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Sunday, April 30, 2023

Lushington D. Brady: Snuffing Out the Candle in the Dark


I have a love-hate relationship with Richard Dawkins. On the one hand, I often find his pretensions to philosophy ill-informed and annoying. I mean, he openly professed ignorance of epistemology, after writing a book on what was, in fact, epistemology (The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True). His attacks on religion are too often trite and undergraduate-level stuff.

On the other hand, I admire him for at least being consistent — and willing to equally offend the self-righteously woke. Even at the risk of his own cancellation.

The Left have been falling out of love with Dawkins at roughly the same rate as the rise of Woke, which should surprise no one.

Of course, it shouldn’t. Because wokeism is an anti-science dogma that would make an old school Inquisitor laugh with scorn. Its corrosive effect is so thorough that it causes even supposed scientists to fawn on the most ridiculous stone age fairy tales as “equal to Western science”. If science is a candle in the dark, the wokeists are hell-bent on snuffing it.

By the time the Guardian ran the headline, Is Richard Dawkins destroying his reputation? the free-fall of reality in Western Civilisation had already begun. He is fighting the same species of demon that plagued the mind and work of Charles Darwin, except that Darwin had the advantage of civilisation at the dawn of higher knowledge – a species that was clawing and scratching for answers. Dawkins is trapped in the suffocating thrall of an anti-science, witch-burning mob whose thatch is laid down by international corporations and soaked in the oil of unelected bureaucracies.

At least Dawkins isn’t succumbing to the woke mind virus quietly, unlike Sam Harris.

Sam Harris is an example of a man who speared himself with the now infamous line: ‘Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement – I would not have cared.’

I was never particularly convinced that Harris was the Great Thinker that so many neckbearded atheists claimed him to be. Watching him prove it beyond doubt, though, is another thing entirely.

And far too symptomatic of the barbarous times we find ourselves in.

For a man who has said he would ‘like to leave the world a better place’, Dawkins finds himself trying to recognise the world as it is today. He is not alone. A few minutes spent with the youth on TikTok is enough to make anyone seriously re-evaluate the survival prospects of the West. These kids are not ‘like, the smartest generation ever’ (which they should be, given their unprecedented access to information), they are a confused nightmare festering in a hyper-socialised environment where ‘identity’ has become a sort of currency instead of achievement.

Evolution is not perfect, and it has certainly gone down a dead end with identity politics.

The war against Dawkins started in earnest when the American Humanist Association withdrew its Humanist of the Year award a full quarter of a century after it was given.

What was it that so triggered the porch atheists?

Was it Dawkins stating — correctly — that Maori creation myths aren’t “science”, no matter what a morbidly obese, glorified lab tech, with an adolescent attention-seeking streak as lurid as her hair, might say?

Or was it Dawkins taking the arguments of gender theorists to their ridiculous logical conclusion, when he pointed out that 100% white Rachel Dolezal could as perfectly reasonably “identify” as “black”, as a male could “identify” as a woman?

Or indeed, Dawkins denying that men could “transition” to being women?

Was it Dawkins pointing out that Islam doesn’t tend to foster scientific achievement?

Trick question: it was all of the above.

Possibly because gender theory is the ruling anti-reason ideology of the Western Establishment at present, it was the tranny stuff that really got the wokeists’ knickers in a twist so tight they threatened to cut off circulation to their balls.

Even more than the “Listener Seven” witch-hunt, transgenderism is an existential threat to not just Western civilisation, but its very foundations of reason and liberty.

The adults in the room need to sort this conversation out right now, because the next generation has no love or interest in reasoned discussion. How many speakers are hounded out of universities by kids screaming into megaphones or wailing hysterically? Watch the average student rally and notice the utter lack of intellectual discipline amid the swearing, abuse, and threats of physical assault […]

Like the ‘Great Leap Forward’, we are watching the mass purging of reality.

It’s less like the Great Leap Forward, although the mass starvation of that calamity was precipitated by anti-science Marxist dogma more than the Cultural Revolution. We are witnessing the wholesale vandalism of centuries of intellectual and cultural achievement by gangs of ignorant, violent children.

Lushington describes himself as Punk rock philosopher. Liberalist contrarian. Grumpy old bastard. This article was first published HERE

12 comments:

Barend Vlaardingerbroek said...

Look at the trash they let into universities these days - many of them do not have the mental capacity for serious academic study. And of course we wouldn't want to fail them so we lower the academic bar until we have what we now have - shouting down anyone even mildly conservative because the capacity for reasoned argument isn't there.

Originz said...

Quite right, Barend. The most glaringly obvious virture missing from today’s youth is humility. It has been completely replaced by overweening self-esteem, self-importance and arrogance. The simply have no comprehension of their own ignorance. No capacity for reasoned argument, because no such thing is necessary any more, simply shouting your own malformed opinions is meant to be enough. No logic, no training in identifying inconsisteny and fallacies. But, sadly, it is not all their own fault - this is what they have been taught - no absolute truth, no right and wrong. Without a respect for truth, “research” becomes simply an exercise in imagination and displaying whatever weird fantasies come into one’s head. And ones “peers” when reviewing the claptrap, will be dead scared to demur. Even the hard sciences that should be immune to this are being invaded by superstition.

Tuatara said...

I agree and originz has summarized the origin of the problem with our youth. They are the product of our aggressively secular society which has done away with ethics and morality. No absolutes, truth is relative. These are among the main ideas of progressive education a child-centred education which includes sentimental Rousseau ideas of the child being naturally good. Some return to traditional values, behaviors and disciplined learning surely would now seem just common sense. Dawkins in his unrelenting attack on metaphysics has got what he deserves. "If God does not exist, anything is possible"-Ivan , 'Brothers Karamazov' by Dostoyevsky.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek said...

The great moral philosophers of the Enlightenment era were mostly Deists and what we would call agnostics nowadays. It was precisely because Middle Eastern spooks were removed from ethics and morality that new paradigms had to be sought. They were. Talk of an "aggressively secular society which has done away with ethics and morality" is just so much hogwash derived from sheer ignorance.

TJS said...

Mmm something is definitely missing.
Ethics and morality of course. A result of secular society, science v conjecture. Good stuff. I will keep being agnostic...for now that is but...

One concern is the devotion to Baal. Evil exists, even if it is only in those that rever it.

Thanks commentators.

Originz said...

Sorry Barend, but there is no “paradigm” available once you jettison the Creator. If you ignore the manufacturer and the operator’s manual for any product, all you have left is ignorant folk arguing and fighting over how to use it, and blithely misusing it.
No manner of human thought, relection, reason, meditation or discussion can lead to a resolution of questions like: should we or should we not murder or steal? As we see around us, there are plenty of people completely convinced that the answer is on one side or the other. Without the Lawgiver, no unanimous solution is possible. It is just one person’s word against another.
Just as you might disagree with me here, without God and his truth there is no way if bringing you and I together on the matter. Any “paradigm” or way of thinking that you propose is no more valid than what I might propose in my own right.
I do not propose God as a solution, as a paradigm: I recognise God as a fact, as a being, as my Creator, who has the right (and the condescension) to tell me what is right and wrong. You have no such authority to appeal to, since you rebel against him, and there is no alternative.

Tuatara said...

Barend, you imply Christianity is based on 'spooks' . While I can't speak for other Middle Eastern religions for me Christian faith is evidence based.To shatter my faith you would have to prove the very many prophesies in the Old Testament were simply coincidences,demonstrate Jesus did not rise from the dead and that all the people who have come to Christ, and had their lives transformed were simply an illusion and so on.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek said...

Originz, you evidently have no idea of what over 300 years of moral philosophy post-Enlightenment have given us, and you obviously don't want to know or you would have bothered looking it up. You appear to be so utterly naive as to presuppose that rules of conduct need to be imposed from On High whereas human beings, being social creatures, are most adept at rule-making. Societies where people can nick one another's gear, bump one another off for no reason, etc, don't last. I don't need any spook to tell me what is wrong/right, and certainly not a tribal deity that explicitly condones mass murder, slavery and rape, and finally demands a human blood sacrifice to make up for it having screwed up on Project Earth. It is your god that has no authority.
Tuatara, a prophecy needs to be a precise description of an event that will happen in the future. Many 'prophecies' were written after the event and/or in such nebulous terms that they could have been applied to any number of events. Now it is not for me to prove that your guru rose from the dead any more than it is for me or you to prove that the toothfairy doesn't exist; the onus of proof in law and science is on the party making the claim.

TJS said...

I thought might be interesting to come back to this page.

Tuatara said...

More comment for TJS who may return.
Ridicule and mockery, Dawkin's style is not argument and gives no credit to the one who does it.
Bible prophesy is very specific. Unlike us the Old Testament people lived in a theocracy, and their survival was God's plan. Applying Pascal's and Popper's belief that any theory should consider its negative then why are we not ever allowed to question anything in evolution?

Barend Vlaardingerbroek said...

If you had the foggiest clue what you were on about, you would know that we continuously question all things in science including current evolutionary models.
Well, you probably don't know what the word 'evolution' means anyway, but I was wondering whether you were talking about the cosmological, geological, biological, chemical or cultural versions all of which are propelled by different mechanisms. But you've probably never opened a book about it in your life other than one written by some mouth-foaming Yank fundamentalist shyster.
You've probably never read up on the literary analysis of ancient texts either.......? If you had, you might have some clue what 'prophesy' entailed in the ancient civilisations.
But you go on conning yourself that you know better than people with years of study in these various fields even though you so evidently don't know the meaning of the words you use.
GROW UP.
End of conversation.

Originz said...

Well, Barend, you are quite the master of ad hominem, aren’t you? How arrogant and condescending of you to assume that those you are conversing with have done no reading and research on the subjects; to presume that anyone who disagrees with you must be an ignorant raving idiot. I imagine that Tuatara and TJS are very well read: I have certainly spend the last twenty years compiling and reading a substantial library of books on evolution and theology. I am a professional mathematician and statistician, and am convinced that evolution is simply so far beyond the limits of possibility that it is essentially impossible. That is quite telling for me; even apart from the fact that no evidence for evolution has ever been discovered, nor has any adequate model been proposed for how it might actually occur.

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