Roger Bissell

I have a number of "secular atheist" friends who will laugh themselves silly over this. By your way of thinking, I must be a drug addict and an advocate of abortion on demand. But since you've invoked a trinity of Holy Sacraments for us "secular atheists" and only listed two of them, your math skills are as questionable as your metaphysics. REB

I do agree that everybody has to believe in something. I believe I'll let you stew in your theistic juices and find something more productive to do - like catch some zzzzz's. REB

Atheists and secularists "believe that something does not exist"? Atheists and secularists are "nothing but" cockroaches? So, there is a species of cockroach that "believes that something does not exist"?? That's even funnier (and scarier) than what you said before! Get a grip, man. Also, based on the order in which you listed them, it would appear you think that belief that something (God) does not exist is belief in what is true - while belief that something (God) does exist is belief in a lie. I can certainly agree with that! REB

IF that is ALL they are... they are NOTHING more than cockroaches too. But you are absolutely right to describe it as a belief... for it is a tenet belonging to the secular political religion of leftism. Its medrasas are government universities where liberals are stupid enough to go into debt just to be imprinted into radical America-hating jihadis. You must have a ball stuffing people who reject your mythic beliefs into the pigeonholes of leftwing and theocratic statism. As far as I know, the dozens of nonbelievers here on OL firmly reject both of those pet categories of yours. You need some new insult terms to apply to us. We reject both your fantasy supernaturalism and your assignment of nonbelievers to irrationalist groups that compete with yours. REB

IF that is ALL they are... they are NOTHING more than cockroaches too. If there is no transcendence: HUMAN = COCKROACH But you are absolutely right to describe it as a belief... for it is a tenet belonging to the secular political religion of leftism. Its medrasas are government universities where liberals are stupid enough to go into debt just to be imprinted into radical America-hating jihadis. 1 That's a new one on me. I've seen lots of kinds of reductionism - but nonbelievers are "nothing but" cockroaches? Wow. Profound. Reductive materialism, move over - now we've got reductive cockroachianism. REB

Religion may well be the sheep dog, and Christ is the Shepherd... ...but only of the sheep... not of the goats. Metaphors are so cool. Christ was the Great Fisherman, the Loving Shepherd, the Carpenter from Nazareth - probably a symbolic practitioner of dozens of more professions (though those are the ones that come to mind). But a Rational Philosopher and Lover of Life and Achievement of the Productive, Independent Mind? Not so much. I'll take Ayn Rand or Thomas Jefferson or John Locke or Aristotle over Jesus any day. They did not have much respect for the herd mentality of the sheeple, and they saw through cheap magic tricks which are fraudulent claims to the suspension of cause and effect. (Fishes and loaves, indeed.) REB

IF that is ALL you are... you are NOTHING more than a decomposing bloated bloviating government educated cockroach. Very intelligent, very honorable people have believed that this life is all there is long before there was government education. Mind and values are biological functions, just as digestion and locomotion are. That doesn't make them insignificant or meaningless. The significance of biological function is that without biological function there would be no significance. REB

Yeah, that Trump, he's a regular Barry Goldwater, all right - in one major respect: he's going down to a landslide defeat in November. We can only hope that there's another Reagan that emerges during the campaign who will one day step up to the plate and truly restore America's greatness and, more importantly, her liberty. REB

Tony, it would help to get straight on the parallels between nuisance vs. invasive visual and auditory stimuli, if you want to accurately apply the NIOF principle. You can't equate any and all "offensive" visual stimuli with any and all "offensive" auditory stimuli as equally invasive of your rights and violation of the NIOF principle. One standard of rights violation via sensory stimuli is: do the stimuli actually physically hurt you, such that it impedes your action or causes you physical discomfort or pain. This seems to be the standard floated by some here. Let's explore it... If my neighbor sets up a video screen in his back yard that is aimed at my yard and that displays graphic sexual images, and an extremely powerful light that he shines toward my yard. Clearly the latter is or can be physically harmful to me, even in the very brief span of time I see it before managing to turn away. Can you honestly say the same about the sexual images? I hope not. If building a high privacy fence isn't adequate to protect my children (or me) from being offended or shocked or traumatized, and I don't have restrictive clauses in my tenant agreement, then perhaps I and the neighbors could get together and ostracize, picket, publicize, and otherwise embarrass or inconvenience the idiot (non-coercively, of course). Similarly, if my neighbor sets up an audio system that is aimed at my yard and that broadcasts graphic sexual content, and an extremely loud music speaker that he aims toward my yard. Clearly the latter is or can be physically harmful to me. Can you honestly say the same about the audible sexual content? Again, I hope not. Etc. I think that a free society would handle all this stuff voluntarily, without needing intervention by security and arbitration agencies, unless actual physical pain were being caused by the visual or auditory stimuli, or contractual agreements were being broken, such as restrictive covenants that tenants and residents sign onto when they join a neighborhood association, membership in which is a legal requirement of their property purchase. I hope this helps. REB

You are obviously a scholar: a master at answering questions indirectly...i.e; not answering at all. Would you care to try again? How's this: no! REB

?... What does this mean exactly? Meaning that the rules of civility and engagement on OL are not firm, objective rules, but subject to the Framer's whim. Paraphrasing MSK's indictment of Jeb Bush: OL's rules of civility and engagement are tools of power and persuasion, not commitments, and MSK need not honor and uphold and enforce them when he doesn't like it. This is not an insult, any more than MSK's indictment of Jeb Bush was an insult. It's just a statement of fact. REB

Just like Daddy, Just like the supposed rules of interaction here on OL and their Framer. REB

More like there isn't anything to say. And if I don't respond I must have fallen into his conditional: Falling into a reality-based conditional - a fate worse than death! Heh. REB

Wow, Robert, it sounds like you are trying to suppress Korben's freedom of speech. You must be an elitist! REB

A free society would have communities in which, by restrictive covenant, certain non-rights-violating nuisances were considered to be breaches of contract (covenant) and thus actionable by security/police and arbitration/court - as well as communities in which those nuisances were basically ignored. And people could freely choose which kind of community they wanted to live in and feel secure knowing that both their freedom and their comfort would not be overridden by zealots or boors. Currently, we have a mix of such communities, as well as traditional towns, villages, cities, etc., in which various groups contend for their particular limits (or lack of same) on non-rights-violating nuisance behavior - much as they contend over how and to what extent the public schools should provide children with information on sex and reproduction - or how liquored up drivers should be allowed to be or how fast they should be allowed to drive on the public streets and roads. As long as there are public institutions and services, and as long as there is public financing of any of them, there will be such battles or contests, and someone will be "democratically" or bureaucratically or federally screwed, while someone else's preference is honored. Even in a minarchist society, where we have stripped away nearly all of the statist stuff, I fully expect there will still be complaints by purist libertarians with nothing better to do. That will truly be heaven on earth, but I don't expect to see it in my lifetime. Your best bet, in all of this, is to pick the least bad combination of +/- stuff, try to "work within the system" to make it even less bad, but to put your primary focus on creating positive value and not obsessing over what's wrong with the world. Life is too short. REB

Sort of the flipside to the "perception" of principles as too "puristic" to deal with as denying reason. REB

Your assumption, Stephen, is that people posting politics everywhere are wanting to discuss politics everywhere. My suspicion is that they want to rub THEIR politics in people's faces everywhere. The latter is more fun to do when you have a fairly clear idea of whose faces you're rubbing your politics in - which would be in a fairly cloistered, inbred place like OL, rather than Facebook. Of course, if they're just innocently carried away with the fun of discussing politics under a rather far-removed heading such as metaphysics, it puzzles me why they aren't equally enthusiastic about discussing metaphysics, say, in the Donald Trump thread. Or, perhaps they would be, and I'm just selling them short. Perhaps we should experiment by throwing in some racy comments on Primacy of Consciousness or the materialist-idealist dichotomy in the middle of a hot roll on Trump's ideology or lack of same. REB

Better yet, go here and you can order the design on a tee-shirt! (Or you can gawk at the image below.) https://teespring.com/giantdouche-turdsandwich-2016 <iframe height="0" src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-WM8CXF" style="display:none;visibility:hidden" width="0"></iframe> <img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1115394768471214&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">

Trump's leftist protester-opponents (MoveOn.org and related socialist thugs) and reactive Trump supporters. (Not referring specifically to Muslims at all. I just dredged up Mohammed as an example, rather than using more oft-cited 20th century examples.) REB

Bzzzzzzzzzz.

The tape you're referring to is actually a no-pest strip. Flies aren't difficult to perceive. REB

There it is again: bzzzzzz, bzzzzzz, bzzzzzz. REB

The two-in-one of Attila/Witch Doctor is not a rare thing in history. Without delving into the pathologies of the 20th century, I'll just point out Mohammed. He functioned/functions as both messiah and table overturner. (Not to mention as role-model rapist of 6-year-old girls.) Don't be too surprised if you see increasing violence aimed toward those who dare to criticize him - especially not in a culture/political system that is, as we speak, bringing thuggish RICO cases against those who challenge the ruling orthodoxy in regard to things like "climate change science." But also violence against those who support him. I anticipate a period, hopefully brief, of round-robin disruption of people's civil liberties by those who believe the end justifies the means and that anyone disagreeing with them does not deserve to be treated in a civil, rights-respecting manner. In particular, I advise staying away from large public gatherings for the next 9 months or so - and limiting time spent in venues where people are, generally speaking, acting as though they've taken leave of their senses. REB

Stephen, one coping approach for this nuttiness is to realize that hegemony is often no cover of humor, either. Sometimes the absurd simply cannot be camouflaged. Some things are just laughably pathetic. Kind of noise, like flies buzzing around a dead or dying animal - or website, in the present case. REB

What's the matter, Stephen, don't you realize that Adam's post was all about metaphysics, viz., about "the objective reality" that Weisberg refuses to see, and that so many of Tromp's opponents refuse to see? Adam was merely trying to remind us (or perhaps taking perverse advantage of our belief) that politics has its roots in metaphysics - except that I don't think that he or a single one of the other people using every stray pretext to rub in the ascendancy of the Tromp Godhead cares the slightest about the connection of politics to anything more fundamental than a desire for power and revenge against whoever has wronged them. Yes, this post/thread belongs either in the Stomping folder or (perhaps) in the Humous folder, not here. But when all other rules of civility and rationality seem to have been suspended "for the duration," should we be so surprised at this rather minor anomaly? Someday, perhaps, MSK will recover from his non compos mentis condition and start moderating OL in a more rational way. Until then, Stephen, deaf ears and (perhaps not-so-) silent smirks will greet your protests, I predict. REB