Saturday, August 28, 2010

No better example

Jeffrey Sachs, known for his profoundly unscientific beliefs in Global Warming and the ability to end world poverty, has written his final and Faraway column for Scientific American. And in it, he puts digs himself into logical hole of epic proportions:

This goal was not even remotely achieved. Indeed, it was barely even noticed by Americans: The U.S signed the convention in 1992 but never ratified it.Ratification feel victim to the uniquely American delusion that virtually all of nature should be subdivided into parcels of private property, within which owners should have their own way.
What a pathetic, petty, little diatribe. Mr. Sachs, you desperately need to have a reality check. Private property as the American delusion? Try the American dream.
Poor Jeff simply doesn't understand what the previous century has demonstrated countless amount of times. Public property and its means of production is a trainwreck of an idea from an efficiency standpoint, a horror in the mass slaughters it has engaged in, and in the suppression of true manhood.
The most telling bit of his entire article however, is that it provides the perfect proof of the link between the Environmental Movement and Totalitarianism. Private property is the only -- the ONLY -- defense mechanism the people have against a ruthless totalitarian government that the twentieth century produced in no short order.
Sachs' rants would be amusing, if it weren't for the fact that so many people taking his musings seriously. I would say powned, but that may not even suffice to describe Sachs' intellectual downfall sufficiently.
In the beginning of the 1st Century, Jesus Christ had to suffer with many deluded fools. He did not treat them lightly, He chastised them, nor did He tolerate them. He repeatedly criticized the "wise" men of the world for their arrogant incompetence and misunderstandings. Our time is no different, and although we have 2000 more years of history upon which to draw, there is still as much folly running rampant in the intellectual air that we breath. For proof of this, one need look further than Jeffrey Sachs and others like him. And like our Lord and Savior, we should not tolerate it.

Monday, August 23, 2010

The perfect Curriculum

It being the first day of school, I found myself thinking about what the most important aspects of education are, and how to obtain a solid knowledge base revolving around those aspects.
Now then, it is no secret that I loathe being lectured to; I asked my mother to pull me out of the school system when I was still in second grade because of the inevitable boredom that it wrought. Looking back at 17, I have to say that I do not regret that transition. Moreover, my conviction that one can obtain a superior education by self-learning is as strong as it has ever been. It was always obvious on a theoretical level, but now, at least for myself, it has proven to be empirically undeniable. What these years of self-education has also taught me is that while textbooks are necessary for some subjects, such as math and science, they are demonstrably not as useful has many books and blogs written by ordinary authors. One can reliably obtain the appropriate knowledge of politics, economics, social behavior, game theory, polemic argumentation, and all the big ideas that moved the world by reading Dale Carnegie, Vox Day, Roissy, and the Mises Intstitute.
Much this knowledge, useful knowledge, is seldom taught in the school system, public or private -- I very much doubt that one could go to a local high school, or even college, and find someone that knows what either Social Game Theory or Austrian economics are.
The problem with writing is easily solved: open a blog just like this one. Write about the books you read. And because you not drooling on your desk listening to a teacher for 7 hours a day, you will have sufficient time to read plenty of books.
People are starting to recognize the benefits. The ongoing Homeschool revolution, and the superior tests scores by homeschoolers, are merely providing empirical support from what was always obvious on a theoretical level. And that is to put the responsibility of your education into your own - and your parents'- hands.

Friday, August 13, 2010

The childish problem of evil

You know that there is not a single valid atheist argument out there when you hear infidels regurgitating the silly and irrelevant problem of evil, especially when they apply it to the Christian God.
But when we look at the world around us, we find prevalent instances of apparently gratuitous evil—pointless evils from which no greater good seems to result. According to proponents, the existence of apparently gratuitous evil provides strong evidence that God (as traditionally defined) does not exist (e.g., William Rowe)
By far, the problem of evil is the most ignorant, childish, and irrelevant argument against the Christians religion. And while many theologians have concocted their various complex theodicies on how the evil that exists in this world in all part of God's plan, the answer is actually much more simple. Christianity requires the existence of evil, it is predicated on it, for both logical and documentary reasons. Without evil, Man is not fallen, there is no need for a Savior, and the Christian worldview would be demolished. For if there is one single person, man or women, that leads a life devoid of evil, then you can dismiss Christianity once and for all.
Moreover, this avoids the Biblically-supported doctrine that the significant ruler of this world, at least for the time being, is a malicious being seeking the damnation of every soul. The Bible refers to him has lucifer, or satan. When God created the earth, He gave the race of Man dominion over it. But Man foolishly gave it away when Adam and Eve gave into the temptation to eat the apple, because they "wanted to be like gods". This in turn, allowed satan to usurp Man's dominion over this world into his own hands. This explains why Paul refers to him as “the god of this age” and how satan was able to tempt Jesus Christ by giving him the entire world if He were only to worship him.
It is clear that while the so-called problem of evil is convincing to the atheist who seeks to rationalize his disbelief, it is not so convincing to anyone who has even a basic understanding of the Bible and the orthodox interpretations of it.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Some thoughts this Summer

Its been a little quiet here at the alpha anomaly lately as I spent two weeks up in Canada and New York in July. That, and admittedly, my writing faculties have been suffering a stroke of laziness that sweeps through once and a while. What I have not been lazy in, however, is my reading. My reading has picked up this summer, and I am going at the fastest reading rate in my all of my 17 years of existence. I am currently reading A Canticle for Leibowitz, one heck of a book by the way, one in which I will surely be writing a book review once I finish it in its entirety. Additionally, I have been contemplating an idea that I could use to write my first novel. It is my intention to place the setting in a dark age, where leftist ideology has dominated all aspects of life, the engines that drive the world are absent, and where the knowledge of those engines have been completely stamped out. Its not total ignorance of the people, its just all Marx, Freud, Darwin, and Keynes. There is no freedom of thought or speech, and there are none that know the secrets of capitalism and the scientific method. Until one day....
Well, lets just say that I don't have the story completely mapped out, but I hope to add some interesting aspects to it that I hope will make it somewhat original .

Sunday, August 8, 2010

The problem with Washington

Many have expressed their dismay with regards to the behavior of the politicians in Washington. This of course is a perfectly justifiable position; most politicians are frauds, their inability to understand basic principles of economics and human nature is laughable, and they seldom act within the general public interest.
There are several reasons why the folks at Washington are such a hapless bunch. First, most politicians are not the selfless, humble servants determined to advance the common welfare of the people that they make themselves out to be, but rather egotistical individuals that are motivated by extreme personal ambition. They are motivated by Power and Position, and of course, the perks that come with it. However, since we live in a democracy, or more specifically, a quasi- representative democratic republic, one must make a good public impression if one wishes to maintain their position. This invariably leads to actions that seek to rack up numbers in the voting polls. This explains the contradictory and hypocritical actions of politicians, which of course, was obvious to anyone who has half the wit to figure out that not everyone tells the truth, and that there is sometimes a monster behind that sweet talking young demagogue .
Second, is that they are human beings, and are just as corrupted by power as anyone else, arguably even more so. Since most of them do not view the people as individual human beings, but rather as a mass sea of faces, they tend to put their personal interests ahead of the people. They ease their consciousness that tells them they are in the wrong by concocting rationalizations for their corrupt behavior. Many academic disciplines are literally ruined because politicians only hear the theories that their ears want to hear.
The reason why Keynes general economic theory became such a widely held paradigm was not because of its intellectual veracity, but because it informed the politicians that their wasteful government programs and corrupt behavior was not only harmless, but beneficial to the economy. The general acceptance of the Global Warming fraud had a similar story.
The third reason is that politicians, like most everyone else, fall into functional idiocy. They may have P.H.D's from all the elite schools, but if they haven't bothered to use their intelligence to analyze many of their assumptions, then you will find even the most "educated" minds believing what the thinking man knows to be fairytales.
I don't believe that this explains all of the mysteries and idiosycracies of the Washington elite, but I hope that it will clear up some confusions with regards to the egregious blunders made by the people that run this country.
P.S It may appear by my terminology that I am lumping up every single politician together, even though this is not my intention. I recognize that are many good politicians, however the problem is that most of them demonstrably are not, these are the ones I was critiquing in my post.