Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
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rhetoric

agit-prop, opinion manipulation and well-poisoning games

L&FP 41: George Barna helps us to understand the worldviews chaos we must address

Barna has issued new survey results that paint a stunning picture of the bellwether United States, as an utterly confused, conflicted nation, with 88 percent defaulting to incongruous worldview components, with the single largest bloc being 39% inclined to “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” Of course, actual full adherence is at the 1% level. Biblical theism comes first on full adherence, at 6% but that is itself a radical shift of worldviews, probably reflecting the impact of generations of cultural elites hostile to the Gospel and Gospel ethics (most often articulated in terms of its being anti-Science, outdated and intellectually indefensible . . . the standard media and “education” narratives). Such elites have long since sought to overthrow the influence of the Read More ›

L&FP 40: Thoughts on [neo-?] Reidian Common Sense Realism

We live in a civilisation haunted by doubt and by hyperskepticism. One, where skepticism is deemed a virtue, inviting hyper forms in as champions of intellect. The result has gradually led to selective hyperskepticism that often uncritically takes the word of champions or publicists for Big-S Science, while doubting well founded but unfashionable analyses or even self-evident truths. H’mm, just in case someone is unclear about or doubts that Self-Evident Truths exist, here is one . . . with an extra one for good measure: (Of course, I also have argued that there are self-evident truths regarding duty; particularly, inescapable first duties of reason that actually govern responsible reason, argument and discussion, starting with duties to truth, right reason, warrant Read More ›

Wikipedia presents pseudo-“knowledge” [fake “knowledge”?] on ID, yet again

In discussing implication logic and first duties, Wikipedia on ID came up yet again. The lead’s manifest failure to be responsibly objective, descending into slander from the outset, speaks volumes: Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as “an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins”.[1][2][3][4][5] Proponents claim that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”[6] ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.[7][8][9] The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank Read More ›

How do we move civilisation (and especially science, tech and math) forward?

We are clearly in an age of reversion to oligarchic domination and lockout of dissent, so the issue is that of formation of a counter-culture, starting with the life of the mind. H’mm, as a preliminary, let us look briefly at a refresher on a more useful ideological/political spectrum than the usual LEFT/RIGHT (which has no coherent definition of centre and right, where also Nazism/Fascism is actually of the left . . . contrary to popular notions): This is necessary because, regrettably, power dominates over essentially anything, especially in a time of deep polarisation. We can map that through the seven mountains/pillars of influence model: This naturally points to the cliff metaphor and warning: Let me add, that with our Read More ›

UD Live event part 3, US Election moves to resolution . . . [?]

As the Election progresses into its third month, this week we expect a runoff election in Georgia State and the Congress is to sit to resolve the Electoral College result on the 6th. We continue to track from here and here. As developments unfold we will add further updates. END U/D1, Jan 6: Photograph demonstrating even more brazen scrutineer frustration in GA than at Nov 3+, 2020: I note, extra, by way of the earlier capture from the surveillance video on the night of 3/4 November: U/D2, Jan 7: Tucker Carlson’s warning on where undermining election integrity leads: U/D4, a reminder on McFaul Colour-Culture revolution and the SOCOM insurgency escalator: . . . also, on 4th gen war: I add, Read More ›

Candace Owens interviews Dr Stella Immanuel and dynamics of hope (yes, JVL, it’s back to answering the “never let a crisis go to waste”/ “inevitable crisis of Capitalism” Marxist revolutionary strategy)

Yes, Marxist ideology pivots on the idea of mounting crises of Capitalism opening the door to socialist transformation. (Where, yes, pandemics obviously count as do incidents of police brutality or anything else that can be used to hang the failure of Capitalism and/or Christendom crisis template on.) Back in the ’30’s, Stalin thought THE Crisis had arrived, but Kondratiev — his star economist — instead produced an honest analysis that discovered generation-length long-wave cycles; oops. Stalin had him shot. Kondratiev, of course, was right. Yes, he produced a breakthrough analysis and paid for being right with his life, at the hands of the notorious Marxist Dictator, Stalin. Simplifying: The typical 8 – 11 year business cycle we worry about is Read More ›

UD Live Event from Nov 3, US Election cont’d: BBC — yes the BEEB — on BLM’s Marxist founders, “[We] fought to change history and we won”

Okay, we are looking at the victory lap being taken (a bit prematurely, methinks) by the BLM trio of marxist founders. Here is BEEB: Black Lives Matter founders: We fought to change history and we won Published14 hours ago The year 2020 will be remembered for a lot of things – not least the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement around the world. The organisation has led huge street rallies and high-profile campaigns against racism and police brutality. Now the three women who founded the movement have told the BBC they believe it has transformed politics. “Black people alongside our allies stood up to change the course of history and we won,” said Alicia Garza. Garza and her BLM Read More ›

Judge Amy Barrett and positivist “constitutional jurisprudence” as usurpation, vs., the natural law (and the natural/original sense of a Constitution)

One of the almost amusing features of UD is to observe threads largely dodged by inveterate objectors (given the known, intense hostile scrutiny we face). One of those threads, recently, has been the discussion of Judge Amy Barrett and the hearings she faces. However, in the course of some discussion some themes were sounded that are worth further focus, so, let us headline some of these. A good start point is with a Washington Post Op Ed by Brian Leiter, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School: Let’s start telling the truth about what the Supreme Court does Opinion by Brian LeiterMarch 19, 2017 Ordinary Americans may be understandably perplexed by the controversy over nominating a judge to Read More ›

Judge Amy Coney Barrett begins US Supreme Court nomination hearings

Judge Barrett has issued the text of her remarks ahead of the hearings. She is President Trump’s third nominee and the hearings are liable to be contentious, one hopes the sort of accusations raised against Mr Kavanaugh will not occur. It is to be noted that election year nominations to the Supreme Court have happened a significant number of times since the 1790’s. Over the past century and more, several times, nominees proposed by a president of one party with a Senate dominated by the other have failed, while same-party nominations have typically gone through. The US Constitution simply stipulates Presidential nomination and Senate “advice and consent.” In past decades, such were not contentious, but the Court has deteriorated into Read More ›

Culture Revolution insurgency escalator

As background, let us first refresh our memory on the BATNA concept and the Overton Window: Where, let us further refresh on centres of cultural influence . . . as well as the Machiavelli challenge of timely, prudent change: Now, let us expose the 4th Generation Colour Revolution playbook and operational patterns, so that we may begin to better recognise what has been going on and where we now are: Next, let us bear in mind the crooked yardstick effect: The matter of clarifying political spectra will help: Let us further set that in the global geostrategic context: Now, we can have a more focused discussion on where we are going over the next 3 to 15 months, in the Read More ›

U-Haul a riot (where, lawless oligarchy is the “natural” state order)

Yes, it seems some connected Alinsky School Community Organiser groups have been videotaped in the act, by independent, viral video journalists. Caught, in the act of unloading telling messages and riot equipment — shields and shield walls are not normal, “peaceful”/lawful protest equipment (and no, shields are not purely defensive) — from a rental truck: Another . . . augmented . . . vid clip allows us to recognise the renter of the truck (black shorts girl), even as longer shields are being handed out: This is of course directly connected to the incident where two police officers were shot by rioters in Louisville. So, we can readily connect riots, red guard cannon fodder cultural revolution activism, the ecosystem of Read More ›

Netflix goes over the moral cliff (or is it “conspiracism”?) . . .

A pic to ponder, first: In the aftermath of Mr Weinstein, Mr Epstein, Ms Maxwell and others (see here, the MeToo movement and how it helped set up the Kavanaugh hearings accusations), as well as the questions hovering over Prince Andrew of Windsor and others, many have begun to believe there is a lurking network of – promotion of sexual perversities (aka perversion), – sex trafficking (the notorious casting couch is sex trafficking), – grooming and trafficking of minors (there is a reason for age of consent laws),– possibly, networks of blackmail– promotion of pornography and near pornography — often, little more than – prostitution or even rape (Linda Lovelace, if you doubt me) on film or video– tied to Read More ›

A Sandia National Labs Whistleblower on Culture form Marxism imposition by HR Department

Yes, it’s real: And if this is being “mainstreamed” at Sandia National Labs, it’s going to be all but pervasive in Government and in the sort of corporations that typically get government contracts. Across today, DV, I intend to put up screen shots from his presentation, as points to ponder. As a start, clip 1: Clip 2: Clip 3: Petersen’s caveats: Let me add, on HR etc vs surveys of actual black Americans: Similarly, though there is a general violence problem in the US and such is echoed in policing, US DoJ figures as cited give a picture different from the narrative (especially if we recognise that, sadly African American youth are heavily over-represented in violent crimes, as perpetrators and Read More ›

Is the USA going over the edge as we speak?

Scott Adams, American cartoonist and commenter on events with a particular view to persuasion and narrative dominance seems to agree. Transcript of key comments: I think I’ve been telling you for some time the obvious way that these protests/riots/looting episodes were going to go. There was only one way that these would go under the assumption that the police would not get more aggressive and that the local government would not let the federal government come in and take care of the violent stuff. There was going to be no adult supervision and that was intentional. The local leadership decided to not have any adult leadership during the protests/riots/looting. So it was obvious that the locals would end up arming Read More ›