A Puzzle For You

Hello my droogies!

I needed a change of pace from all this talk of religion, so I decided to actually attempt to harness all the considerable brainpower and variety of viewpoints on this blog to do something constructive instead of just the usual mutual mental masturbation.

Let's instead try to find the solution to a really hard puzzle. And if we do solve it, perhaps do some good in the world. Maybe even solve an old murder case.

No, really. Excited yet?

First, you might want the background information:

FBI: Help Us Crack This Code and Solve a Murder Case


That's right, when I set a challenge, I shoot for the fucking moon.

Here's the deal. Nobody can solve this code. FBI cryptology experts have been stymied by it now for twelve years. And yet, when I look at it, I can't look away. So I thought that I'd introduce it here, as a post, so that all of you can discuss it and share the pain. Perhaps we might even solve it; who knows?

Here's the actual code:





(click to enlarge)

Have at it!

I'll start. I notice that it seems that the two letters 'se' have some special significance, perhaps indicating the end of a word.

And afterwards when we've exhausted ourselves in this sisyphean manner, we can go back to religion.

Or maybe not. I haven't decided yet. Consider this my 'intermezzo.'

Narrative World

Wanting to be right so bad that you come to actually believe that you are right, is not the same thing as actually being right. If you can't tell the difference, you're hopelessly lost, and no one can help you anymore.
-StBtG

Beliefs are thoughts that the ego fell in love with.
-StBtG


***


This is an article about the two worlds we live in on this planet.

What two worlds?

Well, there is the consensual reality that we mostly tend to agree upon, with attendant facts and data that can be used to prove or disprove our theories.

And then there's Narrative World.

Narrative World is a world where the narrative rules over the facts. The love of the narrative is too intense for mere facts to be allowed in to interfere.

In Narrative World God is real. (In fact, only in Narrative World is God real)
God is so real in fact, that to even doubt in Him is considered wrongheaded, a 'sin.' To suggest that the facts do not support His existence, is to be ostracised and scorned. Facts and data have no power in Narrative World, you see. All that matters is the story. Facts are heresy; logic is a crime. Only the story is real.

Religious people are married to their story. They just fucking love it, more than they even love themselves, and that's an awful lot. You cannot even assail it without intense personal scorn being directed back at you. You can't suggest that they might be in error... what's wrong with you? Literally, they equate belief in their narrative with being 'good' as opposed to 'evil' and in their minds it's an eternal war between the two. No gray areas allowed. So if you're a skeptic, in their minds you are personally evil. Case closed. As are their minds.

Some narratives are childishly simple. 'Believe in God or else go to hell, period.' Fear is the ruling factor here. Of course egotism enters into it as well, the 'I'm right and you're wrong and I'm special and you're not and I'm going to heaven and you're going to hell' mentality. Schadenfreude abounds in Narrative World. All the petty emotions thrive there as well. After all, even God is petty and small and oh-so-humanly flawed, admitting personal jealousy and wrath openly, even gambling with people's lives on a whim. Indeed it would seem that 'Tis all a checkerboard of nights and days, where God with men for pieces plays...' And apparently, that's okay. No amount of overt examples of raw Biblical evil are enough for them to see their God in a bad light. He's always good, even when killing little innocent children. Somehow that must be good too. It's a mystery, and it's all God's plan for us and we're just not meant to understand it.

(One wonders how these people hold their shit in, since the functionality of even a simple sphincter muscle must surely be beyond them.)

(Oh right, it comes out their mouths, I forgot...)

However some narratives are ridiculously complicated. (For good reason!)
Thomas Aquinas (God's official liar and archetypal ass-smoke-blower-upper extraordinaire) for instance constructed huge and impressive edifices of logic upon the shifting sands of faith to 'inexorably' lead us to belief in God, and did so in such a seamless manner that later generations of christians are completely incapable of seeing that all those pretty words and logical-sounding sentences aren't ultimately based on hard fact as they sound like they must surely be, but are instead based upon what amounts to nothing more than childish wishful thinking. Their love of the narrative utterly clouds their perceptions of reality, and the more complex, more logical-sounding narrative in this case allows even relatively intelligent people to be caught like flies in amber.

We are human, fallible emotional animals at best. So at what point is the lure of the narrative so great that we are willing to forgive it for not meeting the test of facts and data?

At the point where it provides more meaning to our lives than just living them in consensual reality does. The fact that it's empty meaning based on wishes and dreams matters little if at all. The religious just don't know the difference. They do not want to know. They are (have been kept) far too ignorant of reality to glean any real deeper meanings out of it, and are far too lazy to learn to now, nor do they see any need to, so they crave the simple, children's fairy-tale version. It's like a nice, warm bottle of milk, lulling them to a comfortable sleep. Forever.

And they want everybody to join them in their slumber. In fact, they *insist.*

***

A part of the religious narrative is of course that all other narratives are false, including consensual reality's 'narrative.' This can become quite comical when religion's beloved narrative meets reality in a head-on collision. Heliocentrism comes to mind. Hell, all of the findings of modern science come to mind, for that matter. Religion has been dragged into the modern world kicking and screaming all the way, like the retarded child it is. It never agreed with science or even basic observations of the world, it always had it's own ass-backward ideas instead, and it has always, always been wrong. Pathetically wrong. And it's still trying with no better results. This is because, by nature, religion is viciously stupid. It ignores reality in favor of fantasy; what better definition of 'stupid' does one need? Today's religious people even go so far as to vilify learning and knowledge itself, to scorn them as effete and effeminate somehow. The 'real Christian man's' way is apparently to kill and fuck (and fuck over) one's way through life whilst blaming one's 'sinful nature' for one's flaws and still maintaining the belief that somehow they're still 'going to heaven' because after all, they do still believe in God and they do ask to be forgiven their many sins, which are then magically erased from their souls and from their consciences. Convenient. After a while, they even forget to ask. They assume forgiveness for whatever they might do, since hey, they're *christian* and that's how it works, that's what Jesus does. It's magic, no doubt. Magic, plus a heavily flawed system of pseudomorality that is ultimately coercion-based with heavy appeal to egotism, and therefore can produce no good thing in the world without an evil taint to it.

When one 'absolutely knows' that one is 'good' with no doubt left in one's mind, it frees one up to do considerable evil in the world. This is the boon of religion. Sure you're an evil fuck but you believe that you poop Ben and Jerry's, and that's all that matters. You get to sleep at night, guilt-free, no matter what heinousness you've comitted or contemplate comitting. You'll even eventually get to the point where you're *proud* of it.

That's because religion is Purina Ego Chow.

I am always amused at the christians who vehemently deny (irrationally) that Hitler was a christian. I mean, he certainly acted like one. He definitely *believed* in his own righteousness completely, and manipulated his people through their christian faith. He thought he was an instrument of God in fact. Pretty typical, actually. He just got more power than most do; it's not that many other christians alive today wouldn't do the same thing if they had the opportunity. So why then, can he not be a 'real christian?' Because nobody that evil could be? That's what they'd like to believe, but I know differently because I do not live in Narrative World. It's easier to be evil if you're also religious. Look around.

***

You see my droogies, being right, as in being correct more often than one is not correct, as it turns out requires living in consensual reality enough to observe it dispassionately and draw conclusions from it. However, merely believing that one is right (and good, and just, and holy, and so on...) is more than good enough for those who are lost in the psychosis of their religion. Sure, they're wrong about just about everything, but they're ignorant of that fact too, so it's okay. Ignorance is indeed bliss to them, and a nightmare to everyone else. Because, they vote like they see the world. Ass-backwards.

I find myself wishing that the religious folk come to an agreement to ignore *all* science. Got diabetes? Pray it away! Go ahead... surely you have enough *faith* for that to work. No? Aww, too bad, so sad.

Hey, I can dream... And at least, I don't mix up my dreams with reality. That would be religiously stupid of me.

We Suck

So I've finally figured it out.

We suck.

No seriously, look at
this article.

See? We suck. Sad.

We are, as a country, a self-centered narcisistic lot with delusions of grandeur. We seem to have come to the unspoken concensus that believing we are NUMBER ONE, is somehow indistinguishable from actually being number one. We've grown sloppy and bloated, and we just don't give a shit anymore.

And I'll sing my sad, sorry song yet one more time here, and tell you that yes, absolutely, I blame the fucking religion. The religion, coupled of course with a ravenous pack of amoral Republican wolves who play the stupid sad sorry lot of religious fools like an out-of-tune saxaphone. This duality, the fools (sheep) and the wolves, is why we are in such a sad state of denial as a country. Heck, we've practically made blind patriotism a religion. Or perhaps more correctly an addendum to the already-existing religion.

We are the Lotos Eaters. We are asleep.

WAKE THE FUCK UP.

There. I've said it.

***************************
For those who cannot use the link provided, here is the article in full from Explore, the Journal of Science and Healing (http://www.explorejournal.com/home) minus references:

Volume 7, Issue 1, Pages 8-12 (January 2011)

5 of 13


ABSTRACT

FULL TEXT

FULL-TEXT PDF (185 KB)


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Trends That Will Affect Your Future … A Portrait of American Societal Health

Stephan A. Schwartz



The SchwartzReport tracks emerging trends that will affect the world, particularly the United States. For EXPLORE, it focuses on matters of health in the broadest sense of that term, including medical issues, changes in the biosphere, technology, and policy considerations, all of which will shape our culture and our lives.

Article Outline
• Abstract

• Tax Cuts

• Povertry Rate

• Moving In

• Prison Population

• Physical Health

• Hunger

• Justice

• References

• Biography

• Copyright

When Benjamin Franklin—the only founder who drafted and signed all three of the documents that brought the United States to life, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris (September 3, 1783), and the Constitution—dreamed of the America he would like to see develop, the imagery that came to his mind was of a middle-class, largely urban culture made up of immigrants who were technologically sophisticated, family oriented, joyful, and upwardly mobile. And when he thought about how they might happen to become that society, it wasn't just the people he thought about. He also understood the importance of infrastructure as a factor in creating a middle class. He felt so strongly about this that he used his will to continue to support his plan for America beyond his death. He left specific bequests for public works and created the microlending model that has proven such a powerful transformative force, leaving what today would be several hundred thousand dollars1 each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia. The infrastructure money was to be used specifically to build such an infrastructure and nurture such a middle class. He explained his intent was to create that “Which may be judged of most general utility to the Inhabitants, such as Fortifications, Bridges, Aqueducts, Public Buildings, Baths, Pavements or whatever may make living in the Town more convenient to its People and render it more agreeable to Strangers, resorting thither for Health or a temporary residence.”2

This is classic Franklin. He defines a goal, and a process for achieving it, but leaves any personal cherished outcomes as to how this should happen unstated. Franklin put his money on creating civic amenities—the kinds of things now seen as the prime targets for budget reductions—because he knew they are essential for a healthy city. His genius allowed him to conceive of the impact over time that parks, sanitation, and hospitals would have on the lives of all the city's people. He knew that each interaction with clean water, or decent medical care in an emergency, or a place to go for a picnic improves the quality of life and lifts morale. People think in larger terms, attempt more. Are more optimistic. The interaction each individual in the city has with these amenities might seem small and not terribly important, but in aggregate, over time, they are a powerful force in shaping a city's character through their impact on the lives of citizens and visitors alike.

How different that view is from the policies that seem to govern so many municipalities, states, and even the federal government today. Ultraconservative Grover Norquist voices this worldview: “I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”3 What he does not say, and what is not acknowledged, is that such a vision of governance can only be attempted through the radical reduction of the social safety net Franklin recognized as so important, because philosophically this worldview sees no role for government in doing such things.

So do these anti-Franklinian ideas really work?

A large percentage of politicians apparently think so and, through their voting, have attempted to create this Ayn Rand world, with the Bush tax reduction for the rich as one of its crown jewels. Just about this time last year, I wrote an essay “The Vanishing Middle Class,” which dealt with what was happening in 2009 as a result of pursuing those kinds of policies.4 I talked about Franklin's view and the truth of what was happening, noting:

University of California, Berkeley, economist Emanuel Saez had reported that, in 2007, the disparity between the richest and the poorest reached a level never before seen, going all the way back to 1917 when modern tax data began to be collected. According to Saez's study, the top 10% of earners in America received 49.7% of all the income earned in the United States. To give this context as recently as the 1970s, the top 10% earned around 33% of all the income earned in the United States—a 17% shift. This contrast becomes even starker when only the super rich are considered. According to Saez, ‘The top 0.01 percent of earners in the US are now taking home six percent of all the income, higher than the 1920s peak of five percent, and a whopping six-fold increase since the start of the Reagan administration, when the top 0.01 percent earned one percent of all the income.'4


Or, put another way, as of 2007 the top upper-class 1% of households owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).

A year later, these trends have continued, and every one of my markers has become more distorted in favor of the top at a cost to the middle class and the poor. There are a hundred ways to show this breakdown. Here are seven, by which I hope you will see that I am not selectively picking my data to make a polemic case, but describing the actuality of American society just when it transits the midterm elections. Perhaps it will provide some guidance for the choices we now must make.

Tax Cuts
Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running, as I write this, on an economic platform centered on tax cuts, and proposing that the Bush cuts be made permanent for the richest Americans. The 2008 income tax data are now in, so we can assess what their economic theory is worth, and how it fulfilled its promise that tax cuts would produce widespread prosperity, by looking at all the years of the George W. Bush presidency. This is what David Cay Johnston, on the faculty of Syracuse University College of Law and Whitman School of Management, and Pulitzer Prize–winning tax analyst, concluded, based on the IRS data:

Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels (all figures are in 2008 dollars). In only two years was total income up, but even when those years are combined they exceed the declines in only one of the other six years.

Even if we limit the analysis by starting in 2003, when the dividend and capital gains tax cuts began, through the peak year of 2007, the result is still less income than at the 2000 level. Total income was down $951 billion during those four years.

Average incomes fell. Average taxpayer income was down $3,512, or 5.7 percent, in 2008 compared with 2000, President Bush's own benchmark year for his promises of prosperity through tax cuts. Had incomes stayed at 2000 levels, the average taxpayer would have earned almost $21,000 more over those eight years. That's almost $50 per week. Just measuring the second through seventh years we find that total income was still nearly $2 trillion lower than if 2000 level income continued.5


Povertry Rate
That same US Census data also described what has happened to the nation's standard of living, comparing just the latest time period—2008 data with that of 2009. Here are some of the highlights:

Some 43.6 million people were living in poverty last year—the highest number since 1959, five years before President Lyndon Johnson declared his War on Poverty. The poverty rate was 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008 and the highest level since 1994. Hispanic households took the hardest hit: Their poverty rate rose 2.1 percent from 2008's level, compared with a 1.1 percent jump in the rate for blacks and whites. (The US government considers an annual income of $21,756 to be the poverty line for a family of four.)

A record number of Americans, 50.7 million, were not covered by health-care insurance in 2009. At the same time the survey was being taken, Congress passed President Obama's contentious health-care reform law.6


Moving In
From the 50s until about five years ago, one of the strongest American familial trends was for children to grow up and move away. It was a central part of the nuclear family ethos. That is now reversing thanks to the grinding down of the middle class through unemployment, job loss, and reduction in income even when a person is employed.

From 2005 to 2009, family households added about 3.8 million extended family members, from adult siblings and in-laws to cousins and nephews. Extended family members now make up 8.2% of family households, up from 6.9% in 2005, according to Census data released in September 2010.

“Clearly, a big part of that is the economic recession and housing costs,” says Stephanie Coontz, cochair of the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research association. “We're seeing a shift away from the 1950s and 1960s mentality against extended families, when ‘modern’ women did not take in aging parents for fear of hurting their marriage.”7

And this shift involves far more than blood relations. “For the first time in more than a century, more than half of people aged 25 to 34 have never been married. The number of people in non-family households—those whose members are not related—grew 4.4% from 2005 to 2009, faster than the 3.4% growth for family households.”7

Prison Population
According to the Pew Research Center's Economic Mobility Project, the US prison population has more than quadrupled since 1980, from 500,000 to 2.3 million.8 The American Gulag is now larger than the 35 largest European countries combined. The incarceration rate in the United States—753 inmates per 100,000—is five times that of the United Kingdom—itself an anomaly at 151 prisoners per 100,000. France, which is next, stands at 96, with Germany at 88. This means more than one in 100 Americans is in prison, and one in every 28 children in the United States has a parent behind bars—up from one in 125 just 25 years ago.7

It probably won't surprise you to learn that a family with a parent in prison on average earns 22% less the year after the incarceration than it did the year before. After all, who wants to hire an ex-con in a tight labor market? And children with parents in prison are significantly likelier to be expelled from school than others; 23% of students with jailed parents are expelled, compared with 4% for the general population.

“Both education and parental income are strong indicators of children's future economic mobility,” the survey notes. “With millions of prison and jail inmates a year returning to their communities, it is important to identify policies that address the impact of incarceration on the economic mobility of former inmates and their children.”7

In all, 2.7 million US children have parents behind bars, and “two-thirds of these children's parents were incarcerated for non-violent offenses,” the study notes.7

And when you break the statistics down by race, it just gets nastier. There are large disparities. Among black children, fully one in nine, or 11.4%, have a parent in jail. For Hispanics, the number is one in 28, and for white children it's one in 57.

I hope marijuana law reform passed in California, because this alone could help reverse these trends, simply by reducing the 858,000 arrests in the United States in 2010 for marijuana. That's marginally down from the 2007 peak of 872,000. It is notable that more than 50% of these arrests are nonviolent violations involving marijuana.9

The cost to states of this human warehousing now exceeds $50 billion per year, or one in every 15 state dollars expended.7 What is worse is that a growing number of small towns and cities now look to the gulag for their economic well-being. Like something from an Orwell novel, it is a complete cycle: one group of Americans lives on the incarceration of another group of Americans. And although it would appear illogical, it goes on even though it is well-known that the children of incarcerated parents face a much harder struggle in life. The gulag that incarcerates their parents, in the process, also often condemns the next generation to a life in jail.

Why would any society do this? Well, from the point of view of those who live on keeping them, and who mostly live in low-crime areas, isn't this exactly what is wanted? Thus, we have created a lobby whose rice bowl is dependent on the gulag. It is a truly Dickensian reality that few talk about for fear of being labeled “soft on crime.” It is a form of willful ignorance on the part of politicians and citizens alike.

Physical Health
In 1950, before the inception of the present illness profit industry, the United States, compared with the world's other leading industrial nations, was fifth with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.10 In 2010, the United States position concerning female life expectancy had fallen to 46th.11 And when both men and women were combined, it went to 49th.12, 13 Americans live 5.7 fewer years of “perfect health”—a measure adjusted for time spent ill—than, for instance, the Japanese.14

Is this the result of lack of spending on the part of the United States? Most emphatically it is not.

Health policy expert Uwe E. Reinhardt, the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University, headed a team that specifically considered this. They found, “per capita health spending in the United States increased at nearly twice the rate in other wealthy nations between 1970 and 2002.”15 As a result, the United States now spends well over twice the median expenditure of industrialized nations on healthcare, and far more than any other country as a percentage of its gross domestic product.15

Peter A. Muennig, assistant professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, in New York City, and Sherry A. Glied, professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health and currently on leave as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, analyzed Reinhardt's and many other studies in a groundbreaking exegetic survey of healthcare.16 They concluded:

We found that none of the prevailing excuses for the poor performance of the US health care system are likely to be valid. On the spending side, we found that the unusually high medical spending is associated with worsening, rather than improving, 15-year survival in two groups for whom medical care is probably important.

We speculate that the nature of our health care system specifically, its reliance on unregulated fee-for-service and specialty care may explain both the increased spending and the relative deterioration in survival that we observed. If so, meaningful reform may not only save money over the long term, it may also save lives.16


Hunger
It doesn't get much more basic that not having enough to eat. It is hard to think of America as a place where large numbers of people are facing hunger as a daily reality for themselves and, even worse, for their children. That happens in Africa, or maybe Asia, but surely not here. You think not? Millions of our fellow citizens routinely are forced to make life decisions based on whether they or their children will eat or go without to pay for housing or medical bills. And even the slender pipeline of assistance that does exist is problematic; 70% of emergency food centers face threats to their survival.

According to a study from the nation's largest food bank operator, the number of Americans in need of food aid has jumped 46% in three years, including a 50% jump in the number of children needing food assistance and a 64% increase in hunger in senior citizens' homes.

According to the largest study of domestic hunger ever done, Hunger in America 2010, a study based on more than 61,000 interviews with clients and surveys of 37,000 feeding agencies, “hunger is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States”17:



1.Feeding America is annually providing food to 37 million Americans, including 14 million children. This is an increase of 46% over 2006, when we were feeding 25 million Americans, including nine million children, each year.


2.That means one in eight Americans now rely on Feeding America for food and groceries.


3.Feeding America's nationwide network of food banks is feeding one million more Americans each week than we did in 2006.


4.Thirty-six percent of the households we serve have at least one person working.


5.More than one third of client households report having to choose between food and other basic necessities, such as rent, utilities, and medical care.


6.The number of children the Feeding America network serves has increased by 50% since 2006.17



“Clearly, the economic recession, resulting in dramatically increasing unemployment nationwide, has driven unprecedented, sharp increases in the need for emergency food assistance and enrollment in federal nutrition programs,” said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America, which operates some 200 food banks across the country.

“It is morally reprehensible that we live in the wealthiest nation in the world where one in six people are struggling to make choices between food and other basic necessities,” Escarra said in a statement.

She added that “these are choices that no one should have to make, but particularly households with children. Insufficient nutrition has adverse effects on the physical, behavioral and mental health, and academic performance of children.”18

Feeding America's report is far from alone in reporting this food catastrophe.

“The Food Research and Action Center found that nearly one in five in the US—18.5 percent — report having gone hungry in the past year, up from 16.3 percent at the start of 2008. Households with children were even likelier to experience hunger, with nearly a quarter reporting hunger in the past year.

“Perhaps worst of all, the Feeding America study finds that 70 percent of emergency food centers are reporting “one or more problems that threaten their ability to continue operating.”18

Justice
I have placed this last because I hope you will agree with me that where there is not justice, there is not civil society. It has always been my safe port that no matter what else happened in America, I always saw the justice system as fair. Perhaps you feel the same way, and will be as appalled as I was when I read the World of Justice Project (WJP) report, Rule of Law Index 2010.19

To understand why I think this report is such a big deal, perhaps it will help to say who funded it: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Neukom Family Foundation, the GE Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and LexisNexis. I list them to make the point that this is the pinnacle of nonpartisan philanthropy, not some political think tank with an agenda. We can trust the data.

The project, involving 900 researchers from 35 countries, who have polled 35,000 individuals, in addition to searching each nation's records, presents itself in this very Franklinian way:

“Establishing the rule of law is fundamental to achieving communities of opportunity and equity—communities that offer sustainable economic development, accountable government, and respect for fundamental rights… . The rule of law is the cornerstone to improving public health, safeguarding participation, ensuring security, and fighting poverty.”

When the WJP talks about the rule of law, they spell out very carefully what they mean. They refer to “a rules-based system in which the following four universal principles are upheld:



•the government and its officials and agents are accountable under the law;


•the laws are clear, publicized, stable, and fair, and protect fundamental rights, including the security of persons and property;


•the process by which the laws are enacted, administered, and enforced is accessible, fair, and efficient;


•access to justice is provided by competent, independent, and ethical adjudicators, attorneys or representatives, and judicial officers who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities they serve.



With this as the basis for its analysis, the Rule of Law Index 2010 then lists what it calls the 10 “factors,” which break down further into 49 “subfactors.” These descriptors are the basis upon which the Rule of Law Index 2010 evaluates a nation's justice under the rule of law. The outcome of this exercise is a quite extraordinary assessment “of the extent to which countries adhere to the rule of law—not in theory but in practice [emphasis added].”19 Here are the 10 factors; they all sound very “American”:



•factor one: limited government powers


•factor two: absence of corruption


•factor three: clear, publicized, and stable laws


•factor four: order and security


•factor five: fundamental rights


•factor six: open government


•factor seven: regulatory enforcement


•factor eight: access to civil justice


•factor nine: effective criminal justice


•factor 10: informal justice19



As I started reading the report, I assumed that whatever other self-inflicted wounds we have brought to ourselves as a nation, our justice system was still solid, and that the United States would rank at the top of the world's list. Surprise. The WJP groups countries by regions as well as such considerations as income level, then evaluates them, dropping factor 10—“informal justice”—because it is does not involve law. Not surprisingly, the United States is grouped with North America and Western Europe, and there are seven nations in our bloc: Austria, Canada, France, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and USA (Table 1). These are the nations where the survey was carried out for the 2010 report, with other countries to follow in later reports.

Table 1. Nine-Factors Ranking Analysisa


Nations Factor One Factor Two Factor Three Factor Four Factor Five Factor Six Factor Seven Factor Eight Factor Nine
Austria 3 3 4 1 1 6 3 3 1
Canada 4 4 3 3 4 4 4 5 6
France 6 5 5 4 6 5 6 6 4
Netherlands 2 2 2 5 3 2 2 2 3
Spain 5 6 7 7 5 7 7 4 7
Sweden 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 2
USA 7 7 6 6 7 3 5 7 5

a
Countries are ranked from one to seven.


For the United States, it is a death's head portrait of the reality that lies beneath the smug rhetoric we use to hector others about justice and the rule of law. I am embarrassed. We all should be. This has haunted me since I read the report. If America is not a leader in justice, what are we? I could pick a dozen other trends, from closing libraries, to depaving streets, to decline in educational performance, but do we need to go further? If America were a patient, what would you tell him about his lifestyle and habits? What would you see as his prognosis?

On the basis of data, it is impossible to say America's societal health is good. On the basis of that same data, we can also conclude policies based on cutting taxes, without recognizing that it is in the societal interest to assure a decent quality of life for all, are destructive. We know enough to see that democracy cannot function properly without a healthy and vibrant middle class, and to prove to ourselves that we are killing ours. We need to change course—not on the basis of political ideology—but on facts. Facts about what does and does not work.

It is the middle class that holds the key, just as Franklin saw all those years ago. The middle class has enough money to dream, but rarely enough to do it alone. Success requires working together, finding compromises. And that's what most of us say we want. According to research by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, 92% of Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the United States, choosing Sweden's model over that of the United States.20 The America Benjamin Franklin imagined while sitting beneath his mulberry tree in the courtyard of his house in Philadelphia over two centuries ago.

References

Okay, so maybe Obama doesn't suck...

I may have to re-examine the suckiness of our president. Apparently he was saving all the good stuff up for two years till after he lost the midterm elections, in the Lame Duck session. Who knew? What a chess move!

Actually, I think when he read that he sucked, he re-evaluated himself as a person and made some course corrections. And I had no idea that he even followed this blog. Good thing.

Now DADT falls, and we have a START treaty with Russia? Okay.......

Wow.

Republicans who made fun of me saying that he sucked, eat my shorts, I guess is all I have to say. I'm glad that I was wrong. I wish I was wrong like this all the time. And besides, none of your politicians are worth a plug nickel in the first place, not a one of them. All narcissistic assholes, the lot. Why, even Obama when he sucked, didn't suck nearly half as much as even the least sucky of what the right wing has to offer.

So now he'll likely be re-elected, methinks. Amazing.

I'm happily stunned here.

OBAMA SUCKS!

Well, as it turns out, he does. The results are in. There can no longer be any doubt.

So, what is he? What's his scam? Just the old 'quest for power and glory?' Wouldn't that motivation necessitate him actually PERFORMING well?

I can't believe that he's so unlike his campaign platform. His first DCC convention speech was amazing, his oratory inspiring and moving throughout the rest of his campaign...

What the hell is he? SATAN?

A mole? A closeted republican? An 'agent of the New World Order?' An 'Illuminatus?' Just one of the muppet pastors, er, puppet masters?

Another black lap dog, like Michael Steele?

Or a really incredibly well-spoken moron? Like, the bestest, most well-spoken moron that ever lived on the planet? The ultimate drooling idiot-savant of politics, if you will?

Or hey, conversely, is he just SO much smarter than all of us poor knuckle-dragging huddled masses types that somehow he's merely seeing the larger picture here whereby he clearly perceives a path to actually accomplish the optimum amount of good in the world by playing it as if he were a fucking turncoat ball-less uncle Tom village idiot now? Play the game that way (and play it so very well) and thus somehow against all 'common sense' actually manage to WIN in the end, perhaps years from now, through his a almost-scary Capablanca-like understanding of the game of politics?

Sure, that must be it... Sure it is. His intellect is too godlike for the likes of us poor cretins. I'm just not smart enough to grasp his breadth of vision. His perception is so much more holistic and global than anyone else's is... why, he's some kind of supergenius polymath president, that's what he is. Maybe even from Krypton.

Yeah, right. Sure, that has to be it. That's how I'll sleep tonight.


***

So obviously, color me disillusioned here.

And hey, by the way, you christian republicans voodoo-worshipper mumbo-jumbo types, your guys are still no better, and considerably more overtly EVIL. They don't even try to hide it anymore. They're like Palpatine in that third movie. They've really let themselves go, and they just don't give a fuck anymore, because they know they hold they winning cards. Which is all they care about in this sad world.

Of course, upon reflection, perhaps overt evil such as they exemplify is actually the lesser of the two kinds, in that the evil which is not overt and obvious but instead is subtle and inspiring, that kind of evil more easily gets in the door to REAL POWER, where it can thenceforward really fuck things up in a much more global way.

***

Right now, the nightly news is like a ridiculous tragi-comedy. If Obama is as fake as he seems now, then who to ever, ever trust again?

What a life, huh? I guess I'm still learning just how very unbelievably extremely DEEP the river of eternal bullshit runs in this reality. Hell, we eat, drink, sleep and breathe it in every second of our lives, few ever ever realizing how much more complex reality is than they imagine it to be. And perhaps it is better to sleep thus, than to awaken to truth such as this.

I'm sure that the lowly rat-tail maggot never realizes that it's natural habitat is liquid raw sewage, either. Why, if one of them ever did, it'd go insane, wouldn't it?

Welcome to my reality. Hi, howarya?

***

On a more positive note, my personal life is incredibly SWEET right now, in the new house with baby and wifey, got it just where we want it and we're really happy with it, and of course the previously mentioned terrarium is absolutely amazing, looks better than most zoo exhibits I've seen showcasing similar biota, and it is a living, respiring, (and unfortunately excreting) work of art. One that consumes like, sixty individual cricket lives every day. As it turns out, I'm like, the Klaus Barbie of the Gryllidae. All of them sitting there in their little cricket cage, not unlike a shower stall.... awaiting their fate, all unbeknownst.........

God, I'm sick.




But then again, it's a sick world, as it turns out.

River Tank Aquarium

(Click on pics for larger versions)

As I've mentioned, I've been constructing a terrarium. A really huge one. An aquatic vivarium, to be precise. It's a 95 gallon bow-front triangular tank, in which I've built up the back with hidden risers and then rocks on top with a land area consisting of gravel and a sunken rectangular planter in the back. I've had to install a triangular rigid black wire screen in the back for a basking heat light and an exhaust fan to provide the reptiles with a hot basking area in the rear with lower humidity than the rest of the tank. There is a submersible heater and powerhead filter (overkill!) and I've planted live mosses, sphagnum and frog moss and such, and pothos, and wandering fig, and a phalenopsis orchid, and even a small patch of venus fly trap. I have two lizards; a bahama anole (that exact type of little brown lizard that is scampering around absolutely *everywhere* in Florida) and a long-tailed grass lizard, and a nice assortment of tropical fish. Oh, and one aquatic african frog, too. And a White's tree frog.
The water part, in front, is about ten inches deep, and is tinted dark (blackwater) by the peat and tannin in the driftwood. It's natural, and doesn't hurt the fish. Right now, the fish are a few basic ones, because they have a good chance of not living through the first month due to the progress of the nitrification cycle. Eventually, I'll have some really great, unusual tropical fish in there too. A mudskipper for instance, is a necessity.

So here's a few pics for you to get a sense of the thing. This tank is HUGE. That bowed glass front measures 48 inches from side to side and two feet in height, and if I try to reach the back corner reaching in from the front, I can't even do it. It's over a yard away.

The plants are really taking off, of course, in such a greenhouse environment, so it's only going to get greener. Also, those plants underwater are live plantings as well.

Eventually, perhaps another lizard, maybe a gecko. And a red-eyed treefrog. Yeah. And a school of cardinal tetras.

The Divine Brat

"There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness."
-The Dalai Lama

“We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all.”
-Kalu Rinpoche

"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me...)
-God (aka: Yahweh)

***

Since I don't really believe in the supernatural, I see a 'spiritual' person as a person that is very non-egotistical, is very empathetic and loving, is almost impossible to anger, is completely selfless, and lives in the moment rather than in the past or the future, thereby being ready to accept whatever life has to offer and to enjoy it all to its fullest, even the sad parts. A person who has genuinely attained an inner serenity.

Such a person almost invariably causes joy in those around them.

Given that definition, you can see why I so strongly differentiate 'spiritual' from 'religious.'

My readers may note that my idea of what constitutes a spiritual person is a very hard thing to attain, but is attainable, since such people have existed and do exist. Some Buddhist monks get there. Also some Christians and indeed some few people of every disparate faith, or even of no faith or belief at all, do seem to occassionally make it to that point.

Basically, the introspective ones get there, sometimes.

One may also note that my definition of a spiritual man is the very diametric opposite of the Old Testament God Yahweh. He's a self-centered egomaniacal small-minded wrathful self-righteous vindictive jealous asshole.

And that's supposed to be great somehow? Something to love? Something to emulate?

More like a cautionary tale. “Now Johnnie, don’t kill ants with that magnifying glass! You wouldn’t want to end up like GOD, now would you?”

(Little Johnnie pisses pants and promises to be a good boy, mommy)

I think it is a point worthy of pondering that a mere man, as noted above, can, albeit rarely, get to a much more spiritually evolved point than can the Christian God and most of His followers put together. Don’t you?

Of course, this is because Christianity is not a spiritual path. It is more like an immature misbegotten attempt at one at best. Something a child would think up in response to being told about the nebulous concept of spirituality from an adult… “I am too spiritual! I am! I am!”

(In a Trelayne voice, of course)

(Time to come in now, Yahweh…)

***

(The reader should also note that I am not even close to my own definition of what constitutes a spiritual man, nor do I claim to be)

***

For my readers like Botts (where is he, anyhow?) and all other more spiritual, less dogmatic (nicer/saner) Christians, I would add that most (but not all) of the portrayals of Jesus Christ in the Bible coincide with my definition of a spiritual person.

So there's that.

I certainly don't see that as somehow special to Him, though. As noted above, a mere human can most certainly attain it, too. It’s not easy, I’m told, but it’s definitely possible.

But not Yahweh. Not the Old Testament God of the Hebrews. No way. Lost cause, that one. He's way too immature. Way too wild. Still at the “Id” phase. He needs a SPANKING more than any kid I ever knew, and I’m even against corporal punishment. What a little snot He turned out to be!

I guess it’s only natural that an all-powerful orphan with no one ever around to discipline Him ever would turn out to be the Ultimate Immoral Spoiled Brat with no respect nor love for anyone but Himself.

Why, He even went and had a Son out of wedlock like that and all. So on top of everything else he’s kinda ‘white-trashy’ too.

And poor Joseph. Being cuckolded by your own deity has to suck. Who do you beat up?

***

Too bad He didn’t have a mommy and a daddy to raise Him up right. Take Him down a notch when He got too full of Himself.

Maybe if He had parents, decent loving parents, He’d be a little more like "Our Lord" and a little less like “Our Lord of the Flies..."

Sad, really. He had such potential. What a waste.

What's wrong with this picture?

Looks like a nice pastoral scene, a boy on a farm, all dressed up in his Sunday best. Or is it?

Look closer... Click on the images for more detail.






Have you figured it out yet??? Need more time? I'll wait....

......


.....


....


...


..


.



Time's up!


Okay, ready?













He's FUCKING DEAD!


(no, really, he is)




HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

......

Isn't it interesting how mores and societal norms evolve over time? In the day this picture was taken, people were so much more inured to death than we are today. To them, death was everywhere, all the time. That's why you had a bunch of children.

Just imagine...................................................................

'So yer tellin' me little Billy dropped from the typhoid this morning? God's will be done, Amen. Let's just prop him up right quick before he starts to turn, and take one last portrait so we can remember what the little feller looked like in the confused haze of our memories of our other six boys and four girls. Mildred, go get the twine from the kitchen cupboard...'

Someone had to pose this boy's corpse and tie it into place. The parents actually wanted a picture of him taken like this after his passing, and so posed him strung up like a puppet.


Damn.


I guess you could say, they posed him with rigor.



(Late Victorian tintype, circa 1875-1900, post-mortem photograph)

(Also just about the creepiest photo I've ever laid eyes on!)



Hey, just wanted to share... now you can go back to your regularly scheduled discussion of far more weighty matters, such as whether even primordial singularities can ever acheive the density of the religious mind. Or how many famous philosophers can dance in the head of a single Christian apologist.









PS: And apparently it can be yours for the low low price of $375.00 (or best offer) right now at EBay. (Which of course was where my wife ran across it, made a small 'meeping' noise in her throat, and now can not even look at it for one second, she's so creeped out.)


Sleep well, my droogies. Try not to think of him.

And the Stupid just goes on and on...

The religious man has no trouble believing the ridiculous and only wonders why he's so much better at it than everybody else is. This he takes as a sign from God.
-Saint Brian the Godless

********

What is it with Christianity's seeming determination to dumb down the world... Now apparently 'Darwinism' is a 'devilish Gnostic plot.' Who knew?

What the heck is WRONG with these messianic mouthbreathers? I seriously doubt that the glorification of utter stupidity would have been something that pleased Jesus. But hey, who knows...

Here, read it and weep... weep if you give a damn about human intelligence and progress. Weep if you care at all about logic and reason. Weep if you love science. Because I am weeping. The highly contagious mental disease of Christianity is neutering our minds one by one with it's creeping pernicious ignorance, and we sit by and let it happen. If it has its way, we'll be a country of drooling idiots in a half-century, sitting around in our own feces singing hosannas.

(If I sound bitter, I am)

The article:

********

Darwinism: devilish Gnostic myth dressed up as science

By Linda Kimball
September 24, 2010

(Renewamerica.com)

Today all people whose faith in God the Father is genuine face a seemingly insurmountable problem with what seems like an overwhelming weight of evidence that evolutionism is true and the Genesis account of creation is false. Mockers and scoffers abound, scornfully accusing the faithful of believing in "an invisible being in the sky and that a dead guy from 2000 years ago is coming back soon...instead of believing in reality," as one scofflaw said recently.

However, the real issue here is not "superstitious, backward Christianity" vs. "enlightened reason and science," but about one creation account (Genesis) vs. another creation account (Darwinian evolution). The truth of this claim can be seen in the following quotes:

"...one belief that all true original Darwinians held in common, and that was their rejection of creationism, their rejection of special creation. This was the flag around which they assembled and under which they marched.... The conviction that the diversity of the natural world was the result of natural processes and not the work of God was the idea that brought all the so-called Darwinians together in spite of their disagreements on other of Darwin's theories. (One Long Argument,1991, p. 99, Ernst Mayr (1904–2005), Professor of Zoology at Harvard University)

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." ("Billions and Billions of Demons," Richard Lewontin (b. 1929), PhD Zoology, Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at Harvard University)

In other words, terrible-willed evolutionists have a Cosmic Authority problem, and this is why they rally around Darwinism and force its absurd, counterintuitive teachings upon gullible, misinformed Americans while simultaneously ridiculing and otherwise psychologically terrorizing creationists, among whose numbers are many of the defenders of America's founding traditions.

Commenting on the Cosmic Authority problem of many atheists, Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy and law at New York University, confesses:

"I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind." (The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me To Faith, Peter Hitchens, pp. 149-150)

Just what is Darwinism anyway?

At bottom, Darwinism is a Gnostic myth, notes Dr. Wolfgang Smith, physicist and mathematics professor at Oregon State University:

"...As a scientific theory, Darwinism would have been jettisoned long ago. The point, however, is that the doctrine of evolution has swept the world, not on the strength of its scientific merits, but precisely in its capacity as a Gnostic myth. It affirms, in effect, that living things created themselves, which is in essence a metaphysical claim....Thus...evolutionism is a metaphysical doctrine decked out in scientific garb....it is a scientistic myth. And the myth is Gnostic, because it implicitly denies the transcendent origin of being; for indeed, only after the living creature has been speculatively reduced to an aggregate of particles does Darwinist transformism become conceivable. Darwinism, therefore, continues the ancient Gnostic practice of deprecating 'God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth.' It perpetuates...the venerable Gnostic tradition of 'Jehovah bashing.'" (From Old Gnosticism to New Age I, Alan Morrison, SCP Journal Vol. 28:4-29:1, 2005, pp. 30-31)

Gnostics

Historically, Gnostics have always been notorious God-haters to the extent of consigning Him to hell. The early Church Fathers called them the "lawless ones," as they were idolizers of their own minds, rebels against all authority, immoralists, hedonists, and builders of alternative realities (utopian fantasies) requiring the death of God, for the heart of Gnosticism is "man is god."

While the infamous Tower of Babel was history's first Gnostic project, the Soviet Union and Socialist Germany are modern versions. In his book "Science, Politics, & Gnosticism," esteemed political philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-85) identifies progressivism, positivism, Hegelianism, Marxism, and the "God is dead" school as modern Gnostic movements. All of these movements are firmly grounded on the Gnostic myth of Darwinism.

In their rage against God the Father, modern Gnostics refuse to be created in His spiritual image, thus they conceptually "uncreate" themselves through reductionism, which in the words of Wolfgang Smith, means that they speculatively reduce themselves to "aggregates of particles." Reductionism is a tenet of the philosophy of materialism.

Materialist philosophy is neither new nor scientific, but one of the most ancient superstitious beliefs in the world. The ancient version held that matter has always existed and everything that exists consists of matter. According to the modern version, invisible dead-matter spontaneously generated itself from nothing, and then by way of evolution magically produced everything else. To believe this is to believe that the nothingness within the magician's hat spontaneously generated the bunny.

If evolutionism was a gas-powered generator, then spontaneous generation would be its indispensable fuel, admits Ernst Haeckel, pantheist mystic and ardent defender of Darwinism. In the following quote, observe that Haeckel confesses that spontaneous generation is not scientific but rather metaphysical. Furthermore, this metaphysical doctrine is the essential replacement for creation Ex Nihilo — the miracle of creation in other words:

"...spontaneous generation appears to us as a simple and necessary event in the process of the development of the earth. We admit that this process, as long as it is not directly observed or repeated by experiment, remains a pure hypothesis. But I must again say that this hypothesis is indispensable for the consistent completion of the non-miraculous history of creation, that it has absolutely nothing forced or miraculous about it, and that certainly it can never be positively refuted. It must also be taken into consideration that the process of spontaneous generation, even if it still took place daily and hourly, would in any case be exceedingly difficult to observe and establish with absolute certainty as such. This is also the opinion of Naegeli, the ingenious investigator, and he, in his admirable chapter on Spontaneous Generation, maintains that "to deny spontaneous generation is to proclaim miracles." (The History of Creation v.1, 1892, p. 422)

Ray Comfort quotes evolutionist Stephen Hawking, who in essence affirms that "the nothingness within the magician's hat spontaneously generated the bunny:"

"According to professor Stephen Hawking, God didn't create the universe. Instead, nothing created everything. However, Hawking has violated the basic laws of science. In an extract of his latest book, The Grand Design...published in Eureka magazine in The Times, the professor said: 'Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.'"

"It is embarrassingly unscientific to speak of anything creating itself from nothing," remarked Comfort. "Common sense says that if something possessed the ability to create itself from nothing, then that something wasn't nothing, it was something — a very intelligent creative power of some sort. "

Comfort concludes:

"Hawking has violated the unspoken rules of atheism. He isn't supposed to use words like 'create' or even 'made.' They necessitate a Creator and a Maker. Neither are you supposed to let out that the essence of atheism is to believe that nothing created everything, because it's unthinking." (Hawking Breaks Atheists Rules, Comfort, www.worldviewweekend.com)

So as it turns out, spontaneous generation is yet another "just-so" story. However, the importance of this particular fairytale is that it is the irreplaceable metaphysical foundation of the larger Gnostic myth of Darwinism. Without spontaneous generation, Darwinism...indeed all evolutionism...falls apart, leaving only the miraculous creation Ex Nihilo.

Furthermore, the respected scientist Louis Pasteur definitively disproved spontaneous generation just three years after Darwin published his book "On the Origin of Species:"

"... Darwin's celebrated tome On the Origin of Species, which had been published just three years before Pasteur's experiments, sought to discredit the need for God to create the species by showing how one species can transmute into another. But Darwin's account left open the problem of how the first living thing came to exist. Unless life had always existed, at least one species — the first — cannot have come to exist by transmutation from another species, only by transmutation from nonliving matter. Darwin himself wrote, some years later: 'I have met with no evidence that seems in the least trustworthy, in favour of so-called Spontaneous Generation.' Yet, in the absence of a miracle, life could have originated only by some sort of spontaneous generation. Darwin's theory of evolution and Pasteur's theory that only life begets life cannot both have been completely right." (The Fifth Miracle, 1999, p. 83, Paul Davies (b. 1946), Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science)

The Darwinian Deception

Colin Patterson writes that after studying evolutionary theory for many years, he finally "woke up and realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way." Patterson goes on to say:

"One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, or let's call it a non- evolutionary view, was last year I had a sudden realization for over twenty years I had thought I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That's quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long. Either there was something wrong with me or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally, I know there is nothing wrong with me, so for the last few weeks I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people....Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, 'I do know one thing — it ought not to be taught in high school.'"

"Evolutionism and Creationism" November 5, 1981, p. 2, Colin Patterson (1933–1998), Senior Paleontologist at British Museum of Natural History

When C.S. Lewis pointedly observed that the entire edifice of the so-called "science" of Darwinian naturalism has but one purpose, to keep the supernatural Creator out, he was merely confirming admissions made by Lewontin and many other Darwinists. In sum, Darwinism is a deception perpetrated by self-worshipping swindlers who have been "pulling the wool" over the eyes of the uninitiated masses, to use Lewontins' own words. (The Oxford Socratic Club, 1944)

Deceptions Have Consequences

Long before Darwinian Gnostics systematically liquidated in excess of 200,000,000 men, women, and children on behalf of communist and socialist utopian fantasies, George Romanes sought to warn the world of the coming catastrophe:

"Never in the history of man has so terrific a calamity befallen the race as that which all who look may now behold advancing as a deluge, black with destruction, resistless in might, uprooting our most cherished hopes, engulfing our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless desolation.... The flood-gates of infidelity are open, and Atheism overwhelming is upon us." (George Romanes, A Candid Examination of Theism,1878)

More recently, H. Enock wrote:

"No wonder that Brig. General F.D. Frost stated in the Fundamentalist, January, 1950, p. 21: 'There is no doubt about it that the doctrine of evolution is the greatest curse in our educational system.' Whether we read Ward's Dynamic Sociology, or Russell's Code of Morals, or Briffalt's Immoralism or some other book written by the Behaviorist School, — they all seem to endeavour to justify and base their conclusions on the bestial nature of man. This philosophy seeks to.... reduce man to the level of animal nature. The surging unrest, the broken homes, the frustrated lives, the increasing divorce cases, the multiplied number of criminals are but the inevitable outcome of the acceptance and practice of this evolutionary doctrine." (H. Enock, Evolution or Creation,1966, pp. 1146-1147)

Evolutionism "should not be taught in high school." Indeed. Gnosticism is the spiritual disorder of our age and Darwinism and spontaneous generation are its toxic roots. Conceptual murderer of God the Father, inverter of reality, hater of humanity, uplifter of Satan as the first "free thinker," destroyer of truth and all that is good, normal, and decent; bringer of chaos, blasphemy, hedonism, pathological lying, genocide and other evils too many to be listed, Gnosticism has all but destroyed America and the West.

In his book, "The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me To Faith," Peter Hitchens, brother of the infamous atheist Christopher writes:

"...the Bible angers and frustrates those who believe that the pursuit of a perfect society justifies the quest for absolute power. The concepts of sin, of conscience, of eternal life, and of divine justice under an unalterable law are the ultimate defense against the utopian's belief that ends justify means and that morality is relative. These concepts are safeguards against the worship of human power." (Rage Against God, p. 135)

The Western civilized nations rose to greatness on the wings of just one spiritual faith ...Christianity. Unalienable rights come from the transcendent Creator and not from weak, easily corrupted men. Through abandonment of its spiritual roots, the West — which today is a Gnostic-West — is moving inexorably toward its death.

America is the West's last best hope, observed Mark Steyn. Yet America is itself pathologically infected by Gnosticism and near death. Gnosticism must be destroyed. To do this we must tear it out by the roots. This means Darwinism must be uprooted and exposed for what it really is: a Gnostic myth.

********

Nooooo Linda, this means that your little pet cult of *Christianity* itself must be uprooted and exposed for what *it* is: A *dangerous* and highly contagious intentionally induced mental disease that produces narcissistic self-satisfied entitled morons like Linda Kimball here, with her pathetic delusions of superiority and intelligence, and no sense of what is real and what is not real left in her silly fluffy little Christian head. Her mind has been neutered by her religion, which is after all nothing more than institutionalized paranoid schizophrenia for the masses dressed up as a spiritual path, nothing more than a control mechanism, a mental computer virus constructed to conquor minds. People like her are completely and utterly disconnected from reality, and all they want is for the rest of us to follow suit ASAP. Now 'Darwinism' (evolution?) is a 'devilish Gnostic myth!' A who? Gnostics? You Christians haven't stopped fighting the Gnostics? I would have thought killing them all off would have satisfied you murderous bastards, but apparently not. A Gnostic myth. Really? What's next? The Big Bang Theory is a Cathar plot? Oh, those rascally Cathars...

How very fucking stupid.

I find this paragraph particularly telling:
"In other words, terrible-willed evolutionists have a Cosmic Authority problem, and this is why they rally around Darwinism and force its absurd, counterintuitive teachings upon gullible, misinformed Americans while simultaneously ridiculing and otherwise psychologically terrorizing creationists..."

Simply reverse the terms, replace 'evolutionists' with 'creationists' and vice-versa, and 'Darwinism' with 'Christianity,' and you have the actual truth of the matter. The creationists perceive (force themselves to perceive) reality precisely backwards and in reverse, because if they ever did not, if they ever saw reality as it actually is, then it would be revealed to them that it is actually their corrupt, stunted ideology which is backwards and reversed.

I miss Carl Sagan

"It is self-evident that the insane are willing to resort to things that the sane cannot even consider nor sometimes even imagine. Therefore they always have the element of surprise."
-Saint Brian the Godless

***

And now a quotation from someone considerably more famous, and rightly so:

"If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It or whatever the appropriate pronoun is, prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing? Or would He prefer His votaries to admire the real universe in all its intricacy? I would suggest that science is, at least in part, informed worship. My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, then our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, then our curiosity and our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival in an extremely dangerous time. In either case the enterprise of knowledge is consistent surely with science; it should be with religion, and it is essential for the welfare of the human species."
-Carl Sagan

I miss Carl Sagan. A clearer mind and better communication skills are seemingly impossible to find amongst today’s spokesmen for the side of science, which is basically identical to the voice of reason in our society. He was clever, thoughtful, had a disarming manner, and he knew how to make science interesting, even to a lot of people not interested in science. I wish there were a lot more like him. Of course if wishes were fishes I could put on a far better 'feeding the poor' show than Jesus did.

I have always liked the above Sagan quotation; however I see that even Carl, intelligent as he was, missed the obvious.

The part that I refer to is this interrogative sentence:
“If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It or whatever the appropriate pronoun is, prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing?”

YES, Carl, YES. That is PRECISELY what today’s Christians, many of them at any rate, believe!

Your audience in that quotation, or rather the Fundamentalist Christian portion of it, not only believes that God wants them to be sodden blockheads, they believe it so deeply that they compete to be the most sodden blockhead of all! Of course they don’t actually think of themselves as sodden blockheads in those exact words. No, they’re the faithful, the flock, the True Believers, the Chosen Ones, the righteous God-fearin’ common folk that just ‘know’ in their bones that prairie wisdom and so-called ‘common sense’ along with religious faith of course, are in every way preferable to logic and reason, proof and evidence. And so of course therefore, science is rendered that much pious malarkey, all bets are off, up is down and black is white. That loud slamming sound was the closing of their minds. Their reality has just trumped your reality, Carl. You lose.

(After all, as we all know, momma grizzlies and such don't truck with no book larnin' when a wink and a nod suffices as long as Jesus is in your heart)(Katie Couric rot in hell!)

Now Carl, what to do? Your whole logic is stymied! Your eloquence is wasted on those most in need of it. What you thought was the undeniably obvious, turned out to be anything but.

You’ve underestimated our stupidity as a species, Carl.

It’s not your fault, though. I find that the reverse of old Bertrand Russell’s saying is often true as well. You know the one: “A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”

Conversely and unfortunately for you Carl, a clever man’s understanding of the mind of a stupid man is limited by the fact that he is too clever to imagine being that stupid. At a gut level, he can't believe it's possible.

Too bad you’re dead, Carl. You were perhaps sufficiently brilliant to solve this conundrum for me, the “How to reach them” conundrum. I can’t seem to find any satisfactory solution. And it's not like I haven't tried. At first I thought there was a chance, but it's like their minds reset every Sunday or something. Any progress is deleted on a weekly basis.

(sigh)

(Oh well, at least you left us Cosmos. And that Jodie Foster movie.)

And Carl, not to make you spin in your grave, but they vote! How they vote! More even than in your day... They vote in droves! They vote in direct inverse proportion to their intellects! They are worse than sheep; they are lemmings, and not how lemmings actually are, no, but how they were incorrectly portrayed in that film by Mr. Disney. They listen to any caucasian that knows the secret word (Jesus Christ) and then they vote like maggots on a carcass, whipped into their dipterous larval frenzy by everyone and anyone from national-level right-wing politicians down to bloviating A.M. Radio personalities, their rabid pastors, myopic internet blogs, and that ever-present cable television version of ‘Pravda,’ Fox News. (Otherwise known as 'The Retarded Network') (Yes, I fucking said it!)
They osmotically absorb their fork-tongued hyperbiased non-reality-based talking points from their chosen Officially Sanctioned Disseminators of Truth, whichever one makes them feel the most special, and oh by the way, they pay attention to actual facts and verifiable truth about as much as an orca pays attention to a drowning gnat.

They not only can never think for themselves; they are so far away from ever even being able to imagine thinking for themselves that they’ve convinced themselves beyond a shadow of a doubt that that they already do. And that's enough for them. And for those who helped convince them. For they exist embedded in a matrix of reality-denial, a support-group of fellow dunces.

Mutual ignorance can have a peer-bonding effect. Who knew?

They are under the induced delusion (one among many) that a lack of knowledge is amply compensated for by a surfeit of blind belief, as long as you call it 'faith.' Proud of their ability to ignore the obvious, they persist in their beliefs in the face of any evidence to the contrary. (What evidence?) You see Carl, in their estimation the people like you, the realists, the science and logic based persons, are the actual ‘sodden blockheads’ because they (you) (we?) ‘understand, but worship nothing’ so to speak.

They are the blind insisting on their superior vision here, Carl.

And sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings Carl, but they are not impressed with you. Never were. All you ever were to them was a voice of the opposition, the hated adversary science, and therefore evil, so basically ‘don’t let the door hit you on the existential ass on your way to hell’ is how they feel about you. Sure, you were a visionary to many people, but not to them, never to them. To them, you and your kind, are anathema.

The bungled and the botched have decided that the rational reaity-based people are insane, and they breed faster than we do and are more organized than termites. It's like a cancer. It's scary, Carl. This country is seeing a rise of agressive religious anti-intellectualism that is like nothing I've ever seen before in my lifetime.

We’re fucked, Carl.