Image: Jacob Vogel, via Wikimedia Commons // CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication
By Eric Utter
According to recent reports, there are a growing number of atheists in America.
And, apparently, many of them are joining “secular congregations” and attending a “church without God.” (“Church without God?” That seems to me just another way of describing belief in leftist dogma.)
Nothing like a little ‘religious not spiritual,’ which appears to be the flip side of the ‘spiritual, not religious’ claims of recent years among some less-than-committed Christians.
It is ironic that these professed atheists are reportedly seeking to mimic religious organizations by using the language and structure of a “church,” such as meeting on Sundays, hearing a member’s “testimony,” and adopting various other religious practices.
Of course, some of the non-believers’ churches are a bit different. For example, there are purportedly a growing number of “psychedelic” churches, which cater to people looking to experience spirituality and ritual through drug use. A few mushrooms here, a little LSD there…what could go wrong? I mean, Marxists have famously called religion “the opiate of the masses.” This seems silly. Why not have opium be the opiate of the masses?!
Members of the Church of Perpetual Life believe they can achieve immortality– on Earth– via gene editing or cryonic preservation (the practice of freezing bodies after death in hopes that they can someday be resuscitated.) And I thought only taxes and the Democrat party were immortal. (They are inextricably linked.) Hope for that kind of immortality requires a suspension of disbelief. And an unwarranted faith…in science.
Yet another secular group promotes the idea that only physical matter exists. Talk about having faith! They don’t know this– and can’t prove this– but believe it because…?
Some of these secular groups describe their value system as “Good without God.” That’s always worked out well historically, right? The Nazis thought they were doing good by ridding the world of Jews. Marxists purported attempts to engender equity were only successful in the sense that well over 100 million people were rendered equal in death.
Simply put, it is not rational not to have faith in something bigger than oneself. I once tried to embrace atheism, but I didn’t have any faith in its leaders and just couldn’t bring myself to believe in it.
It is no coincidence that as the West becomes ever more secular in outlook, it loses its belief in everything else, too– including itself. Moreover, when individuals lose faith, they tend to lose their freedoms shortly thereafter.
Because, as William Penn observed, “Men who will not be ruled by God will be ruled by tyrants.”
Soon after the Greek philosopher Pythagoras crossed the Adriatic Sea from his native island of Samos, arriving at the Italian city of Crotona, it is said that he was hounded by local youngsters.
They had heard from the sailors on whose ship the foreigner had travelled that he could perform marvels such as none had seen before.
He at first told them that these miraculous things were performed through him, but were not from him and that they should rather be ascribed to ‘The One’ (τὸ Ἕν), the worship of which single, transcendent Deity was to be the whole focus of Pythagoreanism.
From curiosity over supernatural phenomena, the youngsters now turned to curiosity over philosophy, asking that he teach them about his mysterious God.
The philosopher’s response, however, was disappointing to the more raucous among the Crotonan youth: “If you wish to know God, worship Him; and if you wish to worship Him, do good works.”
“What good works should we do?” His interlocutors pressed.
“Works such as might honour your fathers and mothers and be a credit to your families,” he answered.
Seeing how brashly they spoke to a stranger—indeed, one very much their senior, for Pythagoras was around 40 years old when he came to Italy—the Greek thought it best to first teach them filial piety and so recommended that they go attend to their household duties and their parents.
But there was actually a subtle lesson here, as Iamblichus relates in his biography of Pythagoras, for the priority which a parent has over a child in time—in terms of the order in which the one comes into the world, serving as the instrument for the other to do so—is an analogy, a metaphor, for the priority which God has over all things. The structure of reality, including biological reproduction and temporality, reveals things about God’s character.
Not surprisingly, many of the local parents found Pythagoras’ teachings amenable, and he soon developed a community of followers.
Philosophy was suddenly fashionable, and being known as a student of Pythagoras became a status symbol, whereupon a wealthy man by the name of Cylon approached the newcomer.
Cylon’s experience in life had hitherto been that status was a purchasable commodity, and so he offered Pythagoras money to take him as a student. The sage, however, refused. We are told that Cylon’s physiognomy and gestures bespoke a temperament ill-suited to contemplation, and so he was entreated to be pious and do good works but was barred from joining the philosopher’s inner circle of dedicated students.
Jealous of those possessing something he could not buy and not particularly endeared by the intangible goods of family loyalty and monotheism that the Hellene had brought to his city, Cylon began trying to drive him away.
To this end, he found a formidable ally in one called Ninon. A poor man, Ninon preached radical egalitarianism to those persons in Crotona who had either fallen short of the Pythagorean school’s barriers to entry or generally mistrusted philosophy and the Greek’s new religious ideas:
“Why should some be esteemed over others? Are we not all equally able to perceive reality? Do you suppose you do not know as much truth as any other person who lives or has lived before?”
Ninon’s social egalitarianism was based on a flat epistemology, a materialistic worldview. He was an empiricist, uninterested in the exacting (spiritual and logical-deductive) disciplines that reveal truths below the surface layer of human experience.
And this anti-philosophy caught on.
Soon, a mob was roused, killing some Pythagoreans and driving others out of the city.
Pythagoras himself was either in Delos at the time or went there presently, emigrating with the families of his students to the community near that Greek temple, for he was held in high esteem by the priests of Delos, who considered him a manifestation of Apollo and messenger of the Divine.
Following his death, however, the Crotonan followers of Pythagoras were invited to return to their native city, where their property was restored to them, for Cylon and Ninon had fallen into disfavour, and a new governor wished to make amends.
What can we learn from this?
The idea of non-purchasable goods and of knowledge requiring spiritual piety and logical thoroughness can indeed be an impediment to the Cylons of the world, as can a strongly pro-family worldview, which will always interfere with naked market logic and political control.
In their fight against religion and family, Cylon types will sometimes mobilise the resentful and economically downtrodden who would otherwise be their class enemies. A Ninon, able to speak to the masses and whip up resentment, presents materialistic egalitarianism as emancipatory (when, in reality, it will only render people more vulnerable and more easily controlled).
The global oligarchic project to displace religion, break down the family, and concentrate political power relies on creating an underclass of state-dependent persons who can be called upon to defend the elite’s interests against reformists.
Cylon needed his Ninon; George Soros needed his Pablo Iglesias types.
Resistance requires asserting that truth is not a purchasable commodity and that the family and natural institutions analogize transcendent realities.
The proliferation of a flat, materialistic outlook in society is a sure sign that a predatory elite is mobilising and exerting its influence.
Police and the public prosecutor’s office have arrested a young man in Detmold. He is alleged to have stolen chemicals from a school in order to build a bomb.
A 17-year-old from Detmold is said to have been planning an explosives attack. State security investigators arrested the teenager on Friday morning. According to broadcaster WDR, an arrest warrant has now been issued.
The alleged perpetrator is said to have broken into a school in Detmold the night before and stolen chemicals to make a bomb. Alerted police caught the 17-year-old after a short escape.
Further clues after search During the search of his room, the investigators are said to have found sulphuric acid. The Detmold public prosecutor’s office is investigating on suspicion of preparing an explosion offence and grand theft.
In an initial interrogation, the teenager is said to have stated that he had wanted to blow up a building. According to “Der Spiegel”, the intention was not to kill people.
On Friday evening, the police and public prosecutor’s office announced in a joint press release that the teenager had allegedly broken into the school twice last weekend. The suspect had stolen chemicals from the chemistry rooms. The exact substances involved are not yet known.
According to information from the mag “Der Spiegel”, the youth was known to the police as an Islamist.
The UK is set to become the only country in the G20 without the ability to make steel from raw materials as its largest plant goes “green” and is expected to cut nearly 3,000 jobs in the process.
Indian-owned Tata Steel announced on Friday that it will be scrapping its blast furnaces at the Port Talbot steelworks in Wales and will replace them with an electric-powered arc furnace in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The move, which the poorly-named Conservative government gave £500 million in taxpayer money to help achieve, will mean that Britain will no longer be able to domestically produce steel from raw materials, given that the electric furnaces will only be able to convert recycled materials into steel.
This form of recycled steel is much weaker than that made from raw materials, and therefore cannot be used to make military vehicles and other defence projects. It will mean that Britain will become the only nation in the G20 incapable of producing its own steel from raw materials domestically, The Guardianreported.
The green conversion of the steelworks will also take upwards of four years to complete and will see as many as 2,800 jobs cut, severely impacting the small town of 32,000 that has already suffered under decades of deindustrialization.
Commenting on the scheme, vice-chair of the Port Talbot multi unions Gary Keogh said: “This plant isn’t part of the community, it is the community. We’re now fighting for a way of life. We’re an endangered species… The mood is devastation, uncertainty and probably overnight – certainly in my case – it’s going to be anger.”
Keogh also questioned the supposed environmental benefits of the conversion of the steelworks, saying that Britain will simply look for virgin steel overseas, meaning that even more carbon will be emitted, albeit out of site and out of mind on the other side of the world.
“They want to make their steel in Jamshedpur [India] … bring it thousands of miles across the ocean on ships with diesel engines, and call it green. It’s time people were honest,” he said.
Net Zero madness kills 3,000 skilled steel jobs.
Labour & Tories do not care about manufacturing workers in their Net Zero obsession.
This analysis was echoed by the chairman of The Spectator and former BBC presenter Andrew Neil, who wrote in the Daily Mail: “The irony is that decimating our heavy industry does not, in fact, reduce global CO2 emissions. It is reckoned that converting Port Talbot to greener electric arc production will cut our CO2 emissions by 1.5 per cent.
“But that will be swamped by the rise in CO2 emissions elsewhere as we import more steel from countries, especially China, which still generate electricity with dirty coal,” Neil added, noting that China’s CO2 emissions have spiked by 13 per cent over the past decade and therefore “swamp” any reductions made by Britain’s Net Zero policies.
The veteran journalist went on to characterise the government-inspired decision by Tata Steel as symbolic of the failures of the political elite in London and their “green virtue-signalling”, which comes at the expense of working-class communities.
He wrote that the governing Conservative party and the left-wing opposition Labour Party — which traditionally championed workers prior to their green shift — are “failing ordinary British people. They are unanimous in their support of Net Zero, whatever the cost in terms of lost jobs, prosperity, energy security or economic growth.”
The leader of the Nigel Farage-founded Reform UK party, Richard Tice, said that British steel workers have been “sacrificed on the altar of the madness of Net Zero”.
“The Labour Party don’t care, Keir Starmer doesn’t care, Ed Miliband doesn’t care, the Tory party don’t care, Rishi Sunak doesn’t care… they are all obsessed with Net Zero.”
Tice said that Reform UK is the only major party in Britain that will stand up for workers, vowing to “promote and defend skilled manufacturing jobs in the UK”.
It would be hard to imagine a group of people less black than characteristically blond and blue-eyed Swedes. But no lie is too outlandish to be rammed down the public’s throat by the moonbats running state media as they wage war on history to bring it into compliance with their hostile ideology:
SVT (state TV in Sweden) produced a high-budget series called the History Of Sweden, to remind the actual Swedes, IGNORE everything you know to be true, ignore your ancestors, ignore your culture, your heritage… it just turned black. pic.twitter.com/7A0ULsf7rr
The first Swedes are portrayed by black Africans and people from the Middle East in Sweden’s tax-funded state TV channel SVT’s blockbuster “History of Sweden”. Critics accuse SVT of falsifying history and the ‘experts’ involved of spreading propaganda for ideological reasons.
Historien om Sverige (The history of Sweden) is not just any TV series, but SVT’s biggest ever historical venture, which has taken three years to produce and will be broadcast this fall.
Europeans may have had darker skin in caveman days than they do now. As the theory goes, lighter skin evolved to help synthesize vitamin D. Even so:
Seven people from the 7700-year-old Motala archaeological site in southern Sweden had both light skin gene variants, SLC24A5 and SLC45A2. They also had a third gene, HERC2/OCA2, which causes blue eyes and may also contribute to light skin and blond hair. Thus ancient hunter-gatherers of the far north were already pale and blue-eyed…
But then, if Anne Boleyn could be black, why not Swedes? Believe — or prepare to get canceled for being a racist.
If all goes well for leftist social engineers, they will eventually use their control of the media to convince all Caucasians that they and those in their immediate physical vicinity are the only white people who ever existed.
trans-identified male has taken home the trophy at a women’s professional golfing tournament in Florida. Hailey Davidson, 30, emerged victorious at the NXXT Women’s Classic at Mission Inn Resort and Club on January 17.
Despite outlining eligibility as being restricted to “female players,” NXXT allowed Davidson to compete. His victory is particularly significant as this year NXXT had partnered with the Epson Tour to award 10 exemptions to their top five players. The exemptions were intended to provide female golfers the ability to compete in the Epson Tour regardless of their specific qualifications, something NXXT boasted would facilitate “unparalleled professional growth opportunities for women golfers.”
Davidson is currently ranked in the top spot to receive two of the ten available exemptions.
Davidson, who is originally from Scotland, last competed as a male in 2015 before declaring a transgender identity. Since then, he has become a vocal advocate for trans-identified males in women’s sports.
Writing for Athlete Ally in 2021, Davidson described himself as the “world’s first transgender woman to win a professional golf tournament, which I have now done multiple times.” He explains that he first began to believe he was a “woman” at age 14, but suppressed his “true self” until he was an adult, at which point he began experiencing severe anger issues.
“I had tried playing golf professionally as male prior to coming out, but I was such a headcase it was not only affecting me but the other players around me,” he writes. “I was at a crossroads at this point since I thought I had to choose between playing golf for a living and hiding who I was forever, or finally be happy as my authentic self and potentially never play golf again … While I did not play nor touch a club at all for over 2 years due to all that came with coming out of the closet, I was finally able to get back into playing when I was lucky to land a job at GolfNow. This got me back into playing for fun, and for once I was playing without anger or this mental time bomb waiting to explode.”
“No. Not fair at all,” Judy Murray posted to X (formerly Twitter) in heated words that quickly went viral. “Protect women’s sport. Listen to the facts, the scientists and the medics. This is wrong.”
No. Not fair at all. Protect women’s sport. Listen to the facts, the scientists and the medics. This is wrong. https://t.co/bFjlfNSg2v
While he was ultimately unsuccessful, Davidson attributed criticism of him playing in women’s sports to transphobia.
“I’ve seen that it’s not about protecting women’s sports or me having an advantage, it’s just that you don’t like trans people,” Davidson said during an interview on the Like It Is podcast. “It’s very sad that that’s what it comes down to. In the last couple of months, that’s what I’ve come to learn.”
On X, Davidson boasted of his victory, writing: “I was finally able to get my 4th professional win after two playoff holes… Also moved me into 1st place in the season rankings for two Epson Tour exemptions!”
The Epson Tour is the qualifying tour for the LPGA, meaning Davidson will not only be taking a major professional opportunity away from a woman, but he may also manage to successfully acquire the LPGA Tour Card he has been fighting to receive. The LPGA Tour removed the “female at birth” requirement in 2010.
Reduxx reached out to NXXT for clarification on their policies, and received a response deferring to the transgender guidance of the Ladies Professional Golfing Association, US Golfing Association, and Epson Tour — all of which have uniform policies allowing males to participate in women’s categories if they meet a certain amount of requirements.
Davidson prior to declaring a transgender status.
“The LPGA has a comprehensive Gender Policy that allows transgender athletes, including those who have transitioned from male to female, to participate in its events. This policy requires transgender athletes to provide a declaration of their gender identity, proof of gender reassignment surgery, and evidence of at least one year of hormonal therapy maintaining testosterone levels at a specified range. It also includes provisions for confidentiality and the recognition of decisions regarding gender verification made by other golf tours or sports authorities,” NXXT Tour Director Bennett Noe wrote.
“This alignment across the NXXT, LPGA, Epson Tour, and USGA ensures a consistent approach towards transgender athletes, emphasizing fair competition and integrity in the sport.”
“The NXXT tour is claiming just because their policy is uniformly and consistently unjust alongside the Epson Tour, LPGA and USGA that somehow that ensures ‘fairness and integrity in the sport.’” Smith said.
“It is precisely the opposite. The question they must answer is ‘do women deserve access to fair competition?’ If yes, they must adopt simple and clean rules that create a female protected category without exception.”
As we embark on a new year, our hopes and aspirations are renewed even as the specter of a climate doomsday purportedly looms over us.
The predicted apocalypse being a falsehood, we are called upon in this season of joy and love to forgive the fear-mongers perpetrating it. These would include policymakers, news reporters, and activists who are either ill informed or cynically manipulative.
So here’s to a fresh start for 2024. Let’s embrace forgiveness but also resolve to resist fear engendered by misinformation and hyperbole with the truth.
We’ll start with temperature predictions generated by computer models that have long served as a basis for fabricating a scary future. Crafted by a multitude of scientists worldwide, these numerous models — carrying the imprimatur of the United Nations — provide data that have been the source of hyperbolic headlines, hysterical protests, destructive public policies, and high energy prices. There have even been shortages of fuel, electricity, and food.
Yet the models themselves are fundamentally flawed, exaggerating the influence of CO2 on Earth’s temperature.
Known collectively as the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), the models fall well short of the accuracy required to guide crucial policy decisions that directly affect people’s lives. “All model runs warmed faster than observations both globally and in the tropics, in most cases significantly,” concluded scientists who examined the data.
The models’ deception underlies a continuous stream of falsehoods permeating every level of society and widespread hostility to fossil fuels, which are among the most reliable, abundant, and affordable energy sources.
This is why politicians want to cull thousands of cows in Ireland and grab agricultural lands from farmers in the Netherlands, why insects are proposed as alternatives to meat, and why expensive and unreliable wind and solar projects are subsidized to replace perfectly good coal-fired and nuclear power plants.
What’s truly astonishing is that even if the models’ predictions were to prove true, the forecasted higher temperatures would not be a threat to mankind. This argument was laid out in United Nations’ own special report, which showed (on page 256) that a business-as-usual approach with no actions to reduce CO2 emissions would lower global gross domestic product (GDP) by less than 3% by the year 2100.
Actually, there is no evidence to substantiate a 3% reduction of global GDP. There has been a marked improvement in human well-being since the onset of natural warming in the 18th century following the Little Ice Age that started around 1300. The widespread utilization of fossil fuels, coupled with industrialization and advancements in science and technology, has significantly advanced civilization.
The pending apocalypse is supposedly being prefaced by an increase in extreme weather, but no such trend is to be found in honest assessments of the data. For example, there has been a decrease, rather than an increase, in tropical cyclone frequency in the Indian subcontinent. Similarly, there has been a slight decrease in landfalling hurricanes in the U.S. The incidence of wildfires has decreased both globally and in the U.S., with most wildfires globally being the result of arson rather than climate-related factors.
Plant life has thrived in warmer temperatures and higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2, a fact supported by numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies and manifested in record crop harvests.
Notably, forest areas have expanded in both India and Europe. There has also been a doubling in the population of Bengal tigers and an increase in the number of polar bears compared to the mid-20th century.
The bulk of the news portraying a warming catastrophe is rooted in speculation rather than scientific knowledge, ignoring altogether evidence that the planet may be cooling in coming decades.
To gain deeper insights into how the present warming trend has benefited society, delve into the pages of “A Very Convenient Warming” by Gregory Wrightstone, geologist and executive director of the scientific non-profit CO2 Coalition.
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has defended inviting Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to his country despite the Turkish president’s woeful human rights record.
A freedom of information release to The Herald showed the offer was made at a controversial meeting between the pair at the COP28 summit in December. Those talks sparked criticism from within the SNP due to concerns about Turkey’s treatment of Kurds.
The Scottish first minister, of Pakistani origins, claimed he would raise human rights concerns with Erdoğan were they to meet in Scotland.
The invite has been criticised by the SNP’s government partners, the Greens.
It came after the first minister said he was not “comfortable” with the word “national” in the SNP’s name because it can be “misinterpreted”.
Asked about the invitation to the Turkish president, Yousaf told reporters at Holyrood: “I said the next time he’s in the United Kingdom why not come up to Scotland.”
He added: “Why on earth would Scotland not look to seek to engage with a Nato ally and of course with somebody we would seek to do business and trade with?”
The first minister said he would raise human rights concerns “as I tend to do whenever I have meetings with international leaders”.
He added: “But I should say of course we do that in a way that also recognises we’re on a human rights journey as are other countries.”
Minutes from the meeting at the COP28 summit revealed the pair had discussed the conflict between Israel and Hamas and Yousaf’s parents-in-law, who were trapped in Gaza for several weeks.
The SNP leader denied to reporters that the invite to Erdoğan was related to evacuating his family members from Gaza.
The Turkish government under Erdoğan, who has led the country for more than 20 years, is a staunch supporter of Hamas and the Palestinian cause.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Scottish Greens MSP Ross Greer pointed out the Turkish regime’s “ethnic cleansing of the Kurds”, bombing civilians in Syria and Iraq, imprisoning opposition politicians “on nonsense charges” and shutting down independent media and human rights groups.
Turkey has conducted military operations against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) bases inside Turkey and across the border in Syria and Iraq as part of what it says are efforts to prevent terror attacks.
The PKK, which has Marxist-Leninist roots, was formed in the late 1970s and launched an armed struggle against the Turkish government in 1984, calling for an independent Kurdish state within Turkey.
Mr Greer went on to say the Scottish government “wouldn’t roll out the red carpet” for Russian President Vladimir Putin or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Scottish Conservative external affairs spokesperson Donald Cameron: “The public will question if Humza Yousaf’s invitation to President Erdoğan to visit Scotland overstepped the mark, especially given his record on a number of topics.”
Erdoğan made a three-day state visit to the UK in 2018, which included a meeting with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. He also appeared alongside then-Prime Minister Theresa May at a media conference.
Kurdish-born SNP councillor Roza Salih said she was “disgusted” by Yousaf’s meeting with Mr Erdoğan in December as Turkey had stepped up attacks on Kurdish groups in Syria.
The UK government also threatened to withdraw support for Scottish ministers during overseas visits since no UK official was present.
Before being questioned about the invite to the Turkish president, Yousaf told BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast that he had concerns about his own party’s title.
“I’ve never really been comfortable with the fact that we have national in our party’s name,” he said.
The first minister explained that was not because he thought founding members of the SNP had any “far-right nationalist inclination” but because the term can be “misinterpreted”.
He told the podcast that the SNP had developed a “very strong brand” based on being a “civic national party”.
“We’re a party that believes it doesn’t matter really where you come from – what’s important is where are we going together,” the SNP leader said.
“And there’s no doubt about our politics being very routed in the left and the centre left of political discourse.”
On today’s #ncfnewspeak, NCF Director Peter Whittle, Senior Fellow Rafe Heydel-Mankoo and regular guest Amy Gallagher (the SDP’s London mayoral candidate) discuss: * The shocking report into Rothertham grooming gangs. * French pro-natalism – Emmanuel Macron shifts right and wants more French babies * Trump storms to victory in Iowa. Is he unstoppable? * Right-wing Youth in Europe v Left-wing Youth in Britain
