...iIncredulity 3

[Joe Cummings]

Let's just remind ourselves of Luther' comments about lying:


"What harm could it do if a man told a good lusty lie in a worthy
cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches?”
Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 373.


“To lie in a case of necessity or for convenience or in excuse – such
lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on
Himself”
Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 375.

Earlier, I remarked on the assumption of our creationist friends that
the theories of origins were binary; that is, evolution and
creationism were the only games in town, and that they were mutually
exclusive. If you didn't accept one, then willy-nilly you had to
accept the other.

In the years since Lmmertrs helped found the "Creation Research
Society," there has been little evidence of any substantial number of
scientists abandoning evoltution and adopting the creationist view.
If, indeed, there are any. Perhaps one of our creationists could cite
the names of such defectors. It looks very much as if the only
recruits to "creation science" come from the ranks of the faithful.
But I'll stand to be corrected. Any offers?

I want to report now on an egregious example of the steps taken in the
UK to eliminate the teaching of evolution in some London schools.

In the UK, the educational standards in schools are set nationally,
and enforced by Examination Boards - at least in England and Wales. I
think Scotland has its own system.

One of the state examination boards was persuaded to censor all
questions of evolution from the GCSE Sciencel question papers sent to
a number of religious schools.
So for the same GCSE, there were TWO examination papers, one for the
commonalty of students and one for the religious schools, from which
questions of evolution were omitted.
The teacher, who goes by the name of "Conspiracy Catz" and has been
making humorous videos about flat earthism, happened to come across
this particular scandal, and felt obliged to address it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X34HDTI5IL0


This would have gone on indefinitely, but someone discovered it and
the scandal is now in the public domain. The examining board which
censored the papers would never have made this known until the leak.
Pretty scandalous.

I would strongly advise any creationist to look at the video and send
in their comments. Or will they remain silent and hope it blows
over?


Joe Cummings

[Bill]

Joe Cummings wrote:

> Let's just remind ourselves of Luther' comments about lying:
>
>
> "What harm could it do if a man told a good lusty lie in a worthy
> cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches?”
> Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 373.
>
>
> “To lie in a case of necessity or for convenience or in excuse – such
> lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on
> Himself”
> Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 375.
>
> Earlier, I remarked on the assumption of our creationist friends that
> the theories of origins were binary; that is, evolution and
> creationism were the only games in town, and that they were mutually
> exclusive. If you didn't accept one, then willy-nilly you had to
> accept the other.

There was and is, a third option: "I don't know". This is the option most
vigorously ignored since ignorance is the greatest sin possible in the
scientific age.

Bill

[jillery]

Thank you for sharing this video. Misery loves company, and it's good
to know there are other countries having trouble coping with religious
accommodation. I confess I got a giggle over the narrator exercising
his justifiable outrage. It reminded me of the scene from "Life of
Brian" when Pilate confronts the "wabble".

You may be aware that, thanks to Trump and his toadies packing SCOTUS,
it has handed down numerous decisions reversing long-standing
precedent of separation of church and state, the most blatant being
overturning Roe v Wade, it's likely that similar cases as the video
describes will soon appear in the U.S., if they haven't already.

--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.

[Joe Cummings]

>In the UK, the educational standards in schools are set nationally, and enforced by Examination Boards - at least in England and Wales. I hink Scotland has its own system.

On Wed, 28 Sep 2022 09:36:52 -0500, Bill <fre...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Joe Cummings wrote:
>
>> Let's just remind ourselves of Luther' comments about lying:
>>
>>
>> "What harm could it do if a man told a good lusty lie in a worthy

>> cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches??

>> Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 373.
>>
>>

>> ?To lie in a case of necessity or for convenience or in excuse ? such

>> lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on

>> Himself?

>> Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 375.
>>
>> Earlier, I remarked on the assumption of our creationist friends that
>> the theories of origins were binary; that is, evolution and
>> creationism were the only games in town, and that they were mutually
>> exclusive. If you didn't accept one, then willy-nilly you had to
>> accept the other.
>
>There was and is, a third option: "I don't know". This is the option most
>vigorously ignored since ignorance is the greatest sin possible in the
>scientific age.
>
>Bill

Unfortunately, Bill, that option has been preempted by any scientist
attempting to understand nature.

Maybe modified to "I don't know yet."

Joe Cummings

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 28 Sep 2022 09:36:52 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bill <fre...@gmail.com>:

>Joe Cummings wrote:
>
>> Let's just remind ourselves of Luther' comments about lying:
>>
>>
>> "What harm could it do if a man told a good lusty lie in a worthy

>> cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches??

>> Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 373.
>>
>>

>> ?To lie in a case of necessity or for convenience or in excuse ? such

>> lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on

>> Himself?

>> Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 375.
>>
>> Earlier, I remarked on the assumption of our creationist friends that
>> the theories of origins were binary; that is, evolution and
>> creationism were the only games in town, and that they were mutually
>> exclusive. If you didn't accept one, then willy-nilly you had to
>> accept the other.
>
>There was and is, a third option: "I don't know". This is the option most
>vigorously ignored since ignorance is the greatest sin possible in the
>scientific age.
>

Wrong again, as has been pointed out to you repeatedly here.
I guess you're simply incapable of stepping outside your
inherent prejudices to see reality.
>
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Bill]

Scientists substitute ignorance with an hypothesis, believing that the
darkness is thereby diminished. Some folks might see this as a desperate
hubris, while others see only progress.

[Glenn]

You know that. Do any such scientists exist?

[Burkhard]

Just a bit more context, Education Minister in 2014 was a certain
Elisabeth Truss - now busy as Prime Minister ruining what's left of the
UK science (The UK just dropped out of all the collaborative science
research programs in the EU, from the multi-billion Horizon projects to
the Marie Curie PhD scholarships) and running t the ground what is left
of the UK economy. Recently announced: An income tax cut for the rich,
lifting the salary cap for bankers, and just so that they have something
to spend their money on, reducing the tax on champagne and abolishing
the import ban for foie gras that does not show it was produced in
animal friendly ways.

The school in question has form: It was downgraded to "inadequate" in
2018, due to "not following the national curriculum, limiting pupils'
access to knowledge, poor governance, poor quality teaching, lack of
safeguarding, lack of respect for diversity or promotion of tolerance,
and failures to meet statutory requirements to equip pupils for
adulthood in British society."

Wehn ask why hardly any of their pupils progress to university,
massively below the national average, their Head said: "there isn't the
environment for Haredi girls to do that" "Our experience is that the
better educated girls turn out to be the most successful mothers. For
us, that's the most important role a woman plays."

[Glenn]

On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 9:20:24 AM UTC-7, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Sep 2022 09:36:52 -0500, the following appeared
> in talk.origins, posted by Bill <fre...@gmail.com>:
> >Joe Cummings wrote:
> >
> >> Let's just remind ourselves of Luther' comments about lying:
> >>
> >>
> >> "What harm could it do if a man told a good lusty lie in a worthy
> >> cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches??
> >> Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 373.
> >>
> >>
> >> ?To lie in a case of necessity or for convenience or in excuse ? such
> >> lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on
> >> Himself?
> >> Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 375.
> >>
> >> Earlier, I remarked on the assumption of our creationist friends that
> >> the theories of origins were binary; that is, evolution and
> >> creationism were the only games in town, and that they were mutually
> >> exclusive. If you didn't accept one, then willy-nilly you had to
> >> accept the other.
> >
> >There was and is, a third option: "I don't know". This is the option most
> >vigorously ignored since ignorance is the greatest sin possible in the
> >scientific age.
> >
> Wrong again, as has been pointed out to you repeatedly here.
> I guess you're simply incapable of stepping outside your
> inherent prejudices to see reality.
> >

And of course, you have and do stepped outside your inherent prejudices and see reality as it really is.

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 6 Oct 2022 09:14:01 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Glenn
<GlennS...@msn.com>:

Care to address the fact that I was correct in what I posted
about The Refrigerant's lie? No? OK.

[Glenn]

OK what?

[peter2...@gmail.com]

I was made aware of this thread today by jillery, thanks
to her love affair with the expression, "cdesign proponentsists".
--https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/c5F1_Zm_gQ0/m/BNMJQ290AAAJ
Oct 8, 2022, 2:15:34 PM
Re: Kitzmiller v. Dover Wiki

I did two rebuttals to that post this afternoon.

On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 10:55:24 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Sep 2022 11:24:20 +0200, Joe Cummings
> <joecumm...@hoosegow.com> wrote:

> >Earlier, I remarked on the assumption of our creationist friends that
> >the theories of origins were binary; that is, evolution and
> >creationism were the only games in town,

This depends greatly on whether "evolution" refers to the undeniable
fact that evolution has taken place on a grand scale, or to the restriction
of the word to the hypothesis that it was done without intelligent input.

> and that they were mutually
> >exclusive. If you didn't accept one, then willy-nilly you had to
> >accept the other.
> >
> >In the years since Lmmertrs helped found the "Creation Research
> >Society," there has been little evidence of any substantial number of
> >scientists abandoning evoltution and adopting the creationist view.
> >If, indeed, there are any. Perhaps one of our creationists could cite
> >the names of such defectors. It looks very much as if the only
> >recruits to "creation science" come from the ranks of the faithful.
> >But I'll stand to be corrected. Any offers?

FTR, since the above has nothing to do with the science of Intelligent Design
(ID) as practiced by Behe and Minnich and some lesser known scientists,
but only to do with creationists, I am not interested in it except
to regret to see them stoop to such shenanigans as related below.

> >I want to report now on an egregious example of the steps taken in the
> >UK to eliminate the teaching of evolution in some London schools.
> >
> >In the UK, the educational standards in schools are set nationally,
> >and enforced by Examination Boards - at least in England and Wales. I
> >think Scotland has its own system.
> >
> >One of the state examination boards was persuaded to censor all
> >questions of evolution from the GCSE Sciencel question papers sent to
> >a number of religious schools.
> >So for the same GCSE, there were TWO examination papers, one for the
> >commonalty of students and one for the religious schools, from which
> >questions of evolution were omitted.
> >The teacher, who goes by the name of "Conspiracy Catz" and has been
> >making humorous videos about flat earthism, happened to come across
> >this particular scandal, and felt obliged to address it:
> >
> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X34HDTI5IL0

I'm glad the double standards were exposed. I have consistently
fought against double standards no matter who practices them.

> >
> >This would have gone on indefinitely, but someone discovered it and
> >the scandal is now in the public domain. The examining board which
> >censored the papers would never have made this known until the leak.
> >Pretty scandalous.
> >
> >I would strongly advise any creationist to look at the video and send
> >in their comments. Or will they remain silent and hope it blows
> >over?
> >
> >
> >Joe Cummings


> Thank you for sharing this video. Misery loves company,

Whose misery? I thought jillery had a ball knocking down
such hapless creationists as Ray Martinez.

> and it's good to know there are other countries having trouble coping with religious
> accommodation. I confess I got a giggle over the narrator exercising
> his justifiable outrage. It reminded me of the scene from "Life of
> Brian" when Pilate confronts the "wabble".
>
> You may be aware that, thanks to Trump and his toadies packing SCOTUS,
> it has handed down numerous decisions reversing long-standing
> precedent of separation of church and state, the most blatant being
> overturning Roe v Wade,

The overturning of RvW has NOTHING to do with tampering with
the separation of church and state. The claim jillery is making
to the contrary is a falsehood promulgated by propagandists for abortion,
of whom jillery thus shows herself to be one.


The overturning was due in part to blatant distortions of the historical
record in Blackmun's Opinion of the court.

More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
experts are unable to agree where life begins.

The only real experts on where the life of a human individual
begins are the human embryologists like Ronan O'Rahilly,
author of _Human Embryology and Teratology_,
and the developmental biologists specializing in human
development, such as Keith L. Moore, author of _The Developing Human_.

The consensus in their respective fields is expressed by both: it begins at fertilization.
But Blackmun acted as though these fields did not exist.

> it's likely that similar cases as the video
> describes will soon appear in the U.S., if they haven't already.

They will fail almost immediately, unless they are in-house
tests by private schools who are protected by freedom of the press
from US governmental interference. But they will pay the price
of their students being handicapped in understanding biology.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> [...]
> [re overturning of Roe v Wade]

> More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
> deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
> experts are unable to agree where life begins.

I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.

Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago (becoming human
much later, but still long ago) and, in the case of people living now,
has not quit since. The uncertainty comes in where people want to stick
various labels, and religion is a big part of that.

There is also a huge disagreement about what is of value about life,
with the "pro-life" side, ironically, saying that little about it is of
value except symbolically and, of course, religiously.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Mark is taking advantage of the fact that at least one person has killfiled me,
but not him, to give that person [and anyone else who is following Mark's
posts but ignoring mine] a completely false impression of what
is going on here.

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 11:05:37 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > [...]
> > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
> > More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
> > deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
> > experts are unable to agree where life begins.

> I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
> than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.

Are you exiling Homo habilis and Homo erectus from the ranks of human beings?
"more than," lacking quantification, gives the impression of maybe 400,000 years
but hardly as many as 2,000,000 or more.

What DOES have everything to do with abortion is what jillery wrote and you snipped:

[repost]

On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 10:55:24 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> You may be aware that, thanks to Trump and his toadies packing SCOTUS,
> it has handed down numerous decisions reversing long-standing
> precedent of separation of church and state, the most blatant being
> overturning Roe v Wade,

[end of repost]

> Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
> same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago (becoming human
> much later, but still long ago) and, in the case of people living now,
> has not quit since.

Take it up with the ghost of Blackmun on Halloween,
or with jillery if you want a live person. She seems to
think the world of RvW; based on what you've done here, so do you.

In case that went over your head, Blackmun used the words,
"when human life begins," in a way widely understood to be relevant
to abortion. If one interprets the word "homicide" to mean the killing
of a member of the genus *Homo*, then that is exactly what most
of the abortions he had in mind are.

Don't get me wrong: I regard abortion up to 10 weeks LMP as "excusable homicide,"
in the legal sense.

>The uncertainty comes in where people want to stick
> various labels, and religion is a big part of that.

Not where what I wrote about Blackmun above is concerned.

Bill Clinton, when President-Elect, seconded Blackmun on national television
when a college student in Ohio asked him whether he thought abortion was murder.
Although the student could have been an atheist for all that he knew,
Clinton immediately translated the question into a religious context
by claiming that religious leaders are divided on when ensoulment occurs.

> There is also a huge disagreement about what is of value about life,
> with the "pro-life" side, ironically, saying that little about it is of
> value except symbolically and, of course, religiously.

You are just showing what an anti-pro-life propagandist you are.
I wish you could have been there on Monday, when Wayne Cockfield
lectured us in a meeting on the dangers of physician assisted suicide,
euthanasia, and so-called "Living Wills."

Wayne has been ardently pro-life in *every* sense of the word,
and no wonder: he had both legs completely amputated as a
result of combat injuries in Vietnam and has spoken to the
UN General Assembly on these end-of-life issues.

He told us how "Living Wills" don't define any of the terms they use,
like "terminally ill." He read documentation of what that expression means:
"a debilitating condition, which IF LEFT UNTREATED, will lead to an early death."

By that definition, you would be "terminally ill" if you had diabetes
but were not treated with insulin on a regular basis.

Take care,

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Glenn]

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 8:05:37 AM UTC-7, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > [...]
> > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
> > More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
> > deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
> > experts are unable to agree where life begins.
> I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
> than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.
>
> Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
> same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago

Support that claim.

[jillery]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:01:54 -0700, Mark Isaak
<spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:

>On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> [...]
> > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
>> More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
>> deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
>> experts are unable to agree where life begins.
>
>I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
>than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.
>
>Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
>same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago (becoming human
>much later, but still long ago) and, in the case of people living now,
>has not quit since. The uncertainty comes in where people want to stick
>various labels, and religion is a big part of that.
>
>There is also a huge disagreement about what is of value about life,
>with the "pro-life" side, ironically, saying that little about it is of
>value except symbolically and, of course, religiously.

Good catch in noting PeeWee Peter's failure to distinguish among all
life on Earth from the origins of humans from embryological
development from what point any government body has a compelling
interest in legislating the rights of independent humans vs
undifferentiated embryos. Only the last item has any relevance to his
favorite off-topic topic.

[Glenn]

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 2:00:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:01:54 -0700, Mark Isaak
> <spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:
>
> >On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> [...]
> > > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
> >> More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
> >> deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
> >> experts are unable to agree where life begins.
> >
> >I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
> >than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.

He didn't say 'human life", he used the common expression "life begins", which anyone
with more than three brain cells would instantly realize is meant to be taken into context
to human reproduction.

> >
> >Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
> >same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago (becoming human
> >much later, but still long ago) and, in the case of people living now,
> >has not quit since. The uncertainty comes in where people want to stick
> >various labels, and religion is a big part of that.
> >
> >There is also a huge disagreement about what is of value about life,
> >with the "pro-life" side, ironically, saying that little about it is of
> >value except symbolically and, of course, religiously.
> Good catch in noting PeeWee Peter's failure to distinguish among all
> life on Earth from the origins of humans from embryological
> development from what point any government body has a compelling
> interest in legislating the rights of independent humans vs
> undifferentiated embryos. Only the last item has any relevance to his
> favorite off-topic topic.
> --

Of course you want government to "follow the science", except when it conflicts with your worldview. The involvement of evolutionists in such threads, of which you include yourself,
is sickening. Undifferentiated embryos are living human cells packed with the information needed to develop into an "independent human". As an "independent" human, you have nothing that an embryo does not possess relevant to the concept of what determines "life". You are the people that fail to distinguish such simple scientific facts, as far as they can be defined. Your kind, including yourself and Mark, purposefully misrepresent the
"pro-life" side by ignoring the most relevant fundamental fact they all agree on, that life begins at conception. The politics of the subject concern where society should draw a line between that event and birth - and for some, even after birth.
As for me, I will regard your kind as willing to legislate "life" at any stage or condition between conception and death.
The controversy is more serious in my opinion than any other to civilization as we know it now, and likely the reason why many are now insisting on complete abolition of abortion.
You make me sick. I hope the feeling is mutual. Take that anyway you want.

[Mark Isaak]

So would say that someone who has a beloved but terminally ill and
constantly suffering pet euthanized is a terrible person, or would you
say that we should treat pets better than people?

Folks might also want to compare the map of the 26 states that are
certain or likely to ban abortion with the map of states that use the
death penalty. Apparently, "pro-life" means, "let's kill people."

[Glenn]

Nope.

>or would you
> say that we should treat pets better than people?

Nope.

>
> Folks might also want to compare the map of the 26 states that are
> certain or likely to ban abortion with the map of states that use the
> death penalty. Apparently, "pro-life" means, "let's kill people."
> --

Actually, pro-death means let's kill people, and that is what has been getting worse and worse over the years, partly as a result of RoevsWade. You pro-death people have pushed people too far, and now the extreme opposite result should not come as any surprise.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 5:00:38 PM UTC-4, jillery rewrote
talk.origins history, shackling herself to Mark's snip-n-deceive tactics
an hour and a half after I had convincingly exposed them.

Documentation below, after repeating some parts of the expose.

> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:01:54 -0700, Mark Isaak
> <spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:

And I wrote, describing Mark's whole post documented above,

"Mark is taking advantage of the fact that at least one person has killfiled me,
but not him, to give that person [and anyone else who is following Mark's posts but ignoring mine]
a completely false impression of what is going on here."

And jillery is flattering Mark ["imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"]
by taking advantage of the same fact (with "jillery" in place of "Mark").

> >On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> [...]
> > > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
> >> More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
> >> deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
> >> experts are unable to agree where life begins.
> >
> >I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
> >than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.

My riposte, an hour and a half before jillery's post, went in part as follows:

"What DOES have everything to do with abortion
is what jillery wrote and you snipped:"

[repost]

On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 10:55:24 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> You may be aware that, thanks to Trump and his toadies packing SCOTUS,
> it has handed down numerous decisions reversing long-standing
> precedent of separation of church and state, the most blatant being
> overturning Roe v Wade,

[end of repost]

The flattering words of jillery to Mark below simulate complete amnesia
about the above repost, thanks to Mark having consigned them to
invisibility as far as anyone who skips over my post is concerned.

> >Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
> >same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago (becoming human
> >much later, but still long ago) and, in the case of people living now,
> >has not quit since.

And my riposte to that went, in part, as follows:

`Blackmun used the words, "when human life begins," in a way widely understood to be relevant

to abortion. If one interprets the word "homicide" to mean the killing
of a member of the genus *Homo*, then that is exactly what most

of the abortions he had in mind are.'

> >The uncertainty comes in where people want to stick
> >various labels, and religion is a big part of that.

My riposte to that went, in part, as follows:

"Bill Clinton, when President-Elect, seconded Blackmun on national television
when a college student in Ohio asked him whether he thought abortion was murder.
Although the student could have been an atheist for all that he knew,
Clinton immediately translated the question into a religious context
by claiming that religious leaders are divided on when ensoulment occurs."

> >There is also a huge disagreement about what is of value about life,
> >with the "pro-life" side, ironically, saying that little about it is of
> >value except symbolically and, of course, religiously.

All Mark was doing here was revealing what a fervent anti-pro-life
propagandist he is. I did a long rebuttal to the pack of lies above,
which readers can see here:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/qo9z4PTIEKg/m/_OQcncWLAAAJ
Re: ...iIncredulity 3
October 12, 2022 at 3:30 PM UTC-4

That was 1.5 hours, to within a fraction of a minute, before jillery posted the following:

> Good catch in noting PeeWee Peter's failure to distinguish among all
> life on Earth from the origins of humans from embryological
> development

Here jillery feigns ignorance of the fact that it was impossible
to anticipate Mark's bringing these distinctions in from nowhere:
all I had to go on were jillery's words, documented above:

"You may be aware that, thanks to Trump and his toadies packing SCOTUS, it has handed down numerous decisions reversing long-standing
precedent of separation of church and state, the most blatant being overturning Roe v Wade,"

> from what point any government body has a compelling
> interest in legislating the rights of independent humans vs
> undifferentiated embryos.

Normal developing humans are undifferentiated embryos only in the
first week after fertilization. Jillery is confusing the issue of abortion
here with research on so-called "embryonic" [read: totipotent] stem cells,
which cease to exist within the following week, except for primordia of germ cells.

> Only the last item has any relevance to his
> favorite off-topic topic.

Not my favorite, but let that pass. It ranks high up on the list, just like
it does for jillery, as the statement of jillery quoted above shows.

That statement has gone down jillery's memory hole. In the words
of O'Brien in George Orwell's _1984_:

"It does not exist. It never existed."

Mark hasn't replied yet to jillery's flattery, but his enabling jillery's spiel
by snipping it shows that he, too, has a memory hole. And I know that Mark
has no qualms about using it in a wide range of contexts.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[jillery]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 15:44:00 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

>On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 2:00:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:01:54 -0700, Mark Isaak
>> <spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:
>>
>> >On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> >> [...]
>> > > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
>> >> More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
>> >> deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
>> >> experts are unable to agree where life begins.
>> >
>> >I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
>> >than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.
>
>He didn't say 'human life",

Nobody said he said...
More to the point, he didn't say "human reproduction" either.
Your willfully stupid word games work both ways.

>he used the common expression "life begins", which anyone
>with more than three brain cells would instantly realize is meant to be taken into context
>to human reproduction.
>> >
>> >Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
>> >same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago (becoming human
>> >much later, but still long ago) and, in the case of people living now,
>> >has not quit since. The uncertainty comes in where people want to stick
>> >various labels, and religion is a big part of that.
>> >
>> >There is also a huge disagreement about what is of value about life,
>> >with the "pro-life" side, ironically, saying that little about it is of
>> >value except symbolically and, of course, religiously.
>> Good catch in noting PeeWee Peter's failure to distinguish among all
>> life on Earth from the origins of humans from embryological
>> development from what point any government body has a compelling
>> interest in legislating the rights of independent humans vs
>> undifferentiated embryos. Only the last item has any relevance to his
>> favorite off-topic topic.
>> --
>Of course you want government to "follow the science", except when it conflicts with your worldview. The involvement of evolutionists in such threads, of which you include yourself,
>is sickening. Undifferentiated embryos are living human cells packed with the information needed to develop into an "independent human". As an "independent" human, you have nothing that an embryo does not possess relevant to the concept of what determines "life". You are the people that fail to distinguish such simple scientific facts, as far as they can be defined. Your kind, including yourself and Mark, purposefully misrepresent the
>"pro-life" side by ignoring the most relevant fundamental fact they all agree on, that life begins at conception. The politics of the subject concern where society should draw a line between that event and birth - and for some, even after birth.

Since your rant above doesn't remotely "follow the science", I am
obliged to point out that every living bit of flesh from your body has
exactly the same kind of information as undifferentiated embryos to
develop an independent human. In both cases, those cells depend on
remaining attached to an independent body to stay alive. This shows
they are unambiguously not independent human bodies, by definition.

>As for me, I will regard your kind as willing to legislate "life" at any stage or condition between conception and death.

And so you follow PeeWee Peter in conflating life with human life with
independent human life, a classic case of Garbage In to rationalize
your Garbage Out.

>The controversy is more serious in my opinion than any other to civilization as we know it now, and likely the reason why many are now insisting on complete abolition of abortion.
>You make me sick. I hope the feeling is mutual. Take that anyway you want.

Does your opinion also oppose the complete abolition of the death
penalty? Does your opinion also oppose the accumulation of wealth by
the few at the expense of the majority? Does your opinion also oppose
imprisonment? If not, then your willingness to defend life
unconditionally is arbitrary and selective. What's sickening is how
proud you are of your hypocrisy even as you pretend to follow a moral
path.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 7:55:38 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak
redeemed himself by leaving in everything I had written this time around.

I don't know how jillery will take this new development. Time will tell [or not].

> On 10/12/22 12:28 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Mark is taking advantage of the fact that at least one person has killfiled me,
> > but not him, to give that person [and anyone else who is following Mark's
> > posts but ignoring mine] a completely false impression of what
> > is going on here.

In her direct reply to Mark, jillery went on to emulate Mark in this respect,
making my preceding sentence significant.

Here, Mark, I was referring to the standard "Living Will" of the
State of South Carolina. Do you know what it is like in your state?

> > He told us how "Living Wills" don't define any of the terms they use,
> > like "terminally ill." He read documentation of what that expression means:
> > "a debilitating condition, which IF LEFT UNTREATED, will lead to an early death."
> >
> > By that definition, you would be "terminally ill" if you had diabetes
> > but were not treated with insulin on a regular basis.


> So would say that someone who has a beloved but terminally ill and
> constantly suffering pet euthanized is a terrible person,

Not at all. I was referring to language that misleads consenting
adults. I think most assume, like I did before I heard Wayne's presentation,
that "terminally ill" is still according to the old definition,
which had EVEN IF TREATED instead of IF LEFT UNTREATED.

> or would you
> say that we should treat pets better than people?

Pets ARE treated better than people in many respects. AFAIK, every
state has laws against starving animals to death, but no state
that I am aware of has laws against starving "terminally ill"
patients to death. The Terri Schiavo case made that abundantly clear.

Also, there are laws against cruelty to animals in every state.
Until very recently, NO state had laws against cruelty to unborn
human beings at a stage where they are capable of excruciating pain.

> Folks might also want to compare the map of the 26 states that are
> certain or likely to ban abortion

...with the usual exceptions of rape, incest, and threat to the life of
the mother (excuse me, I mean the pregnant woman or trans male)...

> with the map of states that use the death penalty.

SC has not used the death penalty in years, even though there are
people who have been on death row for quite a while, because
public outcry has made the drugs for lethal injection impossible to get.
Unless other states have other legal ways of executing criminals,
that also applies to them.

Now try comparing the suffering from lethal injection
to the suffering of a pain-aware unborn child being LITERALLY
torn limb from limb in what is euphemistically called a "Dilation
and Evacuation (D&E)" abortion without the benefit of anesthesia.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 17:30:53 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 5:00:38 PM UTC-4, jillery rewrote
>talk.origins history, shackling herself to Mark's snip-n-deceive tactics
>an hour and a half after I had convincingly exposed them.
>
>Documentation below, after repeating some parts of the expose.
>
>> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:01:54 -0700, Mark Isaak
>> <spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:
>
>And I wrote, describing Mark's whole post documented above,
>
>"Mark is taking advantage of the fact that at least one person has killfiled me,
>but not him, to give that person [and anyone else who is following Mark's posts but ignoring mine]
>a completely false impression of what is going on here."
>
>And jillery is flattering Mark ["imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"]
>by taking advantage of the same fact (with "jillery" in place of "Mark").

The above comments are more of PeeWee Peter spamming more of his
asinine allusions he doesn't even try to identify nevermind prove.

>> >On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> >> [...]
>> > > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
>> >> More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
>> >> deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
>> >> experts are unable to agree where life begins.
>> >
>> >I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
>> >than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.
>
>My riposte, an hour and a half before jillery's post, went in part as follows:
>
>"What DOES have everything to do with abortion
>is what jillery wrote and you snipped:"
>
>[repost]
>On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 10:55:24 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> You may be aware that, thanks to Trump and his toadies packing SCOTUS,
>> it has handed down numerous decisions reversing long-standing
>> precedent of separation of church and state, the most blatant being
>> overturning Roe v Wade,
>[end of repost]

The above was in reply to Joe Cummings, not to Mark Isaak, and so Mark
Isaak had no good reason to include it in his reply to PeeWee Peter.

>The flattering words of jillery to Mark below simulate complete amnesia
>about the above repost, thanks to Mark having consigned them to
>invisibility as far as anyone who skips over my post is concerned.

In PeeWee Peter's haste to spam yet more of his transparent
obfuscations, he conveniently forgot to identify "the flattering words
of jillery".

>> >Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
>> >same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago (becoming human
>> >much later, but still long ago) and, in the case of people living now,
>> >has not quit since.
>
>And my riposte to that went, in part, as follows:
>
>`Blackmun used the words, "when human life begins," in a way widely understood to be relevant
>to abortion. If one interprets the word "homicide" to mean the killing
>of a member of the genus *Homo*, then that is exactly what most
>of the abortions he had in mind are.'
>
>> >The uncertainty comes in where people want to stick
>> >various labels, and religion is a big part of that.
>
>My riposte to that went, in part, as follows:
>"Bill Clinton, when President-Elect, seconded Blackmun on national television
>when a college student in Ohio asked him whether he thought abortion was murder.
>Although the student could have been an atheist for all that he knew,
>Clinton immediately translated the question into a religious context
>by claiming that religious leaders are divided on when ensoulment occurs."

The above suggests PeeWee Peter agree that religion is a significant
factor, and perhaps the primary factor, in opposing abortion. That's
contrary to his previous statement, which he conveniently forgot to
include in his "expose".

"The overturning of RvW has NOTHING to do with tampering with
the separation of church and state."

>> >There is also a huge disagreement about what is of value about life,
>> >with the "pro-life" side, ironically, saying that little about it is of
>> >value except symbolically and, of course, religiously.
>
>All Mark was doing here was revealing what a fervent anti-pro-life
>propagandist he is. I did a long rebuttal to the pack of lies above,
>which readers can see here:
>
>https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/qo9z4PTIEKg/m/_OQcncWLAAAJ
>Re: ...iIncredulity 3
>October 12, 2022 at 3:30 PM UTC-4
>
>That was 1.5 hours, to within a fraction of a minute, before jillery posted the following:
>
>> Good catch in noting PeeWee Peter's failure to distinguish among all
>> life on Earth from the origins of humans from embryological
>> development
>
>Here jillery feigns ignorance of the fact that it was impossible
>to anticipate Mark's bringing these distinctions in from nowhere:
>all I had to go on were jillery's words, documented above:

Here PeeWee Peter feigns ignorance of the fact his failure to
anticipate isn't relevant to the fact of his comments were vaguely
phrased.

>"You may be aware that, thanks to Trump and his toadies packing SCOTUS, it has handed down numerous decisions reversing long-standing
>precedent of separation of church and state, the most blatant being overturning Roe v Wade,"
>
> > from what point any government body has a compelling
>> interest in legislating the rights of independent humans vs
>> undifferentiated embryos.
>
>Normal developing humans are undifferentiated embryos only in the
>first week after fertilization. Jillery is confusing the issue of abortion
>here with research on so-called "embryonic" [read: totipotent] stem cells,
>which cease to exist within the following week, except for primordia of germ cells.

PeeWee Peter is confusing 'totipotent" aka completely undifferentiated
with completely differentiated. All mammals, including humans, go
through stages of differentiation throughout embryogenesis:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_embryonic_development>

More to the point, and as usual, PeeWee Peter conveniently ignores the
fact that all the information in a zygote is duplicated in almost
every single cell of an adult.

In order for the absurd "individual humans exist from conception" to
become law, women would be obliged to submit their menstrual flow to
examination, lest they contain fertilized but unimplanted zygotes.

>> Only the last item has any relevance to his
>> favorite off-topic topic.
>
>Not my favorite, but let that pass. It ranks high up on the list, just like
> it does for jillery, as the statement of jillery quoted above shows.

PeeWee Peter is free to count the number of times jillery has even
mentioned abortion in T.O., excepting to document his spam. He
wouldn't even have to remove his shoes to do so. But he's too busy to
even try to prove his willfully stupid lies.

>That statement has gone down jillery's memory hole. In the words
>of O'Brien in George Orwell's _1984_:
>
>"It does not exist. It never existed."
>
>Mark hasn't replied yet to jillery's flattery, but his enabling jillery's spiel
>by snipping it shows that he, too, has a memory hole. And I know that Mark
>has no qualms about using it in a wide range of contexts.

As usual, PeeWee Peter complains about imagined memory holes in others
while conveniently forgetting about his own.

[Glenn]

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 5:55:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 15:44:00 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
> wrote:
> >On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 2:00:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> >> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:01:54 -0700, Mark Isaak
> >> <spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> >> [...]
> >> > > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
> >> >> More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
> >> >> deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
> >> >> experts are unable to agree where life begins.
> >> >
> >> >I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
> >> >than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.
> >
> >He didn't say 'human life",
> Nobody said he said...
> More to the point, he didn't say "human reproduction" either.
> Your willfully stupid word games work both ways.
> >he used the common expression "life begins", which anyone
> >with more than three brain cells would instantly realize is meant to be taken into context
> >to human reproduction.

So you inadvertently admit that you don't even have three brain cells.

> >> >
> >> >Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
> >> >same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago (becoming human
> >> >much later, but still long ago) and, in the case of people living now,
> >> >has not quit since. The uncertainty comes in where people want to stick
> >> >various labels, and religion is a big part of that.
> >> >
> >> >There is also a huge disagreement about what is of value about life,
> >> >with the "pro-life" side, ironically, saying that little about it is of
> >> >value except symbolically and, of course, religiously.
> >> Good catch in noting PeeWee Peter's failure to distinguish among all
> >> life on Earth from the origins of humans from embryological
> >> development from what point any government body has a compelling
> >> interest in legislating the rights of independent humans vs
> >> undifferentiated embryos. Only the last item has any relevance to his
> >> favorite off-topic topic.
> >> --
> >Of course you want government to "follow the science", except when it conflicts with your worldview. The involvement of evolutionists in such threads, of which you include yourself,
> >is sickening. Undifferentiated embryos are living human cells packed with the information needed to develop into an "independent human". As an "independent" human, you have nothing that an embryo does not possess relevant to the concept of what determines "life". You are the people that fail to distinguish such simple scientific facts, as far as they can be defined. Your kind, including yourself and Mark, purposefully misrepresent the
> >"pro-life" side by ignoring the most relevant fundamental fact they all agree on, that life begins at conception. The politics of the subject concern where society should draw a line between that event and birth - and for some, even after birth.
> Since your rant above doesn't remotely "follow the science", I am
> obliged to point out that every living bit of flesh from your body has
> exactly the same kind of information as undifferentiated embryos to
> develop an independent human. In both cases, those cells depend on
> remaining attached to an independent body to stay alive. This shows
> they are unambiguously not independent human bodies, by definition.

That's a rant. What it replied to is not. Life, or more specifically a new human life, begins at conception. Whatever reason you have for your diseased mind for dismissing that to say it isn't even remotely scientific is not interesting to me in the slightest.
And your "independent" argument is garbage out. At all stages of development all cells of the "body" are dependent. A newborn is not independent. You are not independent.

> >As for me, I will regard your kind as willing to legislate "life" at any stage or condition between conception and death.
> And so you follow PeeWee Peter in conflating life with human life with
> independent human life, a classic case of Garbage In to rationalize
> your Garbage Out.

I'm "conflating" nothing. Using one of your favorite words to babble against your opponents is funny, but is just another of the many things that reveal your irrational diseased mind. Clearly you do wish to legislate and define life anyway that suits your diseased mind.

> >The controversy is more serious in my opinion than any other to civilization as we know it now, and likely the reason why many are now insisting on complete abolition of abortion.
'
'
'
> >You make me sick. I hope the feeling is mutual. Take that anyway you want.
> Does your opinion also oppose the complete abolition of the death
> penalty? Does your opinion also oppose the accumulation of wealth by
> the few at the expense of the majority? Does your opinion also oppose
> imprisonment? If not, then your willingness to defend life
> unconditionally is arbitrary and selective. What's sickening is how
> proud you are of your hypocrisy even as you pretend to follow a moral
> path.
> --

I have not shown a willingness to defend life unconditionally, and for lives like yours I would not likely be willing to defend even conditionally. I've also not shown, nor have you identified or responded to any hypocrisy on my part. The same applies to my "moral path".
Your babbling is quite similar to Ron's, and other evolutionists here.

[jillery]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 23:06:04 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>

wrote:

>On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 5:55:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 15:44:00 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
>> wrote:
>> >On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 2:00:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>> >> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:01:54 -0700, Mark Isaak
>> >> <spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> >> >> [...]
>> >> > > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
>> >> >> More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
>> >> >> deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
>> >> >> experts are unable to agree where life begins.
>> >> >
>> >> >I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
>> >> >than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.
>> >
>> >He didn't say 'human life",
>> Nobody said he said...
>> More to the point, he didn't say "human reproduction" either.
>> Your willfully stupid word games work both ways.
>> >he used the common expression "life begins", which anyone
>> >with more than three brain cells would instantly realize is meant to be taken into context
>> >to human reproduction.
>
>So you inadvertently admit that you don't even have three brain cells.

Even someone like you with only three brain cells should be able to
comprehend that all normal people have much more than three.

<snip your remaining stupidity>

[peter2...@gmail.com]

There is a lot of table-pounding in the form of insults by the jillery below.
That's an allusion to an old joke of advice to lawyers:
"When the facts are against you, pound the law;
when the law is against you, pound the facts;
and if both the law and the facts are against you, pound the table."

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 10:05:38 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 17:30:53 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 5:00:38 PM UTC-4, jillery rewrote
> >talk.origins history, shackling herself to Mark's snip-n-deceive tactics
> >an hour and a half after I had convincingly exposed them.
> >
> >Documentation below, after repeating some parts of the expose.
> >
> >> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:01:54 -0700, Mark Isaak
> >> <spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:
> >
> >And I wrote, describing Mark's whole post documented above,
> >
> >"Mark is taking advantage of the fact that at least one person has killfiled me,
> >but not him, to give that person [and anyone else who is following Mark's posts but ignoring mine]
> >a completely false impression of what is going on here."
> >
> >And jillery is flattering Mark ["imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"]
> >by taking advantage of the same fact (with "jillery" in place of "Mark").

The above comments by me are winnable in any lawsuit, and jillery
is reduced to trolling by the jillerybot persona:

> The above comments are more of PeeWee Peter spamming more of his
> asinine allusions he doesn't even try to identify nevermind prove.

The above trolling makes an asinine allusion to earlier alleged asinine
allusions by me, NONE of which the jillerybot even tries to identify.
IOW, the jillerybot is hoisting jillery with the jillerybot's own petard.

> >> >On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> >> [...]
> >> > > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
> >> >> More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
> >> >> deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
> >> >> experts are unable to agree where life begins.
> >> >
> >> >I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
> >> >than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.
> >
> >My riposte, an hour and a half before jillery's post, went in part as follows:
> >
> >"What DOES have everything to do with abortion
> >is what jillery wrote and you snipped:"

Keep in mind the facts in this two-line quote, open-minded readers,
while interpreting what transpires below.

> >[repost]
> >On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 10:55:24 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> >> You may be aware that, thanks to Trump and his toadies packing SCOTUS,
> >> it has handed down numerous decisions reversing long-standing
> >> precedent of separation of church and state, the most blatant being
> >> overturning Roe v Wade,
> >[end of repost]

> The above was in reply to Joe Cummings, not to Mark Isaak,

This is totally irrelevant, and is a mild form of a dirty debating tactic
which I call "The Phantom Error Correction Scam".

> and so Mark Isaak had no good reason to include it in his reply to PeeWee Peter.

Mark had ample reason: his irrelevant digression, which I'd seen dozens of
times in talk.abortion [it's a standard abortion rights movement ploy]
would have been completely hollow without the deletion.

> >The flattering words of jillery to Mark below

The jillerybot shoved that word "below" down the memory hole
to make a cheap [worthless, actually] shot in the next thing the jillerybot wrote.

> > simulate complete amnesia
> >about the above repost, thanks to Mark having consigned them to
> >invisibility as far as anyone who skips over my post is concerned.

> In PeeWee Peter's haste to spam yet more of his transparent
> obfuscations, he conveniently forgot to identify "the flattering words
> of jillery".

"below" did that job, but the jillerybot was never one to let
facts get in the way of deceit and insincerity and mindless trolling.

The very first words by jillery in the post to which we are both referring
were obviously flattering to Mark.

And, lest anyone try to obfuscate what that post was, here is a url for it:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/qo9z4PTIEKg/m/h_Ss8K6QAAAJ

> >> >Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
> >> >same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago (becoming human
> >> >much later, but still long ago) and, in the case of people living now,
> >> >has not quit since.
> >
> >And my riposte to that went, in part, as follows:
> >
> >`Blackmun used the words, "when human life begins," in a way widely understood to be relevant
> >to abortion. If one interprets the word "homicide" to mean the killing
> >of a member of the genus *Homo*, then that is exactly what most
> >of the abortions he had in mind are.'
> >
> >> >The uncertainty comes in where people want to stick
> >> >various labels, and religion is a big part of that.
> >
> >My riposte to that went, in part, as follows:
> >"Bill Clinton, when President-Elect, seconded Blackmun on national television
> >when a college student in Ohio asked him whether he thought abortion was murder.
> >Although the student could have been an atheist for all that he knew,
> >Clinton immediately translated the question into a religious context
> >by claiming that religious leaders are divided on when ensoulment occurs."

> The above suggests PeeWee Peter agree that religion is a significant
> factor, and perhaps the primary factor, in opposing abortion.

Utter bilge. There is no hint of any agreement by me. Instead, what one sees
is a very thorough dismantling of jillery's allegation that RvW was a
violation of separation of church and state.

And so, the jillerybot's misrepresentation has identified one more
possible motivation for the snipping of her allegation by Mark.

> That's contrary to his previous statement, which he conveniently forgot to
> include in his "expose".

> "The overturning of RvW has NOTHING to do with tampering with
> the separation of church and state."

I stand by these words, but the blogosphere is full of allegations to the contrary,
including jillery's. And so I decided it needed a thorough dismantling,
and that is what my comments above BEGIN to do; there's lots more
ground that I have yet to cover, for want of time and space.

> >> >There is also a huge disagreement about what is of value about life,
> >> >with the "pro-life" side, ironically, saying that little about it is of
> >> >value except symbolically and, of course, religiously.
> >
> >All Mark was doing here was revealing what a fervent anti-pro-life
> >propagandist he is. I did a long rebuttal to the pack of lies above,
> >which readers can see here:
> >
> >https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/qo9z4PTIEKg/m/_OQcncWLAAAJ
> >Re: ...iIncredulity 3
> >October 12, 2022 at 3:30 PM UTC-4
> >
> >That was 1.5 hours, to within a fraction of a minute, before jillery posted the following:

And here are jillery's flattering words to Mark, about which the jillerybot shamelessly
obfuscated above:

> >> Good catch in noting PeeWee Peter's failure to distinguish among all
> >> life on Earth from the origins of humans from embryological
> >> development

> >Here jillery feigns ignorance of the fact that it was impossible
> >to anticipate Mark's bringing these distinctions in from nowhere:
> >all I had to go on were jillery's words, documented above:

Unlike jillery, I was not guilty of feigning, and the jillerybot's
riposte to the contrary is a mindless Pee Wee Hermanism along the
lines of the archetypal "I know you are, but what am I?".

> Here PeeWee Peter feigns ignorance of the fact his failure to
> anticipate isn't relevant to the fact of his comments were vaguely
> phrased.

The context of Blackmun's usage removed all vagueness:
he was referring to the life of each individual human being.
Mark and jillery probably knew that all along, but they
are abortion rights propagandists who will resort to all kinds
of tricks to obfuscate the true issues.


CONCLUDED in next reply to this jillery post.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2022 08:22:37 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>There is a lot of table-pounding in the form of insults by the jillery below.
>That's an allusion to an old joke of advice to lawyers:
>"When the facts are against you, pound the law;
>when the law is against you, pound the facts;
>and if both the law and the facts are against you, pound the table."

jillery acknowledges that PeeWee Peter's petard is bigger, which he
uses to shoot off his mouth after he inserts his foot in it.

[Glenn]

On Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 10:45:38 AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Oct 2022 08:22:37 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >There is a lot of table-pounding in the form of insults by the jillery below.
> >That's an allusion to an old joke of advice to lawyers:
> >"When the facts are against you, pound the law;
> >when the law is against you, pound the facts;
> >and if both the law and the facts are against you, pound the table."
> jillery acknowledges that PeeWee Peter's petard is bigger, which he
> uses to shoot off his mouth after he inserts his foot in it.
> --

Too bad you don't *acknowledge* the truth.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 2:10:38 AM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 5:55:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> > On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 15:44:00 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
> > wrote:
> > >On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 2:00:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> > >> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:01:54 -0700, Mark Isaak
> > >> <spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> >On 10/11/22 4:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >> >> [...]
> > >> > > [re overturning of Roe v Wade]
> > >> >> More relevantly, it is also due in part to *scientific* *facts* that Blackmun
> > >> >> deliberately ignored by "noting" that legal, RELIGIOUS, and medical
> > >> >> experts are unable to agree where life begins.

Mark's stupid word game that begins immediately below
is a staple among abortion rights zealots,
as I remarked in the post I did earlier today to this thread.

> > >> >I fail to see what the certainty of the fact that human life began more
> > >> >than 200,000 years ago has any relevance at all to abortion.
> > >
> > >He didn't say 'human life",

You are humoring Mark in his changing of the subject to the origins of
the *sapiens* subspecies of *Homo* *sapiens* by using his strained designation,
"human life" for it. That's behind what you wrote, and jillery is
pretending not to notice that:

> > Nobody said he said...
> > More to the point, he didn't say "human reproduction" either.

Next, jillery is shackling herself to Mark's stupid word game,
and projecting it onto you, Glenn:

> > Your willfully stupid word games work both ways.

Here, as in the post to which I replied a short while ago,
jillery is "pounding the table" with an unsupportable taunt.

> > >he used the common expression "life begins", which anyone
> > >with more than three brain cells would instantly realize is meant to be taken into context
> > >to human reproduction.

> So you inadvertently admit that you don't even have three brain cells.

The jillerybot did a mindless self-contrary taunt in reply, thereby failing
to pass the Turing test, then did a snip-n-deceive about the rest of what you wrote.

I have some comments to make about that below, after some more word games by Mark
and flattering remarks about them by jillery. I have extensively dismantled Mark's games
and exposed a dishonest cover-up by the jillerybot about what jillery wrote.

> > >> >
> > >> >Oh, are you talking about an *individual's* life? The answer is the
> > >> >same. That life began more than 2 billion years ago (becoming human
> > >> >much later, but still long ago) and, in the case of people living now,
> > >> >has not quit since. The uncertainty comes in where people want to stick
> > >> >various labels, and religion is a big part of that.
> > >> >
> > >> >There is also a huge disagreement about what is of value about life,
> > >> >with the "pro-life" side, ironically, saying that little about it is of
> > >> >value except symbolically and, of course, religiously.
> > >> Good catch in noting PeeWee Peter's failure to distinguish among all
> > >> life on Earth from the origins of humans from embryological
> > >> development from what point any government body has a compelling
> > >> interest in legislating the rights of independent humans vs
> > >> undifferentiated embryos.

Jillery is flagrantly misusing the word "undifferentiated" here; there might later come a backpedal,
claiming that "embryos attached to the parent" was meant by it.

> > >Of course you want government to "follow the science", except when it conflicts with your worldview. The involvement of evolutionists in such threads, of which you include yourself,
> > >is sickening. Undifferentiated embryos are living human cells packed with the information needed to develop into an "independent human".

That last sentence is not quite correct; see what I wrote about jillery's sophistry about "undifferentiated"
in reply to the post where it was first written.

> > > As an "independent" human, you have nothing that an embryo does not possess relevant to the concept of what determines "life". You are the people that fail to distinguish such simple scientific facts, as far as they can be defined. Your kind, including yourself and Mark, purposefully misrepresent the
> > >"pro-life" side by ignoring the most relevant fundamental fact they all agree on, that life begins at conception. The politics of the subject concern where society should draw a line between that event and birth - and for some, even after birth.

Yes: California had a bill that would have allowed infanticide by the parent
during "the perinatal period" [28 days after birth in some jurisdictions].
The bill was changed to some extent but I suspect there are still loopholes
to prevent prosecutions for violations.


I'm splitting my reply here to your post, Glenn, for easier readability.
With a bit repeated for context, I'll pick up in the next half
where I left off here, shortly after I see that this half has posted.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 2:10:38 AM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 5:55:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> > On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 15:44:00 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
> > wrote:
> > >On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 2:00:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:

My first reply to this post by Glenn ended with the following issue,
as stated by jillery:

> > >> what point any government body has a compelling
> > >> interest in legislating the rights of independent humans vs
> > >> undifferentiated embryos.

Glenn's immediate response to that was:

> > >Of course you want government to "follow the science", except when it conflicts with your worldview. The involvement of evolutionists in such threads, of which you include yourself,
> > >is sickening. Undifferentiated embryos are living human cells packed with the information needed to develop into an "independent human". As an "independent" human, you have nothing that an embryo does not possess relevant to the concept of what determines "life". You are the people that fail to distinguish such simple scientific facts, as far as they can be defined. Your kind, including yourself and Mark, purposefully misrepresent the
> > >"pro-life" side by ignoring the most relevant fundamental fact they all agree on, that life begins at conception. The politics of the subject concern where society should draw a line between that event and birth - and for some, even after birth.

And now I pick up where I left off, with jillery's reply to that.

> > Since your rant above doesn't remotely "follow the science",

The only flaw was Glenn's informal "Undifferentiated embryos are living human cells,"
where a precise statement would have ended with "are composed of living human cells."

> > I am obliged to point out that every living bit of flesh from your body has
> > exactly the same kind of information as undifferentiated embryos to
> > develop an independent human.

The thing which jillery was "obliged to point out" is pseudoscientific folly.
More and more of that "information" is turned off as cells multiply and successively differentiate,
rendering them incapable of developing into human beings via cloning.
As I wrote to jillery, only the primordia of germ cells retain that
capacity before the embryo has developed far.

> > In both cases, those cells depend on
> > remaining attached to an independent body to stay alive. This shows
> > they are unambiguously not independent human bodies, by definition.

> That's a rant.

More precisely, it is standard abortion rights boilerplate. An adult in a
coma from which [s]he is almost sure to awake within 9 months
and needing to be fed intravenously, or through a feeding tube,
and also to be on a respirator, is in the same situation. But it would
be murder to withdraw that life support without due process of law.

> What it replied to is not. Life, or more specifically a new human life, begins at conception. Whatever reason you have for your diseased mind for dismissing that to say it isn't even remotely scientific is not interesting to me in the slightest.
> And your "independent" argument is garbage out. At all stages of development all cells of the "body" are dependent. A newborn is not independent. You are not independent.

This common-sense comment is what probably motivated jillery to snip and run, and to lie
about the reason for snipping ("<snip your remaining stupidity>").


An irony here is that jillery is a staunch ally of Ron O,
who thinks he has a devastating comeback every time he accuses an opponent
with "snipping and running." The next time he does this to me,
I'll try to hit him early enough with this example of jillery's
behavior, and to watch his response to it. Unlike my behavior when
Ron O accuses me of it, jillery's action here is transparently cowardly.

> > >As for me, I will regard your kind as willing to legislate "life" at any stage or condition between conception and death.

More precisely, to allow abortion for any reason or no reason at any stage of pregnancy,
and to publish highly misleading "Living wills" that use "terminally ill" with a definition
hardly anyone would suspect. I explained that in detail to Mark.

> > And so you follow PeeWee Peter in conflating life with human life with
> > independent human life, a classic case of Garbage In to rationalize
> > your Garbage Out.


> I'm "conflating" nothing.

And neither was I. Nothing I did was remotely like what jillery is describing.
Like about a dozen people I could name, jillery is cynically preying
on the fact that you aren't going through every post of mine with a
fine toothed comb, and cannot be expected to be sure that jillery
(or others, as the case may be) are lying about me too.

> Using one of your favorite words to babble against your opponents is funny, but is just another of the many things that reveal your irrational diseased mind. Clearly you do wish to legislate and define life anyway that suits your diseased mind.

> > >The controversy is more serious in my opinion than any other to civilization as we know it now, and likely the reason why many are now insisting on complete abolition of abortion.
> '
> '
> '
> > >You make me sick. I hope the feeling is mutual. Take that anyway you want.

> > Does your opinion also oppose the complete abolition of the death
> > penalty? Does your opinion also oppose the accumulation of wealth by
> > the few at the expense of the majority? Does your opinion also oppose
> > imprisonment? If not, then your willingness to defend life
> > unconditionally is arbitrary and selective. What's sickening is how
> > proud you are of your hypocrisy even as you pretend to follow a moral
> > path.

People who constantly flirt with ethical nihilism, like jillery,
are unable to really understand morality or hypocrisy.
This, together with what you next write, Glenn, is why
this latest rant of jillery's carries no weight.

> I have not shown a willingness to defend life unconditionally, and for lives like yours I would not likely be willing to defend even conditionally. I've also not shown, nor have you identified or responded to any hypocrisy on my part. The same applies to my "moral path".

> Your babbling is quite similar to Ron's, and other evolutionists here.

The fact that they are "evolutionists" is almost beside the point.
Almost all of them are a lot less knowledgeable about evolution and abiogenesis
than I am. They are anti-creationISTS [i.e., they despise creationists]
but they seldom attack creationISM, but instead attack ID and are misled by
the titanic propaganda campaign to paint it as a form of creationism.


Peter Nyikos

[Glenn]

I think they are not misled at all. Your definition of who I refer to as evolutionists is not out of the ballpark. They are atheist activists, perhaps "religious fundamentalist atheists".

[peter2...@gmail.com]

I think most of them are misled, by the way they repeat stereotyped propaganda
which they never saw anyone challenge effectively. But it is possible that
most do fit your next comment:

> Your definition of who I refer to as evolutionists is not out of the ballpark. They are atheist activists, perhaps "religious fundamentalist atheists."

Your accusation of Martin Harran being one comes to mind,
but it is possible that he is a Useful idiot in the hands of atheists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

We need to distinguish between the movers and shakers and the Useful Idiots
(Ron O jargon: "rubes"), with "camp followers" in between.

One needs lots of experience to make the distinctions, but the better one
gets at it, the more effective one becomes against them.

For years I thought Burkhard was a mover and shaker, but his extreme deference towards
jillery on one memorable occasion, and also his recent sophistry, indicates that he is a camp follower.
On the other hand, I have good reason to believe that jillery is a mover and shaker, despite most
external appearances.

For instance, jillery often comes across like a Useful idiot
in places where I've started using the term "jillerybot,"
but either there is more than one person whose words
emanate from the email address that begins with 69jpil69,
or this is just a clever ruse.

In years past, I've referred to people who use such ruses as Usenet Angler Fish.

The feigned idiocy exuded at times by them is a ruse to lure guileless people into
letting down their guard and saying something that is palpably false,
and then the jaws snap shut, and the guileless person cannot escape.
This is because guileless people have well developed consciences,
whereas the Usenet Angler Fish are not hampered by their warped consciences.


Peter Nyikos

[Glenn]

He can be both, and I see them as intentionally repeating stereotyped propaganda, regardless of whether they have seen it work or not work in the past.

>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
>
> We need to distinguish between the movers and shakers and the Useful Idiots
> (Ron O jargon: "rubes"), with "camp followers" in between.
>
> One needs lots of experience to make the distinctions, but the better one
> gets at it, the more effective one becomes against them.
>
> For years I thought Burkhard was a mover and shaker, but his extreme deference towards
> jillery on one memorable occasion, and also his recent sophistry, indicates that he is a camp follower.
> On the other hand, I have good reason to believe that jillery is a mover and shaker, despite most
> external appearances.

And also can be seen as a useful idiot by others.

>
> For instance, jillery often comes across like a Useful idiot
> in places where I've started using the term "jillerybot,"
> but either there is more than one person whose words
> emanate from the email address that begins with 69jpil69,
> or this is just a clever ruse.
>
> In years past, I've referred to people who use such ruses as Usenet Angler Fish.
>
> The feigned idiocy exuded at times by them is a ruse to lure guileless people into
> letting down their guard and saying something that is palpably false,
> and then the jaws snap shut, and the guileless person cannot escape.
> This is because guileless people have well developed consciences,
> whereas the Usenet Angler Fish are not hampered by their warped consciences.
>

I put everyone into two general groups, honest and dishonest, though I am aware that none of us, including myself, is perfect. Those in the dishonest group are the ones that actually invented such tactics as you describe, as well as "quote mining", "ad hominem", "red herring", "strawman", etc.

[jillery]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2022 11:00:59 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

>Too bad you don't *acknowledge* the truth.

To quote Colonel Jessup "You can't handle the truth".

[jillery]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2022 12:14:40 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:


... yet more of his spamming trolls.

>On Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 2:10:38 AM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
>> On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 5:55:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>> > On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 15:44:00 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
>> > wrote:
>> > >On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 2:00:38 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>
>My first reply to this post by Glenn ended with the following issue,
>as stated by jillery:

which PeeWee Peter quotemined from a reply to Mark Isaak.

<context restored>
*********************************************************************

Good catch in noting PeeWee Peter's failure to distinguish among all
life on Earth from the origins of humans from embryological

development from what point any government body has a compelling

interest in legislating the rights of independent humans vs

undifferentiated embryos. Only the last item has any relevance to his
favorite off-topic topic.

*********************************************************************

>Glenn's immediate response to that was:
>
>> > >Of course you want government to "follow the science", except when it conflicts with your worldview. The involvement of evolutionists in such threads, of which you include yourself,
>> > >is sickening. Undifferentiated embryos are living human cells packed with the information needed to develop into an "independent human". As an "independent" human, you have nothing that an embryo does not possess relevant to the concept of what determines "life". You are the people that fail to distinguish such simple scientific facts, as far as they can be defined. Your kind, including yourself and Mark, purposefully misrepresent the
>> > >"pro-life" side by ignoring the most relevant fundamental fact they all agree on, that life begins at conception. The politics of the subject concern where society should draw a line between that event and birth - and for some, even after birth.
>
>

>And now I [continue my spam] with jillery's reply to that.


<restore "jillery's reply to that">
**************************************************************
Since your rant above doesn't remotely "follow the science", I am

obliged to point out that every living bit of flesh from your body has
exactly the same kind of information as undifferentiated embryos to

develop an independent human. In both cases, those cells depend on

remaining attached to an independent body to stay alive. This shows
they are unambiguously not independent human bodies, by definition.

***************************************************************

>The only flaw was Glenn's informal "Undifferentiated embryos are living human cells,"
>where a precise statement would have ended with "are composed of living human cells."

What PeeWee identifies above is the least of the flaws in Glenn's
comments, the larger being his transparent mindless ad hominems, and
his false accusations that Mark Isaak and jillery misrepresented any
"pro-life" position. Perhaps PeeWee Peter imagines Glenn's parroting
his style is the sincerest form of flattery

>The thing which jillery was "obliged to point out" is pseudoscientific folly.

PeeWee Peter should stick to his area of expertise, which clearly
fails to inform his understanding of embryogenesis.

>More and more of that "information" is turned off as cells multiply and successively differentiate,
>rendering them incapable of developing into human beings via cloning.
>As I wrote to jillery, only the primordia of germ cells retain that
>capacity before the embryo has developed far.
>

>More precisely, it is standard abortion rights boilerplate. An adult in a
>coma from which [s]he is almost sure to awake within 9 months
>and needing to be fed intravenously, or through a feeding tube,
>and also to be on a respirator, is in the same situation. But it would
>be murder to withdraw that life support without due process of law.

PeeWee Peter's comment above is standard anti-abortion boilerplate and
transparent obfuscation. As described above, the hypothetical adult
necessarily would have a history of independent existence. The
hypothetical is a transparent effort to conflate abortion and murder.

And to refresh PeeWee Peter's convenient amnesia, he previously wrote:
************************************************

Normal developing humans are undifferentiated embryos only in the
first week after fertilization. Jillery is confusing the issue of
abortion here with research on so-called "embryonic" [read:
totipotent] stem cells, which cease to exist within the following
week, except for primordia of germ cells.

************************************************

The above is not only different from what PeeWee Peter now claims he
wrote, and is not only is factually incorrect, but it also entirely
ignores the only "scientific" point Glenn posted in his otherwise
mindless rant.

More to the point, PeeWee Peter conveniently ignored jillery's direct
reply to his comments above:

************************************************

PeeWee Peter is confusing 'totipotent" aka completely undifferentiated
with completely differentiated. All mammals, including humans, go
through stages of differentiation throughout embryogenesis:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_embryonic_development>

More to the point, and as usual, PeeWee Peter conveniently ignores the
fact that all the information in a zygote is duplicated in almost
every single cell of an adult.

In order for the absurd "individual humans exist from conception" to
become law, women would be obliged to submit their menstrual flow to
examination, lest they contain fertilized but unimplanted zygotes.

**************************************************

Perhaps if PeeWee Peter spent less time compulsively spamming his
off-topic rants, he wouldn't sound so willfully stupid so often.

>> What it replied to is not. Life, or more specifically a new human life, begins at conception. Whatever reason you have for your diseased mind for dismissing that to say it isn't even remotely scientific is not interesting to me in the slightest.
>> And your "independent" argument is garbage out. At all stages of development all cells of the "body" are dependent. A newborn is not independent. You are not independent.
>
>This common-sense comment is what probably motivated jillery to snip and run, and to lie
>about the reason for snipping ("<snip your remaining stupidity>").

There is nothing remotely common sense about Glenn's transparent
mindless rant.

>An irony here is that jillery is a staunch ally of Ron O,
>who thinks he has a devastating comeback every time he accuses an opponent
>with "snipping and running." The next time he does this to me,
>I'll try to hit him early enough with this example of jillery's
>behavior, and to watch his response to it. Unlike my behavior when
>Ron O accuses me of it, jillery's action here is transparently cowardly.

The above is yet more of PeeWee Peter's transparent obfuscations. As
this post shows, it is he and Glenn who conveniently snip relevant
material, while at the same time compulsively adding obfuscating
noise, apparently so they can complain when others reasonably delete
same in a mostly futile effort to maintain coherence. That's what
puts the "PeeWee" in PeeWee Peter.

>> > >As for me, I will regard your kind as willing to legislate "life" at any stage or condition between conception and death.
>
>More precisely, to allow abortion for any reason or no reason at any stage of pregnancy,
>and to publish highly misleading "Living wills" that use "terminally ill" with a definition
>hardly anyone would suspect. I explained that in detail to Mark.

PeeWee Peter hasn't mentioned the kitchen sink yet, so this latest of
his compulsive and off-topic spamming trolls is likely to continue for
several more posts, and likely to spill over to multiple topics.

PeeWee Peter and Glenn are spending so much time flattering each
other, perhaps others should give them some privacy, not only as a
courtesy but also to avoid the inevitable nausea from the sight of it.

[Martin Harran]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2022 14:21:02 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"

I always knew you were a sick puppy but never really grasped just how
sick you really are. Or maybe it's just that your sickness is
degenerative.

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/13/22 11:24 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> [...]

> Yes: California had a bill that would have allowed infanticide by the parent
> during "the perinatal period" [28 days after birth in some jurisdictions].
> The bill was changed to some extent but I suspect there are still loopholes
> to prevent prosecutions for violations.

Is this the bill you are referring to?
Assembly Bill 2223, whose purpose says in part:
====
(d) Across the country, people have been criminally prosecuted for
having miscarriages or stillbirths or for self-managing an abortion.
California has not been exempt. Despite clear law that ending or losing
a pregnancy is not a crime, police have investigated and prosecutors
have charged people with homicide for pregnancy losses.
(e) Also across the country, pregnant people are under threat of civil
penalties for their actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcomes and
civil penalties have been threatened against people who aid or assist
pregnant people in exercising their rights.
(f) Pregnancies can end in a range of outcomes. Nationwide, as many as
one in five known pregnancies end in miscarriage. In California, as many
as 2,365 pregnancies per year end in stillbirth, meaning perinatal loss
after 20 weeks gestation. Many pregnancy losses have no known explanation.
(g) People also need to end pregnancies by abortion, including
self-managed abortion, which means ending one’s own pregnancy outside of
the medical system.
(h) Every Californian should have the right to feel secure that they can
seek medical assistance during pregnancy without fear of civil or
criminal liability.
==== [end quote]

see
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/04/california-not-poised-to-legalize-infanticide/

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, October 14, 2022 at 2:45:39 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Oct 2022 11:00:59 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
> wrote:

> >Too bad you don't *acknowledge* the truth.

> To quote Colonel Jessup "You can't handle the truth".

Glenn can handle it a lot better than you can.
Glenn was replying to a post by you in which you had
to snip out almost all of the post to which you were replying.

And that reply by you was a two line trolling which you
couldn't justify if your life's savings depended on it.

However, since you can easily defend yourself
by using The Ultimate Weapon of a Talk.Origins Scoundrel
in a lawsuit by *anyone* that is based on libel by you
that is confined to talk.origins, your life's savings are safe.

The only satisfaction the plaintiff would have is that
if you avail yourself of the Ultimate Weapon that way,
hardly anyone will take anything you post here seriously thereafter.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Fri, 14 Oct 2022 17:38:29 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Friday, October 14, 2022 at 2:45:39 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 Oct 2022 11:00:59 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
>> wrote:
>
>> >Too bad you don't *acknowledge* the truth.
>
>> To quote Colonel Jessup "You can't handle the truth".
>
>Glenn can handle it a lot better than you can.
>Glenn was replying to a post by you in which you had
>to snip out almost all of the post to which you were replying.

Glenn's comment above is a transparent non sequitur and so is no
"reply" by any meaning of the word that wouldn't also include farts
and other noises from his various bodily orifices.

[jillery]

It should be no surprise that anti-abortionists rely on fake news and
outright lies, as these are the tactics of most Christian nationalists
and pseudoskeptics. It's so much easier to just make up stuff than to
make coherent arguments based on facts.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, October 14, 2022 at 7:05:39 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/13/22 11:24 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > [...]
> > Yes: California had a bill that would have allowed infanticide by the parent
> > during "the perinatal period" [28 days after birth in some jurisdictions].
> > The bill was changed to some extent but I suspect there are still loopholes
> > to prevent prosecutions for violations.

> Is this the bill you are referring to?

It's the amended bill, not the original version to which I was referring.

> Assembly Bill 2223, whose purpose says in part:

Purposes mean little if someone finds a loophole.
I couldn't recall the wording of the amended bill, so it's good
that I can read it carefully now.

> ====
> (d) Across the country, people have been criminally prosecuted for
> having miscarriages or stillbirths or for self-managing an abortion.
> California has not been exempt. Despite clear law that ending or losing
> a pregnancy is not a crime, police have investigated and prosecutors
> have charged people with homicide for pregnancy losses.

The internet is awash with such allegations, but I have
never seen an actual case cited. Have you?

<snip of additional undocumented allegations>

> (f) Pregnancies can end in a range of outcomes. Nationwide, as many as
> one in five known pregnancies end in miscarriage. In California, as many
> as 2,365 pregnancies per year end in stillbirth, meaning perinatal loss
> after 20 weeks gestation.

There's that word "perinatal" with the open-ended "after". This context notwithstading,
the perinatal period extends beyond birth, specifically as I told you in the words
to which you are replying.

<snip for focus>

> https://www.factcheck.org/2022/04/california-not-poised-to-legalize-infanticide/

Thanks for the link, Mark. It may bring things up to date,
except that it is still called a "bill." Hasn't it been passed
and signed yet?

The relevant excerpt reads,

"The confusion that it might somehow “legalize infanticide” appears to have come from an early version of the bill, which was introduced in February.

"In that version, a portion of the bill said (emphasis ours), “Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.”

Birth is one outcome of pregnancy, and it's unclear to me whether it is made
clear that the perinatal death has to have been caused by some earlier events
or conditions during pregnancy.

It would have been nice to have dates for the claims by Trump, etc.
of which it said right at the beginning:

__________________________ begin excerpt__________________________________
Full Story
A California bill that would protect parents from investigation and prosecution if they lose or choose to end a pregnancy has been spun into a falsehood that the state is set to “legalize infanticide.”

The pastor of a southern California megachurch, for example, posted a message on Facebook claiming that the bill “would legalize infanticide!”

Other opponents have been posting similar claims, including Jenna Ellis — a member of former President Donald Trump’s campaign legal team — who wrote on Facebook, “This is INSANELY evil. California Democrats are trying to legalize killing children up to the age of 28 days.”

But there is no bill in the California state legislature that would make it legal to kill a person of any age.

_____________________________________end of excerpt________________________________

Note the "is" in that last sentence. Depending on when those undated statements
were made, the above account could be accurate or, at the opposite extreme,
what might be called an "ex post facto smear" in analogy with "ex post facto law,"
the latter being forbidden by the US Constitution.

But now, for the rest of the story:

____________________________________ excerpts ______________________________
An analysis from the Assembly Judiciary Committee prepared for an April 5 hearing on the bill suggested clarifying that section since, the report said, that “language could lead to an unintended and undesirable conclusion.”
...
The bill’s language was then amended to say, “perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause.” The bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, took to Twitter the same day as the committee hearing to address the claims of legalized infanticide.
...
Still, the claims have persisted, as shown by the examples above.

We asked Khiara Bridges, a professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, to explain whether or not there would be any risk that the law would allow for the killing of infants or children.

“Even before adding that language — it’s absurd to think it would legalize infanticide,” Bridges said.

“No judge in the world would understand the killing of a baby that’s born and outside of the uterus as a pregnancy outcome,” which is what the bill is focused on — making sure that parents aren’t criminalized for the outcome of a pregnancy.
_________________________________ end of excerpts

Note that date of April 5. The Fact Check article is dated April 22. Compare
that stretch with the stretch between February, when the bill was introduced, and April 5.
There was plenty of time in the latter stretch for red flags to go up by people
who didn't understand the bill the way Khiara Bridges understood it.

Khiara Bridges is probably right about her "no judge in the world" bit,
but that's a different issue from what might reasonably be inferred
from the original wording. An awful lot of trouble was averted by amending the bill.


Peter Nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/14/22 7:09 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

[big snips ahead]

> On Friday, October 14, 2022 at 7:05:39 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 10/13/22 11:24 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> Yes: California had a bill that would have allowed infanticide by the parent
>>> during "the perinatal period" [28 days after birth in some jurisdictions].
>>> The bill was changed to some extent but I suspect there are still loopholes
>>> to prevent prosecutions for violations.
>
>> Is this the bill you are referring to?
>
> It's the amended bill, not the original version to which I was referring.
>
>> Assembly Bill 2223, whose purpose says in part:
>
> Purposes mean little if someone finds a loophole.
> I couldn't recall the wording of the amended bill, so it's good
> that I can read it carefully now.
>
>
>
>> ====
>> (d) Across the country, people have been criminally prosecuted for
>> having miscarriages or stillbirths or for self-managing an abortion.
>> California has not been exempt. Despite clear law that ending or losing
>> a pregnancy is not a crime, police have investigated and prosecutors
>> have charged people with homicide for pregnancy losses.
>
> The internet is awash with such allegations, but I have
> never seen an actual case cited. Have you?

Yes, years ago. I don't remember whether the ones I heard of were in
California or other states.

>
> It would have been nice to have dates for the claims by Trump, etc.
> of which it said right at the beginning:

Why in hell are you listening to *anything* claimed by Trump? You have
to know by now that he lies about everything all the time. He is easily
the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime. And the people you
refer to as "etc." are morally little better if they can be associated
with him so naturally.

[broger...@gmail.com]

Here's one example,

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brittany-poolaw-manslaughter-miscarriage-pregnancy/

Here's an article about prosecution of women who used illegal drugs and had miscarriages, regardless of whether there is evidence that the drug use resulted in the miscarriage

https://www.al.com/news/2022/09/they-lost-their-pregnancies-then-prosecutors-sent-them-to-prison.html

And here's an article on the use of laws against concealing a birth or death or "abuse of a corpse" based on actions a woman takes after suffering a miscarriage or stillbirth.

https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cjgl/article/view/8061

[jillery]

Your last cite above is an example of the interpreting "person at
conception" to absurdly prosecute cases of fertilized zygotes failing
to implant and being flushed out with ordinary menstrual flow.

>> > It would have been nice to have dates for the claims by Trump, etc.
>> > of which it said right at the beginning:
>> Why in hell are you listening to *anything* claimed by Trump? You have
>> to know by now that he lies about everything all the time. He is easily
>> the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime. And the people you
>> refer to as "etc." are morally little better if they can be associated
>> with him so naturally.


--

[broger...@gmail.com]

Yes, personhood bills lead to some pretty radical and strange consequences. Depending on how you count, up to 50% of conceptions end in miscarriage. If fertilized zygotes have the same moral standing as newborns, then that rate of miscarriages is a huge public health emergency, demanding massive research funding. Surely if 50% of newborns died shortly after birth, it would be a health crisis that would demand an aggressive research program to reduce that mortality. So the pro-life/fetal personhood folks should be demanding a research program to identify and prevent the causes of miscarriage.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/14/22 7:09 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> [big snips ahead]

Unmarked ones, by you, totally disruptive of meaningful communication.

> > On Friday, October 14, 2022 at 7:05:39 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >> On 10/13/22 11:24 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>> [...]
> >>> Yes: California had a bill that would have allowed infanticide by the parent
> >>> during "the perinatal period" [28 days after birth in some jurisdictions].
> >>> The bill was changed to some extent but I suspect there are still loopholes
> >>> to prevent prosecutions for violations.

The above was modified by me in the post to which
you are replying, but your unmarked snips completely
erased everything to that effect.

> >> Is this the bill you are referring to?
> >
> > It's the amended bill, not the original version to which I was referring.
> >
> >> Assembly Bill 2223, whose purpose says in part:
> >
> > Purposes mean little if someone finds a loophole.
> > I couldn't recall the wording of the amended bill, so it's good
> > that I can read it carefully now.
> >
> >
> >
> >> ====
> >> (d) Across the country, people have been criminally prosecuted for
> >> having miscarriages or stillbirths or for self-managing an abortion.
> >> California has not been exempt. Despite clear law that ending or losing
> >> a pregnancy is not a crime, police have investigated and prosecutors
> >> have charged people with homicide for pregnancy losses.
> >
> > The internet is awash with such allegations, but I have
> > never seen an actual case cited. Have you?

> Yes, years ago. I don't remember whether the ones I heard of were in
> California or other states.

You did an unmarked snip here, which erased all clues
as to what "claims" I am referring to here:

> > It would have been nice to have dates for the claims by Trump, etc.
> > of which it said right at the beginning:

You did another unmarked snip here, totally changing the
subject to a wild, baseless, guilt-by-association rant:

> Why in hell are you listening to *anything* claimed by Trump?

I read about it for the first time in the Factcheck article,
and I was careless: it wasn't by Trump at all; it was by
Jenna Ellis — a member of former President Donald Trump’s campaign legal team.

I guess you didn't pick up on any of this because you didn't bother
to read what you snipped: it was "right at the beginning" [see above].

> You have to know by now that he lies about everything all the time.

Readers have to know that you believe in the magic of words like
"everything" and they might as well wait until you get off your
soapbox before concluding anything you say when you are under their spell.

I think once you do, you may appreciate something a Ukrainian friend
told me: Putin did not dare attack Ukraine while Trump was President,
because he couldn't be sure Trump wasn't even more reckless than he was.

Putin has Biden scared he might use tactical nuclear weapons,
and Biden has infected the whole country by being as afraid
of Putin as Putin was of Trump.

> He is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.

I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?

> And the people you
> refer to as "etc." are morally little better if they can be associated
> with him so naturally.

You snipped everything that might let readers know what
the hell "so naturally" is all about.

But then, you always did strike me as someone who
likes to impede meaningful communication between people
with opinions different from yours.


Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

Here an article that lists a few - this of course preceded the recent
legal developments:
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/09/01/they-lost-their-pregnancies-then-prosecutors-sent-them-to-prison

here how they are on the rise now:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/miscarriage-stillbirth-prosecutions-await-women-post-roe?leadSource=uverify%20wall

here a specific one:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59214544

and another one
https://reason.com/2021/10/14/woman-convicted-manslaughter-miscarriage-abortion-oklahoma-brittney-poolaw/

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:

[snips]

>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.

>
> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?

On a list of Christian values I found at
www.christianbiblereference.org. Trump doesn't just slip up a bit
regarding the values; he openly flouts them. All of them, and in a big
way. And actions speak louder than words.

I'm hoping you can help me understand the Trumpist mindset. I recently
heard that the divide in the country is ideological. But what, exactly,
is the ideology that Trump supporters want upheld? As best I can see,
the main part of it is that there *should* be a divide. Surely there is
more to it than that.

[Ernest Major]

On 18/10/2022 17:25, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>
> [snips]
>
>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
>>
>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
>
> On a list of Christian values I found at
> www.christianbiblereference.org.  Trump doesn't just slip up a bit
> regarding the values; he openly flouts them.  All of them, and in a big
> way.  And actions speak louder than words.

It might be clearer if you used unchristian, or if you wanted something
stronger, Antichrist-like. Trump to my knowledge doesn't persecute
Christian for being Christians, or systematically attack Christian belief.

>
> I'm hoping you can help me understand the Trumpist mindset.  I recently
> heard that the divide in the country is ideological.  But what, exactly,
> is the ideology that Trump supporters want upheld?  As best I can see,
> the main part of it is that there *should* be a divide.  Surely there is
> more to it than that.
>

--

alias Ernest Major

[Bill]

Trump is, fortunately, just a bad joke, soon forgotten. Consider Father
Charles E. Coughlin or George Lincoln Rockwell or any number of other
screamers and how their influence faded.

There are always demagogues and there are always those who shuffle along
behind them believing their bile, so what. They come and then they go but
civilizations muddle along somehow. There's better things to take seriously.

Bill

[jillery]

On Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:25:21 -0700, Mark Isaak
<spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:

>On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>
>[snips]
>
>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
>>
>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
>
>On a list of Christian values I found at
>www.christianbiblereference.org. Trump doesn't just slip up a bit
>regarding the values; he openly flouts them. All of them, and in a big
>way. And actions speak louder than words.
>
>I'm hoping you can help me understand the Trumpist mindset. I recently
>heard that the divide in the country is ideological. But what, exactly,
>is the ideology that Trump supporters want upheld? As best I can see,
>the main part of it is that there *should* be a divide. Surely there is
>more to it than that.

Bill Maher has an interesting idea about that:
**************************************
Part of the appeal of a Herschel Walker or a Donald Trump or any
number of egregious assholes Republicans have backed is, in their
mind, the worst a candidate is, the more it says to Democrats, "we
don't like what you're selling.
***************************************

IOW it's a case of collective nose-cutting and/or reverse
fitness-signaling. Christian nationalists are so repelled by what
they think Democrats stand for, they view Spawns of Satan as The
Chosen Ones by comparison.

[jillery]

On Tue, 18 Oct 2022 14:35:54 -0500, Bill <fre...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Ernest Major wrote:
>
>> On 18/10/2022 17:25, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>>
>>> [snips]
>>>
>>>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
>>>>
>>>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
>>>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
>>>
>>> On a list of Christian values I found at
>>> www.christianbiblereference.org. Trump doesn't just slip up a bit
>>> regarding the values; he openly flouts them. All of them, and in a big
>>> way. And actions speak louder than words.
>>
>> It might be clearer if you used unchristian, or if you wanted something
>> stronger, Antichrist-like. Trump to my knowledge doesn't persecute
>> Christian for being Christians, or systematically attack Christian belief.
>>>
>>> I'm hoping you can help me understand the Trumpist mindset. I recently
>>> heard that the divide in the country is ideological. But what, exactly,
>>> is the ideology that Trump supporters want upheld? As best I can see,
>>> the main part of it is that there *should* be a divide. Surely there is
>>> more to it than that.
>>>
>>
>
>Trump is, fortunately, just a bad joke, soon forgotten. Consider Father
>Charles E. Coughlin or George Lincoln Rockwell or any number of other
>screamers and how their influence faded.

Rockwell didn't pack the courts with Christian Nationalists. The
influence of Trump and his toadies influence will be felt as long as
his appointees have a SCOTUS majority.

>There are always demagogues and there are always those who shuffle along
>behind them believing their bile, so what. They come and then they go but
>civilizations muddle along somehow. There's better things to take seriously.
>
>Bill

[broger...@gmail.com]

The problem is not Trump. The problem is that there is a deep, persistent strain of theocratic, misogynistic, White nationalism that's in the U.S. waiting there for someone like Trump to rouse it and make it more active and aggressive. It never goes away, but in the absence of a figure like Trump it fades a bit.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 12:25:43 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> [snips]

They are much more benign than the ones you made last time,
I'll give you that.

> >> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
> >
> > I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
> > but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?

> On a list of Christian values I found at
> www.christianbiblereference.org.

Where? I see no heading labeled "Christian values."

Even if you can dig them out from somewhere in the website,
it's like trying to understand evolutionary biology
from popularizations on the level of "Science News,"
or worse. This one *cannot* do that much for Christian
values, but only those addressed in the Bible.

"Sola scriptura" is not a sure guide to Christian values.
It was a big bone of contention between Roman Catholics
and Luther. The various Orthodox (Greek, Russian, Armenian)
denominations were out of the loop, but they weren't sola scriptura either.
Moreover, in practice, most Protestants have departed from scripture in
many ways, such as easing up on the unequivocal comments of Jesus about divorce.

And even the most fundie of evangelical Christian sects
hew to certain interpretations of scripture that they claim to be normative.

Martin Harran could have told you all this, but he no longer
seems to want to explain Christianity, much less Roman Catholicism,
to non-Christians in talk.origins.

> Trump doesn't just slip up a bit regarding the values; he openly flouts them.
> All of them, and in a big way. And actions speak louder than words.

You, a non-Christian, speak of "Christian values" and rely on a "sola scriptura"
webpage. That wouldn't be so bad if you gave us some examples,
but you are so angry at Trump that you cannot (or maybe just don't want to)
give actual examples. Not of values, not of violations.


Now watch how unafraid I am of giving examples below.

>
> I'm hoping you can help me understand the Trumpist mindset.

Not being one of them, I can't help you much. But keep reading.

> I recently heard that the divide in the country is ideological.

There is a divide on ideological lines, especially where the
big "fault line" values are concerned. On one side of the main fault line
are "marriage is between a man and a woman" and "trans women
are biological men" and "abortion is wrong after a certain stage
of development" with considerable difference of opinion about the
stage, but almost all of it confined to the first trimester.

On the other side of the fault line are the "woke" and the masses who don't
care where the "woke" are taking the country enough to speak out
about it one way or the other.

>But what, exactly,
> is the ideology that Trump supporters want upheld?

"Trump supporters" represent a separate divide from the main political ones,
Democrat/Republican/Independent. It's Trumpist Republican v. Other Republican,
with the former outspoken out of all proportion to their numbers.

This is a political rather than ideological divide, but the ideological has become muddied.

There used to be a lot of unity, but with Trump flourishing the
rainbow flag and being booed for it by a crowd of Trumpists,
I don't know whether there is any major core ideology left.


Maybe YOU can help me understand a political mirror split in Democratic circles:
rabid anti-Trumpists vs. Other Democrats.

WaPo and NYT comments sections have the former predominating, again
probably out of all proportion to their numbers.

Do you agree with the outspoken majority there that if Trump were President,
he would have given Ukraine to Putin without a murmur of protest?

I wrote a diametrically opposite opinion in the post to which you
are replying, that of a Ukrainian friend. You snipped it, but perhaps
you can remember the gist of it even now.

> As best I can see,
> the main part of it is that there *should* be a divide. Surely there is
> more to it than that.

I don't know whether what you describe is a "main part", without
us getting specific about issues.

History isn't very clear on earlier phenomena centered around
single strong leaders. Have you ever been able to figure out what Peronistas
stood for? Or Peron himself?


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 4:25:43 PM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 3:40:44 PM UTC-4, Bill wrote:
> > Ernest Major wrote:
> >
> > > On 18/10/2022 17:25, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > >> On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > >>
> > >> [snips]
> > >>
> > >>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
> > >>>
> > >>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
> > >>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
> > >>
> > >> On a list of Christian values I found at
> > >> www.christianbiblereference.org. Trump doesn't just slip up a bit
> > >> regarding the values; he openly flouts them. All of them, and in a big
> > >> way. And actions speak louder than words.
> > >
> > > It might be clearer if you used unchristian, or if you wanted something
> > > stronger, Antichrist-like. Trump to my knowledge doesn't persecute
> > > Christian for being Christians, or systematically attack Christian belief.

I cast further doubt on what Mark was saying in my own reply
of less than an hour ago. The ball is definitely in his court.

<snip of more by Mark to get to Freon Bill:>

> > Trump is, fortunately, just a bad joke, soon forgotten. Consider Father
> > Charles E. Coughlin or George Lincoln Rockwell or any number of other
> > screamers and how their influence faded.

A more colorful (because many-faceted) example is Huey Long.
I've sometimes wondered just how much he and Juan Peron had in common.
However, to understand that would take a lot of study, more than it is worth
with my present wide range of intense interests.

I do believe, however, that Trump is at least as many-faceted as these two were,
and that Freon Bill is underestimating him.

> > There are always demagogues and there are always those who shuffle along
> > behind them believing their bile, so what. They come and then they go but
> > civilizations muddle along somehow. There's better things to take seriously.
> >
> > Bill

> The problem is not Trump. The problem is that there is a deep, persistent strain of theocratic, misogynistic, White nationalism that's in the U.S. waiting there for someone like Trump to rouse it and make it more active and aggressive. It never goes away, but in the absence of a figure like Trump it fades a bit.

Bill Rogers is bordering on paranoia here. The lunatic fringe he describes is not a danger,
not with Trump denouncing them personally in the wake of the Charlottesville melee + tragedy,
while NOT denouncing Antifa, etc. by name. But that wasn't enough for
the anti-Trump fanatic, Mitt Romney. Mitt discredited himself in my eyes
by demagogically asking Trump, "in the name of decency," to lay ALL the
blame for the upheaval in Charlottesville, on the kind of people Bill Rogers identifies.

After that, it did not surprise me in the least when Mitt denounced Tulsi Gabbard
as a "traitor" because of Tulsi's isolationist slant on the war in Ukraine.
Tulsi showed remarkable restraint in merely serving Mitt with a "cease and
desist" letter. I haven't heard how Mitt responded to that. If he merely
ceased and desisted and acted as though he had never received that
letter, Tulsi should have sued him for libel, IMHO.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 3:00:43 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On 10/14/22 7:09 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > [big snips ahead]
> >
> >> On Friday, October 14, 2022 at 7:05:39 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:


> >>> ====
> >>> (d) Across the country, people have been criminally prosecuted for
> >>> having miscarriages or stillbirths or for self-managing an abortion.
> >>> California has not been exempt. Despite clear law that ending or losing
> >>> a pregnancy is not a crime, police have investigated and prosecutors
> >>> have charged people with homicide for pregnancy losses.
> >>
> >> The internet is awash with such allegations, but I have
> >> never seen an actual case cited. Have you?
> >
> > Yes, years ago. I don't remember whether the ones I heard of were in
> > California or other states.


> Here an article that lists a few - this of course preceded the recent
> legal developments:
> https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/09/01/they-lost-their-pregnancies-then-prosecutors-sent-them-to-prison

I'm too pressed for time to read all of the sites you've linked today, but a quick run-through
of this first one shows that it is not a one-sided affair:

"Even in states with the strictest abortion bans, mainstream anti-abortion activists have largely discouraged criminal punishment for women, instead going after the medical providers through criminal or civil court penalties. The National Right to Life Committee says “any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women is not pro-life.”

There is a link embedded in the above paragraph giving more details,
including a concrete example of the NRLC not standing alone in this:

" “As national and state pro-life organizations, representing tens of millions of pro-life men, women, and children across the country, let us be clear: We state unequivocally that we do not support any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women and we stand firmly opposed to include such penalties in legislation,” more than 70 groups wrote in a May 12 open letter led by the National Right to Life Committee."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/24/antiabortion-movement-divisions/

Considering that this is coming from WaPo, it is surprisingly even-handed for the
most part. However, its last two paragraphs feature a claim by an antiabortion extremist
which makes him a "strange bedfellow" of abortion rights propagandists:

"But Bradley Pierce, executive director of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, helped draft the Louisiana measure and said he was disappointed when antiabortion lawmakers backed away from it.
“I think it revealed a lot of hypocrisy in those who said one thing and did something else,” he said, adding that the bill “would have done exactly what they say they believe. That is, treat a person before birth as being worthy of protection.” "

As if punishing the "medical providers" weren't enough for Bradley; he really wants
his pound of flesh in the Louisiana measure that also "[seeks] criminalize or punish women"
who get abortions, many of them under intense pressure from boyfriends and/or parents
and other close relatives.

But the charge of "hypocrisy" against the mainstream pro-life movement is sweet
music to the ears of abortion rights propagandists, who for decades have charged
rape and incest exceptions as being inconsistent with the concept of "pro-life".


But back to the article you linked, Burkhard.

The cases that are highlighted by the article have mostly to do with drug abuse.
What with the wide range of things now classified under the "woke" version
of the word "healthcare," the drug dealers could be construed
as "medical providers" [psychological well-being, y'know].
And they can be charged with having misled their customers about the side effects of
too much use, and are therefore punishable as being engaged in
in something akin to medical malpractice.


Peter Nyikos

PS I hope to get around to the other sites linked below before the end of this week.
It's a busy one, with family activities and a day trip to UNC-Charlotte to discuss
ongoing and future research in topology. A sabbatical year like the one I am on
comes with some obligations, and this trip is part of one of them.

[jillery]

I acknowledge there are always people like Trump and Rockwell. My
experience is most of them don't stay as public icons for very long
because they fail to learn the art of convincing people that kissing
their ass is a privilege.

[Martin Harran]

On Tue, 18 Oct 2022 16:37:00 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:


[...]

>Martin Harran could have told you all this, but he no longer
>seems to want to explain Christianity, much less Roman Catholicism,
>to non-Christians in talk.origins.

Martin Harran is more than happy to discuss any subject with anyone
with whom it is possible to have an intelligent discussion. That, by
definition, excludes you.

[...]

[jillery]

On Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:25:21 -0700, Mark Isaak
<spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:

>On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>
>[snips]
>
>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
>>
>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
>
>On a list of Christian values I found at
>www.christianbiblereference.org. Trump doesn't just slip up a bit
>regarding the values; he openly flouts them. All of them, and in a big
>way. And actions speak louder than words.
>
>I'm hoping you can help me understand the Trumpist mindset. I recently
>heard that the divide in the country is ideological. But what, exactly,
>is the ideology that Trump supporters want upheld? As best I can see,
>the main part of it is that there *should* be a divide. Surely there is
>more to it than that.

To minimize obfuscation, it would be helpful to specify whether you
refer to traditional Christian ideals taught in Sunday Schools and
expressed in sermons, like chastity, temperance, charity, diligence,
patience, gratitude, kindness, humility, and the golden rule, aka the
kind the Bible says Jesus preached. Or whether you refer to the
values actually practiced by Trump and arguably the majority of those
who claim to be Christians in the U.S. today, like lust, gluttony,
greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride, aka the classic seven deadly
sins. It was no accident that CPAC created a golden idol in Trump's
likeness.

[Lawyer Daggett]

I could say much more but I'm going to focus on this line from above.

> On the other side of the fault line are the "woke" and the masses who don't
> care where the "woke" are taking the country enough to speak out
> about it one way or the other.

I think it's very emblematic of the cultural divide and some things that have
driven it into the zone of embattled tribalism.

The term "woke" in particular has become a special boogeyman for many on
the right wing. But it's one of those amorphous things. What is it really other
than a label that is supposed to raise up emotions in a THEM versus US war?

40 years ago I might have used the term woke to describe that sheltered person
who suddenly discovered some new TRUTH and felt great passion for it. In their
awakening, they often have an exuberance about evangelizing this awaken to
others who, like they used to be, lacked this grand insight. It might be that "meat
is murder", somehow not having ever thought about what going into their cheeseburgers
before. Or it might be some feminist book, or a history that introduced a previously
sheltered person to the Jim Crow era.

The "woke" label was used to capture the sudden enthusiasm in someone who was
somehow previously seemingly asleep and unaware of some reality. Their sudden
zeal for justice can be tiring to even those who strongly agree with them but don't
see a similar urgency in addressing a wrong that they have long been aware of.
Those who agree with them hope to guide them to prepare for more than a sprint,
but for a lifelong struggle towards justice.

But what does "woke" mean now as politicians on the Right use it as a pejorative
against the left? Well, it's a grab bag. Apparently, people announcing their pronouns
really sticks in some people's craw. Yes, I think it gets overdone when cis-gendered
people make a point of it in some form of virtue signaling but what are they really
doing? They are trying to be supportive of people who have been the target of
abuse for a long time. I think their heart is in the right place. What's so threatening
about people wanting to be supportive of the downtrodden? (seemingly a what
ought to be a Christian value).

What else is "woke"? CRT --- Critical Race Theory. And fearful people being afraid that
it's being taught in grade schools. It isn't, it's taught in law schools as a theory, not a plan.
But the Right has twisted reality to claim that teaching history that includes some
aspects of the brutality of slavery in the US is CRT. They merge two claims, that some
white children might feel bad or guilty about how slaves were treated, and that somehow
teaching reality is about trying to make white children feel guilty and bad.

How has teaching facts become a dividing line like this? And it carries over. White Nationalists
get very upset that they are being told they should feel bad about their racist beliefs. That
too is labeled as "woke". In isolation, most on the Right cringe at the White Nationalists but
they are all casually recycling this term "woke" in a manner that smears it all together.

Also in schools there's SEL, that Social Emotional Learning. This covers a range of things but
at heart it acknowledges that different children learn in very different ways. Some need to
connect with what they are learning in a more emotional way to thrive. Trivially, some of
us could attack our basic arithmetic and care enough about being good at it as our own
reward and we thrived. Others not so much. But they respond well when, in a simple example,
girls see a biography of a female mathematician or two. That simple aspect of self-identifying
with math makes a difference for them. Similar with people of color. There's more to SEL
including incorporating lessons schemes that help children learn to manage their emotions,
frustration, anxiety, enthusiasm.

It turns out many of the Right consider SEL to be "woke". And they bundle in "new math" or
anything they are unfamiliar with. Just memorize your times tables like I had to. Just grind
through worksheets like I had to. Now why this is a political dividing line has some answers
but it's nevertheless crazy. Florida recently rejected a large suite of new textbooks as being
woke because they identified things like SEL in mathbooks and some specific examples
included, just as above, the audacity of pointedly including biographies of women and people
of color in their math books. These are one page bios at the end of a chapter, the sort of thing
a teacher might specifically point out to a child that was struggling to care. What a liberal
horror show. I might point out that treating children individually according to their abilities
and needs seems like what Christians ought to consider a Christian value.

I could go on with further examples but the broader point has been made. This term "woke"
gets used with some extreme example and then becomes the broadest of brushes to
use in tribalistic warfare, catching things where there would otherwise likely not be
an actual antagonism other than because of this engineered association with "THEM".

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/18/22 5:22 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 4:25:43 PM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 3:40:44 PM UTC-4, Bill wrote:
>>> Ernest Major wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 18/10/2022 17:25, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>>>> On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> [snips]
>>>>>
>>>>>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
>>>>>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
>>>>>
>>>>> On a list of Christian values I found at
>>>>> www.christianbiblereference.org. Trump doesn't just slip up a bit
>>>>> regarding the values; he openly flouts them. All of them, and in a big
>>>>> way. And actions speak louder than words.
>>>>
>>>> It might be clearer if you used unchristian, or if you wanted something
>>>> stronger, Antichrist-like. Trump to my knowledge doesn't persecute
>>>> Christian for being Christians, or systematically attack Christian belief.

Good point.

> I cast further doubt on what Mark was saying in my own reply
> of less than an hour ago. The ball is definitely in his court.
>
> <snip of more by Mark to get to Freon Bill:>
>
>>> Trump is, fortunately, just a bad joke, soon forgotten. Consider Father
>>> Charles E. Coughlin or George Lincoln Rockwell or any number of other
>>> screamers and how their influence faded.
>
> A more colorful (because many-faceted) example is Huey Long.
> I've sometimes wondered just how much he and Juan Peron had in common.
> However, to understand that would take a lot of study, more than it is worth
> with my present wide range of intense interests.
>
> I do believe, however, that Trump is at least as many-faceted as these two were,
> and that Freon Bill is underestimating him.
>
>>> There are always demagogues and there are always those who shuffle along
>>> behind them believing their bile, so what. They come and then they go but
>>> civilizations muddle along somehow. There's better things to take seriously.
>>>
>>> Bill
>
>> The problem is not Trump. The problem is that there is a deep, persistent strain of theocratic, misogynistic, White nationalism that's in the U.S. waiting there for someone like Trump to rouse it and make it more active and aggressive. It never goes away, but in the absence of a figure like Trump it fades a bit.
>
> Bill Rogers is bordering on paranoia here.

Probably you're familiar with the term "terrorism". What you may not
know is that, according to the FBI, most of it in the Unites States
comes from right-wing Americans. And the FBI and other law enforcement
agencies share Bill Rogers' "paranoia."

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/18/22 4:37 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 12:25:43 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:

[more snipping stuff I'm not responding to]

>>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
>>>
>>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
>>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
>
>> On a list of Christian values I found at
>> www.christianbiblereference.org.
>
> Where? I see no heading labeled "Christian values."

The web page might be gone now. The list of values is:
1. Worship only God.
2. Respect all people.
3. Be humble.
4. Be honest.
5. Live a moral life.
6. Be generous with time and money.
7. Practice what you preach.
8. Don't be self-righteous.
9. Don't hold a grudge.
10. Forgive others.

>> I'm hoping you can help me understand the Trumpist mindset.
>
> Not being one of them, I can't help you much. But keep reading.
>
>
>> I recently heard that the divide in the country is ideological.
>
> There is a divide on ideological lines, especially where the
> big "fault line" values are concerned. On one side of the main fault line
> are "marriage is between a man and a woman" and "trans women
> are biological men" and "abortion is wrong after a certain stage
> of development" with considerable difference of opinion about the
> stage, but almost all of it confined to the first trimester.

The first two are example of division for the sake of division that I
referred to. The abortion is much too complicated to address in the
time I have now.

> On the other side of the fault line are the "woke" and the masses who don't
> care where the "woke" are taking the country enough to speak out
> about it one way or the other.

That is saying nothing, but in disparaging terms.

>> But what, exactly,
>> is the ideology that Trump supporters want upheld?
>
> "Trump supporters" represent a separate divide from the main political ones,
> Democrat/Republican/Independent. It's Trumpist Republican v. Other Republican,
> with the former outspoken out of all proportion to their numbers.

In congress, it is Trump all the way. The couple of Republican
non-Trump supporters got voted out or did not run for re-election.

> This is a political rather than ideological divide, but the ideological has become muddied.
>
> There used to be a lot of unity, but with Trump flourishing the
> rainbow flag and being booed for it by a crowd of Trumpists,
> I don't know whether there is any major core ideology left.
>
> Maybe YOU can help me understand a political mirror split in Democratic circles:
> rabid anti-Trumpists vs. Other Democrats.

I don't know. I'm not a Democrat myself, but I see anyone who is not
rabidly anti-Trump as either pro-fascism and anti-democracy, hopelessly
gullible, or totally detached from news. Surely there are gradients in
all three categories.

> Do you agree with the outspoken majority there that if Trump were President,
> he would have given Ukraine to Putin without a murmur of protest?

I think it is very likely. Putin is the *only* person to whom Trump has
given unmitigated praise and no criticism. All indications are that
Putin is what Trump wants to be when he grows up.

[Bill]

The social and political polarization in the US is the same as the
polarization that has always existed, throughout history. The only change is
in the words used. The entire "Us or Them" extremes seems to be a
fundamental characteristic of humankind.

If there was a general principle that all people agreed was a basic
necessity, how is it that people have never agreed on what it is? People
can't even accept something as simple as the value of human life and
certainly not a responsibility for the welfare of other people. We have
shown ourselves to be savage animals capable of thought yet indifferent to
it.

There are no good guys, no bad guys, none righteous, just limitless self
interest.

Bill

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 19, 2022 at 4:40:44 AM UTC-4, martin...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Oct 2022 16:37:00 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

[in reply to Mark Isaak:]

> >Martin Harran could have told you all this, but he no longer
> >seems to want to explain Christianity, much less Roman Catholicism,
> >to non-Christians in talk.origins.

> Martin Harran is more than happy to discuss any subject with anyone
> with whom it is possible to have an intelligent discussion.

... for you, Martin Harran, except on rare occasions.

One involved a reply to you by Bill Rogers in which he brought
up an issue which is a big stumbling block about the Catholic
Church to millions of evangelicals:

"Another, a Central American evangelical convert from Catholicism, told me Catholics were not Christians because they worshipped many gods, like Peter, and Mary."
-- https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ywKmtOuaq08/m/6t5MREm6CgAJ
Re: What is Christianity?
Dec 15, 2021, 10:15:25 AM

This should have been a no-brainer for you, but you never answered that post.
After two days, I decided someone ought to set the record straight on this issue, and so
I replied to that post, and also tried to clarify the more difficult issue of whether
Mormonism is a branch of Christianity in that reply.
--https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ywKmtOuaq08/m/QO0DbgPnAAAJ
Dec 17, 2021, 3:45:25 PM


And then there was an exception in the opposite direction,
your next comment notwithstanding:

> That, by definition, excludes you.
>
> [...]

In between Bill's post and my reply to it, I did a post in reply to Glenn,
who had been debating you about a technical issue connected with the
devil's tempting of Jesus in the desert. I made a comment about something you
had written and answered a question of yours.

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ywKmtOuaq08/m/sHnB-7zgAAAJ
Re: What is Christianity?
Dec 17, 2021, 1:50:26 PM

Your reply was cordial, all the way through: here is everything you wrote there:

"Care to expalin how that relates to whether or not Satan is an atheist?"
...
"I always thought Satan to be a pretty smart being who wouldn't waste his time like that but maybe you know better."
...
"So your polymathic skills extend even to biblical exegesis, gosh who would have thought that!"
...
"At leat we agree on something – Glenn’s post are not easy to decipher."
-- https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ywKmtOuaq08/m/afxiI2DiAAAJ
Dec 17, 2021, 2:20:26 PM

In my reply, I said at the beginning that it looks like you are getting into the Christmas spirit,
and was cordial in return, getting deeper into the issue of whether Satan is an atheist.

--https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ywKmtOuaq08/m/5VzX8WL3AAAJ
Dec 17, 2021, 8:45:25 PM

In your reply to that, you suddenly turned back into the Martin Harran
who is operative in the post of today to which I am replying.
Documentation here:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ywKmtOuaq08/m/H-N_SsIQAQAJ
Dec 18, 2021, 4:30:25 AM


Peter Nyikos

PS You had no trouble carrying on a conversation with Glenn throughout
much of December on that thread. Looks like his level of intelligence
makes it easier for you to converse with him than is my level.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Now we come to the part you are expounding on below, LD:

> > There is a divide on ideological lines, especially where the
> > big "fault line" values are concerned. On one side of the main fault line
> > are "marriage is between a man and a woman" and "trans women
> > are biological men" and "abortion is wrong after a certain stage
> > of development" with considerable difference of opinion about the
> > stage, but almost all of it confined to the first trimester.
> >
> > On the other side of the fault line are the "woke" and the masses who don't
> > care where the "woke" are taking the country enough to speak out
> > about it one way or the other.
> > >But what, exactly,
> > > is the ideology that Trump supporters want upheld?
> > "Trump supporters" represent a separate divide from the main political ones,
> > Democrat/Republican/Independent. It's Trumpist Republican v. Other Republican,
> > with the former outspoken out of all proportion to their numbers.
> >
> > This is a political rather than ideological divide, but the ideological has become muddied.
> >
> > There used to be a lot of unity, but with Trump flourishing the
> > rainbow flag and being booed for it by a crowd of Trumpists,
> > I don't know whether there is any major core ideology left.

<snip to get to your words, LD>

> I could say much more but I'm going to focus on this line from above.

> > On the other side of the fault line are the "woke" and the masses who don't
> > care where the "woke" are taking the country enough to speak out
> > about it one way or the other.

That cuts both ways: some don't care enough to speak out against it,
though they don't like it; others don't care to speak out in support of
it even though they do like it.

> I think it's very emblematic of the cultural divide and some things that have
> driven it into the zone of embattled tribalism.
>
> The term "woke" in particular has become a special boogeyman for many on
> the right wing. But it's one of those amorphous things.

Hardly. Biden came down foursquare on the "woke" side, setting himself
apart from "the masses" with comments like, "Trans is the civil
rights issue of our time," and actions like supporting a federal law
that would wipe out all laws against abortion and other laws
that regulate abortion. More about one kind of law like that below.

> What is it really other
> than a label that is supposed to raise up emotions in a THEM versus US war?

It is a description of what is happening on one side of the divide.
Hemidactylus took the same kind of attitude towards the word "woke"
that you are doing here, but NOBODY was able to justify his
Biden-like attitude towards what the word stands for.

My reply to Hemidactylus is here; see if you can help Hemi out:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/WWXQfKiyLXk/m/scL8TQ0QAgAJ
Re: Back again
Sep 9, 2022, 9:20:06 AM

>
> 40 years ago I might have used the term woke to describe that sheltered person
> who suddenly discovered some new TRUTH and felt great passion for it. In their
> awakening, they often have an exuberance about evangelizing this awaken to
> others who, like they used to be, lacked this grand insight. It might be that "meat
> is murder", somehow not having ever thought about what going into their cheeseburgers
> before. Or it might be some feminist book, or a history that introduced a previously
> sheltered person to the Jim Crow era.

Or it might be a person who thought women deserved to be told
about the risks of abortion, and about what the "clump of cells"
inside themselves looked like, and what alternatives to abortion
were available to them. And then, that person learned the "new TRUTH"
about informed consent laws that give women the OPTION
of learning about this kind of information.

One of them was the South Carolina bill that was introduced in 1989
and became law in 1995, and survived two attempts
to overturn it that went all the way to the Supreme Court,
finally going into effect on April 29, 2003.

Already in 1990, the bill had been denounced by Inez Tenenbaum,
who gave the "new TRUTH" about the bill: "a blatantly unconstitutional"
effort to "heighten [a woman's] anxiety and subject her to more stress." [1]
Joe Biden is very receptive to this kind of "woke" language. [2]

Tenenbaum's name might be familiar to you: she made a
strong run for the U.S. Senate in 2004, garnering more votes
in South Carolina than Kerry did against Bush, but still losing to Jim DeMint.

[1] Greenville News, March 1, 1990, p. 1C

[2] Think of all the "anxiety" suffered by a trans person when someone
uses the "wrong" pronoun in reference to him/her.

>
> The "woke" label was used to capture the sudden enthusiasm in someone who was
> somehow previously seemingly asleep and unaware of some reality. Their sudden
> zeal for justice can be tiring to even those who strongly agree with them but don't
> see a similar urgency in addressing a wrong that they have long been aware of.
> Those who agree with them hope to guide them to prepare for more than a sprint,
> but for a lifelong struggle towards justice.
>
> But what does "woke" mean now as politicians on the Right use it as a pejorative
> against the left?

I gave some examples above. And Hemidactylus tried unsuccessfully to
whitewash the whole movement, with the result that I described above.
See whether you can succeed where he failed.

> Well, it's a grab bag. Apparently, people announcing their pronouns
> really sticks in some people's craw.

And can lead to mandatory "re-education" if they don't suck it up --
for example, at universities like the one in which I am employed,
or in "enlightened" companies. They may be heavily into technology,
but they also hire people with Ph.D.'s in the humanities from
universities like Yale. Your hero, Burkhard, did a masterly job
of rationalizing those hires a while back.

> Yes, I think it gets overdone when cis-gendered
> people make a point of it in some form of virtue signaling but what are they really
> doing? They are trying to be supportive of people who have been the target of
> abuse for a long time.

Not at universities all over the country, where new faculty or those up
for promotion are expected to have a good record where promoting
"diversity" is concerned.

But not diversity of information in their own field, be it math or biology or whatever.
Biology departments like ours no longer teach courses on birds, or mammals,
or on the history of life on earth -- all relevant to talk.origins, in case
you haven't caught on yet. The all-important grant money just isn't there.

>I think their heart is in the right place. What's so threatening
> about people wanting to be supportive of the downtrodden? (seemingly a what
> ought to be a Christian value).

the downtrodden = a budding new aristocracy whom it is becoming no more safe to insult
than it was for a commoner to insult a member of the old aristocracy
of the Middle Ages and early modernity. The penalties back then may
not have been as extreme as depicted in the TV series "Merlin," but they were quite real.


Your whitewash of "wokeness" continued, but rather than "re-inventing the
wheel of my reply to Hemidactylus," I'll stop here and refer you to it.
Here is that url again:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/WWXQfKiyLXk/m/scL8TQ0QAgAJ


Peter Nyikos

PS Like Mark, you gave no specific examples, no references to where they might be found.
Be glad that I spent (wasted?) so much time on your prose poem.

[Ernest Major]

On 19/10/2022 17:18, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/18/22 4:37 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 12:25:43 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>
> [more snipping stuff I'm not responding to]
>
>>>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my
>>>>> lifetime.
>>>>
>>>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
>>>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
>>
>>> On a list of Christian values I found at
>>> www.christianbiblereference.org.
>>
>> Where? I see no heading labeled "Christian values."
>
> The web page might be gone now.  The list of values is:

I had no great problem finding it yesterday. (It's not linked directly
on the home page, but it wasn't difficult to find it - I presume that
you meant

https://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_ChristianValues.htm

> 1. Worship only God.
> 2. Respect all people.
> 3. Be humble.
> 4. Be honest.
> 5. Live a moral life.
> 6. Be generous with time and money.
> 7. Practice what you preach.
> 8. Don't be self-righteous.
> 9. Don't hold a grudge.
> 10. Forgive others.
>

--
alias Ernest Major

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 19, 2022 at 12:20:44 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/18/22 4:37 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 12:25:43 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >> On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> [more snipping stuff I'm not responding to]
> >>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
> >>>
> >>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
> >>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
> >
> >> On a list of Christian values I found at
> >> www.christianbiblereference.org.
> >
> > Where? I see no heading labeled "Christian values."

> The web page might be gone now. The list of values is:

There is nothing specifically Christian about them,
and they are incomplete and oversimplified. I don't have time right now to comment
on them, but that is of secondary importance: you gave no
examples to show how Trump flouted them any more than you do.


<list snipped for the nonce>

> >> I'm hoping you can help me understand the Trumpist mindset.
> >
> > Not being one of them, I can't help you much. But keep reading.
> >
> >
> >> I recently heard that the divide in the country is ideological.
> >
> > There is a divide on ideological lines, especially where the
> > big "fault line" values are concerned. On one side of the main fault line
> > are "marriage is between a man and a woman"

This is a Christian value, even Biblical. See Jesus's words in Matthew 19:5.

> and "trans women
> > are biological men" and "abortion is wrong after a certain stage
> > of development" with considerable difference of opinion about the
> > stage, but almost all of it confined to the first trimester.

> The first two are example of division for the sake of division that I
> referred to.

You are giving yourself away with this unsupportable claim. The
first shows how pathetically incomplete that list of "Christian values" is;
the second shows how little you understand about basic biology;
no wonder you hardly have anything to contribute to talk about creationism or ID
or evolutionary theory.

> The abortion is much too complicated to address in the
> time I have now.

Feel free to take your time. Hemidactylus used to try to strong-arm me into
never talking about abortion, but he's been strangely absent from this thread.

> > On the other side of the fault line are the "woke" and the masses who don't
> > care where the "woke" are taking the country enough to speak out
> > about it one way or the other.

> That is saying nothing, but in disparaging terms.

You've made a self-referential statement.

LD did better than you at this point; I suggest you take a look at my reply to him today.

> >> But what, exactly,
> >> is the ideology that Trump supporters want upheld?
> >
> > "Trump supporters" represent a separate divide from the main political ones,
> > Democrat/Republican/Independent. It's Trumpist Republican v. Other Republican,
> > with the former outspoken out of all proportion to their numbers.

> In congress, it is Trump all the way.

False dichotomy.

> The couple of Republican
> non-Trump supporters got voted out or did not run for re-election.

No, it was the militant anti-Trumpers. Most of the others belong to "the masses"
I talked about above.

> > This is a political rather than ideological divide, but the ideological has become muddied.
> >
> > There used to be a lot of unity, but with Trump flourishing the
> > rainbow flag and being booed for it by a crowd of Trumpists,
> > I don't know whether there is any major core ideology left.
> >
> > Maybe YOU can help me understand a political mirror split in Democratic circles:
> > rabid anti-Trumpists vs. Other Democrats.


> I don't know. I'm not a Democrat myself, but I see anyone who is not
> rabidly anti-Trump as either pro-fascism and anti-democracy, hopelessly
> gullible, or totally detached from news.

You see fantasies of your own making.

But at least now I see why you libeled me with the charge of being a fascist right about a year ago:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/V2uRVXbAJzI/m/ewMJMfxzAAAJ
Re: Anti-Science Streak in Vaccine Mandates by Biden and Others
Oct 23, 2021, 11:45:15 AM

I haven't got a fascist bone in my body, but rather than address
your insane accusation against me there,
I decided to follow the adage, "Don't get mad, get even."

And so, I began a thread where I more than got even,
without ever mentioning your insane charge against me,
there or elsewhere:

CHEZ WATT: Hitler Is Compared Favorably with Trump
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/DjepbDmn00A/m/1deNFyYNAAAJ
Oct 25, 2021, 11:40:15 AM

I had the "ghost of Hitler" venting his frustration about international accomplishments
of Trump, none of which anyone tried to disparage, and none of which had
anything to do with fascism. I did it in the traditional
Chez Watt way, never giving any hint of whom the words were due to.

And it gratified me to see that you did not risk divulging your authorship.

> Surely there are gradients in all three categories.

The real gradients are outside, as you can see from those threads
of last October.

> > Do you agree with the outspoken majority there that if Trump were President,
> > he would have given Ukraine to Putin without a murmur of protest?

> I think it is very likely. Putin is the *only* person to whom Trump has
> given unmitigated praise and no criticism.

You think calling Putin a "genius" is unmitigated praise?

History is full of evil geniuses: Genghis Khan, Batu Khan,
Tamerlane, Stalin, Hitler, Mao.

And it isn't just in the arena of war and governmental repression.
Arturo Toscanini once said to Richard Strauss:

"As a musician, I take my hat off to you.
As a man, I put it back on ten times!"

> All indications are that
> Putin is what Trump wants to be when he grows up.

Cute, but that's all it is.


Peter Nyikos

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 19 Oct 2022 11:07:28 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"

QED

[Lawyer Daggett]

I might get around to responding to the rest of your post but at the
moment I'm overcome with one point. This habit of yours of proclaiming
that you have vanquished some foe and crowing over your self-anointed
victory is sad and pathetic. What sort of person does this? What do you
imagine you accomplish with this fulsome self-praise?

For your own sake, please stop it. You don't need to continue to humiliate
yourself in this way. There are plenty here who are willing to humiliate you
in our own way.

[*Hemidactylus*]

peter2...@gmail.com <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 19, 2022 at 12:20:44 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>

[snip Peter’s need to add me into the conversation]

>
>> I think it is very likely. Putin is the *only* person to whom Trump has
>> given unmitigated praise and no criticism.
>
> You think calling Putin a "genius" is unmitigated praise?
>
> History is full of evil geniuses: Genghis Khan, Batu Khan,
> Tamerlane, Stalin, Hitler, Mao.
>

When you had disappeared for a while I hunted you down on some disqus site
where you were battling Russia apologists because Ukraine. Not sure where
you’re at with that now.

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/bqBfak8_VCo/m/blNMPAb_CQAJ

I actually respected you for that FWIW! I kinda realize being Hungarian you
would have trepidation about that stuff. But do you have reservations about
authoritarian Orban?

>
> And it isn't just in the arena of war and governmental repression.
> Arturo Toscanini once said to Richard Strauss:
>
> "As a musician, I take my hat off to you.
> As a man, I put it back on ten times!"
>

To gauge the authoritarian streak amongst the USian right you would need to
discern Leo Strauss from Carl Schmitt. Are you capable of that degree of
nuance? Schmitt’s political theology gave us the friend/enemy distinction
and all important state of exception.

>
>> All indications are that
>> Putin is what Trump wants to be when he grows up.
>
> Cute, but that's all it is.
>

Just sayin’ I’m not getting baited into your abortion infused culture
warrior dynamic. Do you need enemies in order to function too?

[*Hemidactylus*]

I doubt you’re aware of what “woke” actually is except some convenient
right wing sobriquet of the day for ‘enemy we hate’ to bring ourselves
together. A politically pathetic move made by the white booted bozo
Desantis shared by poseur left dingbats like Jerry Coyne and Bill Maher.
New Atheist thought leaders latched on as the whole god-bashing thing lost
its luster so they had to find a new bogeyman to maintain interest in their
tweets (Dawkins), blogs (Coyne), and HBO show (ageist Maher).

Woke had a heritage from Lead Belly talking on the plight of the Scottsboro
Boys and what black people faced in certain places. It was taken up by BLM
in the face of systemic racism and police brutality. It’s basically an
antiracist stance. Are you against that?

OTOH there’s “awake not woke” which is a QAnon stance and reminiscent of
the Great Awakenings. That’s the sort of thing neofascist kooks like
Michael Flynn are pushing. Would you distance yourself from such MAGAt
Christian Nationalism?

[*Hemidactylus*]

He’s a legend in his own mind. Glenn might be impressed. Beyond that
probably all hat and no cattle.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

...is nonexistent. You are completely misrepresenting what I wrote about
Hemidactylus to hide your current inability to lend him a hand. Do you think
the inability is temporary?

> and crowing over your self-anointed
> victory is sad and pathetic. What sort of person does this? What do you
> imagine you accomplish with this fulsome self-praise?
>
> For your own sake, please stop it. You don't need to continue to humiliate
> yourself in this way. There are plenty here who are willing to humiliate you
> in our own way.

The depth of your wishful thinking here is second only to that of
the people in the WaPo comments section for the article I told
Burkhard about.

The article was fair on the whole. In stunning contrast, the comments
section looks to be one titanic echo chamber for people with an unreasoning
hatred for pro-lifers, parroting one false generalization after another about them.

How do you like their wholehearted embrace of "the new TRUTH" to which
they "woke" up? Here is the url for that article, in case you want
to find kindred spirits among them:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/24/antiabortion-movement-divisions/


Peter Nyikos

PS Divisions in the various antiabortion movements go back almost
to RvW itself. I'll be talking about them to participants who are
more levelheaded than yourself.

[*Hemidactylus*]

peter2...@gmail.com <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
[snip]
>
> I think once you do, you may appreciate something a Ukrainian friend
> told me: Putin did not dare attack Ukraine while Trump was President,
> because he couldn't be sure Trump wasn't even more reckless than he was.
>
If Trump had won (he didn’t right?) and Putin invaded Ukraine, the US would
have offered much less if any support and NATO would be left wondering what
happened to the US organizational commitment as Putin would have had less
hesitation to threaten NATO members.

To the extent US help under Biden has shored up Ukraine with money and
weapons systems, they might have been in much worse shape if not crushed
under Putin’s fashy boots by now.

> Putin has Biden scared he might use tactical nuclear weapons,
> and Biden has infected the whole country by being as afraid
> of Putin as Putin was of Trump.
>
Putin feared Trump as much as someone fears their senile toothless
incontinent lapdog with a priapism.
>
>> He is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.

>
> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
>

Ummm…really? Grab em by the pussy. Caging migrant children. Using violence
against protestors so he could virtue signal with a bible. Lying pretty
much all the time. Camel through eye of a needle. Meek inheriting earth.
Worshipping himself as an idol (or golden calf). Of course with the GOP
Christianity has always been a marketing gimmick and not a sincerely held
belief system.

[Lawyer Daggett]

The dual elements of self-praise and crowing over self-anointed victories
was more subtle in the above then it usually is when you interject with some
reposting of your battles with others, but it's there for all to see. It's a habit
of yours, and it's one reason people find you obnoxious. I'm not going to go
back and dig out examples because I don't want to reread your posts. Go
ahead and try to deny that you habitually do this. I will leave your posting
record as evidence to my point.

> > and crowing over your self-anointed
> > victory is sad and pathetic. What sort of person does this? What do you
> > imagine you accomplish with this fulsome self-praise?

> > For your own sake, please stop it. You don't need to continue to humiliate
> > yourself in this way. There are plenty here who are willing to humiliate you
> > in our own way.

> The depth of your wishful thinking here is second only to that of
> the people in the WaPo comments section for the article I told
> Burkhard about.
>
> The article was fair on the whole. In stunning contrast, the comments
> section looks to be one titanic echo chamber for people with an unreasoning
> hatred for pro-lifers, parroting one false generalization after another about them.

I'm not going to get into an abortion debate with you in talk.origins.
If you think comments sections on-line are in any way representative to
The Right or The Left, you're absolutely nuts. On-line comment sections
are over-ridden with absolute vitriol, including dedicated trolls that take on
the role of being extreme to point 'the other side' to look crazy. Refer to
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game which laid it all out in 1985 as manipulative
social media.

As for your taunting broadsides at me, I provided you with examples of the
"woke" boogeymen used by active politicians --- CRT and SEL. You deleted
those examples. That's sad because they are active parts of the current election
cycle. At some level, I respect that you avoided discussion around those because
you would likely find it hard to defend what the Right's objections to CRT
actually amount to, and the same for the Right's objections to SEL.

[jillery]

On Wed, 19 Oct 2022 14:42:42 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, October 19, 2022 at 12:20:44 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 10/18/22 4:37 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> > On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 12:25:43 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> >> On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> >>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> [more snipping stuff I'm not responding to]
>> >>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
>> >>>
>> >>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
>> >>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
>> >
>> >> On a list of Christian values I found at
>> >> www.christianbiblereference.org.
>> >
>> > Where? I see no heading labeled "Christian values."
>
>> The web page might be gone now. The list of values is:
>
>There is nothing specifically Christian about them,
>and they are incomplete and oversimplified. I don't have time right now to comment
>on them, but that is of secondary importance: you gave no
>examples to show how Trump flouted them any more than you do.
>
>
><list snipped for the nonce>

The list PeeWee Peter snipped directly answers his own question
immediately above. Since he denies that he snips out relevant
comments, this is a tacit admission that he regards his own question
as transparent obfuscation.

<list restored>

>>The web page might be gone now. The list of values is:

>>1. Worship only God.
>>2. Respect all people.
>>3. Be humble.
>>4. Be honest.
>>5. Live a moral life.
>>6. Be generous with time and money.
>>7. Practice what you preach.
>>8. Don't be self-righteous.
>>9. Don't hold a grudge.
>>10. Forgive others.

The above list is similar to the traditional Christian virtues jillery
identified in a previous post.


<remainder snipped for the nonce>

[jillery]

I agree with your general description of "woke" above. Its current
practice is as you say, a pathetic political right-wing move. However,
because it's political, that means it necessarily follows political
fashions as to what and who qualify as woke and anti-woke. For
example, I doubt that your list of anti-woke boogeymen would agree
much with Desantis. I suspect they would be appalled that you put
them in the same list with him.

A common feature of the "woke" is to eat their own, usually based on a
single issue. Based on that, right-wingers have their own list of
"woke" victims, ex. Liz Cheney and other Republicans who dared to
speak out against Trump and his toadies, ex. the (ex-Dixie) Chicks;
same idea, just different excuses. A difference is right-wingers
don't call it "woke" when they do it.

[*Hemidactylus*]

I doubt you would have the first clue about it, but divisions in the
atheist movement dovetail with the rise of using “woke” as an all-purpose
insult. It began with a reaction against feminism and gained a head of
steam with gamer-gate and the overlap with the various strands of organized
misogyny (collectively the “manospere”—MRAs, seduction aficionados,
incels…) joining the pile on. At some point they started agreeing that
“SJWs” were bad because they cared about the concerns of women, minorities,
and queer folk. The side-effects of accountability became “calling out” and
then “canceling”. Sure there were excesses (eg Aziz Ansari), but the
“victims” were often enough obnoxious special snowflakes not grasping the
law of holes while flaming out on social media.

Oddly enough, in the category of ‘we didn’t see that coming’, gamer-gate
played no small role in midwifing pizzagate and then…wait for it…QAnon.
Viruses rapidly mutate. This is where organized atheism had largely hit the
exit ramp. But some of those in said movement found themselves dovetailing
with Trump supporters in their hatred of the “woke” as social unrest after
various incidents of police brutality and Charlottesville set the tone
under the Trump years.

One atheist, James Lindsay, made a name for himself railing against
wokeness by misrepresenting such disparate phenomena as Germanic Frankfurt
School “Critical Theory”, Francophone poststructuralism, and American
Critical Legal Studies (morphed to CRT under Derrick Bell). He and
Christopher Rufo channeled their inner McCarthy and warned of an
existential threat coming from academia that was ominously marching through
the institutions. For Lindsay when the postmodernist well dried up he went
gunning for New Left darling Herbert Marcuse, the ghost of a long dead
German, still haunting us from the grave. All nuance was irretrievably
lost. Believe me when I say I know said nuance in excruciating detail. Was
Jurgen Habermas “woke” when he took on Karl Popper in the great positivism
“debate”? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism_dispute

Was Adorno “woke” when he hated on jazz as a musical form? Did Frankfurt
School figureheads disagree on the rising student unrest (retrospectively
“woke”?) of the late 60s?

BTW since CRT is the leftist bogey of the day, one should acknowledge legal
movements on the right such as “Law and Economics”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_economics

…and the perverse close reading doctrine of “Originalism”.

For every instance of CRT I counter with the long march through the
institutions enacted by the Federalist Society!!!!

[Ernest Major]

On 20/10/2022 03:21, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Woke had a heritage from Lead Belly talking on the plight of the Scottsboro
> Boys and what black people faced in certain places. It was taken up by BLM
> in the face of systemic racism and police brutality. It’s basically an
> antiracist stance. Are you against that?
>
> OTOH there’s “awake not woke” which is a QAnon stance and reminiscent of
> the Great Awakenings. That’s the sort of thing neofascist kooks like
> Michael Flynn are pushing. Would you distance yourself from such MAGAt
> Christian Nationalism?

When I first encountered the term "woke" it was in a context in which it
seemed to be the equivalent of the evangelical "born-again", or the
alt-right "red-pilled". I've found the perceived implication of
self-righteous certainty worrying.

I've subsequently discovered that the term originated in the black
community, and meant aware of injustice, especially as related to race.
By that definition I would expect that a supermajority of the US
population is woke.

As currently used by the US right woke seems to mean opposed to bigotry,
(but somehow that is to be seen as a bad thing).

--
alias Ernest Major

[*Hemidactylus*]

Lawyer Daggett <j.nobel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
[snip]

>
> As for your taunting broadsides at me, I provided you with examples of the
> "woke" boogeymen used by active politicians --- CRT and SEL. You deleted
> those examples. That's sad because they are active parts of the current election
> cycle. At some level, I respect that you avoided discussion around those because
> you would likely find it hard to defend what the Right's objections to CRT
> actually amount to, and the same for the Right's objections to SEL.
>

The Right projects its own subversion of legal institutions. While
distracting its mouth foaming attack dogs with phantom squirrels like CRT
and woke SJWs indoctrinating kids with ideology, it has greatly perverted
our justice system by stamping it with the Federalist Society imprimatur.
They made a deal with the devil himself Trump to pollute the court system
with nutty right wing judges and SCOTUS justices end-capping a trend
portended by the rejection of Bork. They have given us Originalism and also
Law and Economics (thanks to Mont Pelerin neoliberals ensconced at the
University of Chicago). The latter are quite fine with authoritarian
regimes as long as neoliberal reforms are enacted. See Chicago Boys in
Chile.

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/19/22 2:42 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 19, 2022 at 12:20:44 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 10/18/22 4:37 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 12:25:43 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>>> On 10/17/22 7:07 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>> On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 10:55:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> [more snipping stuff I'm not responding to]
>>>>>> He [Trump] is easily the most anti-Christian politician in my lifetime.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've read all kinds of charges against Trump in left wing sources,
>>>>> but this is a new one on me. On what do you base it?
>>>
>>>> On a list of Christian values I found at
>>>> www.christianbiblereference.org.
>>>
>>> Where? I see no heading labeled "Christian values."
>
>> The web page might be gone now. The list of values is:
>
> There is nothing specifically Christian about them,

I never said they were specifically Christian; I said they are
Christian. Why do you think non-Christians should live by a complete
different, non-overlapping set of values?

> and they are incomplete and oversimplified.

So we should ignore "love your neighbor" because it is incomplete and
simple?

The list again:

1. Worship only God.
2. Respect all people.
3. Be humble.
4. Be honest.
5. Live a moral life.
6. Be generous with time and money.
7. Practice what you preach.
8. Don't be self-righteous.
9. Don't hold a grudge.
10. Forgive others.

> I don't have time right now to comment
> on them, but that is of secondary importance: you gave no
> examples to show how Trump flouted them any more than you do.

I gave no examples because they are obvious.

>>>> I recently heard that the divide in the country is ideological.
>>>
>>> There is a divide on ideological lines, especially where the
>>> big "fault line" values are concerned. On one side of the main fault line
>>> are "marriage is between a man and a woman"
>
> This is a Christian value, even Biblical. See Jesus's words in Matthew 19:5.

By your interpretation, Matthew 19:5 says being unmarried is equally
bad. And it does NOT say no one is to marry someone of the same sex.

>> and "trans women
>>> are biological men" and "abortion is wrong after a certain stage
>>> of development" with considerable difference of opinion about the
>>> stage, but almost all of it confined to the first trimester.
>
>> The first two are example of division for the sake of division that I
>> referred to.
>
> You are giving yourself away with this unsupportable claim.

You are the one making an unsupported claim that marriage equality and
transgender rights are *not* about divisiveness. Transgender people
and same-sex couples do not affect your well-being, or the well-being of
anyone else protesting them, in any way. The only reason to protest
against them is to promote needless division.

>> The abortion is much too complicated to address in the
>> time I have now.
>
> Feel free to take your time.

Not in t.o.

>>> Maybe YOU can help me understand a political mirror split in Democratic circles:
>>> rabid anti-Trumpists vs. Other Democrats.
>
>
>> I don't know. I'm not a Democrat myself, but I see anyone who is not
>> rabidly anti-Trump as either pro-fascism and anti-democracy, hopelessly
>> gullible, or totally detached from news.
>
> You see fantasies of your own making.
>
> But at least now I see why you libeled me with the charge of being a fascist right about a year ago:

There is no argument that Trump is a fascist. He has as much as said so
himself. And since he is the de-facto leader of fascism in America, to
defend him is to defend fascism. Do you see that?

>>> Do you agree with the outspoken majority there that if Trump were President,
>>> he would have given Ukraine to Putin without a murmur of protest?
>
>> I think it is very likely. Putin is the *only* person to whom Trump has
>> given unmitigated praise and no criticism.
>
> You think calling Putin a "genius" is unmitigated praise?

No, I think Trump's repeatedly praising Putin, saying he admired Putin's
ability to kill whoever opposed him, calling his [attempted] talk-over
of Ukraine "wonderful", and never criticizing him about anything, is
unmitigated praise.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 19, 2022 at 11:15:44 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> peter2...@gmail.com <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> [snip]
> >
> > I think once you do, you may appreciate something a Ukrainian friend
> > told me: Putin did not dare attack Ukraine while Trump was President,
> > because he couldn't be sure Trump wasn't even more reckless than he was.
> >
> If Trump had won (he didn’t right?) and Putin invaded Ukraine,

That second clause goes counter to my friend's reasoning, also to
the fact that Putin had four years to invade Ukraine while Trump was President.
Contrast that with Putin's successful annexation of the Crimea when Obama
was President (2014).

But let all that pass for the nonce. Let's see what you say next.

> the US would
> have offered much less if any support

Where's your reasoning for this? My reasoning *against* this is that Trump
is not the kind of wimp Biden is. In particular, I believe Trump would have
given Ukraine the no-fly zone Zelensky was pleading for, very soon after
the first plea. Or, if not for all of Ukraine, then at least for the western
portion to include Lviv and Odessa even if he'd hesitate to include Kyiv.

I am assuming Psaki was a mouthpiece for Biden when she cunningly
rationalized the refusal of any kind of no-fly zone, with a misdirection
that would have done Lawyer Daggett proud:

“As we’ve said before, a no-fly zone would require implementation, it would require us potentially shooting down Russian planes, NATO shooting down Russian planes. And we are not interested in getting into World War III.”
--https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/03/16/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-march-16-2022/

There is no logical connection between the two sentences. IMO, it is absurd to claim that,
after all that had happened by March 16, a few downed Russian pilots would result in
Putin starting World War III. There is even a "belling the cat" issue here:
Putin may wish for even a modest no-fly zone to be challenged,
but what Russian pilot would want to risk his life that way?

My thesis is that Trump would also be of the opinion that the claim is absurd,
for reasons like the above, and that *Putin* would have pulled a Biden-Psaki
and not dared to challenge it. See again what my Ukrainian friend wrote me.


Therefore, IMO, what you write next completes the second half of a GIGO:

> and NATO would be left wondering what
> happened to the US organizational commitment as Putin would have had less
> hesitation to threaten NATO members.

Get real. Trump would have been all too happy to let NATO
allies provide some air cover themselves, if my thesis is correct.

I think you've been reading too much anti-Trump hysteria in blogs
like the comments section of WaPo.

> To the extent US help under Biden has shored up Ukraine with money and
> weapons systems, they might have been in much worse shape if not crushed
> under Putin’s fashy boots by now.

Trump backed up Ukraine with weapons while he was President.
At the first sign of saber-rattling [1] by Putin, I would have expected
him to deliver warnings about what would happen if Ukraine were invaded.

Trump was skilled at finding appropriate warnings, like the one he gave the Taliban,
which ended all killings of American soldiers until 13 lost their lives on Biden's watch.

[1] These took the form of massive military maneuvers in Belarus and the east of Ukraine,
suspiciously like the ones preceding the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.
History repeated itself, first in the Donbas on February 21, then with the massive escalation
on February 24, a day that will live in infamy.

> > Putin has Biden scared he might use tactical nuclear weapons,
> > and Biden has infected the whole country by being as afraid
> > of Putin as Putin was of Trump.
> >
> Putin feared Trump as much as someone fears their senile toothless
> incontinent lapdog with a priapism.

More anti-Trump hysteria.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to another day. It's on a
completely different issue. Also, my trip to Charlotte and
back for a research seminar was quite tiring, and so this is the
only post I am doing today.


Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 3:00:43 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> On 10/14/22 7:09 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>> [big snips ahead]
>>>
>>>> On Friday, October 14, 2022 at 7:05:39 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>
>
>>>>> ====
>>>>> (d) Across the country, people have been criminally prosecuted for
>>>>> having miscarriages or stillbirths or for self-managing an abortion.
>>>>> California has not been exempt. Despite clear law that ending or losing
>>>>> a pregnancy is not a crime, police have investigated and prosecutors
>>>>> have charged people with homicide for pregnancy losses.
>>>>
>>>> The internet is awash with such allegations, but I have
>>>> never seen an actual case cited. Have you?
>>>
>>> Yes, years ago. I don't remember whether the ones I heard of were in
>>> California or other states.
>
>
>> Here an article that lists a few - this of course preceded the recent
>> legal developments:
>> https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/09/01/they-lost-their-pregnancies-then-prosecutors-sent-them-to-prison
>
> I'm too pressed for time to read all of the sites you've linked today, but a quick run-through
> of this first one shows that it is not a one-sided affair:
>
> "Even in states with the strictest abortion bans, mainstream anti-abortion activists have largely discouraged criminal punishment for women, instead going after the medical providers through criminal or civil court penalties. The National Right to Life Committee says “any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women is not pro-life.”
>
> There is a link embedded in the above paragraph giving more details,
> including a concrete example of the NRLC not standing alone in this:
>
> " “As national and state pro-life organizations, representing tens of millions of pro-life men, women, and children across the country, let us be clear: We state unequivocally that we do not support any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women and we stand firmly opposed to include such penalties in legislation,” more than 70 groups wrote in a May 12 open letter led by the National Right to Life Committee."
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/24/antiabortion-movement-divisions/
>
> Considering that this is coming from WaPo, it is surprisingly even-handed for the
> most part. However, its last two paragraphs feature a claim by an antiabortion extremist
> which makes him a "strange bedfellow" of abortion rights propagandists:
>
> "But Bradley Pierce, executive director of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, helped draft the Louisiana measure and said he was disappointed when antiabortion lawmakers backed away from it.
> “I think it revealed a lot of hypocrisy in those who said one thing and did something else,” he said, adding that the bill “would have done exactly what they say they believe. That is, treat a person before birth as being worthy of protection.” "
>
> As if punishing the "medical providers" weren't enough for Bradley; he really wants
> his pound of flesh in the Louisiana measure that also "[seeks] criminalize or punish women"
> who get abortions, many of them under intense pressure from boyfriends and/or parents
> and other close relatives.
>
> But the charge of "hypocrisy" against the mainstream pro-life movement is sweet
> music to the ears of abortion rights propagandists, who for decades have charged
> rape and incest exceptions as being inconsistent with the concept of "pro-life".
>
>
> But back to the article you linked, Burkhard.
>
> The cases that are highlighted by the article have mostly to do with drug abuse.
> What with the wide range of things now classified under the "woke" version
> of the word "healthcare," the drug dealers could be construed
> as "medical providers" [psychological well-being, y'know].
> And they can be charged with having misled their customers about the side effects of
> too much use, and are therefore punishable as being engaged in
> in something akin to medical malpractice.
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
>
> PS I hope to get around to the other sites linked below before the end of this week.


Don't worry on my behalf. I'm not interested in this discussion, least
not on TO, unless the issue of science in law, which is at least
tangential, comes up. The linked articles were meant just a very quick
factual answer to the question whether "people have been criminally
prosecuted for having miscarriages or stillbirths or for self-managing
an abortion."

Here a particularly atrocious example - a woman prosecuted because she
refused a caesarean
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC381255/


> It's a busy one, with family activities and a day trip to UNC-Charlotte to discuss
> ongoing and future research in topology. A sabbatical year like the one I am on
> comes with some obligations, and this trip is part of one of them.
>
>>
>> here how they are on the rise now:
>> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/miscarriage-stillbirth-prosecutions-await-women-post-roe?leadSource=uverify%20wall
>>
>> here a specific one:
>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59214544
>>
>> and another one
>> https://reason.com/2021/10/14/woman-convicted-manslaughter-miscarriage-abortion-oklahoma-brittney-poolaw/
>

[Lawyer Daggett]

Here's an example of a darling of the Right worrying about wokeness.
Doug Mastriano is the GOP candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, so
not just some rando dude in some comments section. He's been pretty weird
on the covid side, hates masks, likes ivermectin. His latest claim is, however,
clearly insane as he pushes the whole Right's fantasy fear of "wokeness".
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1583201646229999616

He complains that Josh Shapiro “He’s standing aside while the Children’s Hospital
of PHI is grabbing homeless kids and kids in foster care, apparently, and
experimenting on them with gender transitioning.” Josh Shapiro is the Attorney
General of Pennsylvania.

Mastriano is proudly a Christian Nationalist, one of their darlings.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Re: Back again
Sep 9, 2022, 9:20:06 AM

> >

I see no need to concern myself with the history of the word when
the big issues on this thread are to whom it applies at the present time,
and their behavior.

Anyway, how can it be an insult when what I thought to be some
of the worst excesses are regarded by you as to be too
insignificant to merit a response from you?

For instance, there was this example, with the first
two lines by you, the rest by me:

_________________________________ excerpt __________________________________________

> Bill and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden played no small
> role given their actions at a critical period.

Yeah, Biden has made trans "the civil rights issue of our time."

Time to cancel J.K. Rowling from celebrations of her Harry Potter novels and films,
and for the Harry Potter Fan Club to have a disproportionate number
of trans people, and not sound a peep of criticism for the massive campaign
of vilification and misrepresentation directed against Rowling for daring
to expose the widespread discrimination against those who dare to say
that there is difference between trans women and biological women.

For that, the creator of Harry Potter has received an avalanche of
hate mail, including at least one letter telling her,
"You are Voldemort." Does the name ring a bell, Hemi?
______________________________________end of excerpt
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/WWXQfKiyLXk/m/scL8TQ0QAgAJ
Re: Back again . Sep 9, 2022, 9:20:06 AM

For daring to inform Daggett about the fact that your side of the issues in
that post of almost a month and a half ago had not been justified,
I was accused of "crowing about [a] self -anointed victory over a
vanquished foe" [preserved above along with even more nasty insults].

And you heartily approved of his vilification by alleging that it shows how
I am "a legend in [my] own eyes."

What can I conclude from this but that you heartily approve of the
way J. K. Rowling has been treated for being so "un-woke"?


Peter Nyikos

PS *Does* the name "Voldemort" ring a bell with you?

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Here is what I was talking about in my post of a few minutes ago.
A polemical personal attack is LD's chosen way of dealing with the ISSUES
raised in my reply to you back on September 9 [url above; date snipped by LD].

> He’s a legend in his own mind.

There you go, thoroughly approving of LD's character assassination.
As I said a few minutes ago.

>Glenn might be impressed. Beyond that
> probably all hat and no cattle.

Yes, only Glenn would be impressed by the following supplement to something I wrote to you
about a BLM co-founder in the same post:

_______________________________ [dated May 23] ____________________
$60 million of the money Black Lives Matter raised went “missing”… and new reports show that BLM founder Patrisse Cullors used the organization as her own personal piggy bank:

$6 million for a mansion in Los Angeles...that Patrisse then “rented” from BLM for $390,

$970,000 to Patrisse’s baby daddy for “creative services,”

$840,000 to Patrisse’s brother for “security services,”

$2.1 million to a board member’s “consulting firm,”

$120,000 to Patrisse herself for “consulting fees.”
======================================== end of list ===================

I had underestimated the cost of that mansion by describing it
only as "in excess of 1 million dollars".

Will you accuse me of "racism" for daring to post the above figures?

Would the fact that the author was a prominent Black woman make a difference to that?

[Probably not: you don't need to know her name to peg her as the female equivalent
of an "Uncle Tom", do you?]


Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

The history of the word woke gives its warranted usage in black vernacular.

>
> Anyway, how can it be an insult when what I thought to be some
> of the worst excesses are regarded by you as to be too
> insignificant to merit a response from you?
>

The current use of “woke” is a bastardization slung solely as an insult by
right wing propagandists and the centrist dingbats (eg-Coyne) who likewise
parrot the term. Johnny come lately opportunists like Ron Desantis have
weaponized it into a keystone of vicious culture war legislation.

You are either ignorant of this or a parrot of right wing talking points
you get from Fox News or radio talk shows. Not my problem.

>
> For instance, there was this example, with the first
> two lines by you, the rest by me:
>
> _________________________________ excerpt __________________________________________
>
>> Bill and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden played no small
>> role given their actions at a critical period.
>
> Yeah, Biden has made trans "the civil rights issue of our time."
>

You completely removed my words from their context lambasting the Clintons
and Biden for their heinous roles in racist legislation. You omit my
reference to critical race theory inspired Michelle Alexander who wrote
_The New Jim Crow_. As punishment I will add _ Superpredator: Bill
Clinton's Use and Abuse of Black America_ by Nathan J. Robinson.

>
> Time to cancel J.K. Rowling from celebrations of her Harry Potter novels and films,
> and for the Harry Potter Fan Club to have a disproportionate number
> of trans people, and not sound a peep of criticism for the massive campaign
> of vilification and misrepresentation directed against Rowling for daring
> to expose the widespread discrimination against those who dare to say
> that there is difference between trans women and biological women.
>

I’m not going to entertain your topically tangential obsession with
transwomen.

>
> For that, the creator of Harry Potter has received an avalanche of
> hate mail, including at least one letter telling her,
> "You are Voldemort." Does the name ring a bell, Hemi?
> ______________________________________end of excerpt
> from
> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/WWXQfKiyLXk/m/scL8TQ0QAgAJ
> Re: Back again . Sep 9, 2022, 9:20:06 AM
>
> For daring to inform Daggett about the fact that your side of the issues in
> that post of almost a month and a half ago had not been justified,
> I was accused of "crowing about [a] self -anointed victory over a
> vanquished foe" [preserved above along with even more nasty insults].
>
> And you heartily approved of his vilification by alleging that it shows how
> I am "a legend in [my] own eyes."
>

You keep dragging my name into threads I’m not participating in. I will
strike back hard.

>
> What can I conclude from this but that you heartily approve of the
> way J. K. Rowling has been treated for being so "un-woke"?
>

Non-sequitur.

>
> Peter Nyikos
>
> PS *Does* the name "Voldemort" ring a bell with you?
>

Senator Rick Scott?

[*Hemidactylus*]

Did he hurt your feelings with “This habit of yours of proclaiming that you

have vanquished some foe and crowing over your self-anointed victory is sad

and pathetic.”??? Do you care to talk about it?

>
>> Glenn might be impressed. Beyond that
>> probably all hat and no cattle.
>
> Yes, only Glenn would be impressed by the following supplement to something I wrote to you
> about a BLM co-founder in the same post:
>
> _______________________________ [dated May 23] ____________________

> $60 million of the money Black Lives Matter raised went missing & and

> new reports show that BLM founder Patrisse Cullors used the organization
> as her own personal piggy bank:
>
> $6 million for a mansion in Los Angeles...that Patrisse then rented from BLM for $390,
>
> $970,000 to Patrisse s baby daddy for creative services,
>
> $840,000 to Patrisse s brother for security services,
>
> $2.1 million to a board member s consulting firm,
>
> $120,000 to Patrisse herself for consulting fees.
> ======================================== end of list ==================

> I had underestimated the cost of that mansion by describing it
> only as "in excess of 1 million dollars".
>

Who wrote the above?

>
> Will you accuse me of "racism" for daring to post the above figures?
>

Do you have a persecution complex or something? Did you twist your nipples
when you asked that like a caricature done of Mel Gibson in the South Park
spoof of him in several episodes?

>
> Would the fact that the author was a prominent Black woman make a difference to that?
>

Well stuff Kanye has been up to lately shows black people don’t have some
magic aura protecting their utterances from scrutiny. I usually ignore him
and Candace Owen. But his latest antics were hard to ignore.

>
> [Probably not: you don't need to know her name to peg her as the female equivalent
> of an "Uncle Tom", do you?]
>

Is this some sort of lame attempt at a Jedi mind trick?

Besides whatever some higher up member of BLM may have done is an anecdote
and not indicative of the movement as a whole.

[*Hemidactylus*]

*Hemidactylus* <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
>
[snip]

I repost this in its entirety as Peter unmarked snipped most of it running
away from my far superior knowledge of the political nature and background
of this topic. He sidetracked in into irrelevancies as out of their depth
culture warriors with axes to grind typically do.

[Lawyer Daggett]

"There you go again." Crowing over self-anointed victories.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Yes just like Carter I get bogged down in unappealing factual minutiae. So
you come along and channel your inner Gipper? Is that the look you’re going
with? I’m not above patting myself on the back for hard won background
details. Somebody has to do it and it may as well be me. I’m not a humble
Georgia peanut farmer groomed by the Trilats.

I’m not being so much hypocritical as hyperbolically fighting crowing fire
with even more crowing with a flamethrower.

[jillery]

Right-wing nuts use "woke" to refer to those who favor any topic the
nutters oppose, whether its civil rights or mask mandates or gun
control or pro-life. That way, anytime right-wingers push their own
agenda, they're not "woke" by definition.

[jillery]

Based on his recent posts, my impression is Lawyer Daggest above used
you as vector for pointed ironic satire. Of course, I could be wrong.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Nice to know you are consistent in use of this slur,
except that

(1) your accusation came after a total silence
about nobody dealing with all but one of the ISSUES
that I brought up in a reply to Hemidactylus, who
completely ignored ALL of them for a month and a half and

(2) while Hemidactylus is crowing less than two full DAYS after
a post he did, talking about an alleged shortcoming
of my response to the same post earlier that day.

______________________ relevant portion plus header________________

On Thursday, October 20, 2022 at 5:35:45 AM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:

> I doubt you would have the first clue about it, but divisions in the
> atheist movement dovetail with the rise of using “woke” as an all-purpose insult.

I see no need to concern myself with the history of the word when
the big issues on this thread are to whom it applies at the present time,
and their behavior.

Anyway, how can it be an insult when what I thought to be some
of the worst excesses are regarded by you as to be too
insignificant to merit a response from you?

==================== end of relevant portion =============================

(3) Hemidactylus gave no pressing reason for me to respond
to any of the disorganized ramblings he did about seemingly
random bits of history.

I could go on listing differences, but I'd rather comment for today on how
I realized over the weekend that the next thing Hemidactylus wrote WAS relevant
to one of the worst excesses: the savaging of J. K. Rowling
for daring to speak out against the injustices wreaked by
trans-allied fanatics. Here is what he wrote, reposted from above:

> > >It began with a reaction against feminism and gained a head of
> > > steam with gamer-gate and the overlap with the various strands of organized
> > > misogyny (collectively the “manospere”—MRAs, seduction aficionados,
> > > incels…) joining the pile on.

This brings up the possibility that the virulent reaction against Rowling and other
women with impeccable feminist credentials [1] is due not so much to being
trans people [2] or in solidarity with them, but to being anti-feminism or being outright
mysogynists against "wymin born wymin" as one fashionable feminist term had it [3].

[1] except perhaps the most important one in the eyes of the dominant feminist subculture:
the depth of their commitment to abortion rights, of which I know nothing.

[2] Rowling has nothing but praise for trans people she knows personally,
but that probably falls into the same category as a white man saying
"Some of my best friends are Black" in the eyes of anyone accusing him of racism.

[3] or the other things Hemi listed or had in mind in the ellipsis.


In short, there may be the same kind of dynamic that plays out every
day here in talk.origins: an "us versus them" mentality that takes no note of the
unfairness or hypocrisy or dishonesty of "us" and does not care about the
validity of any arguments by "them," and completely ignores arguments they hope
"one of us" can deal with.

All of the critics [at least one of whom is very influential] that I have seen of Rowling's June 2021 manifesto
are afraid to go into specifics but merely make general, undocumented claims
about how it is full of distortions and misleading assertions. Some don't even bother:
they label her as a TERP or some other pejorative label and let it go at that.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Monday, October 24, 2022 at 10:55:49 AM UTC-4, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

> All of the critics [at least one of whom is very influential] that I have seen of Rowling's June 2021 manifesto
> are afraid to go into specifics but merely make general, undocumented claims
> about how it is full of distortions and misleading assertions. Some don't even bother:
> they label her as a TERP or some other pejorative label and let it go at that.

Correction: TERF, with connotations of transphobism.


Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

peter2...@gmail.com <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, October 21, 2022 at 8:55:46 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
>

[mercy snip]

>
> (3) Hemidactylus gave no pressing reason for me to respond
> to any of the disorganized ramblings he did about seemingly
> random bits of history.
>

Having deep connection to the topic of what woke actually means they were
not random or disorganized. You must not have the background knowledge for
processing them adequately. Your ignorance is not my problem.

I see no need to concern myself with your catastrophizing over the
implications of a word you refuse to learn the history of. I tried to
remedy that to no avail.

Being a seasoned culture warrior you prefer to latch instead onto hot
button topics having no topicality to this newsgroup. Not biting that hook.


[snip rest]

[Lawyer Daggett]

Moved up from below:

> (3) Hemidactylus gave no pressing reason for me to respond
> to any of the disorganized ramblings he did about seemingly
> random bits of history.

Nyikos game me no pressing reason to respond to any of the
disorganized ramblings he did around his obviously confused
ideas about "woke".

Beyond that, your repeated assertions that there is profound meaning
to be found in the fact that people often don't bother to respond to
much of what you write is not sane. Were I to make similar inferences,
I would constantly be writing about how you ignored much of where
I have explained how you are wrong about, for example, vaccinations.
Oh, I might have some suspicions about why you delete some things
without comment but I find those posts people make claiming that
so and so ran away to be extremely tedious.

> (2) while Hemidactylus is crowing less than two full DAYS after
> a post he did, talking about an alleged shortcoming
> of my response to the same post earlier that day.
>
> ______________________ relevant portion plus header________________
> On Thursday, October 20, 2022 at 5:35:45 AM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > I doubt you would have the first clue about it, but divisions in the
> > atheist movement dovetail with the rise of using “woke” as an all-purpose insult.
> I see no need to concern myself with the history of the word when
> the big issues on this thread are to whom it applies at the present time,
> and their behavior.
> Anyway, how can it be an insult when what I thought to be some
> of the worst excesses are regarded by you as to be too
> insignificant to merit a response from you?
> ==================== end of relevant portion =============================
>
> (3) Hemidactylus gave no pressing reason for me to respond
> to any of the disorganized ramblings he did about seemingly
> random bits of history.
>
> I could go on listing differences, but I'd rather comment for today on how
> I realized over the weekend that the next thing Hemidactylus wrote WAS relevant
> to one of the worst excesses: the savaging of J. K. Rowling
> for daring to speak out against the injustices wreaked by
> trans-allied fanatics. Here is what he wrote, reposted from above:

You want me to cry for JK Rowling and ignore the challenges of children
with gender dysphoria? She is the one suffering and not them? I don't think
the campaigns against JK put her at a particularly high risk of suicide. But
children and young adults struggling with their self-perceived gender and the
one they are asked to accept do demonstrably have a high risk of suicide. They
also suffer bullying, beatings, and rape at a much much higher rate than their
peers. But the real problem is how JK Rowling was treated?

You are contributing to the problem by working against an empathetic acceptance
of a reality. Instead you're aligning yourself with those who glibly dismiss objective
reality for their wishful thinking that the world trivially resolves into convenient
and comfortable categories. Are you really so blind to the broader context?

> > > >It began with a reaction against feminism and gained a head of
> > > > steam with gamer-gate and the overlap with the various strands of organized
> > > > misogyny (collectively the “manospere”—MRAs, seduction aficionados,
> > > > incels…) joining the pile on.
> This brings up the possibility that the virulent reaction against Rowling and other
> women with impeccable feminist credentials [1] is due not so much to being
> trans people [2] or in solidarity with them, but to being anti-feminism or being outright
> mysogynists against "wymin born wymin" as one fashionable feminist term had it [3].
>
> [1] except perhaps the most important one in the eyes of the dominant feminist subculture:
> the depth of their commitment to abortion rights, of which I know nothing.

Please, your knowing next to nothing about something has historically not stopped you before.

> [2] Rowling has nothing but praise for trans people she knows personally,
> but that probably falls into the same category as a white man saying
> "Some of my best friends are Black" in the eyes of anyone accusing him of racism.

Tone deaf.

> [3] or the other things Hemi listed or had in mind in the ellipsis.
>
>
> In short, there may be the same kind of dynamic that plays out every
> day here in talk.origins: an "us versus them" mentality that takes no note of the
> unfairness or hypocrisy or dishonesty of "us" and does not care about the
> validity of any arguments by "them," and completely ignores arguments they hope
> "one of us" can deal with.
>
> All of the critics [at least one of whom is very influential] that I have seen of Rowling's June 2021 manifesto
> are afraid to go into specifics but merely make general, undocumented claims
> about how it is full of distortions and misleading assertions. Some don't even bother:
> they label her as a TERP or some other pejorative label and let it go at that.
>
>
> Peter Nyikos

One does not need to go into specifics over hackneyed rhetoric. It isn't useful to
recycle the refutations, certainly not in the reality that it's akin to a couple of white
guys standing in front of a black audience debating the flawed statistical arguments
in The Bell Curve. Again, beyond tone deaf. It's insulting and tangibly hurtful.

[Glenn]

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

Peter, you can't wake the woke. I believe them to suffer from untreatable mental illness.
Though I regard the subject as being precisely on topic for t.o. the illness manifests itself in more familiar subjects than "trans", and the causes of this illness may be more obvious engaging in the more foundational subjects and controversies that surround us here.

> One does not need to go into specifics over hackneyed rhetoric. It isn't useful to
> recycle the refutations, certainly not in the reality that it's akin to a couple of white
> guys standing in front of a black audience debating the flawed statistical arguments
> in The Bell Curve. Again, beyond tone deaf. It's insulting and tangibly hurtful.

If I thought it would be helpful, I would call for those like J Nobel here to be insulted and tangibly hurt. Young boys and girls suffering through puberty and society has always been difficult to some degree. What is happening in the present is unforgivable, and may not be able to be reversed, or only reversed by the most serious of means. Science fails us, and has been failing us for many years. But I have failed to find anything that could even possibly be seen as helpful. I'm not very susceptible to fatalistic attitude, nor do I consider my regard as being prophetic. It is a mystery, perhaps more physical than social, like aliens introducing viruses on Earth to get rid of all of us. They may even have taken human form to better spread the illness. Rowling may be one, if so I wonder if humankind is worth saving at all. Or maybe Ronald Wetherington is one:

"In 2009, Southern Methodist University anthropology professor Ronald Wetherington testified before the Texas State Board of Education that human evolution has “arguably the most complete sequence of fossil succession of any mammal in the world. No gaps. No lack of transitional fossils…So when people talk about the lack of transitional fossils or gaps in the fossil record, it absolutely is not true. And it is not true specifically for our own species.”1 According to Wetherington, human origins show “a nice clean example of what Darwin thought was a gradualistic evolutionary change.”"

https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/do-fossils-demonstrate-human-evolution-lets-consider-at-the-technical-literature/

Not sure that were he an alien out to eliminate the human race, that I would still wonder if we are worth fighting for at all either.

[Glenn]

"Materialism taken to its logical end effectively turned Stalin and Mao into psychopaths. That is why millions died at their hands. Think about that the next time you see a video of rampaging wild-eyed social justice warriors. Is it so hard to believe that given their passionate hatred for everyone who refuses to toe the DEI line, they would be tempted by a similar impulse?"

https://uncommondescent.com/off-topic/what-must-we-do-when-the-foundations-are-being-destroyed/

After 20 years of studying what at various times I have referred to as materialists and atheist evolutionists, I have been convinced that Materialism is the new religion of the age, which signals the end of civilization and perhaps all life on Earth in the near future.

"Instead, there is a widespread sense that the great evil is stirring again, and the world seems to be teetering on the edge of an abyss of madness and destruction."

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, October 21, 2022 at 9:15:46 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Lawyer Daggett <j.nobel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Friday, October 21, 2022 at 8:15:47 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >> *Hemidactylus* <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
> >>>
> >> [snip]
> >>>
> >>> I doubt you would have the first clue about it, but divisions in the
> >>> atheist movement dovetail with the rise of using “woke” as an all-purpose
> >>> insult. It began with a reaction against feminism and gained a head of
> >>> steam with gamer-gate and the overlap with the various strands of organized
> >>> misogyny (collectively the “manospere”—MRAs, seduction aficionados,
> >>> incels…) joining the pile on.

I've commented on this much, and when you replied to the post where I commented
on the second sentence, you did a mercy snip of the repost of the first sentence,
because you are very merciful to yourself.

In that same reply to me today, you did a snip of my long reaction to the second of your sentences.
I believe that is because you didn't want people whose attention span doesn't take in
such long reactions to see how I picked up your ball and ran with it. Am I correct?

My guess is that my next reaction will get the same treatment,
but my words are for the general readership, whether you decide
to snip it or not in your response (if any).

> >>> At some point they started agreeing that
> >>> “SJWs” were bad because they cared about the concerns of women, minorities,
> >>> and queer folk.

I take it that you mean for SJW to stand for "social justice warrior." Curiously enough, that
disambiguation received only three stars, while three other nearby disambiguations
received four stars in the following webpage:

https://www.abbreviations.com/SJW

However, "Social Justice Warriors" got four stars on the second page, suggesting
that your "SJWs" is as redundant as saying "the hoi polloi".

Anyway, I think the main bad thing about SJM *qua* SJM is that they are
very selective about the concerns they promote. Of course all too many
of them are abusive about it, and you would rather snip what I write
about that all too prominent and influential bunch than talk about it,
for reasons known only to yourself.

That bunch is, I believe, the prime movers of the main driving force
behind Biden's pronouncement, "Trans is the civil rights issue of our time."

There are many other pronouncements and actions where that one came from.


Neither of the two main political parties can do without extremists who
are sufficiently motivated to get out the vote by canvassing door to door, etc.


CONCLUDED in next reply, to be done soon after I see that this one has posted.


Peter Nyikos