Marx the Moron

A response to the idiots over at the “Rolling Stone”

Marx Was Right: Five Ways Karl Marx Predicted 2014 – Rebutted!

A somewhat humorous look at what capitalism really is and how many of the principles laid out by Marx has been implemented in Socialist America which is not even remotely “Capitalistic”.  If you think America is Capitalistic, you are not paying attention.

Marx Was Right: Five Ways Karl Marx Predicted 2014 – Rebutted!

 

The Truth About Karl Marx

A deeper look into what makes Karl the Sociopath tick.

The Truth About Karl Marx

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The Dork of Oxford: The Vanity of this Life

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.” – Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. (Emphasis mine)

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus echoed the same objections that can be seen in Dawkins’ writings today.  Some things don’t change much.  Epicurus held a nearly identical view of the afterlife or “second life” as Dawkins does now.  He thought that mankind would be better served if each man paid more attention to making this life better rather than wasting time and resources trying to appease non-existent “gods” in the hope of obtaining better crops or greater wealth (self-interest) or of being accepted by such deities in the next life (his real objection).  Epicurus believed that this preoccupation with the afterlife was one of the chief problems that kept mankind from enjoying the life they live in the here and now.

Furthermore, Epicurus suspected that the miserable, mean, harsh and impoverished life most people lived was caused partly by their preoccupation with the afterlife.

Of course, this assertion does not make it so, but it still continues to be a common belief among atheists and continues to see the light of day in the writings of Dawkins.  For example…

Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.”  ― Richard Dawkins

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”  ― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

It is clear that his use of words like “vain and presumptuous”, “infantile” and “The truly adult view” are used to convey the impression that his views are intellectually superior to the views held by theists without providing the reasons for his position laid out in cogent argument.  It is typical of the common response one finds on most blogs when an atheist responses to a theistic post.  Their posts are usually peppered with condescension, ad hominem disparity and aspersions of the vilest kinds.  These kinds of responses add nothing to the discussion of the post itself yet their authors often insist that their position is clearly the rational one.  Of course there are the occasional thoughtful exceptions but it is not the norm.

Dawkins’ polite disparagement when writing about the “second” life gives way to the more common umbrage salted with explicatives when publicly speaking and takes on a much more derogatory tone.  His content at times is not much better than the “God is a genocidal maniac so F*** You” kind of thing the average anti-Christian blogger brings to the table as an intellectual offering.  He simply assumes what he says should be taken at face value, that he is always correct in his historical assertions, and tops it all off with a little vitriol.

Observations: It does not seem to matter to Dawkins that his beliefs are contrary to what is known about the world.

As pointed out in previous posts…

• It is never observed that matter has incorporeal attributes in the real world.  In other words, matter never demonstrates attributes such as reason, ideas, desire, nor does it make choices, engineer a bridge, fall in love, or appreciate music.  If matter and energy are all there is, matter must cause these things to come into existence.  In short, the effect must be greater than the cause, which is another way of saying I believe in magic rather than science.
  
• While it is observed that matter can be used as a carrier of information (via Structure), it is never observed that matter is the source of the information that it may carry.
  • When ever the source of information can be determined, it is always because that structure that carries it has been imposed upon matter from outside of itself.
  • When we can determine its source, it is always because a mind has imposed a structure upon matter to carry information.  Basically an force outside the matter itself has ordered and arranged matter so that information can be embedded.
  • When matter is found to carry information  it is for the purpose of communication.
• Information is really the lowest level of mind.  As far as is known, such things as desires, perceiving the value of an object such as a nice purse or a fine watch, motives of passion or pleasure, love, loyalty, honor, hatred, bitterness, gratitude, etc., cannot be explained by the presence of information alone.  And information cannot be explained by matter alone.  These are difference categories of phenomena.

Thus, it is always the case, when the source is known, that information is from an external source that is not material in nature.  Dawkins and some atheists are aware of this, so there have been concerted efforts to fabricate explanations for this source from within the material realm itself.  While at the same time they employ every form of non-material faculty of their being (such as ideas, logic, argument, appeal to emotions, etc.) in order to persuade you their opinion is the correct one.  Opinion being another of those non-material incorporeal phenomena that should not exist if reality is as they say.

We could go on about this but, as I said, this subject has been covered HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE.

The highest form of meaningful life?

But this is not really the point Dawkins is driving at in the above quotes.  Dawkins is asserting that hoping in a life beyond the grave is a vain one, so one should only live for the here and now, the existential experience.  So what is supposed to give this very temporary life of ours its grand meaning and significance?

According to Dawkins it is the wonder of discovery that science provides.  This “wonder”, this “feeling” of awe that is to be derived from scientific investigation is on par with the elation that one might experience while listening to music, going to the opera, a trip to the art museum, or standing in the presence of a great poet.

This “feeling of awed wonder”, this “deep aesthetic passion” is not a phenomenon of matter.  It is incorporeal in nature.  It has no mass or volume.  One cannot measure its hardness, taste it, or perceive its color.  Even so, the experience that is supposed to provide our meaningful existence is simply feeling a certain way.  It is a gratification of a desire.  It is an attempt to provide or create a certain state of feeling (the awed wonder) and nothing more.

It is also important to remember that these emotional states are to be treasured because we are very temporary in nature or as Dawkins puts it, “the time we have for living is quite finite”.  Dawkins does not prove his point about that because we all know that we live and die, at least, the material aspect of us does.  What he cannot and therefore does not explain is how matter comes to value this state of emotion in the first place, he just assumes that it does because he does.  And since he is nothing more than matter and energy flowing to and fro, temporarily coming together to form himself before moving on, it must have these unobserved magical qualities.

However, Dawkins assumes that the emotional bingeing that he hangs the meaning of life upon is the same for everybody.  He elevates his “feeling of awed wonder” to the top of the charts without any criteria but the satisfaction he gets from his own gratification.  Since that is his best experience possible, it must be the best that can be had by all and that is what the whole of humanity ought to pursue.

The best a D. Phil can offer?

So this is what a Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford comes up with, self-indulgence, emotional gratification, a temporary state of wallowing in a feeling.  Setting aside that he cannot explain why this is so.  He cannot explain how these feelings even exist if the world is nothing but matter and energy.  It seems that his education has simply taught him how to hide his nakedness with clever words used to obfuscate the baseless assumptions he makes about “reality”.

The incorporeal, these “feelings”, are to provide meaning for our material existence.  Yet he declares hope in a second life, where it is said that incorporeal existence continues, is “vain” and “presumptuous”?   This is jaw dropping stupidity at its finest.   What Dawkins ought to do in order to truly maximize his experience is to drop some ecstasy the next time he experiences this “awed wonder”.

Kidding aside, if meaning is found in some emotion and its gratification, why it is assumed, as Dawkins clearly does, that music or science can be universally relied upon to provide its highest most preferred form?  What compels anyone towards this particular emotional state as opposed to any other?  Why not shopping for jewelry for instance?  Or power?  Or Wealth?  Or torture? Or hording?  So what if it harms someone else.  Why would an object composed of mere matter care about that?  So what if one’s desires are or aren’t met.  Get used to disappointment.

Life is pain, Highness.  Anyone who says differently is selling something.”  The man in black, The Princess Bride.

Most people in the world do not have the opportunity that Dawkins takes for granted.  And they find temporary pleasures in other things more available to them.   When people face the end of their temporal existence and they know they must leave this world do they really crave one more experience of “awed wonder” that science can provide?  Or do they wish to be surrounded by those they love?

But this too is mere gratification, a desire to be comforted or the desire to be loved one last time before departing this world is in principle no different than Dawkins desire to want “awed wonder”.  If our incorporeal existence terminates here, as Dawkins wants to believe, it is all vain.  His attempt to find meaning within ourselves is all that he or anyone else can come up with if life ends at death.  It is only temporary distraction from the vanity of life, no better than the pleasure derived from enjoying a good hoagie from Philadelphia.

Self-indulgence and gratification of desire need not take the arbitrary ranked “highest experiences” path that Dawkins suggests.  Dawkins guidance, more often than not, goes unheeded.  He simply provides no real reason for the rest of us to assign scientific awed wonder as the pinnacle of human experience.  Never mind the absurdity of an over-educated elitist attempting to find meaning for his material existence in the metaphysical and non-material attributes of his nature.  The common man may not know how to articulate the contradiction he sees in Dawkins’ own vain attempt to find meaning but he senses this contradiction never the less.

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The Dork of Oxford and the little boy

Category Errors are delicious, I’ll have yours.

From Mr. A.M.

Did you notice that the boy doesn’t answer the question? His own argument is, that god created him and he cannot see god. But so, the clay pony would have to assume that the BOY is god. But instead, you claim that there is another good, that they clay pony just can’t see. And why do you assume that the first god that the boy cannot see is the last one?

For Clarity, I am assuming the phrase “another good” is meant to be “another god”.

First of all Mr. A.M. once again dodges the argument in the article.  The past responses are of the same caliber.  He never actually answers or effectively refutes what is written, preferring to focus in on some unrelated minutia.

Actually in the Cartoon, which Mr. A.M. now attempts to discredit (or perhaps waste my time and resources), is one of those humorous philosophical dilemmas. Dawkins, being a materialist, assumes god, if there was one, would have to be a creature not unlike himself, a material being.  He accepts no possibility of a “god” being anything other than an advanced being, an alien, subject to and a product of the physical world that he himself is.

That is why he assumes “if god exists”, he is going to exist as a material being like any other.  Dawkins and Mr. A.M. have no problem violating cause and effect and peppering their rantings with logical fallacies galore. They do not even recognize it when they do so.  But any talk of God and now they suddenly understand cause and effect at least applied to the world of matter and energy to which there belief in materialism has confirmed them.

In Philosophy the question is often turned around as in “where did matter come from?” or more commonly “Why is there something rather than nothing?”  This is the start.  In the physical world, it remains true that whatever had a beginning had a cause.  Since we know that all things had a beginning there was an adequate cause.

In philosophy and logic as well, there is the infinite regression argument.  This argument, from the physical world, is considered invalid because as you trace thinks back to their previous cause you must sooner or later arrive at the first cause.  The Physical universe is not eternal or at least shows no evidence for that being the case.  Sagan my ponder this in the vain hope of a way out of this dilemma but it looks more and more like the Cosmos had a first cause because the Cosmos had a beginning.

Dawkins “Checkmate” only applies if “god” is caused by some other previous material physical phenomena.  Dawkins is attempting to bring the metaphysical into the materialists world he imagines he lives in.  He cannot adequately explain even why he has any conception of a “god” if indeed he is merely matter as he believes he is.  He cannot even explain cogently why he has a belief in anything at all.

The Universe had to have a first Cause because it had a beginning.  That cause is God.  The world we live in and the unseen world we cannot see, yet accept as readily as our physical one, such as the world of ideas, reason, desires, hopes, dreams, goals, love and hate are two different planes on reality.  This is easily seen unless blinded by materialist bias and anti-religious malice.

God does not have a beginning, so he doesn’t need a cause.  God is not a material being, but describes himself as a Spirit or at least living outside the physical realm where spirits dwell.  That is He is being and He is mind.  Whatever He ultimately is, he is not a mere physical phenomenon that Dawkins and Mr. A.M. conceive of.

Dawkins is attempting to apply physical argument to non-physical phenomena.  Oops, Category error.   Besides, why would Dawkins even be able to conceive of the idea of God or gods if he was what he believes he is; mere matter, batches of chemicals whistled together into complex forms by magic (evolution, time and chance, fairy dust).  He finds himself, like Mr. .A.M., at the end of the day loaded with all the incorporeal attributes of spirit or mind so he can enjoy and interact with the world around him and be free to make his own decisions for good or evil without interference from a God he hates.

There is also the question of “does Mind create matter or does matter create mind?”  We know that our minds create objects in the real world from available material.  We design, plan, make blue prints, build houses, breed dogs and ponies, make tools, design circuits, and utilize language to facilitate communication so we can learn and share ideas.  Matter does none of this.  So how does matter create mind?  Everything we see and do, including publish articles about irrational worldviews, is a product of mind.  Matter is merely its tool.  It is never observed to be the other way around.  That would be irrational.  Yet Dawkins and Mr. A.M. believe this very thing.  It is of no concern to them that it is not the matter they are composed of that believes, it is the “ghost withing the machine”, their spirit, their mind that does.  The very part of reality they reject if they were honestly consistent with their beliefs, which, of course, they cannot be.

For Prof. Dawkins, Mr. A.M., and anyone else who is unfamiliar with the First Cause argument, they can go to  Why Russell was wrong I: The First Cause Argument to get a better overview.

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The Dork of Oxford: Imbuing meaning into a void

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.”  ― Richard Dawkins

A statement such as the one above is loaded with materialistic assumptions about origin and being.  At the same time Dawkins attempts to add meaning to these assumptions by stealing from a non-materialistic, indeed theistic worldview, the presuppositions and assertions needed to give it meaning.  He crosses the two yet never realizing he does so.  And he is very consistent in his INABILITY to see it.

His promoters cheer on his brilliant insights when it is simply bad analysis.  For they suffer from the same logical and philosophical malaise.

First off all, Dawkins is a materialist, an atheist and holds an unshakable belief in evolutionary biology, the greatest of all “scientific” jokes.  Now I do not mean that much of what biology with its observations and documentation are wrong.  No much of it is good science.  But it is forced to make unscientific, even irrational conclusions, because of the worldview it must fit into.  Scientism is not science, nor is evolutionary theory, nor is creationism for that matter.

Scientism: the uncritical application of scientific or quasi-scientific methods to inappropriate fields of study or investigation. – Collins English Dictionary.

“Scientists” who want science to be the final arbitrator of all truth is what scientism is all about.  It places the materialist into the position of high priest on par with the purveyors of all of the lunatic versions of religion.  Being the final arbitrator of all truth gives one tremendous influence and power over the less educated masses.  But at this point going into motives is digressive.

Some of the assumptions.

• If we are merely matter and energy, why do we open our eyes to behold a “sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life”?  What are the attributes found in matter that recognize these things?  Matter has weight, takes up space, has color, texture, hardness, etc.  This part we get.  But if we are matter flowing here and there, coming together briefly to become us then vanishing and moving on to something else, why do we even care if matter has weight or color?  Why are we cognizant of this fact?  How does something lacking in any mental faculty or observable function organize and sort and quantify and analyze and draw conclusions and suggest plans and design systems to do useful work that servers some other abstract purpose or goal?

These are not observable functions of matter and energy.  They are the frauds of Scientism.  They are the product of a belief about how the world must be because that is the kind of belief that is wanted. 

• Dawkins must believe that matter begets mind.  For example, the law of non-contradiction must somehow arise from the phenomena of matter and energy.  It is a very popular theme in science fiction to believe that once matter becomes complex enough, it crosses some threshold and becomes self-aware or alive.  The Terminator and Matrix sagas are examples of this.

Dawkins’ statement hides the belief that the effects can exceed the cause.  Because he exchanges an empirical hat for a metaphysical one he never sees the irrationality inherent in this.

• Dawkins must somehow contrive meaning from meaningless matter.  Here he uses the terms “noble” and “enlightened”.  In other places he uses the term “wonder”.   But these are mental constructs describing emotional states.   These are not materialistic phenomena.  Perceptions and emotions are not found in hydrogen, argon, beryllium or cesium.  The cleaver use of adjectives does not somehow imbue meaning into believing that somehow dirt has magical mental properties.

The category error (or category fallacy as it is sometimes called) is the materialists’ bread and butter.  In an age of state run schools of collectivism propaganda it is too often missed and goes unrecognized.

Just as Augustine confused the moral with the metaphysical and sent the institutional forms of Christianity careening down a theologically erroneous and sometimes destructive path, learned men since the time of Epicurus, and scientists since Darwin’s time have made good science to serve their religion of Scientism and have become the pawns of the collectivist state where they serve has high priests.

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The Dork of Oxford – Structure and Information Theory

Dawkins fails to understand structure.

Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place …. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.”  – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

The last post on this subject was meant to be a more general discussing noting the differences because the materialist/atheist/evolutionary viewpoint and the ancient dualism of the Greek and Hebrews and theism in general.  It is very easy to see the vast superiority of dualism over monism but rarely is a worldview decided by rationality.

One former reader, a Mr. A.M., asserted I did not understand the concept behind Dawkins “MEME” nor the idea behind the transmission and subsequent combination of information as it undergoes “selective pressures” and as matter flows from place to place (as Dawkins puts it) because the structure of matter is maintained.  Even though I gave valid references for its definitions and noted the good Professors books from which his theorems arise, still the critic missed the overall point of the post.

Now, structure can account for some things such as preserving and transfer existing information from place to place and through time.  For example, ink and paper can be used by an author to transmit a story, a theory, arguments, ideas, describe desires, advice, etc.

In biological systems, the double helix structure of the chromosomes, contain complex combinations of nucleobases held within a phosphate-deoxyribose spine.  The sequencing of the nucleobases (often represented by the letters C, G, A and T) are the source of the information within the DNA that code for protein synthesis.  It is important to understand that neither the DNA, chromosomes, genes, nor the nucleobases themselves are the information (they are not), but the patterns or sequences of the nucleobases are.  It would be the same thing to confuse the ink or even the shape of the ink (such as letters of the alphabet) as the information, when it is really the ink that is used to form letters that are cobbled together to form patterns that follow rules of syntax and grammar, imposed upon some form of matter, that create a language which is the true source of the information.

Letters are symbols used to represent sounds or objects in the real world.  They are organized by people using rules to construct languages so that communication can be facilitated between individuals who have shared understanding of the grammatical rules of that language.  It requires a sender and a receiver with this shared or common understanding to communicate information, ideas, desires, argument or any other incorporeal non-material mental conception via spoken or written language.

The only evidence we really have is that information requires a physical carrier in order to be conveyed to others who understand the same syntax and grammar, whether spoken or written or carved in stone.  There is no evidence that matter or matter’s structure creates this information (let alone ideas, desires, arguments, values, perceptions or moral standards) regardless whether it undergoes selective pressures to preserve and alter the information it carries or not.   An interesting idea for sure, likely born out of the desperation of the materialist to explain the incorporeal, but it is not science.

All known sources of information require an author which means information is the product of a mind.  Even with this, the author requires readers.  If mechanical (say a machine that can read music and play it back on a computer) it must be designed to do so by some entity that understands the information’s syntax and grammar.  It does not magically happen in the real world we live in; only in Dawkins imaginary world does this occur.  Matter does not comprehend syntax, grammar or ideas.  It does not have properties or attributes that are known to allow for this.  Everything that has been observed, and thus can be called science, is that matter can only carry information if an outside influence forces a structure (code, language) upon it.

In order for incorporeal concepts to be passed on to a receiver of these concepts, the receiver must either learn a language or must be programmed or designed in some fashion to understand the concepts that it will receive.  This goes way beyond mere information.  This includes ideas, perceptions, desires, self-awareness, morality, decisions, judgments, perceiving value, beauty, love of music, appreciation of color and composition, creativity, encouragement, kindness, respect, pride and humility, guilt and shame, virtue and honor, hope, faith, logic, articulate speech, design, and in short, anything that defines humanity.   You can believe that matter must have such abilities and you are welcome to such beliefs but don’t pretend its science.

Materialism and its plunge into the abyss of irrationality hides its nakedness in a wordy world of jargon masquerading as science.  Materialistic bias is not science and in fact violates it.  Yet Dawkins must hold on to this worldview, because the alternative is “unthinkable” (Sir Arthur Keith).   There is no backside of Mt. Improbable to climb in slow small incremental steps.

Materialism commits category errors in ascribing abilities to matter and energy it does not have.  It assumes that the effect is greater than the cause and must do so.  It must believe where there is no evidence to believe and insist that it is an evidenced based rational explanation of things it cannot explain.  It must parade itself as an rational alternative theistic dualism by educational monopolies and ad hominem mockery as intimidation because under its layers of wordy edifices there is nothing but naked irrationality and intellectual vacuity.  Yet it passes for science in a world that is easily fooled by skillfully utilized words.  So once again, God is proved by the impossibility of the opposite and mankind’s accountability to its creator is not assuaged.

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The Dork of Oxford Revisitied

Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place …. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.”  – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Prof. Dawkins has an unshakable belief in the materialistic paradigm and evolutionary biology.  Because of his great belief that matter and energy are all there was, is, or ever will be, Dawkins makes an amazing discovery, or rather, comes to an astounding conclusion.  Since your original matter and energy was not really present at the event of a children memory, yet you retain that memory, there must be a mechanism for the transference of this memory.  Because he rejects the obvious implication of dualism, he asserts that matter, flowing from place to place, has some unknown hidden trait that carries with it memories of events that it passed through.  Of course if this were true, I should be able to remember not only my own personal memories but I should have memories of all events my matter has passed through from the beginning of its existence.

For simplicity sake, monism as used here means that reality is composed of a single strata or substance, that is matter (or matter and energy) and is akin to materialistic atheism.  Dualism, such as was common to the belief of the ancient Greeks or Hebrews, states that reality is composed of both mind and matter and that these two things are distinct.  So when I say Dawkins in a monist I mean he believes in a single layer of reality.  This means that Dawkins has to explain how matter can acquire the attributes of the incorporeal, i.e., of mind.

Dawkins attempts to do this with the concept of the MEME he proposed in “The Selfish Gene”. Never mind that there is not one iota of evidence for it except for the use of large words used in a way to make them sound scientific. Never mind that He uses the canned Neo-Darwinian mechanism to explain how memes operate.

Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition and inheritance, each of which influence a meme’s reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread and (for better or for worse) mutate. –  Wikipedia

To keep things squarely in a materialist framework and avoid the more obvious conclusion of theistic dualism, Dawkins has to invent quasi-evolution constructs like memes.  There is no basis for this in the evidential world in which Dawkins claims to live.  He simply does not know how to explain memory, fashion, or social habits that are found in all cultures.  He certainly knows of no explanation for why a hunk of matter, like yourself, should find art, music or architecture of any interest at all.  After all, dirt is not musical.  It is not moral, it has no memory, contains no blue print or plan.  Matter does not choose a set of symbols and organize them to create the syntax and grammar needed by a sender and a receiver to communicate intentions.  Matter is not in and of itself information baring, nor does it impose upon that information syntax and grammar.  

We use matter in many ways, to pave streets or forge into tools or light up houses and keep warm.  What we don’t do is assume it can make moral choices or have unsatisfied desires.  My granite counter-top does not pine away wishing it were back in the old mountain it was dug from, at least, not to my knowledge.  Such a belief would be considered idiotic.  The average, normal, rational person, driven by the evidence all around him treats matter as distinct from mind.  The normal assumption of anybody free of materialist atheism that arises out of evolutionary pollution is to treat the world as dualistic rather than monistic.

Memes and replication really explain nothing at all, least of which is now matter acquires the attributes of mind.  Of course, to Dawkins, mind is brain.  But mind is not brain.  Brain is matter.  As an analogy we could use a television.  Now I realize no analogy is perfect but they can be instructive.

Say a person is siting at home watching “Happy Days”.  The cable or satellite or TV antenna is picking up the signal and passing it through the matrix of circuits that is the television.  Then, something goes wrong.  Prehaps the sound goes out, or all the reds drop out of the picture, or focus is lost.  What happened?  The signal is still there, with all the information is has always contained.  The other TV in the bedroom is still seeing the picture fine.  So, a repairman is called.  He replaces a part.  Then another, then another.  Finally the show can be viewed properly again.  But the television has new parts that were not in the original configuration.  Shouldn’t that make a difference?  Not at all because those parts that were needed to see the show properly are completely independent of the signal carrying the show itself.

The same is true of the soul or mind or spirit.  The brain may not always work right but it is mere interface for the mind.  Memory, desire, values, decisions, free-will, analysis, sorrow, guilt, wonder, amazement, fear, hope, love, hate, purpose, appreciation, gratitude, composition of literature or of music, devotion, ideas, beliefs, and rationality are not found in matter but in mind.

To believe that the love of architecture is merely a signature of some combination of matter and energy is to believe that the effect can be greater than the cause.  No rational person believes that.  It is akin to saying that books create authors or that I can pour one gallon of water into an empty five gallon bucket expecting it to overflow.  It is like believing that 2 + 2 will always be greater then 4.  It is a position of extreme irrationality in the presence of the evidence of all reality.  What Dawkins and all materialists do is attribute properties to matter that matter does not have and that there is zero evidence for.  According to the materialistic atheism of Dawkins, matter desires and remembers those desires and thinks about them using the laws of mind like identity and non-contradiction and excluded middle.  Matter has never been observed to possess any of these properties.  Matter has never been observed to possess ideas or logic or deductive reasoning.  These things are far beyond the pour capabilities of matter.  Matter has never been demonstrated to possess these things and no  evidence exists for such conclusions. Such a simple thing as a category fallacy sends very bright people into this maze of stupidity.

Yet, Dawkins, Dennett and a great parade of Oxford dons and Cambridge apostles array these beliefs as rational.  They tell us with sophisticated language and complex theorems that matter can create mind.   It is easier to believe that books create authors.  They want us to believe that they are the rationalists among us while the foundation of their beliefs are nitwittery.

Is it any wonder Dennett and Provine claim free-will is an illusion?  How could they not if they believe that all mental interactions are just collisions of electric forces governed by physical law.  But how does matter come to have the capacity of illusion?  How is the matter in our bodies self-aware enough to be even concerned about such an illusion?  How is illusion a construct of matter rather than mind?  In Dawkins’ world it must be so because mind really doesn’t exist, just matter flowing here and there with unknown magically memes recording everything.   After which it becomes me or you for a short time.  For that short time we are drones living an illusion and we then think deep thoughts and have unlimited desires and make billions of choices only to disappear again and flow somewhere else.  An this is called science?

While being a drone, devoid of free-will may make one a prefect candidate for the state collective, many people, common people, reject Dawkins’ atheistic materialism and evolutionary biology not because of ignorance or evil, but because its foundation forces upon them a belief in the absurd.   Dawkins’ monist worldview is not rational but irrational to the point of silliness, it is certain men professing to be wise when they are fools, it is a belief that the effect is always greater than the cause, it is saying that if you want to be considered a brilliant thinker by the elite pundits of the world you have to begin from a base of irrationality.

Why is it that those who believe in a reality of matter and energy only use non-material means such as ideas and language and argument to convince us we should dispense with our common sense and follow their light into darkness?

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Finding Fault

Often people with no definable moral standards will find fault with people who claim to live by some ethical standard.  For example atheists often claim Christians are hypocrites.  Yet in measuring others they measure themselves.

At Dartmouth College for example, the AHA (Atheists Humanists Agnostics) club is putting on a presentation claiming to expose the “truth” about Mother Teresa.  Their assertion: that she was no friend of the poor but a friend of poverty.  From their evolutionary and Marx colored lens, you can be sure they will see lots of questionable events real and imagined.

Were the analytical lens turned back on the AHA and the 5 to 8 people that have signed up to see this thrilling presentation (tickets are still available), one could certainly ask the following questions.

• How many hospitals and orphanages have Atheists started?

As these atheists wish to talk big, they continue to do nothing for the poorest of the poor throughout the world. Unless whining about those who believe in God does something for the less fortunate. Just how many hospitals and orphanages have been started by atheists? I know of none – Ruben Israel

• Almost all top colleges were originally Christian institutions.  How many have Atheists started?  Considerably less.  Perhaps Cornell.

• Why aren’t the AHA angry that their own school?  It was establish to train Native Americans as missionaries!

But Atheists are not logical creatures.  After all, the core beliefs of Atheism are…

1. There is no God
2. I hate Him

This may seem like an amusing straw man to some, but it is all too often true regarding practice.

The Dartmouth AHA criticizes Mother Teresa, and by extension all “Christians”, attempting to impinge their motives as against the poor and destitute of the world while never lifting a finger to help them.  If, however, one would apply the same standard they use to criticize and slander “the religious” in a demonstration of tolerance, at the end of their lives they may find themselves tossed into an inferno by a God who doesn’t exist.

But regardless of the destiny they choose for themselves, some advice is timeless.

Don’t find fault, find a remedy.   Henry Ford

Kudos to Ruben Israel for bring this to my attention.

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