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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

92 Comments

  1. timber-munki
    June 12, 2015 @ 9:42 am

    First off, he can spout arrant nonsense.

    So he's attmepting to incite some kind of uncivilised murder, no doubt a beheading on the streets of London. Nice to see he shows that hubris really is a stranger to irony.

    Also words can have more than one meaning. It's such a basic concept, up there with 2+2=4. Look at the OED definition of 'set'. I think that he thinks that he's trolling when all he really is doing is demonstrating his own stupidity.

    Reply

  2. Robert O' Shea
    June 12, 2015 @ 11:51 am

    Hey Philip, real sorry to see you having to put up with this rubbish. I love your blog and your view are always great reading (although I am going to horrify you by saying I think The Wicked and the Divine is just okay-ish! I am an Irish gay guy who lives in New Zealand, my partner of 11 years is Maori, hence why how I ended up over there. Anyway the referendum for gay marriage in Ireland recently occured with a great result. I had followed the campaign closely on the internet and through my friends at home. There were obviously the haters and those that spread horrible views in the campaign race but what came out more however was the support, love, and overall jolly big great happiness that the Yes campaigners got from all sorts of people. It made me proud to be Irish, gay, part of a community. I wished I had been there that day when the Yes vote came through. I missed by friends back home that day very much but was so happy with the result. My point is that for all those trolls and haters who give u abuse for not following their veiws, just remember there are people out there who respect and value what u say. U do a great job. keep doing a great job.P.S.Did I read on your tumblr that u might do a 2000AD blog?That would be fab. Read the Pat Mills Slaine or Nemesis stuff. Or Stickleback which has zarbi and Who monsters hidden in the fab art!rob

    Reply

  3. Robert O' Shea
    June 12, 2015 @ 11:53 am

    Arrrh!p.s. i published the above comment without previewing so ignore my spelling mistakes!

    Reply

  4. Cdog Zilla
    June 12, 2015 @ 1:08 pm

    I can't help but hear "kill the magicians" in Operatic Elmer Fudd Voice. Not to dismiss the evils of fascism as mere cartoon evil, it's just… these guys. exasperated sigh

    Reply

  5. camestrosfelapton
    June 12, 2015 @ 1:15 pm

    Simply awful – and it is an attitude that is essentially the kind of hate/nonsense that leads evangelical Christians (which Wright isn't) to eschew the very genre that Wright-Day claim to be defending.

    Also, on talking cats, this clip from a documentary abut the British 1960's record producer Joe Meek features a recording Meek made of a cat that he believed was supernaturally talking.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXtTgkSb4n4
    Offered as an antidote.

    Reply

  6. Chris
    June 12, 2015 @ 1:17 pm

    I fear Mr. Wright has not correctly defined the term "kill" which leads to some kind of paradox

    Reply

  7. Holly
    June 12, 2015 @ 1:26 pm

    "I thought, as I went, about all the despicable people that I had met in my lives and on my travels. Not the real twenty-four carat lunatics bent on universal domination or all that nonsense, but everyday, common-or-garden evil. Lying, thieving people with poisoned minds, uttering cruel and hurtful words. Those who had no excuse with which to mitigate their spiteful, critical ways.

    "It was small evil, perhaps, but in many ways far more pernicious than something on a much grander scale. There was small evil at work in this place. I felt it. I knew its distasteful smell. Small evil, conceived by small minds."

    Reply

  8. Ben
    June 12, 2015 @ 2:56 pm

    Your Inquisition nostalgia isn't doing Christianity any favors, John.

    Reply

  9. camestrosfelapton
    June 12, 2015 @ 3:31 pm

    wow.
    I put on my hazmat suit and went and read the comments at VDs blog.
    Your comments were very well done.

    Reply

  10. ferret
    June 12, 2015 @ 3:59 pm

    But it's Witch season!

    Reply

  11. Stardust
    June 12, 2015 @ 5:24 pm

    He does realize someone can turn around and say the exact same thing in the same logic about Christians, right? Or does he just not care/hate Christians as well and wouldn't mind if that sentence were 'magicians are right to kill Christians'?

    It also does not make a great deal of sense… when you make a claim that large, you need to show what exactly is so paradoxical or irrational. He just listed a sentence of defining a term. There's a couple arguments you can make with that, like I once saw someone try to define 'monster' as meaning 'cool' and they got angry when others did not use it the same way, to which I responded 'that word usually is not defined like that, sorry we could not read your mind and want to use it the normal way', but that it's illogical is not usually an argument you can make with definitions…

    Ohhh, I get it. He's angry you are using mysticism for a different term than he does. Obviously there is only one true English.

    Reply

  12. Jarl
    June 12, 2015 @ 6:10 pm

    Heretic season!

    Reply

  13. Asher Jacobson
    June 12, 2015 @ 6:17 pm

    The Inquisition was merely a response to the expansion of Islam into Spain. Prior to this expansion Spain had been, by far, the most pluralistic region in Christendom and it was this very pluralism that prevented Spain from uniting to resist that expansion. The Inquisition was simply about increasing social unity by reducing this pluralism.

    Like all other human events the Inquisition was and effect of prior causes.

    Reply

  14. Asher Jacobson
    June 12, 2015 @ 6:28 pm

    Mysticism without an active and aware ordering force is just human wish fulfillment, chaos. Wright takes the historically standard Christian position that there is a difference between superstition and religion and that the former is socially destructive to the point that the removal of people advocating it is justified by that destructiveness.

    One interesting thing about the Nazis was that much of their atrocious behavior was done secretly, indicating that they intuitively understood there was something wrong with it. Historical Christian treatment of heretics was enacted with much publicity so as to deter others from taking that path.

    The lesson is that if you think killing someone is justified the first test is whether or not one is willing to do it without sneaking around.

    Reply

  15. Asher Jacobson
    June 12, 2015 @ 7:41 pm

    I am reminded of Nietzsche's dictum "call like things alike". Wright's understanding of "mysticism" is clearly different than is yours. Well, it depends on whether or not you prefer the term as a pejorative or not, and since both of you seem to side of "not" the issue becomes which definition of less pejorative.

    Let's go back to Wright's distinction between religion and superstition. The former is the position that there is a self aware law giver who orders the universe and the second latter is that sacred mud will stop bullets (true story). The former is empirically untestable while the latter is definitively false via evidence.

    One might say that the comparison is not relevant. One would be wrong. In fact, there is a vast array of things commonly held that are as ludicrous as the belief that there is a sacred mud that stops bullets. The "nurture" side of the nature/nurture debate. The evidence is in and nature won without a contest – "nurture" didn't even leave the gate, yet, there are entire disciplines in the university system dedicated to and predicated upon an underlying "nurture" assumption. Say what you will about religious people but their theologies are rarely wedded to positions blatantly at odds with manifest evidence. "Nurture", then, is simply magic dressed up in scientific garb, a chaotic, lawless mysticism where reality conforms to man's limitless will.

    This sort of mysticism, which asserts the limitless powers of mankind and blatantly ignores evidence is the sort which will inevitably turn the word into a pejorative. Sandifer, himself, by his own definition of the term is turning it into a pejorative when both he and Wright clearly view it in a non-pejorative fashion. So Sandifer's definition is self-contradictory and evidence-defying (if one agrees that humankind is not a collective Godhood) and Wright's is not, which is why Wright's is better than Sandifer's.

    The only other way out is to declare that demands for evidence and coherency are, themselves, inherently a product of oppression – a response that is a small and vocal minority on the political left.

    Reply

  16. Asher Jacobson
    June 12, 2015 @ 7:44 pm

    I am also reminded of Marx's comment that in an age of science all myths must be made scientific, "nurture" being an excellent example of a scientific myth.

    Reply

  17. camestrosfelapton
    June 12, 2015 @ 8:33 pm

    The Spanish Inquisition wasn't established until 1478 about 700ish years since the Islamic expansion into Spain began but only about 12 years before the Treaty of Granada ended Islamic rule in Spain. Additionally the Spanish Inquisition directed much of its persecutory zeal towards non-muslims. More or less the exact opposite of what you said.

    Reply

  18. luagha
    June 12, 2015 @ 9:02 pm

    When you raise a month-dead corpse to totter around as a fiendish zombie to do your bidding, I will believe that you are a magician, and comport myself accordingly.

    Reply

  19. camestrosfelapton
    June 12, 2015 @ 9:19 pm

    I have to say I managed to read that despite it apparently having been written in Enochian.

    Reply

  20. Jarl
    June 12, 2015 @ 9:39 pm

    What kills me (ah ha, do you see, ha ha, what I… did there…) is that he uses the present tense. Christians are right to kill magicians. Not were, are.

    In fact, it's not even sorcerers, wizards, witches or anything like that… magicians.

    I sometimes wonder if these people realize that they've lost touch with reality. Actually, that would explain a lot, especially if they demand reality come to meet them, rather than the other way around.

    Reply

  21. Elizabeth Sandifer
    June 12, 2015 @ 9:56 pm

    Why the fuck would I want to do that?

    Reply

  22. Elizabeth Sandifer
    June 12, 2015 @ 9:58 pm

    Yeah, if it's not clear, I really have a problem with the whole "killing" thing in terms of this debate.

    Reply

  23. Elizabeth Sandifer
    June 12, 2015 @ 10:00 pm

    Asher, please don't be an Islamophobic fuckhead in my comments. Thanks.

    Reply

  24. benny whitehead
    June 12, 2015 @ 10:04 pm

    To be honest he doesn't look very hard. I reckon you could take him.

    Reply

  25. Jarl
    June 12, 2015 @ 10:10 pm

    You could bring B.B. King back, Phil! The power is in your hands!

    Reply

  26. Aylwin
    June 12, 2015 @ 10:20 pm

    There are actually more glaring historical absurdities in Asher's comment than there are sentences. Not quite managing to outnumber the words though, so there's still something to aspire to.

    Reply

  27. camestrosfelapton
    June 12, 2015 @ 10:30 pm

    I assumed this was a reference to VD's necromantic summoning up of the Irene Gallo non-controversy as a kind of zombie outrage magnet for the Sad Puppies.

    Reply

  28. Aylwin
    June 12, 2015 @ 10:32 pm

    I think there are quite a few other tests that would normally come in ahead of that one. "Is it for no better reason than that they define a word differently from me?" would definitely take precedence, though it's not a test that most people would need to apply. "Have I completely taken leave of my senses?" would be a more common one that also seems applicable here.

    Reply

  29. camestrosfelapton
    June 12, 2015 @ 10:35 pm

    And by essentially ignoring one of the major targets of the Spanish Inquisition, the comment managed to be both Islamophobic AND anti-Semitic.

    Reply

  30. Jack Graham
    June 12, 2015 @ 11:12 pm

    Asher, could you point me to where Marx says that? I genuinely don't recognise it, and I've read pretty much everything of Marx at one time or another. It's possible that I've just forgotten of course, since I'm not actually a proper scholar and am just as fallible as anyone else. I'd like to know if I have forgotten it. And, if that is a genuine Marx comment, I'd like to see it in the original context, which I suspect might be useful.

    Reply

  31. Jack Graham
    June 12, 2015 @ 11:15 pm

    To be clear: It sounds like rhetoric he might use, but I'd love to see the original quote you have in mind so I can place it.

    Reply

  32. John Wright
    June 12, 2015 @ 11:56 pm

    To answer Mr Sandifer's question, no, I did not think he would take the comment seriously, did not think he would be afraid and did not think he or anyone would take it as an excuse to make believe further make believes about Christians.

    I overestimated his intelligence and his honesty. N.B.: in real life, Christians did not kill magicians because a dispute over the definitions of terms. I had forgotten I was addressing minds — I use the term loosely — unacquainted with real life.

    So everyone here agrees I was advocating murder because someone defined a term wrong, eh, rather than expressing mild exasperation with a twit who knows less about the occult than I do, cannot do philosophy, cannot define his terms correct, cannot argue, and reacts like an hysterical goose to a sardonic joke on the internet?

    You people live in a wonderland of aberrant emotion.

    Reply

  33. 08c400a2-92e0-11e4-8d16-5be5a3075e0f
    June 13, 2015 @ 12:22 am

    "You people live in a wonderland of aberrant emotion."

    Aren't you the guy who threw a temper tantrum because you saw two girls holding hands on TV?

    Reply

  34. Iain Coleman
    June 13, 2015 @ 12:35 am

    Shit, someone warn Paul Daniels.

    Reply

  35. Jarl
    June 13, 2015 @ 12:35 am

    "I lack the emotional or psychological capacity to recognize that tone of voice and body language are not visible in text I have written on the internet, especially when my textual statements hew closely to actual beliefs non-sarcastically held and espoused by the host of the venue. Therefore, you were wrong to criticize the death threat I wrote. 911 was an inside job. Ron Paul for president. The N Word."

    Reply

  36. Orange
    June 13, 2015 @ 12:39 am

    As one of the dozens of others who have also had their death called for in the comments of a Vox Day post, I can tell you that we're all aware that it's pretty common sport over there. People who should know better (like you) tend to get caught up in it, and it's clear you don't even think about what you're doing until someone calls you out on it.

    At which point you claim it was just "mild exasperation" or something similar, of course, and imply that it was very much deserved.

    Instead of always having to backpedal or go yelling at even more people, perhaps you should start considering your words before you write them?

    Why do you feel the need to be such a judgmental, rude jerk to everyone, anyway? It's constant with you, the name-calling, the insults to intelligence, the heavily implied death threats, the resentment, the accusations of all sorts of wrong-doing… honestly, can you go even a day without an incident like this one right here happening?

    And are you happy with the way things are right now? I mean, is this the way you want to live?

    Reply

  37. Jarl
    June 13, 2015 @ 12:41 am

    Has anyone been in contact with David Copperfield lately? We need a wellness check, stat.

    Reply

  38. Iain Coleman
    June 13, 2015 @ 12:44 am

    Go easy on John. He's still upset that Terry Pratchett died of natural causes before he had a chance to beat him to death.

    Reply

  39. Jarl
    June 13, 2015 @ 12:46 am

    I just noticed that you're using the Shadow as your avatar and I'm upset about that too. This is why Romans are right to kill Christians.

    Reply

  40. prandeamus
    June 13, 2015 @ 2:22 am

    I fully concur with @orange above.

    "That argument convinced me because it was full of bile and anger" said no one, ever.

    Reply

  41. ferret
    June 13, 2015 @ 2:36 am

    Witch season!

    Reply

  42. Jarl
    June 13, 2015 @ 2:41 am

    Heretic season!

    Reply

  43. ferret
    June 13, 2015 @ 5:07 am

    Heretic season!

    Reply

  44. ferret
    June 13, 2015 @ 5:12 am

    We've all seen Weekend at Bernies 2, and we know how badly that turned out.

    Reply

  45. Prandeamus
    June 13, 2015 @ 5:53 am

    "Let's go back to Wright's distinction between religion and superstition. The former is the position that there is a self aware law giver who orders the universe"

    Abrahamic religions fit that description, certainly. I think that Buddhism is a fair counter-example here unless you wish to consider your definition of religion as that which has an universe-ordering self-aware law-giver, which would be a circular .

    "One might say that the comparison is not relevant"

    I'm missing something here, perhaps, because to me the logical thread shifts to the nature/nurture discussion. One could argue that some aspects "nature" are mystical and untestable (it is the nature of red light to be red) whereas "nurture" is testable (a child exposed to systematic abuse is morel likely to have problems in later life). [And before anyone complains let me say it's testable, not that it should be tested]

    I am happy to admit I may not have understood this argument, and I would welcome any clarification.

    Reply

  46. David Ainsworth
    June 13, 2015 @ 6:04 am

    One would expect a post whose supposed point relates to precise definition of terms to have some degree of awareness of the meaning of the phrase "are right to kill."

    One would also learn a lot about a poster who elects to express "mild exasperation" through a "sardonic joke" about Christians murdering non-Christians (in the present tense) as part of a post about rational and non-rational epistemology.

    I suppose the many people with whom I've had philisophical discussions and epistemological debates over the years who did not advocate the putting to death of those they disagreed with as a joke were either observing some sort of "political correctness" or giving in to the unreasonable expectations of those with aberrant emotional responses.

    One also wonders why John isn't more concerned with the "mental disorganization" of Vox Dei, who believes both sola scriptura and sola fides. Is mocking a pagan whose soul is irredeemable really more important than correcting and redeeming a friend?

    Reply

  47. David Ainsworth
    June 13, 2015 @ 6:07 am

    If they think you are dangerous, you are winning.

    If they call you an 'existential threat," you have already won.

    Reply

  48. Prandeamus
    June 13, 2015 @ 6:15 am

    "Wright takes the historically standard Christian position that there is a difference between superstition and religion and that the former is socially destructive to the point that the removal of people advocating it is justified by that destructiveness."

    The most violent periods of, say, the inquisition, could be argued that way. It could also be said that institutionalised Christianity has periodically been co-opted as a tool for social control by secular authorities; there are echoes of this in contemporary Russia for example.

    There is that pesky Jesus guy who said things like "bless them that curse you", and, "do good to those who persecute you". That alone surely refutes any assertion that killing heretics is justifable in historical Christian terms?

    Nazis certainly indulged in some secrecy, but many Nazis sincerely believed that they were doing the "right" thing by gassing Romany, Slavs and Jews. I'm sure that some had doubts, and some were trying not to think about the morality of their actions. But the secrecy was surely for pragmatic reasons because full openness would have caused greater societal outcry?

    Reply

  49. Asher Jacobson
    June 13, 2015 @ 6:25 am

    The fall of Granada was in 1492 but the bulk of the reconquest of Spain was already finished by the mid 1400s. The Inquisition was about establishing social unity by reducing social diversity and pluralism. It was directed against all major deviations from catholic doctrine.

    That you interpret my citation of dry historical reality as "islamophobia" and "antisemitism" is fucking hilarious. Also, pathetic.

    Reply

  50. Asher Jacobson
    June 13, 2015 @ 6:38 am

    "Nurture" is not an independent category, whereas nature is one. All human traits are moderately heavily heritable, as is the propensity of an adult to abuse their own child. I cannot cite the specific genetic component in the variance of that trait but I would guess it's around .7. In layperson's terms the propensity of an parent to abuse their child is, given my guess, about 70 percent genetic.

    Basically,, the only systemic and efficient means of reducing child abuse would be to identify adults with a genetic propensity toward child abuse and either take away their children or prevent them from having children in the first place But the notion that something like poverty is the final cause of child abuse is ludicrous. Shittiness tends to cluster and someone who has a propensity toward child abuse is also someone who is not likely to have much ability contribute anything to society, hence the poverty. So, while poverty and child abuse clearly correlate there is very little causal component.

    The notion that government programs to fight poverty will create a widespread reduction in child abuse is superstition on the level of believing there is a pool of sacred mud that will stop bullets.

    Reply

  51. Asher Jacobson
    June 13, 2015 @ 6:40 am

    "Yeah, if it's not clear, I really have a problem with the whole "killing" thing in terms of this debate."

    Human beings kill, it's what we do. The entire welfare state is predicated on the overwhelming threat of force enacted by the state.

    If you support the welfare state you support violence.

    Reply

  52. Asher Jacobson
    June 13, 2015 @ 6:50 am

    "One could argue that some aspects "nature" are mystical and untestable (it is the nature of red light to be red)"

    That sort of use of the term nature is metaphysical and passe. Use of the term, today, is about the function of things and how they developed, in this case via evolution.

    Reply

  53. Prandeamus
    June 13, 2015 @ 7:21 am

    "The entire welfare state is predicated on the overwhelming threat of force enacted by the state. If you support the welfare state you support violence"

    I do not follow this argument. Can you break it down in terms that I can understand? I don't recall mentioning the welfare state and I don't see where that comes in.

    Reply

  54. duckbunny
    June 13, 2015 @ 7:27 am

    He's talking about taxes. Taxes are collected by the state, the state uses the threat of force to collect taxes, taxes are used to pay benefits, therefore, QED, if you think people shouldn't be left to starve it means you support Asher being killed by the government. And since you are a godless liberal you do object to people being left to starve, and therefore you have no standing to object to violent rhetoric.

    Reply

  55. Prandeamus
    June 13, 2015 @ 7:30 am

    "the only systemic and efficient means of reducing child abuse would be to identify adults with a genetic propensity toward child abuse"

    Hidden assumption: It's genetic and only genetic.
    Unproven statement: It's the only systemic efficient means

    "… and either take away their children or prevent them from having children in the first place"

    So, that would be advocating Eugenics. OK, would you extend that argument to other societal ills?

    "But the notion that something like poverty is the final cause of child abuse is ludicrous."

    Yes. There are rich child abusers. For avoidance of doubt, I wasn't suggesting this. But it sounds like a straw man argument that you have introduced.

    Reply

  56. Asher Jacobson
    June 13, 2015 @ 7:39 am

    "Hidden assumption: It's genetic and only genetic."

    Given that I explicitly stated such its ridiculous to call it a "hidden assumption".

    "Unproven statement: It's the only systemic efficient means"

    Depending on the genetic input the conclusion follows directly from the premise.

    "So, that would be advocating Eugenics."

    No one advocated anything of the sort. I simply pointed out that, given the highly genetic component to something like child abuse, the only widespread way to prevent it would be to make sure those with a propensity toward abuse were not around children.

    " But it sounds like a straw man argument that you have" introduced."

    Do you even understand what a straw man argument is? Most of modern social science is predicated on what is call the standard social sciences model (SSSM) which is blatantly contrary to a huge body of evidence. It is not going to far to say that entire disciplines and sub-disciplines in the academy are completely fraudulent.

    Whatever you might say about the existence/non-existence of a lawgiving God but it is not contrary to a massive body of evidence.

    Reply

  57. Asher Jacobson
    June 13, 2015 @ 7:41 am

    "if you think people shouldn't be left to starve it means you support Asher being killed by the government. "

    This is ridiculous. I am not a priori opposed to some sort of welfare state. Unlike most who call themselves liberals I am honest enough to admit it is predicated on aggressive force.

    The issue is one of intellectual honesty.

    Reply

  58. luagha
    June 13, 2015 @ 7:52 am

    To prove you're a magician?

    Reply

  59. Prandeamus
    June 13, 2015 @ 7:56 am

    You estimated that genetic propensity was around 70%. I assumed that the 30% was something else. Is it entirely genetic or not.

    The only way to prove that method X for dealing with problem Y is the only systemic efficient means would be to look at ALL possible alternatives and prove that they are inferior. Which you did not do.

    You did mention preventing them from "having children in the first place". Selectively preventing humans from breeding is a part of Eugenics.

    Yes I do believe I understand what a straw man argument is. I didn't mention the SSSM model, which you seem to regard as yet another straw man that I did not mention, in order for you to knock it down. Even if the SSSM model is completely fraudulent it would not have relevancy to my line of argument.

    I did not say that a lawgiving god was or was not contrary to evidence. I am a Christian. I pointed out that many religions do not have a such a lawgiving god, and posited that you were not defining "religion" accurately.

    Reply

  60. Daru
    June 13, 2015 @ 8:39 am

    Witch-Heretic season!

    Reply

  61. Daru
    June 13, 2015 @ 8:40 am

    Yeah well done for going there at all Phil, apart from presenting yourself impeccably.

    Reply

  62. Daru
    June 13, 2015 @ 8:45 am

    "To prove you're a magician?"

    What a ridiculous and limited idea.

    Reply

  63. Daru
    June 13, 2015 @ 8:47 am

    Yes the use of the present tense is worrying, and certainly does not make it sound like a joke.

    (John: "To answer Mr Sandifer's question, no, I did not think he would take the comment seriously.")

    Reply

  64. Elizabeth Sandifer
    June 13, 2015 @ 9:04 am

    My desire to prove myself to a random Internet commenter is far, far exceeded by my desire not to have a month-dead corpse lurching about. Really, I don't even have a ton of bidding to be done. I mean, I guess I'd like the apartment cleaned, but honestly, I could just hire a cleaning lady, which seems a far more sensible route than animating a zombie maid.

    Reply

  65. Elizabeth Sandifer
    June 13, 2015 @ 9:10 am

    Your trolling is not without a measure of skill and craft, Asher, but it lacks any animating spark of creativity. Indeed, it is, I dare say, boring. Either improve it dramatically or play elsewhere.

    A far more skillful execution comes from luagha below, whose demand that I animate a zombie for him is frankly a thing of outright art.

    Reply

  66. Josh04
    June 13, 2015 @ 9:11 am

    @Jack: I don't think Nietzsche implored people to 'call like things alike' either, for what it's worth. That doesn't even sound like him.

    Reply

  67. Daru
    June 13, 2015 @ 9:12 am

    "Really, I don't even have a ton of bidding to be done."

    Hear, hear. Practicality is important! For me I would always be wary about the idea of magic being about exerting control. For me magic is more about allowing oneself to be shaped by the elements rather than wielding them. It feels for me that discovering deeper capacities for inspiration and joy are much more interesting than zombies.

    Reply

  68. Josh04
    June 13, 2015 @ 9:13 am

    the welfare state is predicated on violence in much the same way that me buying my friend a coffee is predicted on my refusing to speak to them ever again.

    Reply

  69. Daru
    June 13, 2015 @ 9:15 am

    Yep, we like and appreciate creativity here.

    Reply

  70. duckbunny
    June 13, 2015 @ 9:35 am

    "I am not a priori opposed to some form of welfare state" is a very different sentence to "I am not opposed to the welfare state".

    Reply

  71. Elizabeth Sandifer
    June 13, 2015 @ 9:35 am

    Oh, hi John.

    While you're here, question for you – when the Pope's encyclical on climate change comes out on Thursday, will you be obeying its moral demands despite your doubts and lack of understanding? I'm particularly curious about the parts that are going to be blaming climate change's threat to creation on the unchecked spread of global capitalism.

    Reply

  72. Prandeamus
    June 13, 2015 @ 10:21 am

    "The issue is one of intellectual honesty." I think I begin to understand.
    So you're saying
    1. Welfare state costs money (of course)
    2. This is paid by taxes (ok)
    3. Non-payment of taxes is punishable with violence (cautiously accepted, see below)
    4. Therefore the welfare state relies on violence
    5. Anyone who disagrees with this logic is not being intellectually honest.

    Well, that clarifies the argument for which I thank contributors.

    Note to 3: In my country if I do not pay my taxes I might be subject to fines, imprisonment and/or state confiscation of my property. If I resist arrest the police might be forced to restrain me and therefore physical violence would be involved. If we replace "violence" with "deprivation of liberty by the government" then your argument stands a lot clearer. And yes, no doubt in some benighted parts of the world non-payment of taxes may well be punishable with violence as a direct consequence.

    I'm still at sea as to how this fits into the larger argument. For example, if Phil Sandifer was accused of non-payment of taxes it might be relevant. But the language used by in the original post is about Christians killing Magicians.

    So, yes. People kill and are violent. From a Christian, theological point of view this is "Fall of Man 101", set text: First chapters of Genesis. In the general case "People kill and are violent" is a perfectly defensible position, though it hardly needs references to the welfare state and Nazis to make it. But extending this into "Christians should kill magicians" is not, to my mind, a defensible position, by a long shot.

    Some branches of Christian theology involve a defence of "the just war" and very few Christians are strict pacifists. In a fallen world most of us accept that there are places where physical violence is a regrettable necessity. I dislike occultism, but far more than that do I hate threats of violence from "Christians" against "magicians".

    Reply

  73. timber-munki
    June 13, 2015 @ 10:35 am

    Throwing insults around like their candy & back-pedalling (as well as some handy-dandy anthropomorphic goose libel as well, must be our mid winter non-denominational light festival)

    So, speaking as a non-Theist, I'm confused, (it's a function of basing decisions on dreary things like evidence & facts rather than some sky daddy hand holding, but it's my own starting-of-the-Common- Era-Middle-Eastern-state-murder-device-of-choice to bear) is it more Christian to throw the insults, the back pedalling or the sneering contempt you toss around like it's going out of fashion?

    Prehaps the next time you could let us know if you've got any fingers crossed behind your back so to speak, we are only weak fools and isn't that the Christian thing to do? It would also avoid all this confusion that you seemed to care about in you original statement.

    Tim Barnett.

    Reply

  74. camestrosfelapton
    June 13, 2015 @ 10:52 am

    Your 1st msg: "The Inquisition was merely a response to the expansion of Islam into Spain."
    Your 2nd msg: "The fall of Granada was in 1492 but the bulk of the reconquest of Spain was already finished by the mid 1400s."

    The Inquisition was established in the 1470s. Therefore your first message was not "dry historical reality" but a supposition clearly based on incorrect facts. The inquisition was established when the reconquista was almost complete and very much NOT as a reaction of an EXPANISON of Islam in Spain but rather the contraction of Islamic influence.
    Your 1st msg: "it was this very pluralism that prevented Spain from uniting to resist that expansion. The Inquisition was simply about increasing social unity by reducing this pluralism."

    Pluralism or not by the time the Spanish Inquisition came into being Spain was largely united and the Reconquista largely compete. The inquisitions persecutions occurred primarily AFTER the end of Islamic rule in Spain. SO again what you claimed was not "dry, historical reality" because your claims made no sense in relation to the actual facts.

    Your topsy-turvy version of history was then used to present the Spanish Inquisition as merely some attempt to unite a country against a common foe – while ignoring the fact that the foe had effectively already been beaten. Given you were attempting to justify a body that systematically persecuted Jewish people, Muslims and people with immediate Jewish or Muslim ancestry then it is reasonable to conclude that your argument was both Islamophobic, anti-semitic and factually gibberish.

    Whether your argument was intentionally that way or whether you just got your history very confused by accident, I cannot say.

    Reply

  75. camestrosfelapton
    June 13, 2015 @ 10:55 am

    I was hoping that Asher was going to answer Jack Graham's question. That quote from Marx? Where did you get it from?

    Reply

  76. Daru
    June 13, 2015 @ 10:55 am

    John: "To answer Mr Sandifer's question, no, I did not think he would take the comment seriously, did not think he would be afraid and did not think he or anyone would take it as an excuse to make believe further make believes about Christians."

    I really don't think that Phil is afraid of you at all. See below:

    "In which case perhaps the saddest thing about them is that I don't have anything to fear. Nobody is going to be showing up on my doorstep with a knife. They serve a mad tyrant who apparently demands that people like me be killed, and yet all they're willing to do in his name is bitch on the Internet and fuck with literary awards.

    We should thank God that such evil should also be so utterly pathetic."

    Reply

  77. camestrosfelapton
    June 13, 2015 @ 11:00 am

    JCW:"reacts like an hysterical goose to a sardonic joke on the internet?"

    Yeah, because you and prominent Puppies would never overeact to something they read on the Internet that wasn't even addressed to you…would you?

    Such, short, short, memories.

    Reply

  78. camestrosfelapton
    June 13, 2015 @ 11:03 am

    Phil:"While you're here, question for you – when the Pope's encyclical on climate change comes out on Thursday, will you be obeying its moral demands despite your doubts and lack of understanding?"

    Not fair! I wanted to ask him that! 🙂

    Reply

  79. Prandeamus
    June 13, 2015 @ 11:05 am

    Asher, you said, "The Inquisition was merely a response to the expansion of Islam into Spain". Surely the 1400s was a period of slow Islamic contraction on the Iberian Peninsula?

    Reply

  80. Ben
    June 13, 2015 @ 11:28 am

    Pramdeamus is quite right. Islam was not on the march in Iberia. Things would have gone a bit differently had it been.

    Reply

  81. Elizabeth Sandifer
    June 13, 2015 @ 1:24 pm

    I suspect that had Jack realized that Asher has, on other forums, suggested that Anders Breivik's victims deserved it, he wouldn't have engaged in the first place.

    Reply

  82. Asher Jacobson
    June 13, 2015 @ 2:38 pm

    "I suspect that had Jack realized that Asher has, on other forums, suggested that Anders Breivik's victims deserved it, he wouldn't have engaged in the first place."

    I said nothing of the sort. My point was that given Breivik's experiences his actions were entirely understandable and rational (i.e. related to cause and effect). Breivik objected to the ruling class globalists filling his environment with people who made his life experience worse, therefore, he killed a bunch of them. Notice Breivik did not go after the immigrants themselves but after the class of people who caused it to happen

    Reply

  83. Asher Jacobson
    June 13, 2015 @ 2:40 pm

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    Reply

  84. Elizabeth Sandifer
    June 13, 2015 @ 2:40 pm

    Goodbye, Asher. Please enjoy literally anywhere else on the Internet.

    Reply

  85. Asher Jacobson
    June 13, 2015 @ 2:43 pm

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    Reply

  86. Jarl
    June 13, 2015 @ 3:30 pm

    Witch season! Now burn the witch!

    Reply

  87. John Seavey
    June 14, 2015 @ 10:56 am

    Remember: When Irene Gallo calls Beale "a neo-Nazi", she literally means him to be a member of the modern-day successors to the political organization that started World War II, a heinous and unprecedented slur against a man who has no intention of conquering Poland.

    When John C. Wright says, "This is why the Christians are right to kill the magicians," directly after quoting a specific self-identified magician who recently humiliated his friend and publisher, he's KIDDING! TOTALLY A JOKE A-HA A-HA-HAHA! And you foolish fools fell for it and thought it was serious! Nononono. That's just showing your literal-mindedness and propensity towards outrage.

    Reply

  88. William Silvia
    June 14, 2015 @ 1:23 pm

    I don't know about a month dead, but if you could rise the corpse of Sir Christopher Lee you would be my new religion.

    Reply

  89. Kit Power
    June 15, 2015 @ 1:30 am

    I love you lot. 🙂

    Reply

  90. SochghajwI'
    June 17, 2015 @ 1:39 am

    Hewetic, shurely?

    Reply

  91. Jacob S. Blaustein
    September 22, 2022 @ 11:01 pm

    His talk about “mental disorganization” is an excuse for him to call anything he doesn’t agree with wrong and demean those who he hates. He likes to act like he speaks complete truth.

    Reply

  92. Jacob S. Blaustein
    September 22, 2022 @ 11:07 pm

    Reply

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