Monthly Archives: September 2014

Weasels and a Rhetorical Lesson

I’ve been trying to work on my rhetoric as I’ve never been very good at it, and have troubles with those with higher improvisational, verbalization abilities. So, as a learning exercise for myself and others, I’m going to go over a Twitter conversation I had a couple weeks ago that will illustrate some common occurrences when debating leftist weasels.

To begin with, here’s the background. CRX48 posted this and the homosexual brigade dogpiled him over the course of multiple tweet ‘conversations’.

Here was one of their responses which played a part later:

If you look at this @homophobiaphobes account, it’s dedicated almost entirely to tracking down ‘homophobes’ (a word which, as we’ll see later, has absolutely no definition beyond a person this homosexual dislikes) and starting 2-minute hates on their Twitter feeds.
https://twitter.com/homophobiaphobe

That’s the background. At one point CRX posted this:

To which the homosexual replied:

I replied with this and the game was on:

Remember, homophobe, racist, sexist, bigot, shitlord, etc. have no real semantic meaning, they are not words that reflect a reality reality in any way. They exist solely as ad hominem attacks on people progressives don’t like.

When a leftist uses a word, especially an emotionally loaded word like homophobe, sexist, racist, etc., always get them to define it. Leftists do not beleive in truth; they ideologically hate truth. They don’t beleive words are used to refer to real concepts for teh purposes of communication, but rather they exist as tools of power. If you do not get them to define a word, they will change the meaning of the word to whatever is most convenient to their emotional state at the time.

I ask for a definition, and notice the wording: “Most people use it to mean…”. This is specifically stated so that the leftist can continue to use the word however she wants. A leftist will deliberately try to avoid attaching a real definition to one of their emotionally charged words, because then it will lose its power if they do. Press them; force them to define words. You’ll see why was we go.

This is just the first weasel attempt, plenty more to follow.

Again, the leftist weasel will dodge to avoid having to actually having to do a real debate. Remember, she said I don’t udnerstand what it means then refused to provide what it means. We can watch the lying weasel dance for quite a while:

Lying leftist weasels will absolutely refuse to define their terms when it comes to their favoured shit-flinging phrases. Press, press, press. Never, ever let them use emotionally-loaded words on their terms. They will abuse them like the dishonest liars they are.

Now, there was a second thread occurring at the same time.

Again, the leftist will straight out lie. The whole thing started with the original tweet against public sexual displays, but admitting that would show how much BS her original accusation was. So she will deny.

Warning, the links in these next two tweets range from mildly NSFW to extremely NSFW.

This is in response to the first set of links, linking to some homosexual/fetish street parties in SF. Here we see the leftist through equivocation; she’s very subtlety trying to change the terms of the debate.

Remember, the original tweet referred to “that “pride parade” mentality where rather than keeping private things private they demand we watch. It’s sick.” Obviously a gay fetish parade would count, but because the parade wasn’t specifically labelled ‘pride’ the lying weasel tries to shift the terms to a false rigorous exactitude that never existed. Also note

Always be aware of weaselly attempts to shift terms or to bring into play exactitudes that don’t exist. Failing to notice can lead to a rhetorical trap.

I call her on her dishonesty:

Her dishonesty readily apparent, she switches tactics:

When a leftist is losing she will retreat to disqualifying you for whatever reason. The reason for disqualifying you doesn’t matter, its almost always a dishonest tactics rather than an actual true belief. Never let a leftist disqualify you. If their disqualification was a true reason for ignoring your argument they would have ignored you from the beginning. A disqualification partly through a conversation is always a tactic taken because they are losing.

Also, because the disqualificaiton is always an excuse, never defend against it. It is a sign blood has been drawn, press the attack:

This is to the second tweet of links, which were to homosexual-friendly mainstream news and therefore didn’t show anything R-Rated. These pictures do include fetish gear, public floggings, men wearing only sexualized jockstraps, sexualized dancing/grinding, almost full nudity (for example, one man had no more than a cap on his penis head), shirtless women, etc. But because they do not include anyone actively sticking their dick in someone else’s orificies she counts this as ‘no sexual acts’.

Anyone not completely sexually jaded would realize these are sexual acts, but again, lying weasels will be selectively (and falsely) precise when it suits their ideological needs of the moment.

Also note the subtle shift of terms. I said sexual displays earlier, which she changed to sexual acts. The latter being somewhat defensible through selective pedantry, the former not. Lying weasels will shift terms to cosntruct rhetorical traps, do not let them.

Whenever lying weasels do this, call them on it.

They’ll try to keep going with their dishonesty, keep calling them on it:

Again, the lying progressive weasel will try to define terms to whatever is emotionally or ideologically convenient at the moment.

From here it kind of petered out. I thought I had another closing tweet but can’t seem to find it in Twitter’s interface.

Anyone, the points to take from this: progressives are naturally dishonest and will use words as weapons rather than as reflections of reality used to communicate information. Make them define terms and don’t let them get away with dishonest equivocating or the shifting of terms.

 

Responses to Genocidal Mercy

I wrote on the Israelite genocides a couple posts ago and am going to respond to a few of the response here.

First, Zippy responded, to others and possibly me, in two posts, here and here.

When the Bible tells us that Samuel said “Thus sayeth the Lord of Hosts”, it is entirely possible that it is giving a literal account of words actually spoken by the actual prophet Samuel. I rather expect that it is; although that is not the only possible interpretation, and inerrancy only really guarantees that true and accurate interpretations exist, it doesn’t guarantee that I have it right.

But Samuel saying those words as a formal preliminary to issuing commands doesn’t necessarily imply what folks think it implies. We know that, as Popes do now, prophets had authority from God. But the fact that Papal authority comes from God doesn’t imply that every word and deed of every Pope is tantamount to a literal act of God. In reality Papal infallibility is something very rarely invoked, and the use of a formal introduction for the words of a Prophet doesn’t convert those words into a set of axiomatic syllogisms from which a positivist theory of everything can be constructed. Samuel’s formalism could conceivably mean that God actually spoke those words from a burning bush; but in the full context of the OT that seems less than likely. At best we can say that we don’t really know whether the formalism “thus sayeth the Lord of Hosts” is a formality – like the wearing of a crown – when the prophet gives orders.

This is intellectually untenable.

To argue that a prophet of the Lord when saying he is proclaiming the will of the Lord is not proclaiming the will of the Lord, ruins any ability to take anything from the Bible. If we can not trust a God-anointed prophet of the Lord to be proclaiming the will of the Lord while saying he is proclaiming the will of the Lord, how can we trust the words of any of the other prophets or teachers? Why would we give heed to Isaiah? Why would the words of John the Baptist be trustworthy? Why would we trust the revelations of John? For that matter, why would we trust the words of Jesus? (Not to mention, for the Catholics, why would we trust Peter or those who claim to be the successors of Peter?)

It is also not just Samuel’s introduction, but Samuel’s pronouncement of judgment on Saul where he also directly claims to speak for the Lord. Saul accepts Samuel’s judgment as being from the Lord, and, as far as I know, no one in the Bible argues that this judgment was ever outside the Lord’s will. Given that Samuel’s appointing of David as king, and, ultimately, the birth of Christ through the lineage of David hinge on this event, it is hard to argue God wasn’t behind this.

And Samuel said, “Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel. And the LORD sent you on a mission and said, ‘Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ Why then did you not obey the voice of the LORD? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the LORD?” And Saul said to Samuel, “I have obeyed the voice of the LORD. I have gone on the mission on which the LORD sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. (1 Samuel 15:17-20 ESV)

To add to this, without accepting Samuel’s words, we have no reason for why God rejected Saul. David’s crowning and 1&2 Samuel lose their meaning and coherency if this event does not take place as written.

What is being pitted against each other is some folks’ personal interpretations of the OT against the intrinsic immorality of murder.

What is being pitted against each other is Zippy’s personal interpretation of natural law against the direct words of the God-ordained prophet of the Lord on a mission from the Lord directly commanding the people of the Lord as the voice of the Lord to destroy the Amalekites. Then the prophet of the Lord stripping Saul of His kingship over the people of the Lord in the Lord’s name for disobeying the Lord’s commandments.

There are 5 ways this event could be interpreted: God commanded the destruction of the Amalekites, God lied to Samuel, Samuel lied to Israel, some other spiritual force deceived an anointed prophet of the Lord and the writer of a book of the Bible in such a way that influenced that entirety of the Christian story and the prophet was never corrected, or the Bible is lying to us (or being metaphorical, which in the case of a book purporting to be history recounting a historical event would be functionally equivalent to a lie).

The second is blasphemy, the third renders the words of the Biblical prophets meaningless, the fourth renders God ineffectual, and the fifth essentially makes the Bible impossible to decipher. Any but the first would make any attempts at understanding Christian natural law impossible.

If you read the Bible and come to the conclusion that a bedrock Christian doctrine such as the absolute prohibition of murder under the natural law is wrong, this doesn’t demonstrate a problem with bedrock Christian doctrine.

The claim is not that murder is okay. The claim is (or in fairness, if this was a criticism of someone else, my claim is) and was specifically ‘Murder is unlawful killing and God’s law is the highest law. If God orders a killing, it is by definition lawful, and is therefore, by definition, not murder.’

God ordered the genocide of the Amalekites, therefore it was not murder. It  has not demonstrated that this was murder; the argument ‘murder is wrong’ misses the point entirely.

In the comments Zippy states the following:

I am equally intolerant of an approach that is unwilling to start with what we actually know – e.g. that slaughtering infants is intrinsically immoral, always wrong, and therefore not something God would ever command – and work the problem from there.

Zippy should prove, not assert, not simply repeat ‘natural law’, but show logically and scripturally that 1) God would never command the slaughtering of infants (despite His prophets specifically commanding the slaughter of infants in His name) and 2) the slaughter of infants is wrong even if God does command it.

The only way to know apodictically that God is ordering it is if you are God. Otherwise it is always possible that you are deceived: that you are wrong. So we can’t escape from comparing how likely it is that we are deceived that murder is always wrong versus how likely it is that it is actually God telling us to do it.

We might not be able to know for certain and no matter what we think we might, but we can and shold reason out the most likely answer. If we follow through on Zippy’s argument how can we know God orders anything? We aren’t God. We can’t know anything of His will apodictically. In that case and what Zippy’s position implies in the context of this debate why even bother trying to ascertain God’s will on any issue? We’ll never know apodictically and it will always be possible we’re deceived.

We can’t escape from comparing how likely is is that Samuel as recorded in the word of the Lord, speaking as a prophet of the Lord in the name of the Lord to the Lord’s people who accepted his words as being from the Lord was deceived or deceiving versus how likely it is that Zippy’s interpretation of the natural law is wrong?

****

malcolmthecynic asked:

Something claiming to be the voice of God commands you to kill children.
Do you obey, or are you convinced this was the voice of Satan, and refuse?

I would test the spirits:

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:1-6 ESV)

If after a period of prayer, fasting, consultation with trusted Christian leaders, and testing the spirits I understood the spirits were those of the Lord I would obey. Depending on the ‘level of wrongness’ (for lack of a better term springing to mind), this period would be longer and more intense. I might also try to bargain with God as per Abraham.

****

Anonymous Coward stated:

This is the same argument that the Muslims make: we cannot put man’s law above God’s law, and man has no right to judge God. Anything Mohammed did is good by definition.

So clearly your argument is wrong, because it defends and promotes the great evil of Islam.

The Muslims are wrong in that their god is not God and Muhammed is not God’s prophet.

****

Aeroguy stated:

I’m not sure you guys really appreciate the full implications of Euthyphro’s dilemma. Defining god as good either denies god agency, the ability to choose, or it makes good relative, not absolute. I didn’t take you for a moral relativist. God could have never sent the angel to stop Abraham from sacrificing Isaac and it would have been equally good as sending the angel. If right and wrong are absolute and not apart from god then he has no will of his own. The temptations of Jesus would be meaningless since he never had the capacity to sin in the first place.

Bottom line, you can’t use god to justify something. Either justice stands on its own or is rendered meaningless.

You seem to mistakenly think you can separate justice and God. God is just. He is the yardstick by which justice is measured; morality is relative to God. I am unsure how would that render justice meaningless.

Lightning Round – 2014/09/03

What if?

The challenges of being gifted, so ignore them.

Patriarchy and collapsing civilization. Related.
Related: What happens when the patriarchy is smashed?
Related: Men aren’t the violent brutes they’re portrayed as.

Some basic Christian red pill.
Related: Don’t respect women, but get respect from women.
Related: Love, respect, want, and need.

Scott analyzes how the manosphere is growing and recognizes the beginnings of the problem. He misses the system level problems though (when being decent is disincentivized, what do you get more of?). Eventually he will be logically forced into agreeing with us.

Life, death, and emotions.

1,400 children sexually exploited by Muslims.
Related: Muslim predation in Rotherham.
Related: Anti-racism fosters rape and child abuse.
Related: It’s anti-racist’s fault .
Related: The BBC is a rape enabler.
Related: Revolutionary racial terror.
Related: Rot Britannia.
Related: Enoch Powell is still right.
Related: Institutional malice.
Related: The evasiveness of the Pakistani head of England’s largest children’s charity.
Related: Immigration is rape culture.
Related: England’s easy meat.
Related: The state will not protect you.
Related: Domesticated humans.
Related: American media coverage in pictures.
Related: British civilization is dead, as is leftist credibility.
Related: The failure of conservatism.
Related: It will all be swept under the rug in a few weeks.

UKIP growing in England.
Related: Ireland for the Irish.
Related: Hope for Norway.

Abandon the political spectrum.
Related: Don’t vote.

Anarcho-tyranny.

The rise of the troll.

A handbook for deconstruction.

The validity of sterotypes.

The deliberate dumbing down of America.

On the stupidity of correlation does not equal causation.

The rise of the cultural domination of the Puritans.

To stop the caliphate, we need to abandon democratic fundamentalism.

Income and ideology by religion.

UNESCO man.

A female game developer on the Zoe Quinn controversy. Related.
Related: Video games, the press, and right-wing mobs.
Related: On leftist witch hunts.
Related: The rending of the video game community by feminists.
Related: Did Anita Sarkeesian fake death threats against herself?

The spiritual slavery of the modern age.

Gentrification research results.

Study: Poverty does not cause violence. ‘Unobserved familial factors’ do. Related.

The decay of bourgeois values.

Why blacks are struggling.
Related: The Georgia plan for blacks.
Related: Black and brown ethnic cleansing.

The federal government’s role in the civil rights struggle.

Michael Brown’s juvenile record may have involved 2nd-degree murder.
Related: The reality of ‘he was unarmed.’

A recap of Ukraine.
Related: Ex-US intelligence officer on Ukraine.
Related: Vox’s thoughts on Russo-EU war.

The coyness of God.

The first violence was the armies of God putting down a democratic rebellion.

Denying the meaning of marriage is the new virtue.

On binge-drinking, hook-ups, marriage, and feminism.

There is no rape epidemic.
Related: Remember, women never lie about rape.

Half of women would lie about contraception to get pregnant.

The cost of premarital sex.

Weight as a proxy for virtue.
Related: Hip size and fidelity.

40% of managers avoid hiring young women to avoid maternity leave.
Related: Why venture capital firms don’t hire women.

The leisurely life of a 1950s housewife.

More Tracy Clark-Flory: She racked up huge credit card bills and wants her (oh so lucky) husband to bail her out.

Feminists are not just ugly, they’re manly too.

The fattening of English women.

The grim reality of the MMP for aging divorcees.

Remember, there is no homosexual agenda.

Priciest divorce ever: $17-billion up for grabs.

Schools help with crystallized knowledge but not with fluid cognitive skills.

Poll shows losers have a losing attitude.

Warren Buffet shows exactly how honest he’s being about taxes.

Why we should default.

SF: When ignorant snobs, like Damien Walter, attack.
Related: More on Damien Walter.

A list of what Gavin McInnes believes.

An anecdote of how bad the entitlement class has gotten.

The competitive advantage of Canada.
Related: Canadians renouncing US citizenship over tax laws.

European gun laws.

Eskimos wiped out pre-Eskimos.

On the ‘97% of papers support global warming’ statistic. Related.
Related: The myth of melting ice.

The CDC hid vaccine data.

The narcissism of the aging boomers.

H/T: Land, SDA, RPR, Isegoria, SSC, GCBH