"atheists" - my final rant on the subject....

I really don't know what else I need to say to be complete about my disgust at the intellectual dishonesty in which I feel most atheists* indulge. But I feel I need to grapple with it one last time.

There are a few honest atheists. They are ones who admit that their assertion that there is no god is based on believing* rather than knowing*. I have no quarrel with them. And mostly, these are not the ones who constantly attack religions. They merely beg to differ.

It's the other atheists who irk me. The ones whose need to attack religions comes from an implied certainty that there cannot possibly be a god, but who are not prepared to discuss the reasoning for their certainty. It is not acceptable to them that some people choose to subscribe to metaphysical explanations for some things. It is not acceptable to them that some people don't require scientific proofs, but are content to dwell in faith about some issues.

To my way of thinking, a lot of what these atheists are on about is tantamount to seeking to disallow religious people their particular morals and values. There's no live-and-let-live being extended to the religious by these atheists. And that's what makes them indistinguishable from religious fundamentalist extremists. And that's what irks me.

There! I've nailed it! Ahhhhhhhhhhh...

Now I don't need to rant about them any more...

(Need a bit more context? Then [go here] )

* As defined [here]

this is NOT the next post...

Compliments of Deirdre... She is SUCH an imp...

(You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Deteriorata, Deteriorata)

Go placidly amidst the noise and waste, and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires. Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself; and heed well their advice, even though they be turkeys. Know what to kiss - and when. Consider that two wrongs never make a right, but that three do. Wherever possible, put people on hold. Be comforted, that in the face of all irridity and disillusionment, and despite the changing fortunes of time, there is always a big future in computer maintenance.

(You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.)

Remember the Pueblo. Strive at all times to bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate. Know yourself. If you need help, call the FBI. Exercise caution in your daily affairs, especially with those persons closest to you... That lemon on your left, for instance. Be assured that a walk through the seas of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet. Fall not in love, therefore, it will stick to your face. Gracefully surrender the things of youth: the birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan - and let not the sands of time get in your lunch. Hire people with hooks. For a good time, call 606-4311, ask for Ken. Take heart in the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese. And reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Milwaukee.

(You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.)

Therefore, make peace with your god, whatever you perceive him to be: hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin. With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal, the world continues to deteriorate. GIVE UP!

(You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.)

the preamble...

The next post will be my final one (or it won't be) on the topic of "what's wrong with atheists."

It occurred to me after reading the responses to the most recent two [1] [2] items on this subject that we need to cover some basic ground first. Establish foundations, so to speak.

The first foundation stone then is the subject of definitions. The first law of philosophy is 'define your terms'. Nowhere does it say that you have to agree with a definition. All it says is that this is the definition used within the boundaries of this work and as such that's where it ends. If you want to have a debate about my definitions be aware that I do not have to accept your definition any more than you have to accept mine and therefore why bother.

All a definition does is to provide a means of trying to understand what the writer is trying to say. A definition sets boundaries for understanding meaning. It does not pretend to be the bees knees of definitions. I'll leave the study of Superior Meanings to the Meaning Fascists. They can be found soaring the upper altitudes of the blogostratosphere. This plane don't fly that high... Nor do we want sudden and catastrophic depressurisation due to a smashed windscreen caused by birdstrike... Save the Philosophic Vultures , I say....

The second foundation stone is "Don't ever, EVER, forget the first foundation stone."

So, before we get going in a day or two, let's use this preamble to get all of the cat-calls out of the way. Got problems? Speak now, or forever hold your piece [sic]...

is the pope a catholic?

I just re-read this post and the comments to it. It was an interesting discussion. Pity not too may people actually got what I was trying to say. Must be my fault...

Maybe one day when I can recover some mental equilibrium I'll try to explain it better.

There's a form of secular fundamentalist extremism loose on this planet which won't be happy until its morals are the only "valid" ones surviving. Make no mistake about it, it is fundamentalist and extremist in nature. And it's covert. It doesn't like to be exposed.

Most of its followers have no idea what they've signed up for, but they agree on one thing: Only they are right. Only their values are the right ones. Anyone who has different values is automatically wrong and to be dismissed or even vilified and despised.

Doesn't that sound like fundamentalism and extremism to you? Are you sure I'm not talking about you?

You know I'm wrong whenever I carry on like that, but why are you so blind to the fact that you do it too? Yes, you!!!

Now fuck off and don't think any more about it...

Go on! Fuck off! You make me sick!!!

Titirangi, New Zealand

Titirangi... ... Titirangi... ... Titirangi...

Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin...

So as not to be guilty of peddling any hidden agenda here, I am challenging one of the good folk of Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin to correct me on a matter of their local history.

Why?

Because a person from Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin has been regularly reading this blog ( a heinous crime in itself) but has so far failed to engage in commentary on what they have been reading here (another unforgivably heinous crime).

Not good enough, Wisconsin!

And so I looked up Soldiers Grove and found their website. In particular, their telling of the "history" of their place. And that's when I spat my dummy!

I'm good at spitting my dummy...

To me, their "history" represents one of the very worst examples I have ever seen of the European white man's disgusting use of propaganda to cover up his evil actions. In this day and age of "civilisation", I find this utterly unacceptable.

Utterly...

Now, I'm not a scholar of the history of that area (or any area), therefore I have issued this challenge in the hope that, if I've got it wrong, some informed scholar (as opposed to brainwashed regurgitator), will correct me.

Here's a couple of references to start us off:

http://www.soldiersgrove.com/village_history.htm

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_War

In this chautauqua I will be using the format "he said, she said". By that I mean that I will quote a bit of the "village history" and then offer my "translation" of it. The Wikipedia article is there merely to help those who wish to go deeper, to find some start-points for their own research. You gotta do your own learnin' dudes...

Ready? Here we go:

"Settlement came to the Kickapoo area in the first half of the 19th century. Much of the local land had been deeded to veterans of U.S. wars."


Translation: "The dispossession of the traditional owners, the Kickapoo Indians, by the white supremacist invaders was finalised with the deeding of their land to the murderous marauders who did most of the killing. Namely, the soldiers." Once again, "might is right" triumphed over anything even remotely resembling "truth", "respect" and "fairness". And thus, this part of the world lurched one notch further towards racist corruption.

Image: Chief Black Hawk, the leader of a band of Sauk and Fox Indians,


Tobacco growing also became a staple of the area’s small family farms. High quality cigar leaf and chewing tobacco became valued cash crops as evidenced by the unique tobacco barns that still dot the countryside.

Translation: "The lucrative rewards of the drug trade replaced more subsistent forms of agriculture and the rule of the drugs barons set a chilling precedent which future generations all over the world would come to rue."

"The 20th century saw the rise and decline of small family dairy farming. Remaining local dairy farmers are fiercely competing with large corporate farms, trying to maintain the American tradition of family farming."

Translation: Having invented globalised capitalism, America is rapidly falling victim to the evil it created (a tick for the buddhist concept of karma.) Ironic, given that America is the most rabidly extremist Christian nation on earth and yet it seems to fail to understand Jesus's injunction against capitalism. Jesus might well have said "He who lives by the dollar, shall die by the dollar." Even more ironic is the fact that the All-American invention, "agribusinesss", is replacing "family farming" all over the world in order to subjugate local farmers everywhere into the blood-sucking service of the American (and their global co-conspiritor) "shareholders".

"The area provides breathtaking scenery and outstanding opportunities to hunt, fish, canoe and hike."

Translation: Having failed to survive through the time-honoured work of subsistence farming, the corrupted locals are now trying desperately to sell themselves, their wildlife, and the natural features of the countryside they murdered the traditional owners for, to the few who remain with sufficient access to The New God (The God of the Almighty Dollar), in a final attempt to survive. A revolution cannot be too far away...

(The biblical floods) A temporary dike built in 1968 seemed to be working fine until the weekend of July 4, 1978. On that weekend, heavy rains saturated the area and sent the Kickapoo over the dike and again into Main Street. This flood was the last straw that convinced local residents that the business section of Soldiers Grove had to be moved.
A new site for the downtown businesses was selected about one mile east of the original location. More the 6.5 million dollars of Federal, State, and local funding was obtained, in part by agreeing to incorporate solar heating systems into the new buildings. Thus Solar Town Soldiers Grove was born.

Translation: Having realised that they had set themselves up on a floodplain (something the original inhabitants might have told them about, had they not brutalised them quite so badly), the Big Money Boys used money syphoned off from the proles to relocate themselves. Realising that an energy crisis was looming, they cunningly switched to solar heating in order to save future dollars, and made a big deal about being "green and clean". Spinmeisters preened themselves, and the gullible public loved it. A real win-win outcome...

The former downtown section was transformed into a large public area which includes sports fields, a playground, a camping area, and a beautiful Veteran’s war memorial. The park area is also home to Region 5’s only Medal of Honor Wall, celebrating the heroism of more than 600 Congressional Medal of Honor recipients from eleven Midwestern states.

Translation: The floodplain, which once might have provided the promise of rich alluvial soil for farming, was now turned into a place for the glorification of those poor sods who were sucked into fighting for the interests of Big Money. And the locals love it!

snippets...

Last year I braved my anti-social tendencies to attend the National Nonviolence Gathering in Queensland. Yes, due to my eternal internal turmoil, I was a displaced person there... A stranger in a strange land... Indeed...

Things were going reasonably well for me until I found myself in a discussion in which the discussion intitiator postulated that soldiers derive a sense of power from guns and uniforms. The initiator painted such a one-sided and absolute picture that I gave him an anectdote from my experience in Vietnam:

December 1968. We had just disembarked from the troopship HMAS Sydney in Vung Tau harbour. We were grunts on our first day on the ground in Vietnam and we were nervous. VERY nervous... We boarded a convoy of trucks for the road trip to our new home, the base at Nui Dat, some thirty or forty kilometers up the road.

A few kilometers along, the convoy ground to a halt, due to a traffic jam of its own making. So here we were, about five hundred troops sitting in the back of stationary trucks. Sitting ducks in a duckshoot. Being a machine gunner, I was at the back of our truck. We were literally surrounded by a throng of Vietnamese peasants dressed exactly the same as the Viet Cong we had been told so much about, i.e. the traditional "black pajamas". And we could not understand what they were shouting at us. Some looked angry.

One toothless old man had an olive-green tin can in his hands and was gesticulating with it. In fact, I now realised that in the crowd, there were quite a few people of all ages doing likewise. Thoughts raced through my mind (as they do in moments of crisis):

Were these tins home-made grenades?
Were they ration tins?
Where they begging for food?
Were they about to attack us with grenades?

I suddenly felt very powerless... And afraid... My gun and my uniform were more of threat to my safety than a source of power. We could do nothing until something bad went down. And if it did, would I even be alive a few seconds later? Fear and impotence is what I felt - not power!

This anecdote seemed to derail the discussion initiator's agenda, which appeared to me to be that all soldiers everywhere and in all situations got a big fat hard-on from carrying a gun and wearing a uniform. No doubt some psychologist who's never "been there" dreamed that one up... No doubt it sounds good in a classroom full of impressionable young students...

How terrible of me not to conveniently fit in with this stereotype...

Tragic...

I wish these self-appointed gurus seeking to shape the impressionable minds of well-intentioned peace activists would occasionally venture outside of the confines of their own lunchtime...

Video time again...

Mike has caught up with CNNNN's excellent exposé of The American Psyche, and once again highlighted the need for the whole world to shout YANKEE GO HOME* in large, friendly, and welcoming voices...

My ego insists that I point out to you that I had presented this in October 2005.

You might like to check out CNNNN's 2003 Video Vault for a full list of their videos.

And remember... Wherever, whenever you meet a Yank, don't forget to say
YANKEE GO HOME in a large, friendly, and welcoming voice... Especially when George Bush (or one of his team) is visting your country...

In fact, why wait till then?

Why not paint, in large, friendly and welcoming letters, YANKEE GO HOME on your front fence, or ask your boss if you can use his billboard for that purpose.

Hey! I got an even better idea: Why not write to particularly benevolent and altruistic American corporations "developing" your country and ask them if you can use their billboards to convey, in large, friendly, and welcoming letters, the YANKEE GO HOME message.

In 1988 Richard Thompson wrote a song titled YANKEE GO HOME, so now, after you've memorised the lyrics and the tune, you can even sing it in the shower with the bathroom window wide open and impress your neighbours with your large, friendly, and welcoming voice...


Image borrowed from [ here ]

(Note the date of the article, and the fact that this man is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.)







* This is an idea whose time just never really went away... As Major General Smedley Butler tried to tell us...