Why hard Atheists shouldn’t be taken seriously

by Steve Harris.

The people who concretely affirm that there is in fact no higher being whatsoever are among the people that I do not agree with nor trust. I see such declarations as the epitome of self importance. Hard atheism is a belief structure and it is just as prideful and dangerous as the unflinching beliefs of religious extremists.
…But, like hard-line religious fanatics, the hard atheists’ character flaw is an uncompromising belief in self. The individual fanatic and hard athiest both share the belief that they are right and disagreeing others are terribly misguided and wrong…
“Why Hard Atheists Shouldn’t be Taken Seriously” by Edgar Alverson

What he means to say, but doesn’t quite say, is that hard atheists and other fundamentalists base their beliefs in themselves, not in the world. They are using ideology to make themselves seem more important than they are. You can see this phenomenon in every belief system, from white power to hard greens to democrats and onward. The only philosophies that escape it, briefly, are those that negate the self, but even the Buddhists now are mostly egocases: “I am, indeed, holier and more passive (non-aggressive) than thou.”
Belief systems based in promoting the individual in the name of changing the world are “cult-like” in that like viruses, they attack the ego and lowered self-esteem, and make their victims act in zombielike obedience toward impossible or untenable goals.
I stopped posting at the internet infidels forum (see my parting shot using Alverson’s article) for this reason. I went there hoping to find people who, like me, believe our society is off-course and we should re-create it using the best ideas we have and discarding the worst. I figured that if they were atheists, they had already rejected much of the thought-conditioning around them; instead, I found that they accepted that thought conditioning, and revelled in the rebel identity granted them by telling off God.
This resulted in a forum where the admins did not know basic philosophy, the posters would chime in with smarmy comments but would tolerate blatant ignorance as long as it was atheistic, and there was a cult of revenge against Christians. When that forum was newer and healthier, its members rejected this kind of schoolboy bullying. But now it seems encouraged, and ignorance is rife, all while calling Christians ignorant, stupid, etc. and implying that all who are not good liberal atheists are somehow redneck morons who got on the internet because AOL dropped a computer in their laps.
When I was a blaspheming youth, I did it because I believed the religious path was a failure — and for most interpretations of religion, I still believe this, although I also now believe that the same problem applies to science, politics, philosophy and culture — not to make myself into some Antichrist Superstar. My goal was to find an ideological truth, use it to get humanity back on course, and then — go back to doing what I always do. My life is full, in fact possibly overflowing, and I don’t have a need to compensate for failure in it. What I would like, selfish perhaps, is to get my species to stop failing so the future is brighter and the smart people around me stop flaking out.
In the same way, I reject the idea of becoming self-righteous: “I have the right answer, you’re all below me, therefore I rise.” When I believe I have the right answer, I am the attack dog of its ideology, but that is because I believe the ideology will affect the world in positive ways, leaving my condition relatively unchanged. Ask yourself: if your ideology impacted the world as you would like it to, what would be your change in status? If the answer is that you go from night watchman to king, beware, you’re in a cult state of mind.
Alverson does a good hit job on the hard atheists, who were like the skeptics a blooming internet cult for computer programmers and others, but now are fading. We really need to look out for this mindset, as it occurs everywhere, including in people of all religions.

Liberalism offers you half of a civilization

Jan, 2014

by Brett Stevens.

Joseph de Maistre famously said that “wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.” While I acknowledge the importance of religion, and more importantly of sacralization, I think basic civilization-building is a far simpler process.
In the most essential terms, civilization is an agreement. It’s a decision to leave behind the near total autonomy of independent hunter-gatherer bands in exchange for certain options offered by stability. My feeling is that what really drove it was the urge by parents to have suitable breeding partners for their children.
To keep such a venture together, there must be a very basic understanding that all can rely on. It is most fundamentally an agreement to collaborate, and it works because it is based on the most essential of promises: good to the good, and bad to the bad.
Both halves of this are essential. If you do well by the civilization, you must be rewarded; if you harm it, you must be excluded from the benefits to those who did not transgress. Although it mentions two categories, this simple promise also creates a third, which is “…and nothing to those who do neither good nor bad, but simply participate.”
This of course creates tension and nobody likes tension (well, until they get bored). As a result, a market is formed for those who offer a path into civilization that has less tension. This path is achieved by cutting out parts of the equation that require people to be constructive. Instead of “good to the good, and bad to the bad,” the new paradigm is “bad to the bad” which implies reward on an equal level for those who do good and those who simply participate.
This makes simple participation more important than doing good. It also makes it more efficient; it is pointless to spend extra energy for no reward when you can simply avoid a few taboos, thus not be “bad,” and get the same reward as if you had done well. However, there is also social pretense to consider. You want to look as if you are doing good things. This encourages the creation of institutions through which individuals can make a small monetary contribution or otherwise demonstrate support, and be assumed to be doing good. It also encourages the creation of jobs and roles well where one can succeed without doing anything good, productive or helpful.
Jonathan Haidt has posited a more complex version of this schism based on six categories. In the illustration below, liberal concerns are indicated in yellow, conservative in blue, and shared concerns in green:

• Care/Harm
• Fairness/Cheating
• Liberty/Oppression

• Loyalty/Betrayal
• Authority/Subversion
• Sanctity/degradation

Haidt has made a great start, but perhaps has overstated the scope of the categories he has selected, in part because he is not looking at them from the perspective of those who elect them. In particular, the three liberal categories:

1. Care/Harm
2. Fairness/Cheating
3. Liberty/Oppression

These are not as universal as he thinks. For liberals, these are interpreted through the individual as fear of negative events. In other words, I don’t want to be harmed, the victim of unfairness, or oppressed. But these categories say nothing about the corresponding contribution by the individual. They’re entirely defensive, for liberals. Conservatives, who see these categories in the context of the other three, tend to approach them more as universal principles. To a liberal, “fairness” means “I get what anyone else gets.” To a conservative, “fairness” means “good to the good, bad to the bad.”
This difference can be wholly explained by the focus differences between liberals and conservatives. Liberals focus on the individual; conservatives focus on the whole, the process and the civilization. Thus a liberal is inherently utilitarian in that what matters most to them is that people consider their own situation good; a conservative, who looks more at the whole, finds it most important to see what the results as affect everyone and the future of the civilization will be.
Christopher Lasch, a former liberal, distanced himself from the movement when he saw how it was creating a wave of narcissism, or self-worship, spreading across the United States. As he hints, this is a natural outpouring of the focus on the individual. With “good to the good, bad to the bad” the individual is incentivized to do good; with “bad to the bad” only, the individual out of the box considers himself perfect and to be a good person, only for not having done bad. There is zero positive contribution requirement.
As a result, narcissism — or more properly “solipsism,” which is an inverse of the normal relationship where we see ourselves as part of the world, and one in which we see the world more as part of ourselves, corresponding to the Greek hubris — spreads because people are encouraged to see themselves as perfect without having to prove it, thus the only requirement for them is to intend something, to wish it or to feel it. They become atomized and isolated in their own little worlds.
This is why liberalism offers you half of a civilization. It ignores half of what is necessary for a healthy civilization and, in return for your accepting that, makes you a member of society just as you are. This erodes societies in any form, whether through hopeless shrugs in the Soviet Union, to rigid ideological mania in the French Revolution, and finally to consumerist-socialist narcissism here in the USA and EU. It takes a whole civilization to stay functional. But where the individual fears, there will always be a liberal offering an easier way, but at the price of civilization itself.

Golden Dawn: The Voice of the Greek People ENGLISH

UK Column Live - 29th January 2014

War is a BANKSTER Racket

~ MESSAGE TO ALL POLITICIANS ~ by WheepingWillow2

A great from the heart speech wrote by an ordinary American Lady, That can apply to us all. Suffering from the ravages of Private central Banking issuing the currency as a loan at interest!

Nick Griffin vs Prime Minister of Greece

NICK GRIFFIN (MEP) TOGETHER WITH GOLDEN DAWN MP'S - ATHENS GREECE 10TH J...

The Romanian Missing Child a New False Flag Low?

This is a new false flag in my opinion,And one that shows how low these tratiors in the Establishment will go. It has in my opinion the one purpose of stopping any one who complains about the mass influx of Romanians into the country. In effect a tool against UKIP and there assured victory in the upcoming Euro elections
I for one think did the child ever exist just like Saddam nuclear weapons. Or if he is missing then best to look at the BBC they have an history of this on behalf of this Bunch of traitors and perverts in Parliament. For if he did exist then it is most likely he has been abducted by the Government itself.
Beware of the Mass media coverage of this story there are in the pay of the mega bankers just the same as our TRAITOR politicians.  

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Top Ten Trends of 2014– A Year Of Extremes

Gerald Celente's Top Ten Trends of 2014 – A Year Of Extremes

December 30, 2013 Print This

We haven't seen the U.S. government rounding up citizens in mass for criticizing Obama, yet, but don't discount Gerald Celente's predictions. Many of Celente's trends forecasts have come true and his insight is welll renowned. If your keeping score, here is Gerald's 2013 predictions from Before It's News.

Gerald Celente Writes:

In 33 years of forecasting trends, the Trends Research Institute has never seen a new year that will witness severe economic hardship and social unrest on one hand, and deep philosophic enlightenment and personal enrichment on the other. A series of dynamic socioeconomic and transformative geopolitical trend points are aligning in 2014 to ring in the worst and best of times.

Ready or not, here they come.

March Economic Madness: One of the most difficult aspects of trend forecasting is getting the timing right. And when it comes to economics, there are many wildcards that can stall or detour any on-rushing trend. We called the Crash of ’87, the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis and the Panic of ’08 (we even established the domain name in 2007) right on the button. But we missed the mark with our Crash of 2010 prediction.

Why? The Federal Reserve and central banks around the world were secretly pumping tens of trillions of dollars into a failing financial system. These were, at the time, unimagined schemes for nations that pride themselves on capitalism. And while we are not naïve to the dirty dealings of the financial industry, rigging the daily multi-trillion dollar LIBOR and FOREX markets was not on our radar. Thus, what we believed to be economic truths and hard facts were, in fact, cover-ups and lies.

Such unforeseeable factors aside, we forecast that around March, or by the end of the second quarter of 2014, an economic shock wave will rattle the world equity markets. What will cause this econo-shock? How can you prepare for it? It’s a Top Trend of 2014. Read about it in the Winter Trends Journal.

Global Chinatowns: Name the continent or pick a country, every one contains its own brand of Chinatown. The Chinese global buying binge, now in its early growth stage, will noticeably accelerate in 2014. From coal mines in Zambia, to Borscht Belt resorts in New York, to factories in Italy, and to farmlands in Ukraine, a seemingly endless variety of Chinese development projects are being incubated around the world. If there is a deal to be had and a need to be filled, Chinese players are increasingly at the front of the line.

Wealthy investors, college graduates without jobs, skilled and unskilled laborers will be migrating out of their overpopulated, congested and highly polluted nation to foreign shores. Where are the new growth areas? What actions will be taken to stop or control the trend? Who will benefit? Who will lose? And what are the dangers and opportunities? You’ll find the answers in the Winter Trends Journal.

Wake Up Call: Last year we forecast the Great Awakening 2.0, a period reminiscent of the first Great Awakening that provided the intellectual, philosophical and spiritual ammunition that ignited the American Revolution. The “Awakening” has begun. Throughout 2014, and beyond, you will hear the Wake Up Call. It will be loud and distinct.

In 2013, the White House and Congress proved their extreme incompetence with a series of public failures. From closing down the government, to the debt ceiling debacle, to the aborted attack on Syria and, ultimately, to the disastrous launch of Obamacare, the ineptness of our political leaders was overwhelming. As polls show, a majority of citizens registered levels of scorn and ridicule unparalleled in modern America.

But this phenomenon is not limited to America. Around the world, citizen distrust has turned into universal disdain for entrenched political parties whose draconian austerity measures and punishing economic policies have thrown millions into poverty and pushed millions of protesters into the streets. Civil wars, civil unrest, revolts and revolutions will be just some of the cards dealt by an angry public that has lost everything and has nothing left to lose.

Will those in power hear the Wake Up Call? Or will they attempt to stamp it down and drown it out? Hear it or not, the movement is unstoppable. It will be a battle of the classes. What will it mean? Where will it take the biggest toll? Can the protests and disturbances of tomorrow bring peace and enlightenment that will lead to the Great Awakening 2.0? It’s all in the Top Trends 2014 Winter Trends Journal.

Seniors Own Social Media: Seniors now comprise the fastest-growing user segment of the social media world, and the year ahead will see the retail, business, political, health and entertainment industries evolve aggressive strategies to realize the robust economic potential in engaging seniors.

The gamut of possibilities is so grand that we forecast technological and product advances that impact everything from nursing home life to political campaigns and causes. Read the Winter Trends Journal to pinpoint how this trend will unfold and affect you and your interests.

Populism: Regardless of how professional politicians deride it or how the traditional media describe it, “populism” is a megatrend sweeping Europe, and it will soon spread across the globe. Mired in prolonged recession, disgusted with corrupt political parties, and forced to follow EU, ECB and IMF austerity dictates, populist movements are seeking to regain national identity and break free from the euro and Brussels domination. These movements are positioned to bring down ruling parties and build up new ones.

The discontent of the one-size-fits-all Euro Union formula is so deep that populists are expected to gain some 25 percent of the European Parliament seats in next year’s elections. “We have the big risk to have the most ‘anti-European’ European Parliament ever,” cried Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta. “The rise of populism is today the main European social and political issue,” Mr. Letta added. “To fight against populism, in my view, is a mission today ­ in Italy and in the other countries.”

Already, some nations, such as Spain, have passed new laws restricting public demonstrations while imposing police-state measures to stamp out dissent. What is the future of populism? How far will it spread? Will it lead to the formation of new parties, or lead to civil wars? Read about it in the Trends Journal’s Top Trends 2014 edition.

Trouble in Slavelandia: Even as total US personal wealth soars above a record high of $77 trillion, fueled by the stock market’s own record highs, life for the growing number of have-nots in Slavelandia has become more desperate. In today’s Plantation Economy ­ driven by the bottom line needs of multinationals and flailing austerity-prone governments ­ low-paying service jobs and reduced hours engineered to evade corporate responsibility to provide benefits, are making it tough for the working poor, a group that now includes debt-burdened and underemployed college graduates and seniors as well as the traditional underclass.

Nearly half of the requests for emergency assistance to stave off hunger or homelessness comes from people with full-time jobs. As government safety nets are pulled out from under them ­ as they will continue to be for the foreseeable future ­ the citizens of Slavelandia will have no recourse but action. The fast-food worker strikes of 2013, seeking a higher minimum wage, were just a mild taste of what is to come. Learn more in the Winter Trends Journal.

The New Altruism: Several burgeoning trends identified for 2014 will coalesce in a welcome trend toward selfless concern for the wellbeing of others and an interest in the common good. Across the age divide, from people in their youth to those of advanced years, the search for meaning will intensify and become more widespread in response to waning resources, want, and an over-commodified culture. As despair quietly takes more prisoners, Doing Good will be recognized as the key to escape.

Ironically, the Internet that has been much maligned for currying narcissism will make the donation of money, time and talents so easy that people will be able to enact their better natures without resistance. Be they Boomers in renaissance or populists in revolt, people will discover and expand the humanist side of globalism and act accordingly. See why in the Top Trends of 2014 Winter edition of the Trends Journal.

Private Health Goes Public: While the world focused on the blockbuster NSA surveillance revelations and other cyber-snooping episodes of 2013, another powerful trend line was firmly planted: Your health data has been progressively mined, assembled and made accessible to a widening group of interested parties.

While signing up for the Affordable Care Act brought some attention to this developing trend, around the globe, data on individuals’ health status, behaviors, prescriptions and even their genetic indicators have been funneled to a wide range of databases. Those databases have many purposes and a growing number of hands on them.

The positive and negative implications of this trend are equally powerful. Individuals and their health care providers can more easily tie vital physical data with worldwide medical databases to anticipate and potentially prevent disease. But, in the wrong hands, the data can be used to exploit, damage and take advantage of individuals and their families. Security concerns will rise in equal importance with the potential benefits of this critical trend line.

What does this mean for you, your family, or your business? The Winter Trends Journal will provide the answers.

Boomer Renaissance Arrives: Distinct and strengthening economic, lifestyle and societal determinants are building a creative foundation for the older population as it discovers new approaches to work and finds long-elusive contentment in the process.

You already know that older workers, seeing their retirement plans shattered, have to work beyond traditional retirement years. You also know that those same economic dynamics are forcing aging Boomers to entirely rethink retirement. And, of course, you know that as Boomers are living longer, traditional thinking about retirement has been stood on its head. What you might not realize is how these factors are compelling Boomers to unearth potent creative energies not only to survive, but to realize potential that evaded them in traditional work roles.

In 2014, we will see growing evidence of this Boomer Renaissance, accentuated by waves of self-guided entrepreneurism that alchemizes commerce, survival and self-actualization into a new world and self view. The Winter Trends Journal will explore this compelling 2014 trend in depth.

Digital Learning Explodes: Fears that online educational platforms fall short of providing depth and effectiveness in the learning experience will all but disappear. Across the entire educational spectrum, online learning will expand to include not only course instruction, but also a wealth of real-life learning experience, with considerable participation by the skills-hungry business community.

For individuals, educational institutions, industries, small businesses and up-and-coming entrepreneurs, the implications are enormous. From traditional degree-based education to very specific micro skills-based learning, this trend line explodes. The Trends Research Institute will break down the implications for individuals, business professionals and a range of industries in its Winter Trends Journal.

"The Holocaust" Has No Reality In Space And Time