Kevin MacDonald: Diane Ravitch’s recent LA Times op-ed (“The Big Idea — it’s bad education policy“) opposes “Big Ideas” in education policy, but what it is really saying is that the educational establishment is running out of ideas. “We now face a wave of education reforms based on the belief that school choice, test-driven accountability and the resulting competition will dramatically improve student achievement.” She argues that none of this is working:
Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead, pushing an aggressive program of school reform — codified in its signature Race to the Top program — that relies on the power of incentives and competition. This approach may well make schools worse, not better. …
On the federal tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, from 2003 to 2009, charters have never outperformed public schools. Nor have black and Latino students in charter schools performed better than their counterparts in public schools.
When charter schools have performed well, it’s because of selection: Better, more motivated children attend them, and this does nothing for the masses of Black and Latino children. Holding teachers accountable doesn’t work either.
But if course, Ravitch can’t really come to grips with the problem. In pointing to things that could affect student achievement besides teachers, she comes up with this list: “students’ motivation, the schools’ curriculum, family support, poverty and distractions on testing day, such as the weather or even a dog barking in the school’s parking lot.”
No mention of IQ — 16 years after The Bell Curve placed IQ and the intractability of changing became front and center for the American public. Coming on the heels of the finding that the Head Start pre-school program has no demonstrable effects on IQ or academic achievement, one would think that at long last it would start to dawn on people that there are no easy solutions because no one has come up with a way to improve IQ. The result is that race differences in achievement are going to be here long into the future. And that means that importing millions of low-IQ people is a long term disaster for the country.
Ravitch herself seems to have given up the fight. There are no Big Ideas that will work, so she advocates returning to a well-rounded curriculum rather than the Obama Administration’s focus on math and reading. If you can’t teach them to read or do math, you might as well entertain them by having them do art and music.
Facing the Future as a Minority
I am deeply dissappointed that Diane Ravitch did not consider the only big idea that does seem to work. And I am certainly not referring to homeschooling, where the average student scores in the 80th percentile. Rather, I am referring to the proven system of Ebonics, there can be no doubt that this pedagogical methodology is the wave of the future. It is well-established in various research studies that Ebonics increases children’s cultural IQ, as well as their bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence. Isn’t Diane Ravitch aware of (Jewish) educational genius Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences? His ideas have swept mainstream academia. An excerpt:
“One of the main impetuses for this movement has been Howard Gardner’s work. He has been, in Smith and Smith’s (1994) terms, a paradigm shifter. Howard Gardner has questioned the idea that intelligence is a single entity, that it results from a single factor, and that it can be measured simply via IQ tests. He has also challenged the cognitive development work of Piaget. Bringing forward evidence to show that at any one time a child may be at very different stages for example, in number development and spatial/visual maturation, Howard Gardner has successfully undermined the idea that knowledge at any one particular developmental stage hangs together in a structured whole.”
Speaking of IQ, the first person ever to scientifically quantify intelligence was Edward Lee Thorndike. Thorndike was a strict behaviorist. His textbooks on educational psychology were used by 2 generations of teachers to effectively teach basic math and reading skills to elementary school students and to prepare them for further learning. I am old enough that my elementary teachers employed his methodology and I am of the belief that it is and was the best ever conceived. Elementary school is where a child is most receptive to learning and attitude shaping. I trace the pedagogical problems that we have today to when the educational establishment threw Thorndike out and substituted progressive ideas like “student centered”,”look-say” instead of phonics, “active learning” (or acting out as I call it), “fuzzy math,” “co-operative learning,” “OBE” (remember that?), “team teaching,” “self-esteem strategies,” “modular scheduling,” “learning styles” (after Howard Gardner) and on and on.
Most of these concepts can be traced back to a German-Jewish psychological movement called “gestalt.” In educational circles, it is better known today as “constructivism.” Enough said.
From the article:
Coming on the heels of the finding that the Head Start pre-school program has no demonstrable effects on IQ or academic achievement, one would think that at long last it would start to dawn on people that there are no easy solutions because no one has come up with a way to improve IQ.
Of course, the implication of this is that once someone does come up with a procedure to improve IQ, then a significant step will have been taken in the direction of abolishing racial differences altogether.
Won’t that be wonderful? :-D
The white man’s child-like faith in technical Progress will be his undoing.
because no one has come up with a way to improve IQ.
well I know how they will eventually solve the average white vs average black iq problem -just start killing off high iq whites – that’s exactly what jewish bolshiviks did in poland and the soviet union.
“..would start to dawn on people that there are no easy solutions because no one has come up with a way to improve IQ”
The solution requires longer term thinking.
The problem is that the one valid solution is even less politically correct than mentioning IQ. The realistic goal of an effective policy would be (at the minimum) to remove dysgenic breeding incentives, while a more active policy would create financial incentives for the bottom 30% or so not to reproduce. At the same time, the top 15% should be encouraged to have larger families.
I have read that educated, intelligent black women are the least likely to find a mate and the most likely to have an abortion. It is the ghetto dwellers that are creating most of the next generation of black youth. The genetic situation for black americans is in crisis mode, but no one (in the main stream) is brave enough to discuss it .
At what point will people realize that feminism + welfare are badly damaging the gene pool, both black AND white?
Perhaps Diane Ravitch needs to read this from UCLA’s Neurology Department.
More Evidence that Intelligence is hereditary
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/more-proof-that-intelligence-is-85134.aspx
Florida college athletes reading at 2nd grade level
One of these ‘athletes’ had an IQ of 60 and couldn’t even read the test questions, much less answer them.
http://www.cfnews13.com/Sports/CentralFloridaSportsReport/2009/10/16/ncaa_transcripts_reveal_some_seminoles_read_on_2nd_grade_level.html
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/FSU-releases-NCAA-transcripts-Some-Noles-readi?urn=ncaaf,196189
The realistic goal of an effective policy would be (at the minimum) to remove dysgenic breeding incentives, while a more active policy would create financial incentives for the bottom 30% or so not to reproduce.
Or to procreate eugenically — “designer babies.” You wouldn’t even need to explain it to them as anything but an “experimental process.” Heart-stricken equalitarian ninnies can be expected to experience palpitations over it — “Hitler Lives!” I can hear them scream — but they never actually manage to explain what would really be so awful about it — in what way would it be anything but a boon? The way they see it as soon as someone realizes that differences in human ‘quality’ are real and quantifiable that’s it, he starts walking around “discriminating” against people. Sadly, they do have some evidence to base this view on. The vast majority of HBD nerds are such uppity snots you want to strangle them. In reality, however, all a program like this would be is a ‘mild genetic solution to a mild genetic problem.’ Or, if demographics is destiny — and it obviously is — then taking charge of our destiny requires taking charge of our demographics. The average person wouldn’t even need to know that anything had changed; he certainly wouldn’t experience anything different in his daily life if things did thus change. It’s like an immigration moratorium — what that lying kike shit “J-Pod” describes as “extreme,” if it were enacted in stealth nobody would even notice that it had occurred, so much for it being “extreme.”
“When will they start talking about IQ?”
That’s like asking a dog to talk about quantum physics!
Unpleasant things like IQ simply don’t exist in the Leftist (or mainstream Rightist) universe.
An imaginary universe of really non-existing socialism which is governed by a set of rigid egalitarian laws.
I don’t think any reasonable person doubts that there are huge differences (IQ being one of them) between populations (even between European populations), the question is whether they can be accurately measured and defined. Human beings are not computers.
“(they’ll)…just start killing off high iq whites – that’s exactly what jewish bolshiviks did in poland and the soviet union.”
Yes. This is largely due to the fact that among those who prop up any corrupt socioeconomic system are moderately high-IQ academics charged with the educational indoctrination of its subjects. Thanks to them, IQ is conspicuously correlated with “the establishment” and punished accordingly when the system is violently dismantled.
Unfortunately, although what academia gets is often exactly what it deserves, and although it often rejects excessively intelligent people for threatening its lucrative place in the status quo by asking too many questions, its activities tend to inculpate and endanger intelligent people across the board. At this point, with the human race already dysgenically disadvantaged and without the resources that would let it start afresh, a dysgenic attack on mankind’s limited supply of superior intellects could easily spell doom for humanity.
While daring to claim superior intelligence, academia (and academic products rich in its credentials and crowding the top rungs of the socioeconomic ladder) have been working overtime to reduce average human intelligence (fitness) by proscribing eugenics and encouraging the reverse evolution of humanity. Through their efforts, humanity has become a dysfunctional species that, after temporarily exempting itself from the de facto “eugenics” of hardcore natural selection, is about to re-learn the folly of its ways. Even those who would not qualify for a eugenic breeding program should fear the day when natural selection catches up with mankind.
“…but they never actually manage to explain what would really be so awful about (eugenics”…”
Sure they do. The “awfulness” of eugenics resides in anyone actually daring to make a rational decision about human population genetics, insofar as such a decision would “open the floodgates of naziism” and hurt the feelings of the most entitled people on earth, otherwise fallaciously known as “minorities” (most of which are actually worldwide majorities).
Meanwhile, those who most aggressively promote anti-eugenics sentiment, namely Jewish academics, aggressively practice their own special form of “eugenics” behind the scenes. That is, they usually make it a point of breeding only with other Jews, and they give their first loyalty to an openly racist country in which Jews are forbidden to marry non-Jews. That way, they have a monopoly on eugenics, and stand to inherit the earth from those of us who are forbidden to enjoy its obvious advantages.
But sadly, even though Jews have dishonestly arrogated a virtual monopoly on eugenics, they are nowhere close to having a monopoly on the kind of extreme intelligence that humanity desperately needs to light its way into the future. The kind of “intelligence” necessary for Talmudic argumentation, the practice of law, the running of a bank, or even being undeservingly rewarded by other members of your tribe with a Nobel Prize, is neither qualitatively nor quantitatively sufficient to ensure the long-term survival of humanity at large.
“…the question is whether (IQ differences between populations) can be accurately measured and defined.”
This question has already been at least partially answered. Such differences can indeed be measured and defined, at least up to a point. The problem is that research along these lines cannot be funded. Allocate or even request one penny for it, and the watchdogs of Boazian egalitarianism will gleefully blight or destroy your career.
Sure, ideology is one of the main reasons why the IQ issue is still a “turn off” in academic circles. But there are methodological problems measuring IQ. I’m not an expert, though.
There are indeed methodological limitations in psychometrics, but most of these are clear, and they do not appreciably detract from the measurements actually conducted. These limitations do not qualify as “problems” in the sense you seem to mean. They can be safely applied, and could be extremely useful in any benign eugenics program. The correlation of IQ with what we intuitively mean by “intelligence” is also well-established. IQ and intelligence are almost certainly not identical, but only an ignoramus or a liar would deny that there is a substantial positive correlation between them.
Of course, there remains considerable room for further psychometric research and the extension and refinement of psychometric concepts. Some recent studies even suggest that limited IQ boosts may be possible. But again, objectively incorporating racial distinctions in the conclusions drawn from such research, and especially admitting the well-confirmed fact that racial differences are innate and irreversible, are forbidden by academia and those to whose tune it dances.
“ ‘When will they start talking about IQ?’ That’s like asking a dog to talk about quantum physics!”
Actually, Nick, it’s like expecting an devoted dog-owner to admit her
beloved Shih-Tzu likes eating what he finds in the cat’s litterbox.
The arrogance of the jews has always been their undoing wherever they’ve ruled. It’s happening again right now.
How do the leftists in education manage to ignore the utterly clear implications of the results of over 100 years of IQ testing? They invoke the tradition of post-structuralism (an outgrowth of your good old Frankfurt School of Judaism) to tell us that IQ testing is just part of the logico-scientific discourse that is a part of the post-enlightenment conspiracy of WASPs to entrench white patriarchal hegemony.
Kevin McDonald
Why sidetrack the race replacement issue with a discussion of race-IQ-psychometircs. The race-replacement issue can be adressed completetly independently of the race-IQ-race-replacement issue.
I have made this point many times on American Renassaine:ORDINARY NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS will have a hostile reaction to being told that they are less intelligent than asians.
I have read enough od the scientific literature and cinceptaul issues in biology to realize that eventually people who push the race-IQ-psychomertric stuff will eventually have their heads handed to them in a debate. by an academic biologist and-or philosopher of sceince who specializes in conceptual issues in biology..and in the mean time….the race-replacement of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS is pushed to the side. Just take a look at Jared Taylors post on vdare.com about the AR conference cancellation. The race and IQ issue gets highlighted by Brimelow while race-replacement issue is not highlighted…even though by many orders of magnitude it is way more fundamentally important.
It is one minute beffore midnight for NATIVE BORN BORN WHITE AMERICANS and you,Jaylor Taylor and Peter Brimelow want to sidetrack the discussion to a public discussion about differences in racial intelligence..at a time when WHITE MEN are being replaced in the the work force by “more intelleigent”chinese and hindu males.
Anyone who has followed the debates in the American Renassaince comment section over the past three years would know that not all White Nationalist are intertested in this issue.
A much better idea would to go savagely after the asian LEGAL IMMIGRANT invaders.
I can already see the comments comming. So let me prempt them.
1)kick out the majority of post-1965 hispanics
2)Blacks will never except being told that they are less intelligent than Whites. Whites do not wont to subsidize blacks. Solution: separation from blacks. This requires that Whites socially ostracize White parents who tolerate their white daughters race mixing. This is the start.
What would have happened if Jared Taylor went after the asians on Russian TV? Lots of free publicity for the White Nationalist movement. The predatory asians would have gone nuts. “The antifascists” would have gone nuts. Lots more free publicity for White Nationalism.
The HBD crowd does not understand the obvious point that the case against race-replacement is not weakened…by one bit…if the race and IQ issue is never doscussed.
What if Jared Taylor is invited on the MSM-take a pick,FOX,Mathews,the bull-dyke Maddow or a national debate on public television and launches a savage attack on the asians-who are obviously waging a vicious race war against NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS- in OUR AMERICA instead of sidetraking the “debate” on racial differences in intelligence…the you know what would hit the fan.
In his debate with the Canadian philosophy professor, the one issue-and only issue-the Jared came across weak was when the issue of race and IQ came up. Take at look at the tanscript of the debate.
It is absolutely crucial in the war against race-replacement to focus exclusively on the race-replacement issue. It is one minute before midnight..WE can not waste time on a mind-numbing discussion on econometrics.
I have been some what hard on Jared in this post. Let just so that he is an incredibly brave WHITE MAN. These are meant to be constructive criticsm.s.for Kevin MCDonald and Peter Brimelow also.
Jupiter, there’s room for both approaches. In fact, both are required.
First, as I said before, avoiding the topic of IQ precludes any technical defense of the thesis that America is primarily for White people, leaving the premise all but scientifically defenseless.
You, on the other hand, feel that IQ is the perfect opening for critics of this premise, and that the only way to deny them such an opening is to confine ourselves to a moral justification of the premise, i.e., “Whites settled and built America, so America belongs to Whites just like China belongs to native-born Chinese and Africa belongs to native-born Africans!”
But in an atmosphere of moral relativism, this kind of justification is even more prone to be attacked than IQ. For example, as many critics have already said:
“Whites aren’t the original inhabitants of this country. Whites surrendered all conceivable property rights by committing evil acts against Native Americans and other non-White races; other races and their cultures can only improve on evil, unjust, high-tech White civilization!”
If you want to have any chance of proving that Whites were in fact the original inhabitants of North America, you need the sciences of paleontology, archaeology, and anthropology. On the other hand, if you want to prove that non-White races and their cultures cannot improve White society, but instead can only cause it to further degenerate, you need the science of psychometrics and related fields like sociology, sociobiology, educational psychology, genetics, and evolutionary psychology.
Whoever your all-powerful critics of IQ may be, if they deny the validity and/or heritability of IQ, then they are sniffing glue and can easily be shown up as veritable monkeys by anyone who knows anything (especially anyone who is up on the most recent studies of human intelligence and their implications).
So let’s not get carried away here. We can use all the justification we can get, and to avoid the highly relevant topic of IQ because sophistical idiots are sure to attack it is to surrender in advance.
“Importing millions of low-IQ people is a long term disaster for the country.”
True, but it’s a carefully planned disaster. So the bigger the disaster it is, the more satisfying the results will be. The planners of the disaster are certainly not complaining.
“Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civilization’s got to go!”
(Stanford students’ chant, 1988).
Willi Munzenberg, eminent Frankfurt School revolutionary — Stalin’s secret police tracked him down in 1940 in Italy and hanged him (deservedly) from a tree — must be rejoicing as he sees America go down the drain.
It was this Jewish commie who said, “We must organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
This is what it’s all about: making life impossible.
The swamping of America with low-IQ ethnics — ethnics whose descendants will one day rape and murder White women and castrate their menfolk — is only to be expected. Meanwhile the Jewish elite, safe and complacent in their gated communities and whisked from place to place in their bullet-proofed automobiles, will preside gloatingly over the a dying civilization.
Adorno will then be vindicated. “Who will save us from Western civilization?” he once droned. His wish, like Will Munzenberg’s, will then have been fulfilled. Western civilization will be dead, and no one will need to be saved from it any longer.
Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civilization’s got to go!
“If you can’t teach them [students] to read or do math, you might as well entertain them by having them do art and music.”
Tut tut, nothing wrong with art and music! A highly subversive remark, that. :) If students are not very bright, the best thing you can do is steer them in the direction of sociology — the “Jewish science”, as it was once called. Three to four years of indoctrination in politically correct attitudes would be just the ticket. A model citizen would emerge from the other end of the sausage machine.
I had a school friend called Portia who was absolutely adorable, but then she went off to college and subjected herself to three years of sociology and Women’s Studies. When I bumped into again last year, I was horrified to note that she had turned into a total fanatic. She wanted to have babies in order to abort them. She wanted to have sex with men so she could be unfaithful to them, and, preferably, castrate them when the affair was over. She wanted to sleep with women to avenge herself against a previous boyfriend who had dumped her.
Portia, once my best friend, had been turned by the Masters of Discourse into a brain-dead moron. (Portia, I hope you’re not reading this!)
There are “academic disciplines” for everyone nowadays. You don’t need to be clever. The dimwitted lecher can now do postgraduate studies in pornography. Literacy and numeracy are not essential requirements here. An appetite for sleaze is all that is needed.
I was reading recently about Annie Sprinkle, porn star and prostitute, and how she was “discovered.” She was discovered by a Jewish university professor who had a taste for strip clubs and porn parlors — all in the interests of his academic work, you understand. He would take his students along to see filthy movies and then get them to write learned essays on coprophilia and sodomy.
Here is the passage:
“Sprinkle first ventured into the art realm with “Deep Inside Porn Stars,” which replicated a round table rap session of sex industry professionals, at the New York performance space Franklin Furnace in 1984. The following year she was “discovered” at a 42nd Street porn theater by director/professor/scholar Richard Schechner, who was showing his New York University Performance Studies class “non-traditional” performance. Taken with her alienating stance toward burlesque, Schechner invited her to participate in his production, “The Prometheus Project,” where she performed her Nurse Sprinkle routine…including a striptease sex ed class where she asked the audience to examine her labia with a flashlight and describe its texture and color.”
http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/1992fall/fall1992_Dworkin.php
So here we have a Jewish university professor who, purely in the interests of academic scholarship, is inviting a porn actress to exhibit her vagina (flashlight provided) so that he and his students can take notes on said vagina and write learned papers discussing it.
What more do you need?
Erotele
What you are advocating as a strategy is tactically insane. The existetnce of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS as a racial majority within the border of American is not debatable issue. It is completelt insane to claim to that the Bell-Curve science is necessary to give a scientific validation for White American racial interests.
All a White Nationialist has to say in public is this:The intention of post-1965 immigration policy is to reduce NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS to an ever dwindling racial minority within the borders of America. Resistnce to this is growing and the resistance will grow stronger and stronger with each passing year. Why should White Americans be in favor of this? These are the terms of the “debate”
Jared Taylor is completetly wrong if he thinks the Murray-Hernstien stuff is crucial to making the case against race-relacement. The case for OUR race-replacement does not exist.
At the present time my posts are not allowed to be posted over at American Renassaince. No doubt Jared Taylor is behind this.
So why not have a debate between Jared Taylor and yours truly right here on Original Dissent about the wisdom of Jared Taylor’s stategy of making the Bell-Curve “science” the centerpiece of his debating strategy on radio and television. What do you say Kevin McDonald?
I also beleiv that I have banned from posting on American Renassaince because of my posts here and over at Original Dissent about asian LEGAL IMMIGRANTS. I this is true, it lends more support to the suspicion that many of us have that Jared Taylor is in his heart an asianphile like his buddy John Derbyshire.
An incredible opportunity is being blown by Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow. It would be very easy to tap into the growing rage in the NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN population against asian LEGAL IMMIGRANTS.especially among WHITE MALE tech workers. Instead, WE get blather about sceince has demonstrated that asians are “more inelligent” than WHITE AMERICANS. And Jared does say this in public..at a time when thousands of WHITE AMERICAN families are thrown into a state of econmic terror..at thehands of the intelledctually “superior” asian LEGAL IMMIGRANTS(Check out Brenda Walkers’ victime Wall).
Kevin McDonald. how about a debate between yours truly-Jupes-and Jared Taylor over tactics and asian ‘superior intelleiginece”.
True story:
Several years ago, I attended a debate on immigration organized by the League of Women Voters. One of the immigration enthusiasts on the panel was a Jew who is married to a Salvadoran wetback. This Jew made a career of organizing illegal aliens form El Savador.
This Jew made the following statement:America needs to import chinese and indian engineers, because the chinese and idians have very high IQs and are smarter than White American engineers.
All of a sudden, a White Guy stands up in the audience-identified himself as an Italain American Engineer-and with viens poping out of his neck in a angry and loud voice said:”that’s not true…chinese and indian engieneers are not smarter than White Aerican engineers. WE are the best in the world…and I resent your statement that the chinese and indians are smarter than White American engineers…it is really outrageous what is being done to White American Engineers”.
I have other true stories such as this one. No one should be shocked-Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow-that I and other White Nationalist have a very hostile reaction to your pushing of thre Muray-Hernstien stuff at a time when NATIVE NORN WHITE AMERICAN MALE ENGINEERS are under assault by predatory asian LEGAL IMMIGRANTS in the engineering and programming field. You two have no idea just how bad it is..not a frigging clue. Without a doubt, this Jew married to a wet back was well versed inthe Bell-Curve stuff.
Now lets see if this post will go through..or perhaops free speech on this website must pass HBD poltical correctness.
Either you believe in fre specch or you don’t ..it’s that simple.
Jupiter, the observation that East Asians have a slightly higher average IQ than whites, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/3 standard deviation, has been pretty well confirmed by scientific studies. But as I’ve pointed out, there is a trump card to be played regarding intelligence. It is called “Western Civilization”.
First, we must understand that the extreme geniuses who built Western civilization, i.e. those on whose technical and philosophical insight and expertise Western civilization is based, have almost all been Whites of Western European ancestry. Apparently, whatever the associated form of “intelligence” may be, Euro-Americans have historically possessed a near-monopoly on it. Given the relatively backward state of East Asian civilization until a short time ago (at least as regards technological sophistication), the fact that Whites presently have a slightly lower average IQ than East Asians is misleading on this score.
Next, we must understand that IQ, while being a measure of intelligence, is not necessarily identical to intelligence. At best, we can say that within a certain set of bounds, it is “highly correlated with intelligence”. Intelligence may contain ingredients other than IQ, particularly when it comes to what we call “genius” as applied to the advancement of civilization.
[Note: Some anthropologists - including another Jared, Jared Diamond - have stated or implied that these extra ingredients, and the unmatched frequency of White supergeniuses, are entirely social and cultural in nature, i.e., environmental or at most epigenetic. However, no theorist has ever made anything resembling a solid case for this assumption, which flies in the face of accumulating scientific knowledge regarding the heritability of intelligence.]
Next, we need to understand that unlike East Asians, Whites have been subject to calculated dysgenic pressure for many decades now, and current studies may not accurately reflect their actual intellectual potential. This dysgenic pressure has come by way of social and economic policies that economically, educationally, and socially inhibit the natural reproductive behavior of high-intelligence non-Jewish Whites. (Jews are not as strongly inhibited by such influences because their intact racial identity generates reproductive pressures opposite to those working against Whites, as we see in the racist attitudes and inbreeding of Jews all over the world.) We must also consider the possible epigenetic effects of cultural deterioration.
As we all know, high-IQ Whites have been strongly discouraged from reproducing by two influences, moralistic environmentalism targeted on just those who are moral and intelligent enough to be receptive to it under prolonged educational indoctrination, and even more importantly, rising levels of financial obligation and vocational responsibility, by virtue of which the most intelligent members of Western societies end up supporting the incontinent reproduction of non-Whites (and perhaps even less intelligent Whites; but as we see, non-Whites have been especially eager to take advantage of this situation, and then some).
It doesn’t take more than a generation or two for such pressures to have a marked effect on population genetics, and we’ve already got more time than that under our belts. Thus, current studies may not reflect the actual racial genetics of IQ and intelligence.
It is highly likely that we still have extraordinary White subpopulations which, if allowed and encouraged to do more breeding, could readily boost the average White IQ right back up to something resembling its natural state. For example, the White engineer to whom you refer above belongs to a vocation which selects for intellectual ability, and thus belongs to such a subpopulation. It is very likely that Asians working in fields like science and engineering have no net IQ advantage over White Euro-Americans, and the opposite may well be true.
These are only some of the points which beg to be raised against people who claim that White Americans need to import Asians to do their mind-work for them. I respectfully suggest that if you do not understand these points, you might consider leaving the technical argumentation, and the formation of debate strategy, to those who are more familiar with the complexities of such issues.
On the other hand, if you do understand these points, then why don’t you integrate them into your own debate strategy?
eurodele said:
March 18, 2010 at 8:38 AM
“Jupiter, the observation that East Asians have a slightly higher average IQ than whites, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/3 standard deviation, has been pretty well confirmed by scientific studies. But as I’ve pointed out, there is a trump card to be played regarding intelligence. It is called “Western Civilization”.”
Another way of looking at it is: White IQ + White ingenuity = White Supremacy
Asians don’t have the ingenuity that Whites have.
erodele
Hopefully, when a White Nationalist goes on tv tp speak to his fellow NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS he or she will avoid a mind numbing and incomprehensible psychometric discussion like the one you just gave. The White Nationalist should say someone along the lines”I oppose post-1965 LEGAL immigration policy beciause over time it will reduce NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS to an ever dwindling racial minority within the borders of America…then launch a very aggressive attack on LEGAL IMMIGRANT asians. Donald Collins-vdare collective-hides behind the skirt of a tiny little LEGAL IMMIGRANT asian woman named Yeh Ling Ling. He isn’t man enough to stand up for himself as a White American male. What a faggot. Go look at his recent post on vdare.com
I see your point, Jupiter.
I also notice that you have a favorite catchphrase: NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS.
Perhaps the most powerful slogan that could take form around this catchphrase is
“America is for NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS!”
But after a bit of reflection, one cannot help but notice that with the addition of just three (capital) letters, this slogan becomes an equally powerful anti-slogan:
“America is for NATIVE BORN NONWHITE AMERICANS!”
After all, many of those born in America are non-White. In fact, one of the most recent discussions on this page deplores the fact that
“Nearly half of children born in the U.S. are minorities.”
That is, being NATIVE BORN no longer gives Whites much of a leg up on non-Whites, because from here on out, an ever-dwindling fraction of NATIVE BORN AMERICANS will actually be…White!
Consequently, it’s a pretty safe bet that if your slogan catches on, it won’t be too long before some sarcastic Black or Mestizo decides that it cries out for a certain anti-slogan to be chanted by our ever-so-precious “minorities” as they dance like feral pongids around the raging bonfire of diversity and multiculturalism, and the ADL and SPLC furiously beat the tom-toms of righteousness and equality.
This, of course, could be disadvantageous to our ethnic interests, and would no doubt be quite painful to the eyes and ears of already put-upon White Americans.
So my question is this: given that it is only a matter of time before NATIVE BORN NONWHITE AMERICANS outnumber NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS, don’t you think that it might be nice if we had a slogan less dependent on being “native-born”, or anything else at which we’re being thoroughly beaten, and thus more likely to stand the test of time on our behalf?
Just something we might want to consider.
The notion that someone has a statistically significant measure of the IQ of several billion Chinese and Hindus, most of whom don’t have toilets let alone the means or pretense to take an IQ test, is idiotic.
Of IIT graduates and their progeny, sure. The analogy would be to take the IQ of Oxford students as that of Great Britain.
Sorry, more garbage pseudo-science perpetuated by the media.
Not quite. Most of those who run scientific studies on IQ are more careful than that, choosing their samples “randomly” from as wide a range of environmental and genetic variance as possible (within the parameters of the study).
Don’t forget, the Chinese have also been found to have, on average, one cubic inch more cranial capacity than Whites, and cranial capacity is correlated with brain weight, which is correlated with IQ. Thus, one doesn’t even need to measure IQ to infer a slight IQ advantage for Asians.
But the White trend toward microcephaly, supported by research which suggests that we’ve lost 15-20% of our cranial capacity over the last few thousand years, could easily be reversed by a bit of timely action, if only White people were able to stop deluding themselves that reverse evolution is not the inevitable result once natural selection has been all but suspended, as it has been in modern Western society.
Tiny little White girls with 5 inch skull diameters and narrow pelvises may look sexier to some men – just take a look at the average porn starlet these days – and small-headed males to some women. After all, if one’s head is small, this makes certain other body parts appear larger (e.g., breasts and muscles), and secondary sexual characteristics may thus appear to be enhanced. But evolutionarily, it is 100% degenerate.
Even if you laugh at this (possible) culturally-conditioned selection effect, there are others that aren’t so funny. Such trends must be actively countered if racial fitness is to be maintained or enhanced.
Based on this narrative, it is pretty clear Buffet is Jewish.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/nation/article/warren_buffetts_jewish_connection_20060602/
I’ve often wondered why Jews (such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin and Howard Gardner) are so opposed to the notion of I.Q.
I have my own theory:
I suspect that the Jewish I.Q. pattern of verbally-centric intelligence causes the Jews to equate intelligence with linguistic ability— and that this causes them to imagine that intelligence, like language, is ‘acquired’ from the environment.
In other words, I suspect that the Jews suffer from a cognitive blindness to I.Q. as a direct result of their high-verbal, low-visiospatial (i.e. asymmetric) I.Q. pattern.
This theory of mine is, of course, pure speculation— but I would be willing to wager a considerable amount of money on the possibility of it being true.
That’s an interesting thesis, insofar as the Jewish cultural emphasis on language and verbal manipulation has already led to the academic replacement of the truth concept with success in argumentation.
From the Jewish perspective now prevalent in academia – for a better understanding of that perspective, see MacDonald’s work on the “culture of critique” – truth is secondary to dialectic, and thus associated with verbal dominance rather than objective fact. To a Jew, “truth” is just that for which he/she can argue successfully, even when success in argumentation relies on non-veridic factors like political clout, numerical majority, and coercion (especially as brought to bear by Jews on non-Jews).
The idea is that whatever the facts may be, Jews can appropriate “truth” by mounting a sustained campaign of verbal aggression which renders the opposition too weak and weary to fight them. Facts become irrelevant, having been shriveled up and blown away by the sheer weight of Jewish argumentation, where “weight” is determined not by factuality or quality of inference, but other criteria like intensity, duration, misplaced authority, and ad hominem attacks.
This perspective has led academia to abandon the correspondence theory of truth (“truth denotes factual correspondence to objective facts”) for other so-called “theories of truth”, especially those associated with social constructivism. This trend is intellectually and socially degenerate in the extreme, leading as it does to the notion that “truth” can be determined by indoctrination as the outcome of successful propaganda campaigns and other forms of social conditioning … especially that which is implemented by and for, you guessed it, Jews.
It seems but a short step from there to the idea that “intelligence”, traditionally associated with one’s ability to find truth in the sense of factual correspondence, is just another verbally-generated social construct.
Very intriguing!
Dialectic does lead to truth, as long as both sides are willing to challenge each other’s assumptions.
Like George Wallace would debate Liberals, or when Jared Taylor debates Liberals today.
The problem is that nowadays most people are too afraid to challenge the assumptions of Jewish sophistry, even if deep down they tend to disagree with it, because they’re afraid of being called racist or something.
eurodele says:
This perspective has led academia to abandon the correspondence theory of truth (”truth denotes factual correspondence to objective facts”) for other so-called “theories of truth”, especially those associated with social constructivism. This trend is intellectually and socially degenerate in the extreme, leading as it does to the notion that “truth” can be determined by indoctrination as the outcome of successful propaganda campaigns and other forms of social conditioning … especially that which is implemented by and for, you guessed it, Jews.
The Jews have played the modern destruction of “objective truth” for their own benefit, and have definitely assisted in its demise, but they did not cause it all by themselves. It has strong characteristics of an organic development that was propelled by many shifts of paradigms in science and philosophy that were serendipitous for them. Yet, we must certainly notice also, at the same time, that these changes were forced by the very structure of “reality” (such as it is or was ;-)), and had to be taken into account if the technological system were to continue to expand. In short, it was technological “Progress”, more than anything, which stuck the knife in the old conception of truth. I will only sketch a few of these paradigm shifts, which stemmed directly from the work of the four well-known names who did so much to shape the thinking of the 20th century – Darwin, Marx, Einstein, and Freud.
Darwin – The triumph of evolutionary theory throughout the sciences did much to undermine the confidence of western man. Before Darwin, Christianity had taught whites that the existence of God was a certainty, since man’s existence itself could not otherwise be accounted for. The moral order of the world, with whites (and especially, rich whites) on top and in control, also was seen has having been determined by this God. Darwin’s theory, which overturned all that, and which is still being resisted to this day by fanatical holdouts, essentially abolished what remained of the need for God as an explanation; it consigned him to metaphysical irrelevance, and by implication abolished any moral order established by Him. When Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, he was proclaiming the triumph of the scientific world view. In a sense, science has no other object than to abolish God.
Marx – Marx’s theories, which were based, in their essence, on a weird fusion of Hegelian metaphysics, Christianity (in the sense that it envisioned a Christian-like utopia from which strife would disappear and in which all men would be brothers), and a keen understanding of the role of money in technological societies, also did quite a bit of damage to western man’s self-confidence. Although they were not workable theories in practice, since they took insufficient account of human nature, it wasn’t all bunk. Specifically, it is undeniable that money does play an important role in society; in the industrial civilization of Marx’s time in particular, the ruling class did exploit and endeavor to keep down the proletariat. And again, contained within Marx, there was an attack on God, and the old moral order. Religion was seen as no more than the opiate of the people; the moral order came not from God, but was designed by the ruling class to keep down the proletariat. When taken together with the other developments that were occurring simultaneously in other branches of human knowledge, this critique made a lot of sense and became enormously influential.
Einstein – Einstein’s relativity theories constituted a revolution in thought that fundamentally overthrew the old intellectual order. After Einstein, western man was forced to regard with suspicion not only his own motives and origins, and not even just the absolute character of the moral order that he had been taught to believe came from the transcendent source called God. Now, in a relativistic world, even the evidence of his own senses was called into question. Bertrand Russell was later to formulate the dilemma perfectly: Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, leads to the conclusion that naive realism is false. Neither time nor space were anymore absolute. As a direct result, the old, comfortable, placid Newtonian and Euclidean universe ruled over by a bearded white Gentleman who created man in his own image and had given him his moral rules to live by had been destroyed. The blast at Hiroshima was both a public announcement of the truth of this totally new world view and a confirmation of the death of God.
Freud – Before Freud, psychology was naïve and almost Cartesian in its simplicity. What appeared to be, was. Man’s motives were simply what he thought them to be. They were self-evident, in the sense of being evident to oneself and wholly explained by one’s own opinion of them. Likewise, his systems of thought, as developed in his manifold ontologies and epistemologies, were held forth as only the product of rational processes, and completely explainable as the workings of his conscious mind. Freud introduced to western man the subversive, but not entirely untrue, notion of the unconscious. Man’s motives, as Freud was able to show, were not always what he said they were. Consequently, after Freud, western man needed always to suspect himself. The triumph of this worldview has been total, such that even critics of Freud like KM now accept the idea of the existence of unconscious motives. But this acceptance also meant that the very notion of God, and the moral order provided by Him, were brought into question. For what if, instead of an actual existence, the idea of God merely expressed man’s unconscious desire for a return to an infantile condition, presided over by a God as parents preside over their children? If this were true, and Occam’s razor would suggest that it is, the scientific project had once more abolished God.
Adam: “Darwin’s theory … essentially abolished what remained of the need for God as an explanation; it consigned him to metaphysical irrelevance, and by implication abolished any moral order established by Him. When Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, he was proclaiming the triumph of the scientific world view. In a sense, science has no other object than to abolish God.”
You sometimes write well, Adam. But I think you may be reading a bit too much into Darwinism.
The theory you seem to be talking about is metaphysical naturalism, for which Darwinism provides no evidence whatsoever. Darwinism, properly restricted to the principle of natural selection, is perfectly consistent with either one of the hypotheses “God exists” and “God does not exist”, and thus supports neither to the exclusion of the other. Granted, many so-called “Darwinists” are also metaphysical naturalists, but the scientific theory of natural selection is independent of the philosophical theory of metaphysical naturalism.
In addition, we should note that as Darwinism is about evolution rather than ultimate biological or cosmological origins, it does nothing to render irrelevant the concept of a Divine Originator. The question of whether the universe requires a Creator is superficially independent of processes occurring within the universe, including biological evolution. (The reverse need not be true.)
Adam: “And again, contained within Marx, there was an attack on God, and the old moral order. Religion was seen as no more than the opiate of the people; the moral order came not from God, but was designed by the ruling class to keep down the proletariat. When taken together with the other developments that were occurring simultaneously in other branches of human knowledge, this critique made a lot of sense and became enormously influential.”
Even if religion has often been used by the elite as a tool of mass pacification and subjugation, this does not automatically empty it of content. Its content is independent of its instrumentality.
Adam: “Bertrand Russell was later to formulate the dilemma perfectly: Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, leads to the conclusion that naive realism is false. Neither time nor space were anymore absolute.”
No, but the absolute remained alive and well in the locally Euclidean spacetime manifold of General Relativity, where the Lorentz transformations connect Euclidean frames of reference, tangent spaces replace points, geodesics replace straight lines, tensor equations replace Newtonian laws, and absolute spacetime intervals supplant relative distances and durations.
As the Euclidean framework of classical geometry and the Newtonian framework of classical mechanics were extended without being destroyed, the absolute universe “ruled over by a bearded white Gentleman who created man in his own image and had given him his moral rules” underwent a parallel extension and was simply reformulated on a higher level of description (General Relativity).
Thus, Einstein-related rumors of the death of God were (and are) greatly exaggerated.
Adam: “Man’s motives, as Freud was able to show, were not always what he said they were. Consequently, after Freud, western man needed always to suspect himself.”
Western man needed to suspect himself even before Freud, and frequently did. The problem was that he was not always allowed to openly follow up on his suspicions. We have much the same problem now, but coming from the opposite direction.
Adam: “The triumph of this worldview has been total, such that even critics of Freud like KM now accept the idea of the existence of unconscious motives. But this acceptance also meant that the very notion of God, and the moral order provided by Him, were brought into question. For what if, instead of an actual existence, the idea of God merely expressed man’s unconscious desire for a return to an infantile condition, presided over by a God as parents preside over their children? If this were true, and Occam’s razor would suggest that it is, the scientific project had once more abolished God.”
The question of the existence or nonexistence of God is independent of whether or not human beings have an unconscious desire to return to an infantile state or even to the womb. In fact, if such an unconscious desire exists, there can be no simpler way of explaining it than to assume that it reflects the longing for a purer state of being in which the unborn and newly-born actually exist.
The only extra assumption here on which Occam’s razor can operate is the notion that religion, rather than being founded (as its more rational apologists say it is) on a straightforward appreciation of nature and a longing for reunification with its source, instead has its roots in an unconscious and therefore empirically inaccessible psychological regression to biological infancy.
Aside from that, Occam’s razor is not in play here. As I’ve remarked elsewhere, the existence of an organizing principle in nature, which is the ultimate core of the God concept, is empirically given and cannot be eliminated from science.
@ eurodele
The point you seem to be missing is that Darwin, Marx, Einstein, and Freud, each in his own way, offers us a science- or reason-based alternative to a religious conception of the universe. If their theories are true, the Christian God becomes obsolete, a relic of a pre-scientific age. By this then do I mean that it is no longer possible for anyone to believe in God? Not at all. Belief systems need not be rational or scientific. But I do mean that such people have rejected science and rationality as a complete explanation for the universe. Therefore it is fair to say that, to the extent that they have faith in God, they have no “faith” in science.
Historically, the enterprise of science was developed as a means to avoid having recourse to God or other mysterious entities as a means of explaining the why’s of things. Science is nothing but the attempt to bring the world fully into the domain of our rational understanding. To the extent that it succeeds in this, God is dispensed with. This is what Nietzsche meant when he proclaimed that God is dead: We humans have slain him with our reason and our technology; a fully rational man in a universe that can be understood by means of reason has no need for God.
Some people try to eat their cake and have it too by saying that God created the universe, but now no longer interferes in its operation; or better yet, that God is immanent in the universe, like eurodele’s “organizing principle”, or as Spinoza suggests. But in either case, this is no help. If the universe is a rational place, then God can’t intervene. A given cause must lead to a given effect, no exceptions. There is no room for God in such a universe, at least not a God in the ordinary, Christian sense. He has been pushed out of it.
And who can take seriously a God who is powerless to contravene the laws of nature? If your God can’t perform miracles and suspend the laws of physics in response to prayer, then what good is he? No good at all. Therefore, believing in a God who created the universe, or created man, and who now is powerless to intervene, has very little net value. It is pretty much the same as atheism or agnosticism, since if such a God exists, he is unable to make his existence known to us, or affect the universe in any way.
“The point you seem to be missing is that Darwin, Marx, Einstein, and Freud, each in his own way, offers us a science- or reason-based alternative to a religious conception of the universe.”
Do they really? Or are you just imagining that they offer such an alternative?
After all, I’ve already explained that the ultimate metaphysical character of reality, such as it may be, is independent of anything in the work of any of these individuals, at least two of whom (Marx and Freud) are now widely considered to have been neither scientific nor especially reasonable.
“Therefore it is fair to say that, to the extent that [people] have faith in God, they have no “faith” in science.”
I’m afraid I don’t quite know what you mean by this. Metaphysics, which is a logically necessary level of discourse regarding the nature of reality, is independent of what you call “science”, which you seem to be partially conflating with some form of materialism (a flawed strain of philosophy).
But in any case, if science is not itself a religion, then one should not have to rely on “faith” to appreciate it. By the same token, one’s faith should not be threatened by it.
“Historically, the enterprise of science was developed as a means to avoid having recourse to God or other mysterious entities as a means of explaining the why’s of things.”
No, it wasn’t. It was developed as a sustained and cumulative attempt to satisfy human curiosity about the natural world while increasing net human utility, and it occupies a level if inquiry not typically discussed in religious scripture. This is why it was possible for many of the greatest scientists in history to be ardent believers in God.
“Science is nothing but the attempt to bring the world fully into the domain of our rational understanding. To the extent that it succeeds in this, God is dispensed with.”
Again, that makes no sense. The existence or nonexistence of God is logically independent of empirical science (but not necessarily vice versa), and cannot be “dispensed with” by means of anything which any mere scientist stands to discover.
“…a fully rational man in a universe that can be understood by means of reason has no need for God.”
Maybe not. But then why don’t you show us such a man, and such a universe? Show us the philosopher or scientist who has come up with a complete and perfectly consistent rational account of nature, and show us that picture. (Hint: His name wasn’t Nietzsche.)
“If the universe is a rational place, then God can’t intervene. A given cause must lead to a given effect, no exceptions.”
That’s called “Laplacian determinism”, and it seems to have been rendered false by the light of modern physics. It’s a very convenient assumption, but there is no scientist or philosopher alive who can come close to supporting it. (Incidentally, many of the modern scientists and philosophers who consider it to be utterly mistaken are reputed to be quite rational.)
“There is no room for God in such a universe, at least not a God in the ordinary, Christian sense. He has been pushed out of it.”
Again, while this may be an interesting and provocative assumption on your part, it is unsubstantiated. Merely repeating it over and over again doesn’t make it true.
“And who can take seriously a God who is powerless to contravene the laws of nature?”
Who wants God to contravene the laws of nature? Those who worship God worship Him as the SOURCE of those laws. A God whose place it is to dictate “laws of nature”, but then turns around and reverses them at a whim, would obviously be a contradiction in terms.
Nevertheless, you say that a God who merely enacts laws, and then has the poor form to actually treat them as laws by leaving them in place as originally intended, is of “very little value”. To you, this no doubt makes some kind of sense. But to most other people, it makes no sense at all.
Perhaps you should consider what your personal fate would be if God, defined as the ultimate source and guardian of the laws of nature, were to suddenly snap His fingers and suspend those laws. Surely you can understand that this would spell doom for the ungrateful creature calling itself “Adam”?
Think about it a little.
eurodele says:
A God whose place it is to dictate “laws of nature”, but then turns around and reverses them at a whim, would obviously be a contradiction in terms.
Nevertheless, you say that a God who merely enacts laws, and then has the poor form to actually treat them as laws by leaving them in place as originally intended, is of “very little value”. To you, this no doubt makes some kind of sense. But to most other people, it makes no sense at all.
Look, it’s really quite simple. Either you believe that the universe can be fully explained by reason — in which case there is no need for God, since in such a worldview he serves no purpose — or it can’t. To say that God is reason (i.e., your “organizing principle”) is a possible, though somewhat tired, dodge. But it’s really no use in saving the Christian God, because that is an interpretation utterly foreign and unintelligible to most Christians — and apparently to yourself as well, judging from your anthropomorphic depiction of God above. In the Christian view, God is a kind of “President of the Universe”; someone who personally cares about them, to whom they can appeal to intervene in their behalf by means of prayer. He is separate from the universe he created and rules over it. The Gods of Islam and Judaism are also envisioned like this. Buddhism and Taoism, among other religions, are different. They are atheistic religions in which the God hypothesis was dispensed with. Maybe you should investigate those forms of spirituality if you want to be religious and rational at the same time.
Adam: “Look, it’s really quite simple. Either you believe that the universe can be fully explained by reason — in which case there is no need for God, since in such a worldview he serves no purpose — or it can’t.”
Since the early Middle Ages, God has been explicitly considered the SOURCE of reason. That’s the basis of Anselm’s so-called “ontological” proof of the existence of God (it might just as well be called epistemological), which essentially says that one’s mere ability to think about God is proof of God’s existence.
Now, one can try to escape from this proof by saying something like “No, evolution is what has generated reason!” But evolution must have something prior on which to operate. In fact, evolution cannot explain natural selection, or the process of evolution itself; natural selection is axiomatic to the process.
By logical extension, Anselm would simply say that God is the source of natural selection right along with the natural world on which it acts and the mental world in which we conceive of God. All of these things have logical structure, hence require an ordering principle. So God cannot be “displaced” by them by any stretch of anyone’s frantic imagination.
Adam: “To say that God is reason (i.e., your “organizing principle”) is a possible, though somewhat tired, dodge.”
Then perhaps, if we were discussing arithmetic, you’d think that 1+1=2 is a “tired dodge”?
The fact is, God’s primary role has always been that of an ordering principle in nature. God can be defined to have other attributes and roles as well, but only in addition to this central role.
If you were to insist on working with another definition of God – one in which God is not associated with the natural order – then obviously, that would be the “dodge”.
Adam: “But [God as ordering principle] is really no use in saving the Christian God, because that is an interpretation utterly foreign and unintelligible to most Christians —”
What you seem to mean is, “foreign and unintelligible to my (Adam’s) personal image of Christians”. I personally don’t know a single Christian who does not (implicitly or explicitly) attribute the natural order to God, Who clearly must have organized the world in the process of creating it. Neither, I daresay, do you.
Adam: “…and apparently to yourself as well, judging from your anthropomorphic depiction of God above.”
Hold on a second. That was your depiction, and I put it in quotes. Try to keep the two of us separate. (In case you need an identifier, I’m the one who at least seems to know what he’s talking about.)
Adam: “In the Christian view, God is a kind of “President of the Universe”; someone who personally cares about them, to whom they can appeal to intervene in their behalf by means of prayer. He is separate from the universe he created and rules over it.”
You mean, of course, that divine transcendence (as opposed to immanence) is a core feature of Christianity. But that’s simply not the case. Even to call transcendence an “interpretation” of Christian scripture would be a stretch, insofar as the Bible nowhere depicts God as having sequestered Himself far away from His creation.
In fact, according to (e.g.) Catholic doctrine, God is supposed to be “omnipresent” throughout His creation, by virtue of which He is also “omniscient” regarding it. (A third quality, omnipotence, is implied by His having created reality and its invariant laws, for the continuing invariance of which He is considered solely responsible.)
Adam: “Maybe you should investigate those forms of spirituality if you want to be religious and rational at the same time.”
I agree that one of us had better get busy investigating comparative theology, if only to wake himself up to theological reality. However, that would be you.
Listen, here’s a well-meant piece of advice for you. The Web is teeming with atheists, materialists, “Brights”, and followers of people like Richard Dawkins who wear their irrational hatred for religion on their sleeves. Many of them run bulletin boards and email lists on which religious believers always seem to come out on the short end of the stick.
You might think that this is because Dawkins et al have “logic and science on their side”, but that’s an illusion created by means of their numerical majority in any argument, their tight control of the forums in which they operate, and their frequent recourse to rhetorical diversions and dirty tricks. Give somebody who knows what he’s doing an hour with Richard Dawkins himself, and Richard will either be eating communion wafers out his hand, or he will be dangling from the mesh and sullenly eating a banana.
It’s not because Dawkins, Dennett, etc., and their followers are stupid, mind you; it is merely because they are too insanely committed to their illogical viewpoint, their hatred of God and everyone who believes in Him, to tell their asses from their elbows, theologically speaking. All that one would have to do in order to make this obvious even to them is to isolate some of their many delusional inconsistencies and rub their noses in them at close range.
They know this, of course, and carefully avoid putting themselves in a position where it can happen to them. The problem is, they keep on talking anyway.
Just a word to the wise.
@ eurodele
Your exasperation at being exposed as irrationally believing in the God hypothesis is beginning to show. For someone as obsessed as you seem to be with the project of rationalizing his Christian faith, that must indeed be painful. We see what you’re really made of in the post previous to this last one, in which you challenge me to imagine an anthropomorphic God who will just “snap his fingers”, suspend the laws of physics, and make me disappear, or suffer the torments of hellfire — or something, it’s not clear what. For all your prating about reason, adorned with learned references to such figures as Laplace, Anselm, Dawkins, and Dennett, this kind of stuff shows you to be just as intellectually stunted as any Bible-thumping fundamentalist grade school dropout. Let me just pluck away from your fingers a few of the straws you are so frantically grasping at, and then unless you have something more interesting than you’ve shown so far, I think I’ll leave this topic as I think I’ve made my point and it’s beginning to bore me.
Anselm’s argument:
Anselm’s so-called proof for the existence of God is so stupid one wonders how anyone could ever have been convinced by it. Basically, it runs like this: God must exist because I can form an idea of a perfect being, and that idea isn’t truly perfect unless such a being actually exists. But what about a perfect island, or a perfect unicorn? Those things aren’t truly perfect unless they exist too, so can they be wished into existence like Anselm’s God? No, of course not. The argument fails.
On whether or not identifying God with an “ordering principle” such as reason is of value:
I entered this exchange by trying to show how the ideas of Darwin, Marx, Einstein, and Freud had destroyed the old conception of God. That this old conception of God has in fact been displaced by science and reason-based thinking is clear, and that is true whether or not you or others think that was called for, or desirable, or logically entailed. As an historical matter, it happened, and that’s the case whether you personally approve of it or not. In fact, for the most part, even religious fanatics now accept science as their new God, and this is shown in their actions. I would be willing to bet that even someone like you falls in this category. When you get sick, I’d wager that you go to a doctor and look to science to heal you, not God. When your car breaks down, I’d bet you take it to a mechanic. You don’t confine yourself to making sacrifices to God or praying to him to fix it — although in a pre-scientific age, before belief in God was displaced by more rational reactions, that is exactly the sort of thing that people did.
You apparently think you’re being clever when you redefine God as an “ordering principle”, but your words above show that you don’t really believe this yourself, at least not completely. You’re still thinking of him as a person, an omnipotent designer who created the universe and oversees its operation. Apparently you need this for psychological reasons. But as I keep trying to tell you, if you believed reason alone could fully explain the universe, you’d have no need of such a God. If God is forced to disappear into reason he becomes self-identical to it, and has no other existence apart from it. In that case, both atheist and believer alike are cast adrift in a universe which the laws of physics completely determine everything and grind to an inexorable conclusion. Of what value then is a belief in God? If reason explains everything, then God explains nothing.
Now, it’s true that the question of “Why?” has various levels, only some of which science and rationality address. For example, the question “Why is the sky blue?” can be answered by having recourse to explaining the physiology of the eye in relation to wavelengths of light and diffraction phenomena in the atmosphere. That would be a scientific approach. Yet someone (like you, perhaps) might say, “Yes, that’s why it’s blue, but why blue rather than some other color? Why is the causal chain structured in that way rather than some other? Who said it had to be that way?” Enter: God. But the existence or non-existence of such an entity cannot be ascertained. It isn’t even a scientific question. Science can tell us what the laws of physics are, but is silent on the question of why the laws of physics are as they are and not some other way. Of course, you can still believe there is such a God if you wish but, having been thus detached from the causal chain (except to begin it), he serves no practical purpose for explaining why things happen as they do. Even his existence isn’t subject to empirical determination. Therefore, belief in such a God has little practical value, and it’s quintessentially irrational — a leap of faith. It’s my view that the human need to make that leap is best explained by psychological considerations. That is the simplest hypothesis.
No, that inference still does not make any sense even if brain size is moderately correlated with IQ. The commonly quoted correlation coefficient from regression analysis from brain volumes ascertained from MRIs is .4. According to Race Differences in Intelligence and Inuits have large skulls (large than Asians) and their IQ is only 91 according to Lynn’s meta-analysis.
I think I finally see what they mean about you around here, Adam. I actually thought you might be getting a bum rap for a while, but that’s really not the case, is it?
When properly cornered regarding one of your back-assward opinions, you get a case of hurt feelings and are quickly reduced to what might as well be tears of rage. Then you simply begin spouting the same bone-headed drivel over and over again ad nauseam like a runaway audio loop, getting progressively nastier and more bombastic with each repetition. (Apparently, this is easier for you than actually using your head.)
Well, here’s some good news for you: I don’t have any more time to waste trying to get a rational message through your numb and probably undersized skull. There’s just no percentage in it, know what I mean? So believe whatever you want to. Or don’t. After all, if the miraculous fact that your rear end wasn’t booted off this board a long time ago doesn’t prove the existence of God to you, nothing will.
But you might consider doing yourself a favor and stop trying so hard to impress people with your use of language. You’re not nearly as good at it as you seem to think you are; there’s too little meaning and too much acid in your carefully contrived sentences. I suppose that some people might be fooled into thinking there’s some actual content there, but nobody worth impressing could possibly be that stupid.
So anyway, go and sin no more. (Sorry to have hurt your feelings.)
Aki_Izayoi:
Sorry, Aki, but you’re a little behind the times.
8/19/2008 – Scientific American claims that larger brain sizes may correlate with higher IQs.
“In humans, brain size correlates, albeit somewhat weakly, with intelligence, at least when researchers control for a person’s sex (male brains are bigger) and age (older brains are smaller). Many modern studies have linked a larger brain, as measured by magnetic resonance imaging, to higher intellect, with total brain volume accounting for about 16 percent of the variance in IQ. But, as Einstein’s brain illustrates, the size of some brain areas may matter for intelligence much more than that of others does.”
Here’s another one:
ScienceDaily (Dec. 26, 2005) – Bigger Brain Size Matters For Intellectual Ability
“Brain size matters for intellectual ability and bigger is better, McMaster University researchers have found. The study, led by neuroscientist Sandra Witelson, a professor in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, and published in the December issue of the journal Brain, has provided some of the clearest evidence on the underlying basis of differences in intelligence. The study involved testing of intelligence in 100 neurologically normal, terminally ill volunteers, who agreed that their brains be measured after death. It found bigger is better, but there are differences between women and men.”
Here’s another one:
ScienceDaily (June 18, 2005) — VCU Study Shows Big-Brained People Are Smarter
“RICHMOND, Va. (June 17, 2005) – People with bigger brains are smarter than their smaller-brained counterparts, according to a study conducted by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher published in the journal “Intelligence.”
The study, published on line June 16, could settle a long-standing scientific debate about the relationship between brain size and intelligence. Ever since German anatomist and physiologist Frederick Tiedmann wrote in 1836 that there exists “an indisputable connection between the size of the brain and the mental energy displayed by the individual man,” scientists have been searching for biological evidence to prove his claim.
“For all age and sex groups, it is now very clear that brain volume and intelligence are related,” said lead researcher Michael A. McDaniel, Ph.D., an industrial and organizational psychologist who specializes in the study of intelligence and other predictors of job performance.
The study is the most comprehensive of its kind, drawing conclusions from 26 previous – mostly recent – international studies involving brain volume and intelligence. It was only five years ago, with the increased use of MRI-based brain assessments, that more data relating to brain volume and intelligence became available.”
Here’s how it works in animals:
ScienceDaily (May 20, 2007) — Bigger Is Smarter: Overall, Not Relative, Brain Size Predicts Intelligence
“When it comes to estimating the intelligence of various animal species, it may be as simple measuring overall brain size. In fact, making corrections for a species’ body size may be a mistake. The findings were reported by researchers at Grand Valley State University and the Anthropological Institute and Museum at the University of Zürich, Switzerland.
(…)
The new study compared how well eight different brain size measures predicted the domain-general cognition variable generated in the earlier study. To the researchers’ surprise, overall brain size and overall neocortex size proved to be good predictors, but the various measures that controlled for body size did not. The results did not change even when various statistical assumptions were altered.”
So as you can see, Aki, the tide seems to have turned regarding the relationship between brain size and intelligence. Five years ago, your opinion would probably have been considered accurate, but no longer (Eskimos notwithstanding).
Aki_Izayoi says:
No, that inference still does not make any sense even if brain size is moderately correlated with IQ. The commonly quoted correlation coefficient from regression analysis from brain volumes ascertained from MRIs is .4. According to Race Differences in Intelligence and Inuits have large skulls (large than Asians) and their IQ is only 91 according to Lynn’s meta-analysis.
Good point. His response (“Eskimos notwithstanding” ???) shows he doesn’t really understand why the exception is a problem.
Just goes to show there’s no moron like a hi-IQ moron, I guess.
@ eurodele
You’re projecting again. I can just see you sitting there typing your screed furiously, drunk on Jeebus juice and the powah of da Lawd! In any case, I salute you, o fat-headed one. You left my arguments untouched, but your personal attacks on me were worthy of a true Christain! :-D
No, I am just saying that a .4 correlation with brain size and IQ does not necessarily mean that Asians with a brain size advantage would necessarily be smarter because of that. I was not disputing the Asian IQ advantage nor was I arguing that brain size and IQ aren’t correlated; but I was simply stating that those facts (asian cranial advantage and the .4 correlation of cranial capacity and IQ) alone do not justify the inference of an Asian IQ advantage. The Inuit example is a concrete example against such an inference because a .4 correlation allows significantly large positive and negative residuals.
BTW, brain size does not correlated with IQ within families (using 36 sibling pairs). (Just wanted to throw that out here… not necessarily to formulate any argument or thesis using the PNAS article… maybe I am inviting you to link to an article to address the PNAS one )
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/9/4932.full
Aki: “No, I am just saying that a .4 correlation with brain size and IQ does not necessarily mean that Asians with a brain size advantage would necessarily be smarter because of that.”
That’s agreeable. I was using “inference” inductively (in a weak sense), not logically or statistically.
My point was that comparative head size data and IQ data from Whites and Asians are well in line with the observed correlation. Given that complexity limits power in virtually all types of computational system, what we know about the brain as a neural network suggests that the correlation will eventually resolve to a particular kind of causal relationship: controlling for neural architecture, bigger brains are likely to mean greater maximum computing power, which could well mean higher IQ. (Of course, that’s only an educated guess as to what might actually be happening.)