Tiptoethrutulips wrote to me with regard to whether natural science and the fruits of natural science are indeed the “heritage” of Carolyn:

Merriam-Webster – heritage

(1): property that descends to an heir

(2) a: something transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor: LEGACY, INHERITANCE, especially: the traditions, achievements, beliefs, etc., that are part of the history of a group or nation

b: an established or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior

(3): something possessed as a result of one’s natural situation or birth: BIRTHRIGHT

Well, natural science is certainly not “something transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor” to Carolyn, since Carolyn has made very, very clear that it indeed was not transmitted to her: she rejects it very, very strongly indeed.

Again, Carolyn wrote:

My (cy) conclusion: Science and the Scientific Method is a cult. You’ve taught me, Dave, that not only Physics but Science itself is a cult! And someday, the majority of humankind will know it.

Quite obviously, natural science was not “transmitted” to or “acquired” by Carolyn!

Nor is natural science, in Carolyn’s case, “an established or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior,” quite the contrary in fact. She is very, very determined not to engage in the “pattern of thought” employed in natural science.

This is the key point I am trying to make: Carolyn, and a lot of other people in contemporary society, have made damn sure that the knowledge embedded in natural science most certainly is not “transmitted” to or “possessed” by them. A lot of them, like Carolyn, deeply hate natural science. Many simply have enough of a distaste for natural science that they simply avoid any real contact with it at all.

The idea that natural science is the “birthright” or “heritage” of such people is just weird. It would be like saying that fine French wines are part of my heritage, even though I do not drink and have never drunk any French wines. Or like saying that Satanism is part of your “birthright” or “heritage” because you grew up in a society that includes Satanists!

No, fine French wines are not part of my “birthright” or “heritage,” and natural science is not part of Carolyn’s “birthright” or “heritage,” according to the dictionary definition that you quoted.

I know you know almost as little science as Carolyn does, so you do not appreciate how socially and intellectually destructive science is. But Carolyn has managed to grasp that. She has insisted:

As a human being, I have a right to that/my world view.

Nope. What science is about, has been about since the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, is wiping out all of the world views that human beings have cherished, that have made human societies, cultures, and civilizations possible, that have provided comfort and solace to ordinary people, for thousands of years.

In the unlikely event that you have any desire to read any serious books, you might try reading Richard Westfall’s classic The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics: from the get-go, science was an assault on all previously existing thought systems.

But I don’t suppose you really want to, do you?

Dave

Tiptoethrutulips wrote to me:

In any case, where did I say Clastres was evil? I said he was likely a stupid, useless, Useful Idiot, due, in part, to his ideological/political slant against his own society, therefore suspect in his conclusions, which were likely formulated/imbedded by/in his disassociated Western European mind whilst he was still wallowing in the fetid froggy swamplands of French academia under the influence of who/what?

And that does not sound ad hominem to you?

Okaaaaayy…

Tiptoethrutulips asked me:

Was there a transitional stage of socialism throughout Bolshevik/Soviet Russia/Eastern Europe prior to the implementation of real communism?

As I said above:

None of the socialist states ever pretended they had reached the state of Communism, and, indeed, they were always quite vague about how Communism would actually work.

Yes, they did indeed have “a transitional stage of socialism throughout Bolshevik/Soviet Russia/Eastern Europe”: it was those actual socialist regimes. Did they ever engage in the “implementation of real communism”? No, as I said in my previous post, they never did and, of course they couldn’t, because the supposed transitional stage of socialism, which was going to produce overflowing abundance, never worked.

Tip also asked:

So, again, Dave, how did specific forms of socialism manage to succeed in Germany and Scandinavia…

Those were and are capitalist countries.

I’m not sure what point you are trying to make.

I quoted the dictionary definition from Merriam-Webster: this is the standard definition of “socialism” and the one I have been using. By that definition, Germany and the Nordic countries are not and have never been “socialist.”

You don’t like that definition? Argue with the editors at Merriam-Webster!

In any case, you jumped into a debate between me and mumblingbrain about Cuba. The form of socialism we were debating was the Cuban form, which is based on the Soviet form.

Your remarks about the Nordic countries simply have nothing at all to do with the topic we were discussing.

Tip also wrote:

The ultimate goal of Communist regimes is to wither away the state? Which state? Whose state? By what apparatus does Communism ascend and remain?

Ask some orthodox Marxist, if you can still find any! Don’t ask me.

I was just relating what the Communists claimed: in reality,they really did implement real socialism, as defined in the dictionary, but of course the ultimate goal of Communism was just a sick, evil fantasy.

You seem not to understand: ever since I was a young child, I have deeply hated all forms of socialism, Marxist or otherwise, as well as the fantasy of “communism” and also the half-way pseudo-socialisms such as existed in Nazi Germany and the Nordic countries and in the USA today.

I have always been a militant supporter of an unhampered free market, with no restraints of private business at all, except that they cannot use force or fraud against innocent people or their property, and providing of course that they be given no goodies by the state (of course, as an anarchist, I do not want any state, anyway)>

Tip also wrote:

Ultimately, National Socialism via Adolf Hitler was necessary for defensive and protective purposes against Communism/Marxism and Vulture Capitalism/Banking.

Well, then he failed, didn’t he? The end result was that all of Eastern Europe was handed over to the Communists, including Eastern Germany. And all of Germany was devastated and many Germans killed.

And, when Communism finally did fall (because true socialism cannot work), what took over Europe was what you consider “Vulture Capitalism/Banking,” right? From your perspective, “the Jews” won and your nasty little hero lost, right?

Tip also wrote:

There was no bait & switch with the implementation of [National Socialism in Germany].

Actually, there was.

You might like to read the 25-point program of the NSDAP (see here). Among the points:

11.That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.

Breaking the Bondage of Interest

12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.

14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.

18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.

Rather socialistic, in fact.

But, of course, he didn’t do it.

Hitler was in some ways just a tool of the large-scale crony capitalists.

Of course, in the end, the little evil monster lacked the guts to actually face his captors in public and try to justify his actions. Instead, the little coward blew his brains out in the bunker in Berlin.

Not only a loser and a mass murderer who led his country into its greatest disaster in its history, but also a cowardly little weasel, wouldn’t you say?

Dave

The mentally deranged Carolyn Yeager wrote to me:

[Dave} Let’s run a little experiment: I will briefly respond to some of your points, and we will see how you respond.

[Carolyn] Dave, this is coercion on your part and if you don’t recognize it, what can anyone say? You’re trying to control my speech and behavior by putting restrictions on me. You are so transparent!!

You are truly insane if you believe that is coercion! I placed no “restrictions” on you at all, and I physically cannot do so — only Ron Unz can restrict what you say here. Nor am I “trying to control [your] speech and behavior,” which again I have no power to do.

I merely suggested to you that you respond, and that your response will reveal a lot about your state of mental functioning.

A simple little sanity test, in which you could participate or not, as you chose.

It is not “coercion” for me to simply say that “we will see how you respond.”

We now have seen and the verdict is in: you are insane.

Carolyn also wrote:

As a human being, I have a right to that/my world view.

You do? Why?

Legally, of course, you can think and say as you wish.

But, aside from a strictly legal perspective, why do you have a right at all to your world view?

I don’t agree that you have a moral right to your world view.

As I have said again and again, I and other scientists are working to create a world in which it will no more be possible to hold your “world view” than it is possible for you now to believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

The First Amendment guarantees our right to pursue that goal. You cannot stop us.

We will prevail.

We have the right to eliminate your world view from the human race.

And we will do so.

Carolyn also wrote:

When I say quantum means “subatomic” I’m not wrong. These particles ARE sub atomic, are always subatomic, which is the most meaningful difference in physics for me, that between the atomic and subatomic levels of “matter.”

No, you are wrong: quantum mechanics is in fact used to explain the behavior of matter at the atomic level as well as the subatomic level. And, in fact, have you ever seen a laser pointer or the laser barcode scanners in stores? Lasers are explained by quantum mechanics.

Have you ever seen a picture of a magnet floating over a superconductor? That phenomenon, and superconductivity in general, is explained by quantum mechanics.

You just keep making up these bizarre statements about a subject that you know nothing about, and your statements are just flat-our wrong.

But it does no good to tell you, because, after all, you are clearly mentally unbalanced.

Carolyn also wrote:

What you DO like to do is negate what I say, but w/o giving any valid reasons, just by ridiculing it.

The moon is not made of green cheese. What is the valid reason for saying that? Because the moon is really not made of green cheese!

Similarly, the “valid reason” for saying that you are wrong is that all the things you keep saying go against well-established facts of science. How can I prove it to you? You’d have to actually go to the trouble to learn some science, and that you most assuredly will not do!

Carolyn also wrote:

You must be living in an alternate universe from me if you think that. You ignored this from me:

CY: Sub-atomic is below microscopic, cannot be seen at all, but its effects can be measured by the results. In the same way, spiritual forces occur in the “unseen” or “are unseen”, but felt, and there are results that can be observed and measured.

This is not false, or bizarre, or nonsense. It is true even though it’s not what you want to say; the way you want to phrase it. This “game” is how you evade admitting things you don’t want to admit. This is/can be what is important to a non-physicist.

But of course that is false, bizarre nonsense. You are the one making a positive assertion here: that “there are results that can be observed and measured” of the sort you claim.

There aren’t.

That is all I need say, unless you can show that your bizarre claim is true.

Carolyn also wrote:

I also stated that

CY: “Every thought—directed to the subject–influences the quantum field on that subject. So, every thought does influence the quantum field somewhere, and thus, since all is One, by extension, everywhere.

To which you replied, “That is just nonsense… You most assuredly did not get this from any real physicist!”

I’m not claiming to get anything from “real physicists.” I told you where I got it

You are making a claim here about physics, about the “quantum field.”

And, no, you did not say where you got this insane idea about physics from. But we all know where you did get it from. It comes from your own deranged mind, doesn’t it?

Carolyn also wrote:

I’ll just post what Google AI says about Like Attracts Like

As I have explained, again and again, the LLMs are what are technically known as “bullshit machines.” I know you do not know how they work, but I do: I went through Microsoft’s online course on the subject.

All they do is predict the next word that is likely to occur in a passage (technically the next “token”) based solely on what they have scraped off the Web. If they have scraped Web pages that talked about “Like Attracts Like,” they will just regurgitate, quite mindlessly, what was on those Web pages.

Just out of curiosity, I just asked the google AI “what is the proof that like attracts like”: here is part of its repsonse:

The scientific community largely considers this pseudoscience, as there is no measurable physical “frequency” for specific thoughts that can interact with the external world in this manner.

Well… yeah. But that too is just regurgitating what it found on some Web pages.

Throughout the last year there have been countless discussions throughout the mass media and across the Web of the tendency of the LLMs to “hallucinate.” You have not seen that?

To put it bluntly, only people who are very, very foolish, or mentally deranged, believe the outputs of the LLMs.

Anyway, I want to really thank you for participating in my little experiment here that you falsely labeled as “coercion.” The data you have provided confirms my point: you are indeed insane.

And, again, you made a very, very specific claim about the “quantum field,” which is a part of physics:

Every thought—directed to the subject–influences the quantum field on that subject. So, every thought does influence the quantum field somewhere, and thus, since all is One, by extension, everywhere.

You have provided not a shred of evidence that this claim, which is about physics, is true.

And you cannot because, as I know as a physicist who actually is an excpert on all this, your claim, which is about physics, is in fact false.

But of course you will keep repeating this lie and insisting that I have an obligation to convince you that your claim is false.

You are the person asserting this bizarre claim: it is your obligation to show us how you know it is true.

But you won’t, because you can’t.

Of course, you did not really think this nonsense up completely on your own: you did not awake one morning with all these crack-pot ideas about quantum mechanics and physics. You got them somewhere.

I think you got them from that con artist Nancy Patterson.

Am I right? If not, where did you get them from?

I bet you don’t have the guts to tell us, now do you?

For the record, keep in mind that your statements here are public statements that may be quoted, in whole or in part, in other publications and in legal proceedings, such as mental competency hearings.

And thank you again for your voluntary participation in my little non-coercive experiment.

Dave

Carolyn Yeager wrote to me:

[Dave] No, the double-slit experiment most certainly does not show “that every single thought, as energy, directly and instantly influences the quantum field.”

[Carolyn] Then, what does it show? Why remain silent on that?

Well, you see… yes, I certainly could explain as much as anyone would want to know about the double-slit experiment.

I’ve been studying quantum mechanics. and the various interpretations and philosophical issues relating to quantum mechanics, for way over a half century. I took the quantum mechanics course as a student at Caltech a bit over fifty years ago from the Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. I took quantum field theory as a doctoral student at Stanford from the Nobel laureate Steve Weinberg. And, of course, my Ph.D. thesis was based on quantum mechanics.

I actually am an expert on this stuff: I could literally write a textbook on the technical details of quantum theory. And then I could write a second book on the various approaches and interpretations of quantum theory: the Copenhagen interpretation, the von Neumann cut, Wigner’s approach, Many-Worlds theory, the Bohm-de Broglie model, etc.

But… suppose I were to go to the trouble to try to explain it to you.

I have in fact gone to the trouble to explain lots of things in physics to many people when the only recompense I expected was common courtesy and a polite thank-you.

But how have you behaved towards me?

Well, you have used exceptionally coarse language towards me. You have repeatedly lied about me. You have made bizarrely insane accusations against me.

If I were to actually go to the effort to try to explain quantum mechanics to you, how is it likely you would respond?

You see the point?

Let’s run a little experiment: I will briefly respond to some of your points, and we will see how you respond.

Carolyn wrote:

I know it’s possible to state these ideas in normal language we can all understand, without mathematical equations…

How do you know that? You think math is never necessary?

Carolyn also wrote:

As for Patterson’s book , yes, I chose not to name it because I saw upon re-visiting it that I did not find it of high enough quality/reliability.

Then why did you post a quote from that con artist that was profoundly idiotic?

Carolyn also wrote:

But Dave, Patterson is not talking about a sofa, but “imagining a sizable sub-atomic particle” in the form of your living room sofa, in order to make the point. If you can’t keep that straight in your mind, but confuse the sofa analogy with an actual sofa, then you are no physicist.

But of course there is no “sizable sub-atomic particle in the form of your living room sofa,” and, if there were one, no, it definitely would not behave as she claimed.

Again, here is what she said and you quoted:

If you are not at home and do not think about your sofa, it would “disappear” and would become a probability that it could reappear anywhere in your living room or anywhere else in the universe. If you came home thinking about sitting on the sofa in a specific place in your living room and looking for the sofa where you would like to relax, it would reappear!

That is not what happens to subatomic particles: they do not “reappear anywhere in your living room or anywhere else in the universe” but then if “you came home thinking about [it]… it would reappear!”

That is just bizarre nonsense: it is not what quantum mechanics says and it is not what any legitimate physicist thinks.

So, see, I have now told you something informative about quantum mechanics: let’s see how you respond.

Carolyn also wrote:

You’re basing your objections to my comments on my language choice, on pure semantics — word choice — and you CAN, if you know the answer, put it into language everyone can understand.

No, I am not objecting to your or Patterson’s semantics: I am objecting — quite plainly and clearly — to the fact that what you are both saying is blatantly false.

And that is certainly language everyone can understand! You just don’t like it.

Carolyn also wrote:

But what’s important is that early this morning I “saw” what Quantum Theory is, what it’s based on, and now I will never have to look at another book or dictionary definition.

Well, that is certainly impressive! It took us physicist decades of careful experimental studies and measurements and careful mathematical analysis to create quantum mechanics, but you just did it on the spur of the moment one morning and now you “will never have to look at another book or dictionary definition.”

Quite impressive indeed!

Carolyn also wrote:

Here it is: Quantum is a word standing for “sub-atomic.”

Uh, no.

The idea goes back to Max Planck, who, in 1900, figured out that light existed in discrete energy units in order to understand black-body radiation: as the analogy goes, like steps on a staircase. Einstein seems to be the first person to use the word “quanta” to refer to these energy units when he showed, in 1905, that light is emitted and absorbed in these discrete units when he explained the photoelectric effect.

“Quantum” does not mean “sub-atomic.” It just refers to the fact that light is quantized.

So, now I have told you one more true thing about quantum theory: let’s see how you react to this.

Carolyn also wrote:

This is the essential teaching/”law” of attraction that the whole world is familiar with. Like attracts like. As its said: Every child can understand it. You and I can understand it. It’s no mystery. Yet Dave refuses to comment on what it is. In fact, Dave would rather it not be known.

Oh, I do not refuse to comment on it at all: I am happy to comment on it — it is an utter and complete lie.

In fact, like charges repel, they do not attract. And similarly for like magnetic poles. If you’d ever taken a high-school physics course, you are supposed to have learned this. Indeed, this is what every child is supposed to understand.

Beyond that, the supposed universal law of attraction is just nonsense.

Carolyn also wrote:

More that can be said, such as I used Patterson’s words that: … “every single thought, as energy, directly and instantly influences the quantum field.” It needs to be: “Every thought — directed to the subject — influences the quantum field on that subject. So … every thought does influence the quantum field somewhere, and thus, since all is One, by extension, everywhere.

No, just no.

That is just nonsense.

Where on earth do you pick up such nonsense? Are you still drinking the Kool-Aid from that con artist Patterson?

You most assuredly did not get this from any real physicist!

Where did you get it?

Carolyn also wrote:

Yes, that is how you operate, Dave. You have failed to follow-up with/on me on several occasions. It feels like a betrayal, or cowardice. What will you do this time?

This time I have followed up — let’s see how you respond.

I think we all know.

As to my not always responding, well, I have a life. And of course I am just so blown away by your brilliant insights that I do not know how to respond! And since you believe you have figured it all out, why do you care whether or not I respond?

Carolun also wrote:

Isn’t this the way most Jews think? You tell me/us how it differs.

I have no idea: I haven’t asked them. If most Jews agree with me, does that prove I am wrong? If most Jews claim the sky is blue, does that prove it isn’t?

Carolyn also wrote:

Why [physicists] don’t just use sub-atomic instead of inventing a new word is explained by the fact that that’s what cults do. They have their own ‘secret” or ‘special’ language to give an air of mystery and keep out the uncooperative types who might ask too many questions if/when they realize how simple is all really is…

In fact, Dave would rather it not be known.

Yeah, you’ve nailed us physicists all right! We actually know the secret to being “Masters of the Universe” and we just don’t want to let the rest of you in on it!

Is anyone else here finding this as amusing as I am finding it?

Or am I being mean in “feeding the troll”?

Dave

The mumbler wrote to me:

You’re such a perfect example of the Rightist death-wish that you must be a parody.

Nah, I’m not a “Rightist”: rightists want to conserve the past structure of society — I want to eradicate it. I am an anarchist, like any other sensible person.

The mumbler also wrote:

However, in reality, climate destabilisation is rapidly worsening…

No, it’s not.

Learn some actual science, like from real science books, not the nonsense you see in the mainstream media or on Youtube.

The globe, for the past couple million years has been in the Pleistocene Ice Age: we are currently in an “inter-glacial,” but the planet is still a lot cooler than it has been for most of the last half billion years.

The planet needs to warm up a lot to simply return to its normal state.

Personally, I do what I can to churn out more greenhouse gases, to help the planet return to its normal state. It”s an uphill fight, alas: when the Subcontinent collided with Asia and raised the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, it really caused some anomalous cooling.

But — hey! — with a little bit of luck, we can return this planet to its natural warm, toasty, comfy state!

Dave

geokat62 wrote to me:

Those who believe science has a “point” can be said to belong to the religion called Scientism, the belief that science should replace all other sources of meaning, identity, or tradition.

You betcha! Now you’re getting it!

Non-STEM folks like you tend to think that science is just drudges in lab coats carefully measuring the effects of drugs on mice or whatever.

That is not what it is really all about.

You might try reading Richard Westfall’s classic The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics: from the get-go, science was an assault on all previously existing thought systems.

And, sure, that assault did indeed rely on the drudges making the careful measurements in the lab, but to focus on that alone is to miss the real picture.

The motivating force behind science has been to exorcise what Carl Sagan called the demon-haunted world. And you have to admit: we are succeeding. No normal person any longer can really believe in the old “three-tiered universe”: Heaven above, Earth down here, and Hell below. And it is increasingly difficult for people to believe in the Virgin Birth, a bodily Resurrection, not to mention transubstantiation.

When the Church went after Galileo, when fundamentalists attack Darwin, they definitely know what they are doing!

You might also want to try reading Ernest Gellner’s various books on the subject: you might start with his brief Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. One of the major themes throughout his work has been that modern natural science, for the first time in human history; as his editors summarized his views, freed knowledge from social controls:

It is the matter, he states bluntly, of placing the wells of truth beyond the walls of the city, i.e., under the control of no group and of no interested party.

Gellner emphasizes, as I have stated, that prior to the rise of modern science, human belief systems existed to prop up and maintain the ruling elite and/or to provide comfort and sustenance to the masses.

As Edward Gibbon said:

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

Exactly.

Natural science changed all that.

You may not like it, but the fact is that natural science really is the Great Destroyer, the Grim Reaper that sweeps aside all those useful lies that have made human societies, cultures, and civilizations possible.

You can’t seriously refute that fact.

And the human population, at the size it is now, cannot survive without the fruits of natural science.

So, the destructive power of natural science will indeed prevail.

Dave

When people are on UBI they support whatever the government does or want since they are afraid of losing it. When Trump came, democrats told poor people that he is going to take their food stamps and they all voted against Trump.

When people are on UBI, every dissident will be threaten to lose his UBI. Just look at Covid to see how fast you can become an undermench.

Vergissmeinnicht wrote to me:

I didn’t write it here but I’ve written multiple times before:
Ideally, UBI should be temporary…

And how many government programs, once started are ever “temporary”?

In any case, that would just make it a temporary disaster!

Work out the numbers: suppose that each individual gets, say, $10,000 a year, a rather modest sum given the cost of living in 2025. And then look at the total amount spent now on welfare.

Nowhere near enough money: you would have to drastically increase the tax burden on the productive members of society.

And then there is the fact that those on welfare do not lack for money: they lack in prudence and self-control. Give them UBI, and they will still be homeless, impoverished, and lacking in good nutrition because they will just waste the UBI money.

And you are ignoring my key point: UBI would institutionalize the idea that “society” is responsible for your well-being, not you yourself. The final step on the read to serfdom.

In any case, it will not happen, simply because of the arithmetic.

And if it does, it will implode fiscally immediately.

And if it doesn’t implode, people like me will urge all productive members of society to down tools and live off UBI. Which will therefore guarantee the collapse of the whole corrupt system.

Of course, as a libertarian anarchist myself — the exact opposite of big-government guys like you and Friedman — I kinda like this idea of the whole corrupt system collapsing!

Dave

geokat62 wrote to me:

Fair enough. You’d like examples of jews being expelled in the pre-Christian period, I’ll give you examples of jews being expelled in the pre-Christian period. Key pre-Christian expulsions include:

1. Assyrian Exile (8th century BCE)
2. Babylonian Exile (6th century BCE)
3. Seleucid-era expulsions (2nd century BCE)

You keep just making this stuff up, don’t you?

The “Assyrian Exile” was of (some of) the inhabitants of the northern kingdom of Israel, not the Jews.

The Babylonian Exile was not an expulsion from Judea but relocating the ruling elite to Babylon to make a revolt more difficult: as the Old Testament itself details at length, the ordinary people — the “people of the land” — were left in place. Not an expulsion, just a taking of hostages with most people left in the land.

And what on earth are these supposed “Seleucid-era expulsions”???

What actually happened during the Seleucid era was that the Seleucids were, as governments go, relatively tolerant, but some insane religious theocrats, the Maccabees, started killing people to establish a brutal theocracy. The revolt started when the evil Jewish priest Mattathias, patriarch of the Maccabees, murdered an innocent Jew who chose to participate in non-Jewish religious rites.

Of course, once the Maccabees came to power, they just became corrupt, greedy, power-hungry rulers, like all governments, with the religious themes pushed to the back.

Despite the lies you posted, it remains the case that the Jews were never expelled from the Roman Empire or from the Persian Arsacid or Sasanian Empires in ancient times. And, indeed, the Assyrian and Babylonian actions were most assuredly not expulsions from those empires: in the case of the Babylonian Exile, the Babylonians actually moved the Jewish elite to the center of the empire! Rather than expelling the Jews, they moved the Jewish elite into the actual power center.

Whence the Jews flourished for thousands of years thereafter.

goe also wrote:

I don’t lie. I may get something wrong, which when someone points that out to me I thank them and take ownership and subsequently correct it.

Fact: jews have been expelled from virtually ever place they lived over the last two millennia for their subversive activities.

And that is a lie!

They were never expelled from Persia, from most parts of the Roman Empire, or from Judea itself.

To say that they were expelled “from virtually ever place they lived” is just an obvious, bizarre lie.

Typical of you cultists.

geo also wrote:

[Dave] Are you really unaware that most people do not share your weird beliefs about the Jews?

[geo] While most people may be unaware of the things I’ve been highlighting in my posts, there is definitely a shift taking place in public opinion on the JQ and that explains why the UK, Canada, and Australia have recently announced their intention to ban X from their countries, under the pretext that it draws inappropriate images.

And what on earth does that have to do with attitudes in those countries towards the Jews?

The fact is that the UK, Canada, and Australia most assuredly are not expelling their Jewish populations and there is no indication they ever will.

I know that you have indicated that you wish to do that to US Jews. But you cannot do so legally, and if you try to do it in violation of the law, we will arrest you, convict you, and imprison you for a very, very long time, hopefully in the lovely CECOT prison in Salvador!

You are part of a weird cult, and you have come close to admitting that fact.

Again, you have repeatedly expressed deep surprise that I reject the obvious lies peddled by your cult. And that is very revealing of the fact that you are a cult.

You are in fact serving the interest of your Zionist masters: the only argument they have left is to claim that anyone who denounces the Zionist crimes in Occupied Palestine are simply Jew haters.

And people like you are the prime evidence for that claim.

I do not know if you are being paid by your Zionist masters — though I have my suspicions — or if you are doing it for free.

But you are serving your Zionist masters well.

Dave

geokat62 wrote to me:

Why “rootless cosmopolitan” doesn’t fit:

You are ignoring what Tiptoe and I were actually debating.

Yeah, yeah, I prefer fried chicken to escargot and I would rather drink a glass of lemonade than a glass of fine French wine. No one could talk to me for more than a minute and doubt that I am a product of the American Midwest, a corn-fed boy of Missouri.

But what she and I were debating was whether the discoveries of modern science and the technology based on those discoveries was, in some sense, her and Carolyn’s “ethnic and societal heritage.” And I was pointing out that, no, pretty much all of us scientists and inventors, going back, yes, to Sir Isaac, were not working on behalf of our own racial or ethnic group but on behalf of the entire human race.

I think you will have trouble finding one single scientist of the top rank who claimed that his discoveries were the “ethnic and societal heritage” of his specific ethnic or racial group as opposed to humanity at large. Can you?

And, in fact, Carolyn has angrily denounced science as a whole:

My (cy) conclusion: Science and the Scientific Method is a cult. You’ve taught me, Dave, that not only Physics but Science itself is a cult! And someday, the majority of humankind will know it.

So it is certainly fair to say it is not part of her “ethnic and societal heritage”!

But, more broadly, the whole point of science has been to wipe out ethnic and societal heritages in general, to destroy all of the corrupt belief systems that have made past cultures and societies and civilizations possible. The whole point of science is to put the criteria for truth outside of any societal control, beyond the control of the ruling elite or, indeed, the masses of the populace.

And that is a radical innovation in human history: prior to modern science, systems of belief always existed to provide social cohesion and control or, at least, to give comfort and sustenance to ordinary people.

But science cares nothing for human concerns like that.

And that makes science the most socially and humanly destructive thought system in all of human history.

Which is why I love it.

Dave

Tiptoethrutulips wrote to me:

If “real socialism” entails full state ownership of the means of production, what, then, is real communism?

You really don’t know anything at all about the history of socialism, do you?

In Marxist theory, “Communism” is the final stage of history, after the dictatorship of the proletariat has succeeded in wiping out capitalism completely, at which point we will have the withering away of the state. Socialism, which requires state ownership of the means of production, is a transitional stage before we can reach true Communism.

None of the socialist states ever pretended they had reached the state of Communism, and, indeed, they were always quite vague about how Communism would actually work.

Read some books. Real books, not just Harlequin romances.

I truly do find your lack of education stunning.

Tip also wrote:

[Dave] Socialism does not work. That fact is about as well-established as the fact that the Earth moves around the Sun

[Tip] Except when it does, as it worked rather well in NS Germany and in Scandinavia

There were Nazis who wanted real socialism — Hitler murdered most of them in the Night of the Long Knives. Murder, after all, is the only thing you Nazis are good at!

Read some books.

You are playing word games: sure, we can just define the word “socialism” to mean “a can of tuna,” if we wish.

But that is not what the word has meant historically.

Look in any decent dictionary. Here, for example, is the Merriam-Webster definition:

1: any of various egalitarian economic and political theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

2a: a system of society or of group living in which there is no private property

b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3: a stage of society in Marxist theory that is transitional between capitalism and communism (see communism sense 2c) and is distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Which is what I keep saying.

I’ve known this since I was six-years old: I remember learning about it from an encyclopedia back then and talking to my dad about it.

You still don’t know.

Read some books. Or at least learn how to use a dictionary!

The reason some European parties that are not socialist still use the term is that their parties actually once were socialist and they just kept the name. In the case of leading parties (Britain, West Germany) is was only late in the twentieth century that they officially gave up on their socialist goals.

In any case, ,everything you have said about this has nothing to do with what mumblingbrain and I were debating: socialism in Cuba, which most assuredly has been real socialism of the sort I and the dictionary are talking about and as existed in the Soviet Union, not the kind of crony capitalism that exists in the Nordic countries.

Tip also asked me:

[Dave] Government exists to steal from the productive member of society and turn the loot over to the members of the government and their supporters. This has been true for over five thousand years, and everyone knows it.

[Tip] Do you disavow the Founding Fathers, then?

The 1787 Philadelphia Constitution was an illegal coup d’etat against the Articles of Confederation. I’d like to return to the Articles, but of course that is not going to happen.

Realistically, the best we are going to do is to actually start abiding by the 1787 Constitution.

Which, I admit, is not likely.

Tip also wrote:

[Dave] We [scientists] have not somehow bequeathed the benefits of our achievements to people like you.

[Tip] That wasn’t my contention, was it?

Your contention was:

The current technological advances/utilities/devices are a product of her/our ethnic and societal heritage

And I am denying that: “heritage” implies inheritance. And you and she would have to inherit it from people like me, the scientists and inventors who created the modern world.

And we do not choose to bequeath all that we have created to you.

In any case, Carolyn has denounced science as a “cult”:

My (cy) conclusion: Science and the Scientific Method is a cult. You’ve taught me, Dave, that not only Physics but Science itself is a cult! And someday, the majority of humankind will know it.

I think it is fair for me to say that what she denounces as a cult is not part of her “ethnic and societal heritage”!

Tip also wrote:

[Dave] There is no reason for me to defend Clastres.

[Tip] Other than due to the fact that you submitted his work in support of an argument?

That actually is the ad hominem fallacy: Clastres may (or may not) have been an evil man, but that is irrelevant to the value of his book.

The great physicist Heisenberg worked for the Nazis, which certainly makes him a moral monster, maybe even more evil than Nazis like you.

That is irrelevant to the correctness of his work in physics.

And, again, you have made no attempt whatsoever to refute the fact, known to everyone, that government exists to steal from the productive members of society and turn the loot over to the members of the government and their supporters.

You keep denying it, but you do not even try to give a counter-example.

And anyone who watches the nightly news, or reads any serious history, knows that it is obviously true. It’s just one of those things we are not supposed to say out loud in polite company, such as the fact the the Virgin Mary was of course not really a virgin!

Dave

Tiptoethrutulips asked me:

But real socialism, of the sort that mulga was praising in Cuba, involves full state ownership of “the means of production.”

Real socialism? How about communism?

Communism is of course a form of socialism — the Soviets named their country the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Bolsheviks renamed their faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party as the “Communist Party” after they came to power.

And it is that form of socialism, as exhibited in Cuba, that mulga and I were debating.

Tiptoethrutulips also wrote:

My initial assertion was…

No, actually, your assertion that I am challenging was:

The current technological advances/utilities/devices are a product of her/our ethnic and societal heritage

My point is that the various scientific and technological achievements by people like me are most assuredly not your and Carolyn’s ” ethnic and societal heritage.” We have not somehow bequeathed the benefits of our achievements to people like you.

On the contrary, we choose to bequeath the benefits of our achievements to the entire human race, not to any specific ethnic group, excluding of course people like you and Carolyn. Can you find any prominent natural scientist who has indicated that he wishes to bequeath the benefits of his discoveries specifically to his own ethnic group?

If I could, by waving a magic wand, deprive you and Carolyn of every single benefit due to our discoveries in natural science, I would do so.

Tip also wrote:

If that’s it, then I assert the ethnic makeup of the tiny, tiny, fraction of those ascended individuals are what I said they were.)

You persist in thinking that scientists have some special loyalty to our own ethnic group.

You are mistaken.

We don’t care.

We scientists are “rootless cosmopolitans”: by your standards, pretty much all natural scientists are “traitors to their race.”

Tip also wrote:

Well, are you going to defend Clastres or not? Why don’t you tell me how a system in which any who attempt to establish order under a threat of murder/torture, by the masses yearning to remain unencumbered/savage, is not coercive? Isn’t that exactly what I said was very often the case?

There is no reason for me to defend Clastres.

Yes, human beings are often bastards in dealing with other human beings. Most human beings, most of the time, are not.

In the absence of the state, yes, sometimes humans will still be bastards. But, as Clastres shows, sometimes not.

Try actually reading a book, for once!

The problem with government is that it institutionalizes, it guarantees, brutality and rapacity.

Everyone knows that government attracts people who are power-hungry. And the existence of government legitimizes their rapacity and brutality.

Take the recent conquest of Venezuela: if Bill Gates had hired a criminal gang to do that, everyone would recognize that it was just criminal activity. But because the US government did it, lots of Americans do not view it as simply criminal activity, even many who recognize that it was probably not a great idea.

Government exists to steal from the productive member of society and turn the loot over to the members of the government and their supporters.

This has been true for over five thousand years, and everyone knows it.

Are we guaranteed utopia if we abolish the state? No, of course not — that would not abolish human nature.

But government legitimizes and systematizes the worst aspect of human nature — systematic theft and mass murder.

Your argument is simply that humans can and often will continue to be bastards even without the state. Yes, of course.

But at least they will not have the legitimization of government to hide behind.

And Clastres’ book shows that some stateless societies, sometimes, have actually restrained the bastards.

For obvious reasons, no society with a state ever has.

Dave

mulga mumblebrain wrote to me:

You think that the welfare state is too large because you believe that poverty and want are not as marked as you would like…

You are lying of course, and everyone knows you are lying.

Capitalism, making use of the technology made possible by modern natural science, has raised the material condition of human beings and alleviated poverty as has never before occurred in human history.

Prior to industrial capitalism, normal human life was poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

The mumbler also wrote:

So where have ‘property rights’ been since WWII, as the planet’s biospheres have crumbled?

The biosphere has not crumbled –where on earth do you pick up such nonsense?

If the biosphere were crumbling, we humans would be disappearing, since we are dependent on the biosphere. In fact, there are more humans alive today than ever before, living longer and more healthy lives than ever before.

Again, where on earth are you picking up such patent and obvious nonsense?

Your screen name is indeed well-chosen.

Dave

geokat62 wrote to me:

So, according to you jews were expelled from every place they ever lived because “they refused to accept the lies of Christianity?” Verdict: False!

Fact: jews were expelled in the pre-Christian period for virtually the same reasons they were expelled in the Christian period, ie due to their subversive activities.

Here are some of the more prominent Greek writers and philosophers who were sharper and more influential critics of Jews:

You give numerous examples of Greeks and Romans who disliked the Jews, but you do not give one single example of Jews being expelled, which is what you claim I am wrong about!

Jews were never expelled from the pre-Christian Roman Empire. as a whole Nor, as far as I can find out, were they ever expelled in ancient times from the Persian Empire.

Jews were. on occasion, expelled from specific cities — always, as far as I can tell, as a result of riots or outright rebellions, not because of a general hatred of the Jews (I doubt you know about the Diaspora Revolt, largely in North Africa, now do you?).

And, in particular, there does not seem to have been any fantasy in the ancient world that Jews secretly controlled the whole Empire, much less the entire planet, as you modern Jew-hating cultists think.

I am currently reading Peter Schäfer’s Judeophobia: Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Ancient World: the attitude towards Jews in the ancient world was complex, ranging from respect for their community and family values and (supposedly) ancient religion to distaste for their clannishness and their tendency to violent revolt. Of course, the ancients similarly had mixed attitudes towards lots of non-Greek/non-Roman ethnic groups — the Germans, for example.

But again, your claim was: “Fact: jews were expelled in the pre-Christian period for virtually the same reasons they were expelled in the Christian period, ie due to their subversive activities.” If by “subversive activities,” you mean surreptitiously seizing power in society as your cult claims of modern Jews, you seem to be lying.

If you simply are alluding to the occasional riots and rebellions by Jews, yes, the Romans did not like rebellions! But that was certainly not the reason Jews were expelled from the later European countries, now was it?

As usual, you are extremely careless in what you post.

You seem truly and constantly surprised that I do not share the attitudes of your Jew-hating cult. Are you really unaware that most people do not share your weird beliefs about the Jews?

Are you really unaware that, as in this specific case, you constantly post “facts” that have nothing to do with the claims you are making?

I guess not — typical of a cult.

Dave

Jonas E. Alexis: “The Mythicist Hypothesis in the Light of History and Reason”

In this article, Alexis prominently displays his scholarly incompetence with his customary verbosity. It amazes me that anyone would have the insolence to appeal to “history and reason” in defending the absurd idea that corpses come back to life. After all, in all the recorded history of the world, has such a thing ever happened? If so, Alexis should do his scholarly duty and show us the evidence. If not, then how “reasonable” is it to defend the idea that Jesus did so?

Jonas E. Alexis, doubting a comparison of Jesus resurrection to that of Osiris: “Yet can any serious scholar—or reasonable observer—truly equate this account with a bodily or physical resurrection?”

There is not even one non-Christian source that can be cited as evidence that Jesus came back from the dead, nor any of the other zombies that supposedly appeared at his crucifixion. Indeed, the idea of physical resurrection of dead bodies is something that even Paul doesn’t appear to believe. In 1 Corinthians 15 he takes pains to say that the physical body that dies ISN’T the body that’s resurrected. The notion of physical resurrection is only introduced later, in the synoptic gospels and particularly in John, when Jesus resurrects Lazarus, whose body was, we are told, already in an advanced state of decomposition. He’s been dead for four days, his sister says, and “he stinketh”. Whether his re-animation by rabbi Jesus also miraculously de-stinkified him as well, we can’t know, as the Bible is silent on the matter.

To sum up, biblical accounts of resurrection are obvious lies. Paul started the lie off small, speaking only of spiritual resurrection, but the lie grew in the retelling, elaborated into many presumably physical zombies rising from their graves at Jesus’ crucifixion (Matthew 27:52-53), and culminating in the raising of Lazarus’ stinking corpse in the gospel according to John. It’s a measure of the desperation of human beings to imagine they can escape death that they eagerly cling to such lies.

Anonymous[105] wrote to bj0311:

I am no fan of China either–but if they occupied the West Coast of the US then Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles would have no homeless people and the streets would be squeaky clean in ten years.

Nope — I’ve been to China: it would take less than a year.

Of course, if we would just take the attitude that working people paid for the streets and sidewalks and viewed all that as, in effect, their private property, we could clean it up now.

But government is always a conspiracy against the productive members of society. Government exists to steal from the productive members of society and hand the loot over to the members of the government and their supporters.

Keep that elementary fact in mind, and public affairs make a lot more sense.

Dave

bj0311 wrote:

I have thought about this applied to the US, why punish i.e. regulate companies who regulate themselves? Why not instead give incentives for “good behavior”.

But who gets to decide what counts as “good behavior”?

Does being gay count as more “good behavior” than being straight? Or maybe even being transgender?

Or, shall we count going to church every Sunday as “good behavior”?

Everyone considering this sort of thing assumes that their own personal views will prevail. That is never the case. Most people have actual lives and are not interested in controlling the details of how such a system would work.

The people who do end up controlling it are the obsessive, power-hungry busybodies who have no purpose in life except to control other people. If we are lucky, they are merely annoying “church ladies.” If we are not so lucky, they are more like Soviet commissars.

Funny how easily guys like you miss this very obvious point about human nature!

Dave Miller in Sacramento

Vergissmeinnicht wrote to me:

Yes, if I were proposing the current system “plus” UBI, which I am not. In fact, what I propose is: Lochner Era status quo (pre-New Deal USA) “plus” UBI à la Milton Friedman, which of course would be mean much less expenditure than what we’ve got now.

Actually, Friedman proposed a “negative income tax,” which is not the same thing as UBI.

The negative income tax would go to poor people, not to everyone. The UBI would be universal, hence the “U.”

It would cost a lot more.

In any case, despite his pretense to the contrary, Friedman was a big-government guy. Perhaps the negative income tax would not cost more than current welfare programs, but the goal should be not to maintain the current size of government but to shrink it. The government is already stealing a huge amount — trillions each year — from the productive members of society.

The goal should be not to make it more efficient but to end the theft.

The other problem with both NIT and UBI is that what the poor lack is not money but the habits and character that enable someone to become middle class. Anyone in America who is not severely disabled can make it into the middle class, or, at least, respectable working class, if he exhibits normal, middle-class values.

Give a drug addict a guaranteed income and he will just spend it on drugs, not on better lodging or decent food.

Friedman was so focused on simple numerical monetary issues that he missed this obvious issue of culture and personal behavior.

Prior the the New Deal, Americans generally knew that it was a matter of “Root, hog, or die!”

What we need to do is smash the existing culture of dependency and return to the values of the American Republic.

Both NIT and UBI move in completely the wrong direction.

Dave

thotmonger wrote:

I like and accept the point about Jesus having been a real living person. (For starters*.) But Bro, English is a huge language with many words to choose from. Do not be so redundant with your insistance on and deployment of the word “scholarship”. You take it beyond tedious and nearly to the point of torture.

The problem is that the issue of the historicity of Jesus involves dealing with manuscripts in ancient Greek, as well as Latin and Hebrew, skills most of us do not possess. “Scholarship” just means work by people who do possess such skills, which makes sense.

The problem is that our boy Jonas has stacked the deck, refusing to deal with actual scholars, such as Carrier and Price, who disagree with him.

Again, please note: I am not taking sides. Both the mythicists and the historicists have some valid points. I’m not sure we will ever know who is right.

Dave

Diversity Heretic wrote to me:

I only scanned this article, as it was very long, but I found no discussion of Dr. Richard Carrier’s 2014 peer-reviewed book, On the Historicity of Jesus, or his recently published, although not technically peer-reviewed, An Obsolete Paradigm, on the same subject, reviewing the work in the field of New Testament studies in the last ten years.

You can use crtl-F to search the whole silly essay — Carrier’s name does not show up.

Have you read anything else Jonas E. Alexis has written? The guy is just a fraud, a con artist.

A bit of googling indicates that he has a “has a masters degree in education from Grand Canyon University,” which sorta says it all.

But he seems to be managing to sell some books spreading his nonsense — I suppose it’s a living.

Dave

Carolyn Yeager wrote to me:

[Dave] No, the idea is not correct — it is wildly, bizarrely, insanely wrong.

The idea that when “the attention goes, the object of attention does also” is a view that I have never heard in the context of quantum physics, and I very, very much doubt that any legitimate physicist has ever made that claim.

Where on earth did you get such a nutty idea?

[Carolyn] I added that it was “inelegantly stated” from a physicists’ point of view, and you would find fault with it. But you are HOPING, WANTING to find fault with whatever I say, so you are prejudiced/biased, something that a scientist is not supposed to be. The rule is “Follow the evidence, the science” right? Therefore, you’re a dishonest scientist.

Try this on (in non-scientist language): Quatum physics confirms that a thing can only exist if it is observed. The ‘quanta’ [sub-atomic particles] are organized according to the influence of the mind of the observers.
When something is observed, the quanta merge into sub-atomic particles, then into atoms, followed by molecules, until finally something in the physical world manifests itself into a localized, temporal space-time experience that can be perceived through our five physical senses. …What we call physical reality.

The famous double slit experiment: Shows that every single thought, as energy, directly and instantly influences the quantum field. Thus, ‘quanta’ merge into a localized, observable experience event, an object, or other influence.

That is nonsense piled upon nonsense.

No, the double-slit experiment most certainly does not show “that every single thought, as energy, directly and instantly influences the quantum field.” This is just a bizarre fantasy: you cannot find any actual physicist who will make any claim of this sort at all.

Carolyn also wrote:

Further, from a book on quantum physics for non-physicists:

The act of our observation turns a probable particle into a ‘physical particle” at a certain point in space and time. Once we withdraw our attention from it, it becomes a probability again. Imagine that the sofa in your living room is a sizable sub-atomic particle. This is how it would behave: If you are not at home and do not think about your sofa, it would “disappear” and would become a probability that it could reappear anywhere in your living room or anywhere else in the universe…

That is a bizarre lie.. No, your sofa does not “disappear” and it is not true that ” it could reappear anywhere in your living room or anywhere else in the universe.”

Has your sofa actually ever reappeared somewhere else in the universe?

All just an obvious lie.

You chose not to mention where you got this quote, but it is in fact from Nancy Patterson’s Quantum Physics and The Power of the Mind. Patterson is not a physicist, of course, and her book is just chock-full of lies like the above.

Here is another of Patterson’s lies:

It all sounds so fantastic, but scientists in the field of quantum mechanics will tell you. It is hard for a most of us to comprehend the connection between subatomic particles and the law of attraction. During the investigation of quantum mechanics, it was discovered that subatomic particles determine the direction that the earth is turning.

Utter nonsense, again. No, subatomic particles do not determine the direction of the earth’s turning: it is determined by the angular momentum of the dust cloud that collapsed to form the solar system and the earth.

Another lie from Patterson:

After some double-blind slit tests using subatomic particles as subjects, it was discovered that they could switch between wave-shaped particles and then back to block shaped particles again. These particles could leave our dimension and enter it again. We also found that these subatomic particles changed deliberately from wave-shaped particles depending on the purpose.

How do they “leave our dimension” and what is a “block-shaped particle”? Again, simply bizarre lies.

I could go on and on quoting lies from this book.

Why on earth did Patterson fabricate all these lies?

Well, she certainly did not get them from physicists!!

I suppose she took the line from P. T. Barnum that there is a sucker born every minute and she figured she could make a few bucks by peddling these lies.

Carolyn also wrote:

Dave is clearly exhibiting anti-democratic, anti-libertarian intentions by wanting to keep New Physics a mystery to all the “uninitiated,” rather than to help them get the essence and/or benefit of it and feel included.

Yeah, yeah, we physicists really do know how to wave our magic wands and make your sofa disappear and send you into another dimension and change waves into blocks and everything else Nancy Patterson has revealed, but we are keeping our secrets to ourselves because… well, we are afraid you might do that to our sofas if you knew our secrets! And of course we are doing all this in collaboration with the World Jewish Conspiracy and, together, we are so powerful, that resistance to us is futile! Or else we will make your sofa disappear!

Keep an eye on your sofa, Carolyn!

Carolyn also wrote:

Who disagrees that Dave Miller is a big, fat fraud who needs to be called out (publicly shunned, as he puts it) for his anti-White-European views because he wants to “destroy forever” our foundational beliefs and myths in the name of Science? Speak up.

You betcha! You forget to mention that I am also a proud miscegenator who has mixed my precious bodily fluids, and indeed my actual genetic material, wit a non-White as part of my ongoing crusade to end the White Race. Which, I must say, is progressing nicely.

I admit it all.

And, in all seriousness, yes, the main purpose served by modern natural science during the last four centuries, from Copernicus and Galileo to Einstein and Richard Dawkins in the twentieth century has indeed been to wipe out all of the past cultures, all of the comforting belief systems, that make your lives tolerable.

Yes, natural science is indeed the only source of general, non-obvious, systematic, substantive, positive, well-confirmed knowledge that humans have ever obtained about reality.

And, yes, the greatest achievement of modern natural science is not our technological advances — as great as they are — but our elimination of all of the previous systems of human thought that have made past human cultures and indeed human civilizations possible.

And, now, you eight billion humans who live on this planet can not survive without making use of natural science.

We have you where we want you and we will never let you go!

You might as well learn to enjoy it.

Dave Miller in Sacramento (B.S. in physics from Caltech, Ph.D. in physics from Stanford)

Jonas E. Alexis wrote:

The claim that the historical Jesus closely parallels figures from mystery religions such as Bacchus, Dionysus, or Osiris, and that Christianity largely modeled itself on these traditions, is so implausible and historically irresponsible that it is difficult to understand why any scholar—including David Skrbina—would regard this argument as persuasive.

Jonas, you are not a serious scholar.

No serious mythicist would claim that the story of Jesus exactly reproduces the stories from the “mystery religions such as Bacchus, Dionysus, or Osiris.” It is matter of tropes that are “in the air.”

For example, obviously the Harry Potter series does not exactly parallel the Lord of the Rings trilogy; yet, who could doubt that there are certain similarities between Gandalf and Dumbledore? Did J. K. Rowling read Tolkien? I have no idea. But the trope was “in the air.”

More specifically, you list Philip R. Davies as among those who decline “to regard the mythicist position as a serious contribution to the field.” Well, no.

Here is what Phil Davies actually did have to say on the matter (see here):

The new collection of essays Is This Not the Carpenter represents something of the agenda I have had in mind: surely the rather fragile historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth should be tested to see what weight it can bear, or even to work out what kind of historical research might be appropriate. Such a normal exercise should hardly generate controversy in most fields of ancient history, but of course New Testament studies is not a normal case and the highly emotive and dismissive language of, say, Bart Ehrman’s response to Thompson’s The Mythic Past shows (if it needed to be shown), not that the matter is beyond dispute, but that the whole idea of raising this question needs to be attacked, ad hominem, as something outrageous.
…
I don’t think, however, that in another 20 years there will be a consensus that Jesus did not exist, or even possibly didn’t exist, but a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability. In the first place, what does it mean to affirm that ‘Jesus existed’, anyway, when so many different Jesuses are displayed for us by the ancient sources and modern NT scholars? Logically, some of these Jesuses cannot have existed. So in asserting historicity, it is necessary to define which ones (rabbi, prophet, sage, shaman, revolutionary leader, etc.) are being affirmed—and thus which ones deemed unhistorical. In fact, as things stand, what is being affirmed as the Jesus of history is a cipher, not a rounded personality (the same is true of the King David of the Hebrew Bible, as a number of recent ‘biographies’ show).
…
What I do find ridiculous are those so-called believing Christians who are trying to prove from ‘historical’ reasoning that what they believe is true, even (as in the case of Dr Wright, it seems) stories about saints let out of their graves [Matthew 27:52-3] who, it seems, never went back. Well, at least this explains the existence of zombies. But what else?
…
Two articles in Is This Not the Carpenter? (by the two editors, in fact) amass a great deal of evidence that the profile of Jesus in the New Testament is composed of stock motifs drawn from all over the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. These parallels are valid: in trying to provide an account of who and what Jesus was such resources were inevitably drawn upon, consciously or unconsciously by the gospel writers.

No, Phil was not a mythicist, but neither did he dismiss them as you claimed: indeed, as this quote shows, he thought the mythicists’ efforts “would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability.”

That is close to an endorsement of their efforts.

Note also his statement, “These parallels are valid.” And note Phil’s brusk dismissal of Bart Ehrman’s book: I have read Ehrman’s book (have you?), and, though I am a fan of Bart, I will simply say that that book is not one of his best.

A moment’s googling could have uncovered this. I know because I did that googling.

You didn’t.

Furthermore, you attacked straw men, obvious crackpots like Freke and Gandy and Guyonet (!) , who has made idiotic claims about historical chronology.

But Richard Carrier actually holds a Ph.D. from Columbia in ancient history. And he is a mythicist.

Robert M. Price holds two Ph.D.’s, in Systematic Theology and in New Testament. He also is a mythicist.

You wish to seriously critique the mythicist case? Engage the arguments of serious scholars with Ph.D.’s in the relevant fields such as Carrier and Price.

Please note: I am not taking sides. I am a Ph.D. physicist who happens to be curious about all this: I am certainly not a New Testament scholar.

I am merely noting that, for all your footnotes, your essay is a disreputable joke — misstating Phil”s position, attacking obvious cranks rather than serious scholars with Ph.D.’s in the relevant areas, and straw-manning obvious points about similarities in the various mystery religions, including the mystery religion based on Judaism — i.e., Christianity.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Dave Miller in Sacramento (Ph.D., physics, Stanford)

A people as superstitious as Jews would not need to be bound by objective reality in denouncing Jesus. We tend to forget that these people were members of a pre-logical, pre-scientific culture and did not think in a linear, logical way as we do. The Christian variant of Judaism specifically rejected and violently repressed the reasoned, evidence-based approach to life of the classical Greeks. It would not matter to Maimonides whether Jesus was a real guy or a literary fantasy. The damage done by people who believed he was real speaks for itself. Ultimately what can be said of Jesus can be said of God himself: if he didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him, because the congregation was primed and waiting.

Recent studies of contemporary oral bardic tradition furnish a reasonable account of how the Jesus tales evolved into the format we now have: audience response. Those stories that elicit enthusiastic approval get repeated and embellished, while those that fall flat are deleted. Since the Christian preacher/bard believes there is only one god, tales from other faiths are clearly manifestations of his god, misunderstood by the ignorant unsaved, which he sets right by attributing the magic to its singular “true” author.

I did get a chuckle from the Mackie comment on evil. It is such a classic instance of the theologian’s trademark mischief. When an insurmountable objection appears that destroys your cherished theory, announce that the whole business is not real. This seems to be an attempted improvement in the old fashioned defense of agnosticism, which says, stop asking so many impertinent questions because you won’t be able to understand the answers (aka the mind of god).

Maybe the answer is to the Jesus conundrum is the solution uncovered by Mark Twain that settled the Shakespearean authorship controversy: he was a different man with the same name.

Furthermore, is there any evidence from antiquity indicating that the Osiris myth was ever connected to the Christian narrative, or understood as equivalent in its concept of “resurrection,” as proponents of the mythicist position occasionally claim? It is therefore necessary to ask why this assertion emerges only in the nineteenth century, particularly within the work of fringe figures such as James Frazer, who sought to conflate Christianity with Egyptian, Greek, and Roman religious traditions.
[…]
Once again, why did this purported “striking resemblance” between Osiris and Christ emerge only in the nineteenth century?

The author would be shocked to learn just how many different assertions about the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and early Christianity emerged in the nineteenth century or later, including pretty much everything Ehrman, whom the author mentions multiple times, believes. So?

Here’s a clue. Watch this video on Medieval science. If a civilization can’t figure out that birds probably don’t grow on trees and migrate to the Moon, then it is unlikely it will figure out the kind of things we’ve only discovered in the nineteenth century.

Mr. Crowley wrote:

Only problem is the rabbis in the Talmud confirm his existence. If he was a fabrication there would be no reason to record his existence.

They were writing centuries later and clearly just repeating what they had heard from Christians.

This is like someone today saying that “Homer wrote the Odyssey.” Maybe there was no Homer — we are just repeating what the ancient Greeks claimed.

The same is true for other non-Christian references to Jesus.

The only early independent sources we have for the existence of Jesus are Paul’s letters and the four canonical Gospels, and, of course, Matthew and Luke cribbed from Mark, and John disagrees wildly with the other three. And Paul says almost nothing about the earthly Jesus.

Pretty scanty evidence.

Dave

man wrote to me:

The other Gospels mention it,John 20:20

“And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.”

Youi’re lying.

Scratch a Christian; find a liar.

Matthew 27 claimed that a whole lot of dead people, aside from Jesus, came out of their graves and walked around Jerusalem.

John does not claim that nor do the other two Gospels nor Paul of Tarsus.

Again: an honest question — do you think all those dead guys really came to life as Matthew claims but no one else bothered to mention it at all?

Why do I think you will refuse to answer that question?

man also wrote::

[Dave] Gospel of Peter and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas) are fictional.

[man]Perhaps they are fictional, They are not in the Bible.

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were also not in the Bible when they were written. The canon was established centuries later.

What the Gospel of Peter and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas prove beyond any shadow of a doubt is that the early Christians had a habit of writing “fanfic” about Jesus.

And the four canonical Gospels are clearly examples of that, as proven, for example, by the famous “zombie” passage in Matthew 27.

Now, again: do you believe the bizarre story in Matthew 27 is really true?

Dave

man wrote:

The New Testament is a source of information so we can compare it to other sources, and we get a picture of life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and His message. There is always an element of trust in the material we read.

The Gospels are quite obviously works of fiction: do you really believe that dead guys came out of their graves as is related in Matthew 27?

That would have been huge news: why does no one, not even the other Evangelists, mention it at all?

And then there is the mountain from which all the countries in the world could be viewed, and the slaughter of the innocents, and on and on.

Was Jesus real? Well… maybe.

But if so, the Gospels are most assuredly “fanfic,” fiction about a failed apocalyptic preacher, just as everyone agrees that the Gospel of Peter and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas) are fictional.

The Gospels are make-believe.

Dave Miller in Sacramento

Vergissmeinnicht wrote:

Picture this:

The have-nots as, for instance, factory workers: no minimum wage, no Welfare, no child labour legislation so children can not just work but, say, be paid half of what an adult is (as, likewise, no anti-discrimination legislation is in place), in short, they’ve got nothing…just undiluted lack of the State i.e. so-called “Freedom”.

That is pretty much what we had in 1900, and we were then one of the most prosperous countries in the world.

An increase in the standard of living does not come from government legislation, or government could just makes us all billionaires by passing a law. Prosperity comes from economic growth driven by the free market.

Vergissmeinnicht also wrote::

I’m not arguing for anarcho-capitalists but for free-market minarchists, mind you: It is just safer to install into the system something – maybe, a simple UBI – which supresses revolting, thus, turning the process more effective and efficient in the end.

You are most assuredly not arguing for free-market minarchism!

UBI would mean a dramatic expansion of government and of dependency on the government. And how would it be paid for? By looting the productive members of society!

If we come to UBI, I strongly urge all productive citizens to down tools and go on UBI — bring the whole evil system crashing to the ground so that we can then rebuild a free country.

Écrasez l’Infame.

Dave Miller in Sacramento

I trust you know that is a different David Miller

I do, indeed. In hindsight I should have made that abundantly clear in the post. Apologies.

P.S. looking forward to your feedback to my most recent comment, especially on the doco Why Sweden Is Multicultural?

geokat62 asked me:

Tell us Dave, from how many European countries or regions have the jews* been expelled over the last two millennia?

Why were they expelled?

They were expelled because, for over a thousand years of darkness, Christianity imposed a viciously theocratic totalitarianism on Europe that threatened the lives of anyone who did not profess the lies of Christianity. And the Jews refused to accept the lies of Christianity.

That’s the reason — you don’t know this?

By the way, I am aware that most contemporary Christians are much more tolerant people, to their credit, than their forebears back before the Scientific Revolution. Fortunately, the Scientific Revolution, and its offspring, the Enlightenment, largely de fanged Christianity.

One more reason to praise science.

geokat62 also asked me:

You’re willing to admit we have a zionist problem (jews who are working to benefit Israel) but completely unwilling to admit we have a jewish supremacy problem (jews who are working to benefit the diaspora in host nations by subverting them).

Explain to us what the objectives are of organizations like the Open Society Foundations…

Goerge Soros is a bad guy. And he is Jewish.

Bill Gates is also a bad guy. And he is not Jewish.

Again, what you members of the hate-the-Jews cult keep doing is mentioning some prominent people who are of Jewish descent and who do bad things, but you do not compare them to various prominent people who are not of Jewish descent but who also do bad things. And then you post lengthy quotes or links to videos by people who do the same thing and you think you have proved something!

This is what I have seen again and again from members of various cults — fundamentalists, Creationists, and so many others.

You are a cult.

Dave

Carolyn Yeager wrote to me:

[Dave] I have made my own small contributions to science and technology, for which I deserve a bit of credit. But you and Carolyn and most other White people? None at all.

[Carolyn] And what is that contribution, Dave? Let us give you credit, too.

I have repeatedly provided links to my Ph.D. thesis and one of my patents: look at my earlier posts.

Carolyn also wrote:

Further, quantum physics holds that the universe exists in a state of possibility, and when a conscious entity puts attention on another, it exists; when the attention goes, the object of attention does also. This may be an inelegant way of stating it (and you may say ‘wrong’) but the idea is correct.

No, the idea is not correct — it is wildly, bizarrely, insanely wrong.

The idea that when “the attention goes, the object of attention does also” is a view that I have never heard in the context of quantum physics, and I very, very much doubt that any legitimate physicist has ever made that claim.

Where on earth did you get such a nutty idea?

Carolyn also wrote:

For example, when I wrote to you in comment #616 that when I object (correctly) that an atheist like you who really believes what you say you do about death and consciousness “would not care what happens to the world after he dies,” you lie and say you care about your two daughters,” and to some degree all 8 billion persons living in the world at the time of your death. I’m sure you’d also include your wife if she survives. You’re lying because you know it’s not possible for something/someone that does not exist to “care” about that which is in existence–or anything at all.

I sincerely think you are losing your mind.

Everyone — even you! — knows that a person can care now about something in the future even if he will not be around when that future comes to pass. To be sure, in the future, if he is no longer around, then he will not care. But he certainly can now care about the future.

Saying that I am lying when I point out this obvious fact that all sane people know… well, I honestly think you are losing your mind.

And, by the way, you keep claiming that I have made some statement about what happens to us after death. I have not: I don’t know.

And as to your weird quotes from duPont and GE, well, you posted above:

My (cy) conclusion: Science and the Scientific Method is a cult. You’ve taught me, Dave, that not only Physics but Science itself is a cult!

Without the “cult” of natural science, this planet cannot support over eight billion people. Without the “cult” of natural science, it is unlikely that you would be alive.

So, prove you mean it! Stop being a hypocrite. Stop living your life by taking advantage of this “cult” you so despise.

Live your life as everyone lived in 1600, before the Scientific Revolution — no electric lighting, no fridge, no electric washing machine, no aspirin or antibiotics, and, above all, no electronics of any sort — no computer and no Internet.

Prove that you mean it.

But you won’t, because you are, I think, the biggest hypocrite I have ever known.

Dave

Tiptoethrutulips wrote to me:

[Dave] For which Carolyn deserves not one single smidgen of credit

[Carolyn] I didn’t say she deserves credit. I said the fruits and blessings of western technology/scientific achievement/culture is an aspect of her/our heritage/birthright, the geneses of which are inherent within us upon our inception.

There is no magic dirt, Dave. I guess one could say, WE are the magic dirt. (or clay, as it were…I don’t really know; I’m certain clay is a mistranslation…)

And who is this “WE”???

You and Carolyn have contributed nothing at all to the progress of natural science.

You are, in fact, both impediments to it.

I have contributed in my own small way.

Not you.

And, no, the achievements of natural science are not in the slightest your or Carolyn’s “heritage/birthright.” Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Planck, Einstein, et al. most assuredly did not bequeath to you or Carolyn any of the achievements of modern science.

Hey — how do you feel about the “Jewish science” of Einstein, Born, Pauli, Meitner, Wigner, Feynman, etc.? Do you think that “Jewish science” is also your “heritage/birthright”?

Tip also asked:

[Dave] Most English, Germans, and Scots did nothing at all to contribute to modern science.

[Tip] Oh? Then who did during the 14th century til 20th century? Or, do we start in Sumer and work our way up? God forbid…

Most certainly not the vast majority of English, Germans, and Scots.

A tiny, tiny fraction of English, Germans, Scots, Dutch, Swiss, French, Italians, Poles, Russians, Indians, Chinese, etc. made contributions to natural science. The overwhelming majority in all of those countries made no contributions at all.

For some bizarre reason, you seem to think that if some guy in some country makes some serious contribution to natural science, then all of his countrymen get a share of the credit.

That is insane. The credit goes to the guy who did the work. The numbskulls who sleepwalk through life who happen to live in the same country and who do not even care about science at all, like you and Carolyn, get no credit at all.

Tip also wrote:

I wasn’t born a “Nazi,” I was made one.

Which makes it your fault and which makes you an enemy of the American Republic. Nazism was a totalitarian ideology based on the Führerprinzip, as Hitler went into in great detail in Mein Kampf: this is the exact opposite of the system of limited government and checks and balances established by the Founders.

Tip also wrote:

The Leader as servant? Philosophy of Chieftainship? Human uses of power? That reeks of some form of hierarchy, Dave.

As I keep trying to explain, libertarian anarchists are not opposed to all forms of hierarchy or authority: we are opposed to coercive forms, such as exercised by the state.

I have participated in a number of vocal music groups in the course of my life: I accepted the authority of the director of those groups. But, any time I felt like it, I could quit. And they did not force me to pay money to them, if I did not feel like it, as governments do.

There is a universe of difference between authority that a person accepts, temporarily and provisionally and until he gets tired of it, and coercive authority, as imposed by criminals or by the state, which is of course just highly organized crime.

I think even you can grasp the difference.

Tip also wrote:

[Dave] 1. Yes, I have more years of schooling than you…2. The point is that you have done an abysmally poor job of educating yourself.

[Tip] 1. On what information/data do you base this conclusion?

Oh, c’mon — you’re kidding, right?

Again and again I have had to point out simple things of which you are ignorant. You are uneducated.

Tip also wrote:

[Dave] Socialism does not work.

[Tip] Explain Sweden, Norway, Finland….pre-Diversity, of course (Ah! There’s that pesky genetic component rearing its blonde head again!). And, Dave, I’ve been to Scandinavia and attended school with Scandinavian exchange students…so, keep that in mind when/if you post more condescending slop in an attempt to insult my intelligence….

Again, we see your serious lack of education!

The Nordic countries are what economists call “mixed economies,” not that different from the US, Canada, or the UK. They have huge capitalist, private sectors,, and some of their capitalist enterprises are world-known: the Ericsson telecom giant, IKEA, even the Lego toy company.

Yeah, their welfare states are certainly bigger than I would like, just like the US, and from time to time they have had to cut back on some of that as it became clearly unsustainable. But the idea that the Nordic countries are actually socialist economies is truly laughable. Socialism really existed in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, North Korea, etc., and it failed dramatically.

A productive capitalist economy can indeed sustain a large welfare state, as the Nordic countries, the US, the UK, Canada, etc. prove. The welfare state does impose a burden upon the private sector and does retard economic growth. Often it leads to catastrophic fiscal crises of the sort the US is now facing.

But real socialism, of the sort that mulga was praising in Cuba, involves full state ownership of “the means of production.”

That is not the situation in the Nordic countries.

Do you ever read books?

Dave

mulga mumblebrain asked me:

And what did Mises and the other Austrian nong-nongs say about the ecological consequences of infinite growth?

Pretty much nothing — it’s not a problem. It is generally recognized by economists that negative externalities can be dealt with by well-established property rights.

You don’t know this? There is a huge literature on it. The truly horrendous ecological disasters occurred in the “socialist” nations — e.g., Chernobyl.

mulga also wrote to me:

Dave, that is simply LYING. The sanctions regime enacted by the USA kept Cuba poor, but the Cubans still created a far more decent and humane society than the USA, which is why the US ruling class hate its ‘good example’.

And that of course is why so many millions of people have fled the US to live the good life in Cuba and no Cubans have ever fled Cuba to live the sad lives lived by Americans!

Socialism does not work.

That fact is about as well-established as the fact that the Earth moves around the Sun

If you doubt it, by all means move to Cuba. Or North Korea.

Dave

Tiptoethrutulips wrote to me:

In a society (historically/typically) lacking in means to implement/enforce “common law,” if you choose to ignore the influential guy, you are forcefully cast-out or marginalized. Maybe you’re executed.

Nope — read Clastres’ book.

You are simply misinformed on the anthropological data.

You are a self-confessed “admirer of National Socialist Germany and Adolf Hitler” — AKA a Nazi — and so I suppose you are enamored of the Führerprinzip. It turns out that that is not how stateless societies tend to operate, according to the anthropological data.

And indeed, how could it? The “influential guy,” after all, has to sleep. And if the “influential guy” just goes around killing people when he feels like it, then, when he sleeps, it’s a simple knife to the throat and — voilà — no more problems with the “influential guy”!

The problem with government is that we pretend that the state is something over and above actual individual human beings, that it somehow represents “society” as a whole, and has a moral legitimacy transcending the individuals who make up the state. Accepting that lie gives the state a power to dominate us that goes beyond a mere “influential guy.”

The novelist Robert Heinlein made the point quite clearly:

“Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?
…
“It is the key question…A radical question that strikes to the root of the whole dilemma of government. Anyone who answers honestly and abides by all consequences knows where he stands — and what he will die for.
…
“A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame… as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else.
…
“My point is that one person is responsible. Always. If H-bombs exist–and they do–some man controls them. In tern of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.”

Sure, it is possible that, in a stateless society a ruthless group will get together and bully everyone else: in effect, you will then have a government. But at least it will then be clear what is going on — that this “government” is just a gang of bullies.

In fact, anthropologists have observed that lots of stateless societies have norms and traditions preventing this.

Tip also wrote:

the Founding Fathers, whom we both admire (?), found that some semblance of national/state authority was/is necessary for human civilizational progress and prosperity, which certainly includes/enables progress in fields of science and technology

Nope — you have admitted you are a Nazi, which is antithetical to the principles of the Founders.

And, no, “national/state authority” is most certainly not necessary for “progress in fields of science and technology.” I know an enormous amount about the history of science and technology. You don’t, due to your lack of education.

Tip also wrote:

I find it interesting that there are no current “stateless” or anarchistic nations comprised of European people…

And how is Europe doing nowadays? Indeed since European civilization was destroyed in the Great War between European governments in 1914-18?

Governments are parasites, like the parasite that produces the common cold: governments exist to loot the productive members of society and turn over the loot to the members of the government and their supporters.

There are no European countries that lack the viruses that produce the common cold: that does not prove that the flu virus is either desirable or necessary.

Just like the state.

Read the wonderful book, The Human Condition, by the founder of world history, William McNeill: he argues that human history consists largely of depredations by “micro-parasitism” — viruses and bacteria — and “macro-parasitism” — governments.

Tip also asked:

Why do you continue to insult me by suggesting that I am poorly educated, considering that you, yourself, previously claimed that you are an autodidact?

Education is not schooling. Yes, I have more years of schooling than you, but that really does not matter. The point is that you have done an abysmally poor job of educating yourself.

Tip also asked:

So, it seems that Dewey was a bit of a communist/Marxist, yes?

Well, I don’t think his ideas were actually that coherent: he was indeed a socialist of sorts, but, beyond that… the guy was not exactly a systematic thinker! Which makes sense — progressive education does not encourage systematic thinking.

Tip also wrote:

[Dave] No, that technology is not a product of Carolyn’s ” ethnic and societal heritage.”

[Tip] Oh, yes it is. What’s the statistic? 97% of the innovators/discoverers/achievers in the field of sciences and arts from the 14th-15th century til the 20th, and the resultant technologies/institutions that have modernized/beautified our world, had/have an ethnic origin in Europe. Germany is smack in the middle of the corresponding map of Origin, and amongst the European groups, the English, Germans, and (Scottish) Celts were/are the most prolific. So, Germanic, German, and Celt reign supreme.

For which Carolyn deserves not one single smidgen of credit. At all, Any more than I deserve credit for Beethoven’s music or Michael Phelps’ swimming achievements, just because we happen to be of the same ethnic groups.

Most English, Germans, and Scots did nothing at all to contribute to modern science. A significant number of them did what they could to actively impede it.

I have made my own small contributions to science and technology, for which I deserve a bit of credit. But you and Carolyn and most other White people?

None at all.

Indeed, you and Carolyn and most other White people don’t even deign to seriously learn about the discoveries we scientists have made or even show respect for our work.

Nope, she gets no credit at all.

Tip also wrote:

[Dave]It is a product of natural science, for which Carolyn has openly and unequivocally expressed deep hatred and contempt.

[Tip] No, you mischaracterize again. Not to speak for her, but she seems to embrace the notion that – Man does not live by bread (and hard science/tangible assets) alone. There should be/is more to inform us, accessed from within a spiritual/unknowable, yet somehow perceivable realm, which can sustain us beyond what Science has provided.

Nope — Carolyn has expressed deep and profound hostility towards science. For example, earlier she stated:

My (cy) conclusion: Science and the Scientific Method is a cult. You’ve taught me, Dave, that not only Physics but Science itself is a cult! And someday, the majority of humankind will know it.

Can’t get much more hostile towards science than that!

And, from her perspective, this hostility certainly makes sense. She longs for the lies of this fake “spiritual/unknowable, yet somehow perceivable realm,” which is just a symptom of her mental disturbances.

As I keep emphasizing, the greatest achievement of modern natural science is not our technological advances — as great as they are — but our elimination of all of the previous systems of human thought that have made human cultures and human civilizations possible.

Science is the Great Destroyer, the Grim Reaper that wipes out all the past delusions that have sustained people like Carolyn.

We are ripping away that which, in your words, “can sustain us beyond what Science has provided.”

”Écrasez l’infâme!”

As I keep insisting, the only source of general, non-obvious, systematic, substantive, positive, well-established knowledge that humans have ever obtained about reality is natural science.

As everyone comes to accept this, it will no longer be possible for anyone to believer the lies that sustain Carolyn.

Dave Miller in Sacramento

Tiptoethrutulips wrote to me:

What do anthropologists tell us about the bands of humans once wandering about stateless? No chiefs? No lead huntsmen?

There is a huge literature on this: the point is that if I feel like ignoring the state — say, by not paying taxes — the state will put me in jail. But in many stateless societies, if you choose to ignore the influential guy in the group… well, the others may try to convince you to go along with him. Or not. But in many such societies, no, they will not use physical force to compel you to obey. If you want a specific place to go into this, try Clastrtes’ classic Society Against the State, but again there is a huge literature, far more than I can possibly detail here.

I am well aware that these well-known facts are not presented to you in the (government-run) American educational institutions. You think maybe there is a reason for that?

Tip also asked:

So, why does a nation deliberately lower the standards of education for their populace? – why is America dumbing-down their own people/their own future leaders and innovators?…It makes no sense, unless…it’s deliberate, and it’s of malicious intent.

It goes back to White Gentiles in the Progressive Era and earlier — John Dewey, to take a concrete example. It just plain was not “the Jews.”

Why? Multiple reasons, but, to me, the most salient one is that it is a matter of rebellion against natural science: science has wiped out earlier false and corrupt systems of thought, but learning science is hard. Really, really hard. So, an obvious response is to dumb down the curriculum.

A lot.

Tip also wrote:

The problem ain’t the Irish influx, Dave.

Well, a lot of my ancestors, Old Stock Americans, were quite convinced that the problem was indeed the Irish influx! Read about the “Know-Nothing” party.

Tip also wrote:

[Dave] Mty main argument with Carolyn was pointing out that…people like Carolyn who argue that the net value of technology is negative but who then continue to use everything from computers and the Internet…are simply hypocrites. If she really believed that, she could and would go “off-grid,” disappear into the wilderness, and avoid technology altogether. But of course she won’t.

[Tip] Well, why would/should she? The current technological advances/utilities/devices are a product of her/our ethnic and societal heritage, and furthermore, you are mischaracterizing what she asserted.

No, that technology is not a product of Carolyn’s ” ethnic and societal heritage.” It is a product of natural science, for which Carolyn has openly and unequivocally expressed deep hatred and contempt.

And that does indeed prove that Carolyn is, quite possibly, the biggest hypocrite I have ever encountered in my long life.

And, again, the bizarre claims that you and the other members of the Jew-hating cult here make are belied by the simple facts: look at the Jewish proportion of the Congress, the Supreme Court, past Presidents, etc. And, yes, I know the theory is that the Jews secretly pull the levers of power behind the scenes. Then name one single example from human history in which a very small minority ethnic group controlled a much larger society without having open control of the forces of coercion — the army and the police.

I know of none. Do you?

You cultists think the Jews are essentially superhuman, truly uniquely talented, in all of human history, at secretly seizing power in a large society.

If you were right, wouldn’t resistance truly be futile? How could one ever overthrow rulers this brilliant and clever?

Fortunately, the actual evidence shows that Jewish Zionists — because of the support of the much more numerous Christian Zionists among whom I myself grew up — have managed to largely control US policy in the Mideast. But the evidence does not show that they control the whole society.

And, since their power is focused simply on this one area, and since they need the support of their Christian Zionist foot soldiers, there is hope to overcome them on the matter of Mideast policy.

But if you were right, there would be no hope.

At all.

Dave

I trust you know that is a different David Miller: we are legion! That guy describes himself as:

Political sociologist | Producer @PDeclassified | Professor sacked by @BristolUni at behest of the Zionist movement https://linktr.ee/tracking_power

Obviously, a very different life than my own as a physicist and engineer.

There are indeed a number of David Millers who are physicists.

But, as far as I know, I am the only physicist David Miller in Sacramento, hence how I often sign my posts.

Dave Miller in Sacramento

My friend Carolyn Yeager wrote to me:

You say that you think it is “morally wrong” to use mind-altering “recreational” drugs, and for a woman to prostitute herself. For these moral failures you recommend passing moral judgment on such people, and stating that judgment publicly, as long as physical force or the threat of force is not used, Oh, what a lovely society that would be to live in! Let’s all go around passing moral judgment on “other people.” And let’s all pressure one another to do the same, have the same identical beliefs about it. Obvious question: How is that libertarian-ism according to the vast majority of most people’s understanding? It’s actually authoritarianism, but also impossible to accomplish.

It’s libertarian because it is a corollary of freedom of speech: in a free country, you have to earn the approval — or disapproval — of your fellow citizens: it is not automatic. And freedom of speech guarantees their right to express that approval or disapproval loudly and publicly. Indeed, there is not much else point to freedom of speech, now is there?

And for you, who are a self-proclaimed National Socialist and an outspoken admirer of Adolf Hitler, to accuse libertarians of “authoritarianism”… well, it shows you do retain a sense of humor, doesn’t it?

Carolyn also wrote:

Don’t you know that the reason for laws issued by government is so that individuals don’t have to busybody into their neighbors’ lives, causing ill-feelings, anger and disruption to social peace?

That’s the issue all right: shall the rules of morality be imposed by government via the physical threat of prison or even execution or shall morality be negotiated freely through voluntary social approval or disapproval among free people?

You’ve made clear which you prefer: the policy of National Socialism.

The American tradition is for morality to be decided by free social interaction, free expression of social approval or disapproval. I stand with America.

Carolyn also wrote:

[Carolyn] For instance, when I object (correctly) that someone who really believes what you say you do about death and consciousness would not care what happens to the world after they die, you answer with the old familiar refrain:

[Dave] we care about what happens to [our two daughters] when we are gone — we do planning in terms of our will, etc.

You find that strange?

Now of course the entire human race are not my children, and so I do not care about each one as much as I care about my kids. But, still… eight billion humans now and many billions to come in the future… yeah, I do care about the future after I am gone.

Yes, that is indeed the “old familiar refrain,” isn’t it? Because that is how all normal human beings feel.

I take it you have never had any children — right? — so caring about the future of your offspring after you die is quite alien to you?

How sad.

That is not a normal human life.

Carolyn also wrote:

Sorry, but there is no rationality in this at all. It’s purely manipulative. Your daughters are deeply into adulthood; you say you’ve taught them well; you have to consider they are as capable as you’ve been of making their own decisions. (I do wonder what they would say about all this.)

You think there is something wrong with the fact that my wife and I “care about what happens to [our two daughters] when we are gone — we do planning in terms of our will, etc.”? You think they dislike the idea that we hope to bequeath them some inheritances when we die? I think they rather like the idea, for obvious reasons!

And you think it is wrong for us to hope that they have honest, productive, self-respecting lives and that we make that clear to them?

I’d ask if you don’t hope that for your offspring, but it appears that you have none.

I will tell you: most parents do, quite naturally, hope that for their children.

Carolyn also wrote:

As to the 8 billion other humans you “care” about, no, if you’re totally extinguished you cannot “care” about them, even now while you’re still cognizant. Has it not occurred to you, as a physicist, that when you no longer exist, “they” won’t either? Kaput! All gone.

What a strange thing to say! No, when I no longer exist “they” will indeed still exist — almost all of those much younger than me now and their offspring and so on for a very long time. And it is not true that I “cannot ‘care’ about them, even now while [I’m] still cognizant,” since, as a matter of fact, I do care about them.

I take it that you have no descendants to care about, nor do you, it seems, grasp the idea of caring about future human beings. But that is odd. Normal people do.

You’ve never read the Preamble to the US Constitution which states the Framers’ intent to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”? You don’t believe they really cared about their posterity?

Fine: you yourself have no such intent, but you cannot grasp that many people really do?

How peculiar!

Carolyn also wrote:

Parting thought: You like to speak for everyone; you can’t just speak for yourself. This has been evident since childhood, as you have told us.

I have said nothing of the sort — you are lying. I have said that since childhood I have had a deep and abiding hatred of lies. That is not speaking for others, it is speaking against them when they lie.

I think it is becoming clear why you hate it when people are determined to expose lies, now isn’t it?

Carolyn also wrote:

I’ve already told you there are no voices. It’s a kind of thought transmission.

You are claiming that “far greater beings” communicate some sort of messages or knowledge to you telepathically, as you say, it’s “a kind of thought transmission.”

Suppose sixty years ago, when you were a young woman, your mom or grandmother had made similar claims. Wouldn’t this have worried you? Wouldn’t you have been concerned and considered getting them help?

Can’t you stand outside your current life and see that this is where you are now?

You have a very real, very serious problem: you need help.

I am not being snarky here: this is really not normal.

You really do need help.

Your friend,

Dave