The pond could sense the reptiles in panic, as wild-eyed as horses neighing, what with the election just around the corner, and another wave perhaps in the offing ...
What a fabulous history that wording has, and the pond urges anyone interested to just do a google to see what turns up ...
Ah, the pond notes that we were alert, but not alarmed, way back in January 2020 ... and didn't that work out well ...
But enough of alertness, and even alarm, and on with the daily reptile comedy, and what better way to start than with the inimitable comedy stylings of the government cash in the paw Caterist?
That dogwhistle about the screeching fundamentalism of Margaret Court shows where the Caterist is heading with this one ...
And there you have it ... it's perhaps not an overt act of lying, so much as dissembling, misrepresenting, and distracting (not to mention reeling, writhing, derision and uglification) ...
For an outside view on that, here's the BBC ...
And here's the Graudian ...
Yes, if you explain your ethos - a fear and loathing of poofters, and a detestation and a mocking and a casting into hellfire for all eternity - you can pretty much do anything you like.
And there's a giant truck you can drive through all the Caterist crap about employment and students, thanks to that exemption under sex discrimination laws ...
It's called faith ... in a genuine room full of genuine Leviticus lovers ...
Every so often the pond weighs up which reptile contributor it has the most contempt for, the reptile most capable of the most distortions, contortions and malicious misinterpretations, and the Caterist is always a leading contender ... but then you could expect nothing less of an expert in the movement of flood waters in quarries ...
It's true that he's just echoing his master's voice ... as you might expect of someone who routinely holds out his paw for federal government cash ... but still the lack of shame is remarkable, almost breathtaking, the sheer sublime insouciance with which it's done ...
It goes without saying that the Caterist isn't much interested in social justice. The Menzies Research Centre, after all, prefers government cash in the paw, and the Caterist himself is chiefly skilled in ambition, distraction, uglification and derision ...
The pond however can offer up a Rowe as a counterweight to contemptible Caterist tripe, with more Rowe offerings here ...
And so to the rest of the reptiles this day ...
What a desperate, wretched and sorry bunch, and so the pond was forced to resort to that old standby, Major Mitchell, still reporting for duty ... and this time standing by to help out a little mate ...
Ah, the Major's going to do a blurb for prattling Polonius's latest offering, but before we get going, could the pond just provide a different image of the Pellist at large?
It's always haunted the pond. It seems to sum up exactly and precisely what was wrong with the Catholic church's response when it discovered it had pedophile rats in its ranks ...
It goes without saying that the Catholic church wasn't alone in doing this, as a recent report about Tasmania noted, ABC here ...
And so on.
Moving offenders between schools was one thing, public and Catholic schools were both at that game, but that noted, doing a perp walk with a notorious perp was Pellism at its most pathetic ...
And so on with the Major, doing his own perp walk with a perp ...
Dear sweet long absent lord, and the pond thought that the Caterist was the master of dissembling and distraction ...
Co-mingling the Donald and Pellists is surely a remarkable feat ... and if the reptiles manage to fit in a click bait video comparing the mango Mussolini to Ronnie Raygun, it'll be a total victory for Major nonsense ...
And yet, and yet ... images don't lie, nor do they involve reports of direct speech, so much as direct deeds captured in a moment ...
The pond spent many years covering the Pellists and their love of frocks, while hearing the odd tale about gay times and gay doings in the Pell ranks, admittedly from the gay priest in the extended family who exuded a fair old contempt for Pellism ...
But back to the Major doing a fair old bout of both siderism, or more to the point, one siderism in favour of his Polonial mate ...
Another click bait video? With the caption that it's a dangerous lie to propose that Trump supported white supremacists?
Oh in a way, perhaps, but there were good people, fine people, on both sides, and next time you hear a mob chanting "the Jews will not replace us", remember, they're just fine, good people expressing a view ...
Sorry, the pond just had to take a break from the Major, and now there's just one gobbet of derision, uglification and distraction to go ...
Um, might the pond suggest that the shameful stories of pedophiles in the Catholic church were true, and that the Catholic church's response was woeful and appalling, and leading that response was a man who showed his true colours in a snap, lurking to one side, but still brazenly out there in public, supporting the insupportable ...
And as for all that blather about the mango Mussolini, with the Major doing his best for Trumpism ... please allow the pond to correct the record with an old TT cartoon ...
I'll just leave this here, maybe to be read in conjunction with the Caterist's strange mental wanderings
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/hughriminton/status/1464534127017742336
"Scott Morrison’s religious discrimination bill also allows people who hold no religious belief to make a statement of that non-belief so long as that non-belief is held “in good faith.” What the actual…?"
Maybe I'm getting lost in the semantics here but I've always thought of atheism in terms of not seeing any convincing proof of a deity or deities(agnosticism being a bit of a cop-out). It's not so much a belief in something as the lack of a belief and I was really an atheist long before I admitted I was.
Like most things in the right-wing ecosystem they see it in terms of belonging to one tribe or the other without much reference to logic or proof.
If I'm wrong here, please let me know as the offer of eternal life etc sounds even more attractive than those regrow your hair offers.
Well I hate to be the disruptor here, Bef, but what you describe as the atheist position is actually the agnostic position. Agnosticism is a matter of asserting that the existence, or otherwise, of any kind of 'supreme being' - God or not - is undetermined. That's why I was an agnostic for very many years, because a dedication to logic allows no other position. And even you are not asserting that the existence of "god" has been compellingly disproven.
DeleteBut then, I just came over all contrary as I got older so I thought I might as well be an atheist anyway, because nothing about "god" is ever going to be proved or disproved.
But hey, here's something I think I have posted before, but the good is always worth repeating: Consider a very large - Earth sized - ball of very hard rock (like granite only harder) and imagine that every thousand years a very small bird flutters by and very lightly brushes the stone with its wings removing a single atom from the stone each time. Until eventually the stone is reduced to dust.
And the time that takes is but a single moment of eternity. And already more than enough time has passed for a billion of such stones to have been, one after another, reduced to dust. And that is but a moment of the eternity that has already passed.
Sound at all likely to you ? If not, do you have any suggestions as to what might have happened instead ?
BTW, I got that 'stone of eternity' thing from the writings of a catholic priest (can't even vaguely remember a name) and I've made a clarification or two over the time of my own personal eternity.
I had a look at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/ before posting and decided I didn't really want go down that particular rabbit hole.
DeleteAs I suggested, it all comes down to semantics and I've seen some elaborate arguments suggesting agnosticism can mean that some things are unknowable and therefore logic and observation cannot assist in proving or disproving the existence of the divine (i.e. you could be agnostic theist).
Here's Dawkin's take.
"I used to call myself an agnostic because I could not logically prove whether a god exists, so I took the agnostic position that the existence of any god is unknown — and perhaps unknowable. I was without belief in any gods and thought it highly improbable that any supernatural beings exist. When I learned that this view is consistent with atheism, I became an atheist.
So, my “conversion” from agnosticism to atheism was more definitional than theological. In reality, depending on how terms are defined and their context, I can accurately call myself an atheist or an agnostic, as well as a humanist, secular humanist, freethinker, skeptic, rationalist, infidel, and more."
My guess is that Huxley was just wimping it when he plumped for agnosticism - I certainly was. You can spend a lifetime going in epistemological circles without coming to a conclusion but real life requires some decisions based on imperfect knowledge and the balance of probabilities.
Actually, having written all that, I reread your second para and I think we are probably more in agreement than not.
PS Can you imagine what sort of mess this legislation would create - establishing, in good faith, that I genuinely don't believe something? Eh?
DeleteHi BF,
DeleteInstead of labelling myself Agnostic or Atheist I’ve always found myself much more in the Laplace camp of “There is No Need for God as a Hypothesis” in my understanding of how the universe was formed and the fundamental laws that operate in it.
https://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/09/16/there-is-no-need-for-god-as-a-hypothesis/
Not that keen on the ‘Methodological naturalism’ tag either.
There are of course things we don’t know but these blank bits don’t require an omnipotent sky god to cover for our ignorance. We just need more research.
However it is always commonsense to be wary of the theorists;
https://xkcd.com/2539/
DW
We almost certainly are more in agreement than not, especially if you look up the origin of my nom:
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction
DW - nicely put, and I agree with you. All we need to say about our present knowledge of 'creation' is that there was an instant of difference - call it a 'bang' if you wish - and it is a needless complication to try to attribute that to a god thing. Without the unquestioned authority of being the 'creator' of everything we can see, the god thing has - no authority over us.
DeleteThe "causeless cause", Chad and DW ?
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeless_cause
But if “There is No Need for God as a Hypothesis” what is there need for ? Or do we just conceive that indeed "the universe" - and not just this infinitesimal part that we fondly believe we can observe - has been, and will be, in existence for eternity ?
But no matter, as we're never going to have a clue about any of it, whether we assume ‘Methodological naturalism’ or not, since any 'sentient creator' that is/was capable of bringing "the universe" into existence would be completely beyond our comprehension now and for the entire short, finite time of human existence.
Oh, and by the way, DW, Laplace was simply observing our solar system after it had achieved its current stability which may indeed have required the expulsion of one, or maybe more, of the 'creational' planets:
https://physicsworld.com/a/was-a-giant-planet-ejected-from-our-solar-system/
Don't assume, as Laplace did, that how it is now, is how it has always been.
Good one BF, that set the ball rolling nicely ...
DeleteMmm - wasn’t going to buy into atheism or agnosticism, because what I see of the supposed structure of the bill to set out ‘religious freedom’ does not get to such heights. The minds who composed it show no sign that they have risen above superstition.
ReplyDeleteFunny word, superstition. What is claimed to be its derivation takes us to the Latin for - standing. And not ‘standing’ in the sense of status, but, yep - what you do when you get up off your chair. But we have agreed on what we want it to mean.
Its most likely first use is in an odd book of the 13th century - for which the British Library has given us a convenient article.
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/ancrene-wisse
Should I express surprise that the Henry has not (yet) cited the ‘Ancrene Wisse’ as part of his studied support for the ScoMo hymn to freedom? (Not ever, ever to be confused with the one by Mr Oscar Peterson)
So I am inclined to put all the supposed ‘reasoning’ of the ScoMo hymn (for he will ever be associated with it - his choice) into the morass of superstition, which is one of the reasons its effects will be difficult to resolve, other than to set off even more superstition.
Well, the 'superstitious' are basically standover men (and women ?) aren't they ? Believing that only they know truth and reality ?
DeleteOh my, Nick 'flood waters run free' Cater and Maj. 'reptile idiocy runs free' Mitch. both together on a Monday. Will there ever be another day like it, or was it just a once only 'Post Black Friday Once-off Special' ?
ReplyDeleteAnd we found so much to talk about that had nothing to do with either of them.