean really, you need a philosophical framework for something like that?  BEING WHAT YOU ARE, a man, should be enough for that.

What philosophy underpins your bowl of Wheaties in the morning?

That said, Natural Law doesn’t depend on God, John.

It’s a good thing our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t need Aquinas to give them a good reason to breed!

Otherwise, it really is just selfish DNA, with our consciousness as a mostly regrettable epiphenomenon.

I’ll chalk this up to your desperation to defend your faith.  The second likeliest explanation is that you’re a natural-born nihilist/misanthrope, in which case you absolutely NEED faith, or you’d blow your brains out.  To each his own - I’m not really in a position to understand this dynamic.

P.S., My problem with the whole God thing - we have reason, and reason suggests that one needs a reason to believe in something; ergo, it makes less sense to believe in God than it does to not (talking agnosticism here, atheism is about as supportable as theism).

P.P.S., My problem with anyone who believes in eternal damnation in the afterlife is another story; anyone who worships such a god worships an evil being, period, full stop.  I don’t care if such a being parted the Atlantic Ocean as a personal sign to me, I’m not bending knee to that.

Neither… are

Make that “neither..is”.

Posted by Joe on Oct 01, 2008.

Wrong, Joe.  That Khazar crap is psyops from a Jewish communist (looking to deflect criticism of Jewry-as-a-race-and-acting-like-one).

It is contradicted by the science.

Real human beings are conceptual creatures.

Michael Derpelding called us his enemies.

This is what is long overdue in the West, realizing and responding to the Fact he (and his) behaves and has ALWAYS as a function of his culture behaved as an enemy of ours.  That’s how he’s programmed.  And it is really only *hubris on our part, if sort of good-natured as a result of our Christian cultural programming
to *deny that’s his position (or programming culturally.) Aren’t ‘they’ sort of like us, too?

The judaic response to that is to permit us our illusion, since it more effectively implements their goals against us as ‘their’ enemies.

I accept - I WANT to do battle.  Today whether you realize it or not this is the actual WAR in our world.

And our victory my friends is not assured.  Only cowards believe they cannot lose.

Svigor,

One could also argue that faith in another world beyond this one makes it easier to accept earthly inequality. Atheism and the here and now as the only reality may make earthly inequality more intolerable. So Christianity/Theism can have a conservative effect.