People of the Book

Under traditional Islamic rule, Muslims held high status with strong legal protections and privileges, while non-Muslims held lower statuses, with weaker legal protections and privileges. However, not all non-Muslims were equal in the hierarchy. Muslim rulers acknowledged the "People of the Book" - those adhering to similar religions such as Judaism and Christianity - and gave them better treatment than pagans and heathens. I've always wondered why that was so. The Abrahamic religions are all, in some ways, direct competitors with each other. And the boundary between the Islamic world and Christendom also demarcates a highly active fault line between the eastern and western civilizations. It's not just the religion that changes, but cultures, races, languages, etc. There has been great animosity and much bloodshed between both sides for some 1300 years, and yet Muslims are still inclined to treat their conquered Christian foes better than pagans. Why?

One of the few benefits of living in a collapsing society is that, after seeing so many things go wrong, it becomes more obvious how traditional societies got it right. Most long-lived customs provide some sort of benefit, even long after everyone forgets what that benefit was. Often enough, we only re-learn the wisdom the hard way.

There are countless definitions of religion, many of them cynical. Here, we've often defined religion as "a social system where status is gained by making logically improbable declarations of faith." For instance, Christians state that Jesus walked on water, while liberals proclaim that diversity is our strength. That is a cynical take on religion, but certainly useful. Another description would be "a spiritual belief system." That's perhaps the most usual interpretation, and would exclude the secular religions of the modern era. A third description we should consider is "a social order that keeps the nation from making predictable mistakes." Humans are inclined to err, and a social order that mitigates common mistakes is likely to persist. Christians will certainly understand the concept. In the material world are endless temptations of evil, which the enlightened man avoids.

While the best blogs maintain some sort of theme or domain of expertise, this one tends to bounce around on various subjects. One of the insights I've gained from such a haphazard approach has been that so many of society's major breakdowns - whether it's the bunk science, the deranged journalism, the collapse of academic standards - all stem from a single root cause, which is materialism. The reporters have been hypnotized by an ideology whose only real goal is to acquire worldly power. The scientists are busy designing clever hypothetical scenarios for great order to have risen randomly from great chaos... for something to have come from nothing. Materialism is the cause of not all, but probably most of the major problems pushing the modern world to ruin.

In that guise, it makes complete sense for the Muslims to prefer Christians to non-believers. Muslims are quite spiritual, seeing their whole existence as an interaction with God. They prefer to be around people who are as similar to them as possible. A Christian who prays to Jesus every day is not terribly distant from a Muslim who prays five times a day to Allah. They have a system that helps protect them against the pitfalls of materialism, and they give preference to those who are similarly protected. It's why we don't actually hate Muslims or suffer "Islamophobia." It's why this blog has a running series titled Muslims Kill Liberals (which - not to jinx - has been very quiet lately). It's why Iranian clerics refer to America as "the Great Satan." Of course we are the primary exporter of materialism, so their term is very apt. They aren't talking about the America of Jefferson and Adams. No, they mean the America that strongarms other countries into embracing gay marriage and, now, child transexuality; which goes to war with distant countries for reasons that no one can quite figure out; etc.

It's a funny thing, that the liberals enthusiastically support Islamic immigration (although that's cooling off in Europe) and the conservatives object. Because, while Jihadis may not be real sweet on traditional American families, we aren't the ones driving them into homocidal rages. No, that would be the liberals and the neocons. Jihadis attack cosmopolitan hubs, gay night clubs, those kinds of places. In fact, if Muslims ever did manage to set up up sharia law in a western country, they'd likely do what they've always done. People of the Book would get a limited amount of respect and autonomy; radical atheists would be treated like dirt. Similarly, if the alt-right ever succeeded in setting up a white ethnostate, I suspect that brown Muslims would still be afforded more lenience than white leftists. Because one thing that Muslims still know, and Christendom is having to relearn, is that it is preferable to be surrounded by People of the Book - even if your enemy - than by materialists, the purveyors of worldly temptation who act like a friend.

No, Mr. President

One of the most entertaining aspects of the Trump era is hearing the things liberals will say in their endless zeal to contradict him. Even mainstream politicians are saying things like "America was never great." Boy, there's a political strategy... Cuomo / Buttigieg 2020: America Sucks!

Even more amusing than watching them publicly take anti-American stances is that often they end up inadvertently taking an anti-progressive stance. My favorite was during the election when Trump proposed a plan for providing federal maternity leave, and liberals actually had the gall to respond that the free market provided better solutions.

And so, Salon has also been duped into making some wonderful arguments on our behalf with yesterday's article, titled No, Mr. President: China didn't steal our jobs. Corporate America gave them away. For those unaware, Salon is an online news & opinion site, which is described even by liberally biased Wikipedia as left wing. They are currently seeking a buyer for the paltry sum of $5 million. For comparison, it is less than the listing price on this ugly, 2-bedroom, 1440 sqft. house a couple miles from their San Francisco headquarters. Yes, for the price of a cramped home with a decent view, you too could own a propaganda dumpster fire beloved by millions.

The subtitle goes

Trump's trade war points the finger in the wrong direction. China behaved normally; corporate CEOs betrayed us

The first half of the article is spent explaining that China has behaved rationally in pursuing its own self interest. That is actually correct and, in fact, candidate Trump routinely shared the same sentiment. Salon actually reported on Trump's stance of not blaming China in 2017, when they quoted him as saying "I don't blame China. After all, who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for the benefit of its citizens? I give China great credit," in two articles with two more loaded titles: Asian leaders have learned that flattering Donald Trump really works and Trump rolls over to China, gives up on American values. Just like they don't know now that they already reported on Trump's Chinese stance, they didn't know then that Trump had been saying the same thing for years. And, despite telling us that "flattering Trump works" and Trump "rolled over," they now say he is engaged in a "reckless" and "misguided" trade war with China. Which is it? Salon isn't paid to keep their story straight, which is the main reason why the company is worth less than the office space they occupy.

There is some difference in sentiments. Salon's take would imply that China is without fault in all this. They are engaged in writing political hit pieces, not making sober analyses of the situation. If they're wrong, it doesn't really matter. They don't even refer back to their own past work anyway! Trump, on the other hand, has accused the Chinese of currency manipulation and of using Mexico and Canada as backdoors to circumvent trade agreements. Just because American politicians are to blame for unfair trade policies doesn't mean that the Chinese are acting in good faith.

In the second half, they address the question of who is really to blame for America's trade woes.

The answer is plain to see, and it lies within our own shores. The fault belongs squarely with corporate America. It was corporate America that made these decisions. Corporate America decided to close their American plants and open new plants in China. Corporate America decided to lay off multitudes of American workers and ruin entire American communities.

In this, they differ from Mr. Trump, who did not actually lay much blame on American corporations, but on America's public officials who allowed the fleecing to occur. Yes, corporation are soulless, greedy vampires, but they are generally assumed to be. They are legally obligated to act in the financial interests of their shareholders. Elected officials, on the other hand, are expected to work in the interests of the American nation. Businesses respond to financial incentives, and governments are supposed to create a legal environment where those incentives are mutually beneficial to the people they are paid to represent.

Watching leftists attack corporate America in their attempt to "get" Trump is like watching a snake eat its own tail. Corporate America is rabidly anti-Trump, and liberals are their adoring acolytes, yet they'll turn on their allies without hesitation if it means displaying opposition to whatever Trump is doing. The goal of every liberal is simply to be able to say, at any cost, "No, Mr. President, you're wrong." (That's actually progress, since they're now calling him Mr. President. I've not heard the phrase "Not My President" in quite a while now.) Having a lightning rod like him at the helm is such a good idea that I can't believe we never thought of it before. It brings the left's radical irrationality to the surface, as they are simply unable to keep it shrouded in the usual layers of deception and plausible deniability. And, occasionally, it tricks them into inadvertently saying something that's partially sane.

Weather & Gardening Promotions

There are a few sources of video content for climate change, space weather, and gardening I regularly follow. Here are some links, in case someone else is interested in them.

For climate news and analysis, I regularly listen to David Dubyne and his Adapt 2030 webcast (bitchute & youtube). His major premise is that the earth is entering a grand solar minimum (GSM), which he expects to peak around 2030. He suggests there will be great climate upheavals in store for us, but not the types predicted by global warming advocates. Another youtube channel dedicated to the coming GSM is here.

In space weather, Suspicious0bservers has a site and youtube channel focused on space weather, particularly solar events, and their connections to weather and seismological events on earth, as well the latest updates in astrophysics, with a friendly outlook to plasma cosmology and skepticism of many mainstream theories. In addition to the daily newscast, they have a "disaster prediction" app to provide alerts for solar storms and conditions they believe to be highly correlated to earthquakes and the like.

In gardening, David the Good (unauthorized & youtube) does a podcast, as well as instructional videos on survival gardening. He also has a few gardening books for sale. Styx often does updates of his garden, as does Owen Benjamin. I'm impressed with the output Owen is seeing already, at such a high latitude. Ice Age Farmer does videos on survival gardening, with a focus on preparing for the possible oncoming GSM.

Contrabang #8 Be Humble, Peons

This Is Why Mars Is Red And Dead While Earth Is Blue And Alive (link)

Imagine the early days of our Solar System, going back billions of years. The Sun was cooler and less luminous, but there were (at least) two planets — Earth and Mars — with liquid water covering large portions of their surfaces.

It is a theory - not a proven fact - that Mars was once covered in liquid water. The theory was made because Mars contains landforms that in many ways appear similar to water erosion on Earth.

Neither world was completely frozen over owing to the substantial presence of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide.

As always, one hypothesis is the platform on which further hypotheses are stacked. Because erosion patterns on Mars are assumed to be caused by water, there must have been an atmosphere to keep the planet within the fairly narrow temperature range required for liquid water to pool. So now the erosion patterns require not only ancient oceans, but ancient clouds of greenhouse gasses.

Over the past few billion years, both planets have undergone dramatic changes. Yet, for some reason, while Earth became oxygen-rich, remained temperate, and saw life explode on its surface, Mars simply died. Its oceans disappeared; it lost its atmosphere; and no life signs have yet been found there. There must be a reason why Mars died while Earth survived.

There must be a reason why the available evidence would seem to contradict their stack of theories.

It took decades, but science has finally figured it out.

He then goes on for a few paragraphs to describe the process of earth's atmospheric CO2 being precipitated into rocks like limestone (which incidentally is why plants are now in carbon starvation, and why I advocate for more CO2 emissions, not less). Scientists suspected that CO2 was leached out of the Martian atmosphere by a similar process.

Since Mars once had a similarly CO2-rich atmosphere to early Earth, it was assumed that limestone and other carbonate rocks would be found on its surface. But there was none found by the Viking landers, nor by Soujourner, Spirit, or Opportunity.

The evidence returned by Martian landers does not support the Martian liquid water hypothesis. But that's okay. In modern science, you don't have to drop a pet theory just because it was contradicted by evidence. You just need to find a route around the evidence that gets headed back towards your pre-determined destination.

As discovered by the Opportunity rover, hematite spheres and spherules have been found on Mars. While there may be mechanisms to form them that don’t necessarily involve liquid water, there are no known mechanisms, even in theory, that can form them fused together (as found) in the absence of liquid. [Attached to an image in the article.]

There actually is a theoretical mechanism proposed by the electric universe people, and they even have some results showing similar fused spheres being produced by electrical discharges in a lab. If there is any evidence of the fused hematite spheres being produced in labs using water, I am unaware of it.

Instead of “down,” perhaps the atmosphere went “up” and into the depths of space. Perhaps Mars, much like Earth, once had a magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind. But at just half the diameter of Earth and with a lower-density, smaller core, perhaps Mars cooled enough so that its active magnetic dynamo went quiet. And perhaps this was a turning point: without its protective magnetic shield, there was nothing to protect that atmosphere from the onslaught of particles from the Sun.

 Perhaps.

The goal of MAVEN was to measure the rate at which the atmosphere was being stripped by the solar wind from Mars today, and to infer the rate throughout the red planet’s history. The solar wind is powerful, but molecules like carbon dioxide have a high molecular weight, meaning it’s difficult to get them up to escape velocity. Could the loss of a magnetic field coupled with the solar wind provide a viable mechanism to transform Mars from an atmosphere-rich world with liquid water at its surface to the Mars we know today?

What MAVEN saw was that Mars loses, on average, about 100 grams (¼ pound) of atmosphere to space every second.

Thanks to NASA’s MAVEN mission, we’ve confirmed that this story is, in fact, the way it happened. Some four billion years ago, the core of Mars became inactive, its magnetic field disappeared, and the solar wind stripped the atmosphere away.

This is not just ridiculous, but outright wrong even in the mainstream. The Maven project only measures outflows of hydrogen ions, individual protons which can get snagged into the electrically charged solar wind. It says nothing about carbon dioxide. And yet, Ethan has taken the measured stripping of hydrogen - which no one doubted - as proof for a whole serious of scientific guesses: oceans and flowing surface water, a thick CO2 atmosphere, and a periodic outage of the Martian magnetosphere. The MAVEN results are not even evidence in support of those theories, let alone proof. Yet, look at the confidence of his wording. "Confirmed...in fact...the way it happened." The only thing confirmed is that Ethan can't be trusted to make a sober analysis of evidence.

If he was smart, he'd drop the CO2 theory and stick with water vapor as the Martian greenhouse gas. Then, it is at least plausible that the water's hydrogen atoms escaped, and the leftover oxygen found something else to oxidize (like the sulphur compounds he mentioned). For some reason, they just can't let go of CO2 as greenhouse gas. It's almost like they've been conditioned or something.

What Was It Like When The First Humans Arose On Earth? (link)

In this one, Ethan jumps into the theory of evolution. His subtitle could about be the motto for modern science.

The cosmic story of us wasn’t inevitable, but the culmination of many chance events.

The modern scientist worships at the altar of randomness, and can't be trusted to perform impartial science because of his religious superstitions.

What follows is the standard recital of primate evolution. I only include it in this week's Contrabang to share his final paragraph [emphasis added].

It took 13.8 billion years of cosmic history for the first human beings to arise, and we did so relatively recently: just 300,000 years ago. 99.998% of the time that passed since the Big Bang had no human beings at all; our entire species has only existed for the most recent 0.002% of the Universe. Yet, in that short time, we’ve managed to figure out the entire cosmic story that led to our existence.

The hubris is unimaginable. We've figured out everything!

Fortunately, the story won’t end with us, as it’s still being written.

This sentence underscores that, not only is Ethan bad at scientific analysis, but he is actually a terrible writer. The story that let to our existence won't end with us?  It's still being written? So the future controls the story of the past? Who is writing the story about our existence? Ethan, who routinely fails to maintain proper verb tense consistency, also ends his articles in metaphors so bad they almost hurt to think about. Fortunately, the bulk of his audience must not be thinking much anyway.

The major takeaway from this is that, in whatever field he happens to write on, Ethan always parrots the mainstream consensus narrative, and does little else. He believes whatever he is supposed to believe. He is a good little cheerleader for the establishment viewpoint. Just look at his profile picture...he even dresses up in costume for it!

Your Glorified Ignorance Wasn’t Cool Then, And Your Scientific Illiteracy Isn’t Cool Now (link)

In this one, Ethan shares the story of his childhood.

All across the country, you can see how the seeds of it develop from a very young age. When children raise their hands in class because they know the answer, their classmates hurl the familiar insults of “nerd,” “geek,” “dork,” or “know-it-all” at them. The highest-achieving students — the gifted kids, the ones who get straight As, or the ones placed into advanced classes — are often ostracized, bullied, beat up, or worse.

Ethan, if you're reading this, I know we have our differences of opinion, but I offer my sincere condolences that your were beaten up and ostracized in school for being a know-it-all dork.

This article really is a grab bag of lunacy. In it, he manages to:

• Share yet another image of Barrack Obama
• Advocate for the HPV vaccine, which some estimate kills more than it saves
• Advocate for adding fluoride - of which there is no safe level - to the water supply.
• Push the global warming agenda

Every time we insist we already know everything, we lose an opportunity to learn and improve.

This is outrageous coming from the guy who just said, in the previous article, that we "managed to figure out the entire cosmic story." This is becoming a case study in not just bad science, but of psychological projection.

When we trust our own non-expertise over the genuine expertise of bona fide experts, terrible things happen.

Holy appeal to authority, Batman. Does that sentence read like it would be out of place in some communist propaganda? Listen to what you're told, do not think for yourself, or "terrible things" will happen! Not only is it authoritarian and hyperbolic, but it is factually incorrect. What skeptics like me are doing is not to "trust our own non-expertise" over that of experts, but to demonstrate how they are making illogical conclusions of their own evidence, ignoring or circumventing contradictory evidence, and routinely failing to make accurate predictions. His implication is that it doesn't matter what our arguments are, because those arguments are not properly accredited. Trust only the academy!

The next time you find yourself on the opposite side of an issue from the consensus of experts in a particular field, remember to be humble. 

The opposite is also true. If you find yourself on the same side of an issue as the consensus of experts, such as when you habitually side with the consensus of experts - because you are either incapable of independent thought or perhaps just afraid of being called wrong - there is no need for humility. It is okay to say things like "we've figured everything out." Because, hey man, you're the establishment guy. You know what's cool.

The Goddess Mother

Most cultures have a concept of goddess worship in some sense. We might be inclined to think of fertility worship as associated to backwater tribal primitivism, but the Western world has the same traditions: the only major female deity in Christianity is Mary, the idealized mother; the Norse goddess of fertility was Freyja, whose name we allude to every Friday; and the Greeks had the proto-goddess of life Gaia, wife of Uranus, invoked today when we speak of Mother Earth.

Having a newborn, it's easy to see the inspiration for goddess worship. To him, the mother really is like a goddess, in the literal sense. She has given him a body out of her own body, and then nourishes him from her body. Everything the child has is because the mother has chosen to sacrifice for him out of love. Nine months of pregnancy, hours of excruciating labor, and years of nursing and child-rearing. The mother has the power to create life, which all religions agree is the fundamental supernatural power. Or at least, all the life religions. The progressive belief system is like a religion, but more akin to a death cult. Picture the contemporary Mother Earth: she cradles new life in her womb, then dismembers it with a curette blade or coat hanger when she deems her brood to be inconvenient, or she desires to show the other goddesses how empowered she is.

It's even more disturbing than that, because their goddess need not be a woman at all. Maybe it's a mentally disturbed man in a dress. Maybe he's a pedophile. Womanhood used to be defined by the ability to become a mother, and being a mother meant making great sacrifices to pass on the gift of life. Now it can just mean some transitory emotion, or even just the pretense of one. Society used to revere women for devoting themselves to the primary duty of life. Now the woman has been stripped of all meaning and dignity. She is just a pawn of the left's grievances against men and patriarchal western society. They hail someone like Bruce Jenner as Woman of the Year in order to make a mockery of men, but in the crossfire they make even more of a mockery of women. Bruce Jenner never endured menstruation, pregnancy, labor, nursing, or menopause, nor the weight of societal expectations of the female gender role, such as feminine grace and beauty. He did not earn his way as a woman, yet gets the title anyway. The antidote to feminism, I would think, would be to experience actual motherhood, to watch a woman suffer for her child, and engage in lifelong devotion to him. I would never disrespect my mother or the mother of my children by calling some man in a dress a woman. I would sooner go to jail for it, as is happening in some European countries. That so many fathers and sons are willing to worship a false goddess of motherhood is beyond my ability to properly understand.

There seems to have been a general transition in ancient times from female- to male-oriented societies. The Indo-Europeans were patriarchal and primarily worshipped a sun god. They displaced matriarchal societies that worshipped moon goddesses. It isn't obvious why sun worshippers would have some natural advantage. It could be coincidence, since colder climates tended towards sun worship, and warm climates to moon worship. Cold cultures have the benefit of low time preference (i.e. they were always looking forward, planning for winter) and an incentive towards collective action. Perhaps sun gods prevail because their people prevail. It's the inverse of the Hebrew tradition, where the most powerful god has a Chosen People. Instead, the most powerful people have a Chosen God.

It might also be that sun worship reflects a more mature society. We see that babies are almost entirely in the dominion of their mothers, but in adolescence and adulthood become more influenced by their fathers. They transition from the physical and emotional support of their mothers, towards the rational guidance of their fathers. Pre-agrarian societies needed the benevolence of Mother Earth to provide sustenance; agricultural people need the light of the sun to provide for themselves, as well as the masculine will to impose order in a more specialized society.

Modern society has spitefully rejected Helios, but has not reverted back to Luna. (The current gynocentricity is anti-male and anti-Western, not pro-female.) Instead, the modern zealots worship themselves. They have no god. The child has rejected both mother and father. It is normal for the young adult to move out of his parents' home and establish his own, is it not? Yes, but that is not the same as rejecting the parents. There is an allegory, which is the fable of the Prodigal Son. We are like the prodigal society, believing we need no guidance but our own cleverness. Even worse, our society doesn't merely ignore the good guidance of mother and the father, but intentionally does the opposite. That is the rebellious spirit of our inverted clown world. We don't honor the mother or father, but the child. We aspire not to the subliminal elegance of the virgin mother, nor the wisdom of the eternal father, but the self-indulgent emotional turmoil of the spoiled brat. I demand others give me what I want; reality is whatever I imagine it to be; if something's not fair, I will throw a tantrum.

A recent opinion piece, which the New York Times editors deemed to be fit for printing, was titled Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves Lives. It is technically false, of course, and merely a demonstration of their desperate desires to invert all reality. But, it is true from the viewpoint of perpetual childhood. Parenthood forces the girl to become a woman; the boy to become a man. Pregnancy creates one child, but kills two. In non-clown world, mother and father are always willing to sacrifice themselves for the child. The New York Times reader, on the other hand, is a perpetual child, thus the fetus must be sacrificed for her needs. She is not a woman, and certainly not a goddess mother.

Contrabang #7 Taking on the Skeptics

This week, Ethan directly took on skepticism of the standard model for astronomy. He's not likely aware of this humble blog of skepticism, but that's a good thing, since it means there must be many other voices expressing similar sentiments - so many that he feels the need to address them.

We'll start with what might be the most hubris-soaked headline imaginable.

Cosmology’s Only Big Problems Are Manufactured Misunderstandings (link)

Everything was fine until those darn skeptics started peddling their misunderstandings! The subheading:

Dark matter, dark energy, inflation and the Big Bang are real, and the alternatives all fail spectacularly.

It has sort of the feeling of one demanding that ghosts or the Yeti are real. "The hypothetical-but-unobserved exotic states of matter we created to make our equations work are real, no matter what science deniers might say!" Also, notice the implicit Sherlock's Fallacy being set up. If the other theories don't hold up, then this one must be correct. "If you can't prove who committed the murder, then it must have been you!"

If you add [the cosmology controversies] all together, as philosopher Bjørn Ekeberg did in his recent piece for Scientific American, you might think cosmology was in crisis. But if you’re a scrupulous scientist, exactly the opposite is true. [...] We make predictions, we go out and test them experimentally and observationally, and then we constrain, revise, or extend our ideas to accommodate whatever new information we obtained.

Ethan must not track all the times experimental results conclude a need to "question basic assumptions," only for that never to happen.

The ultimate dream of many is to revolutionize the way we conceive of our world, and to replace our current theories with something even more successful and profound.

Which is why one day some ambitious young scientists will be the first to disprove Nobel-prize awards, once the institutional inertia is no longer able to prevent it.

Although science itself may be unbiased, scientists are not. We can fall prey to the same cognitive biases that anyone else can. Once we choose our preferred conclusions, we frequently fool ourselves through the fallacious practice of motivated reasoning.

Yes.

It’s where the famous aphorism that “physics advances one funeral at a time” first came from. This notion was originally put forth by Max Planck with the following statement:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. 

It reminds me of a Metallica lyric: Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel, is just a freight train coming your way. "Freight trains are what happen to all those other early scientists who became overconfident in unproven theories. But not us, because we're right!"

That’s the key that’s so often overlooked: you have to examine the full suite of evidence in evaluating the success or failure of your theory or framework. Sure, you can always find individual observations that pose a difficulty for your theory to explain, but that doesn’t mean you can just replace it with something that does successfully explain that one observation.

He suggests that if you can't come up with a better theory, then you can sort of gloss over the contradictions of the dominant theory. This is why we are skeptical of the scientists and accuse them of conducting what more or less amounts to intellectual fraud. They deliberately marginalize evidence which contradicts the prevailing model whenever there is not a good explanation. For example, neutron stars have effectively been discredited by the evidence, and yet they remain in the standard model, because astronomers have no better explanation for powerful, periodic stellar radiation. The intellectually honest answer is "we don't know what causes it." Then, they could dedicate some manpower to solving the mystery of the oscillating lights, which clearly exist, rather than the ever-elusive hunt for dark matter, which does not exist.

You have to account for everything, plus the new observation, plus new phenomena that have not yet been observed.

Minus the things you can't account for.

This is the problem with every alternative. Every alternative to the expanding Universe, to the Big Bang, to dark matter, dark energy, or inflation, all fail to even account for whatever’s been already observed, much less the rest of it. That’s why practically every working scientist considers these proposed alternatives to be mere sandboxing, rather than a serious challenge to the mainstream consensus. 

This is the problem. I don't have to provide a better, comprehensive model in order to critique the standard model. He is promoting a false requirement for skepticism, one that cannot practically be met. It's like telling the defense attorney that he must prove someone else committed the crime, or his client hangs. In science, a theory should be considered independently of other explanations. It does not matter if the other theories are deemed to be more wrong than the one under examination. Science is meant to be an objective, not subjective, pursuit of knowledge.

Ask Ethan: How Well Has Cosmic Inflation Been Verified? (link) 

The subheading again takes it right to the haters.

Some claim that inflation isn’t science, but it sure has made some incredibly successful scientific predictions.

I'm just going to cherrypick a couple parts.

What inflation specifically hypothesized is that the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning, but rather was set up by a prior stage of the Universe. In this early state — dubbed an inflationary state by Guth — the dominant form of energy wasn’t in matter or radiation, but was inherent to the fabric of space itself, and possessed a very large energy density.

This would cause the Universe to expand both rapidly and relentlessly, driving any pre-existing matter apart. The Universe would be stretched so large it would be indistinguishable from flat. All the parts that an observer (like us) would be able to access would now have the same uniform properties everywhere, since they originated from a previously-connected state in the past.

Physics is the study of how material things in the world interact. In modern physics, empty space is a thing too, in the sense that a canvas is a thing that holds paint. When they say inflation preceded the Big Bang, imagine a canvas being stretched larger first, and then the paint expanding to fill the canvas second. This solved the flatness problem, since that was as yet no explanation for why spacetime should be flat rather than curved. [Spacetime would also appear to be flat if it didn't exist at all.

Inflation has literally met every threshold that science demands, with clever new tests becoming possible with improved observations and instrumentation.

Science does not demand that inflation obey the fundamental laws of science, like the first law of thermodynamics. Also, "clever" is not necessarily a description the conveys confidence in an experiment. It's why the LIGO results are questionable. They were bound to find whatever they were looking for.

Although it’s perhaps more palatable and fashionable to be a contrarian, inflation is the leading theory for the best reason of all: it works. If we ever make a critical observation that disagrees with inflation, perhaps that will be the harbinger of an even more revolutionary theory of how it all began.

Again, the hubris runs strong. More palatable to be contrarian? Yes, that's far more preferable than promoting the establishment consensus, which is merely rewarded with federal grant money, academic positions with tenure, notoriety, and endless praise from the fawning media. Sure, Ethan has his massive exposure thanks to his syndication by massive corporate outfits like Forbes, but it is far more fashionable for me to be pointing out criticisms to a handful of regular readers.

But that's fine, Ethan has his theories, I have my own. I say it's ghosts. Yes, ghosts are the ones pushing matter into strange dynamics that can't otherwise be described. And until we ever make a critical observation that disagrees that it's ghosts - which can't be observed by mere mortals of their paltry devices - then it is simply contrarian to insist that the cosmos are ruled by anything other than ghost matter and ghost energy.

The Family Pill

The God Pill term may have been coined by Roosh. He noticed that the red pill is the realization that there are great falsehoods which permeate our society and great truths which are actively suppressed, the black bill is the realization that the falsehoods and evil forces are too strong to be defeated, and the God pill is the realization that those forces are an inescapable aspect of reality. How we handle the eternal struggle of good versus evil is the crux of what it means to live a good or virtuous life.  Roosh may have coined the term, but not the concept. In past times, not very long ago even, such understanding was the norm in our Christian society. Merely using a phrase like "God pill" reveals a migration from indoctrination in the modern ethos towards a mindset more typical of western nations.

Others have made similar journeys. Stefan Molyneux used to be one of leading rational atheists on the internet. When I saw him last year in St Louis, he gave what could have easily passed for a Sunday sermon (and superior to any Sunday sermon that I can recall growing up). Owen Benjamin has also embraced Christianity, but on his own terms. To him, accepting Christ means submitting to a higher power, and embracing logos in all aspects of life. But, he is even more excited about his lifestyle changes, transitioning from a California comedian & actor to a rural homesteader. He takes it as a given that the world is fallen and corrupt, and focuses his time and energy on creating a bubble for his family free from both evil and despair. His God pill is the family pill.

Roosh might have coined his term as "the family pill" instead, but he doesn't have a family. His black pill was the realization that, after years of mastering the art of convincing women to engage in the act of reproduction, he has not actually done any reproducing, nor even found a women to keep. His God pill was to realize that, for all the work he did in discovering the truth about the mating game (the red pill) those truths did not actually lead him in a positive direction. In fact, merely embracing the religion of his youth would have served him better in that regard. Roosh exhibits great humility in acknowledging this misdirection, and in redirecting himself and his many followers towards something better. He shows gratitude that, as a 39-year-old man, he still has a chance to redeem his life in terms of swallowing the family pill. [A similarly placed woman may not be so lucky. The black pill can be even darker for women, which may be why they seem more inclined to resist the red pill to begin with.]

The God pill and family pill are both the same realization: that we should strive to construct our own spheres of order atop the seas of chaos. Thus, the family pill doesn't just mean physically making kids, but in creating an ordered universe for them. That means shielding them from the worst that the world has to offer. I'm typing this up lying next to a 1-day-old baby boy we just brought home from the hospital. During our single night in the maternity ward, we made the mistake of turning on the television when the late night show with Seth Myers happened to be on. Within a few seconds he had already bashed Trump, and the entirety of the next five or ten minutes was spent attacking various Republicans before I had to re-assert the bubble of sanity and turn the device back off. It's not that the corporate program was unabashed party propaganda, but that it was deranged. Just sheer obsession by a corporate media machine enraged that America voted for a candidate whom they were told not to vote for. It's an entertainment show ... who could possibly be entertained by it? To merely view is to partake in the madness. 

Clicking OFF is a powerful act of establishing order in your sphere, far more than observing and certainly more so than reacting. It's why, as political as I can be, and so opposed to what the left is doing, I have a strict policy of not politicizing children. It is a tactic of the left. On social media a common meme is something to the extent of: My five-year-old asked me how could we elect a Nazi as president, and all I could do was cry. To the extent they're ever true, it only means a child has been indoctrinated, and at the least it means children are being leveraged to generate emotional appeal towards a political agenda. It's sick, because children are not political pawns. They are young, innocent human beings. There is some analog on the right, with the young girl who does the AOC spoofs, and Soph, a 14-year-old girl who's gotten real big by creating very compelling anti-left rhetoric. I'll admit I'm a little torn on her, since she seems to have reached the age of reason. Still, she's a child. We don't respond to indoctrination of children by counter-indoctrinating them. We do so by un-indoctrinating them. The family pill is the sanity pill. Reacting to crazy people in a way that is equal and opposite to them is still it's own form of crazy. It makes little sense to respond to radical, angry lefties by becoming radical, angry right-wingers. There are many good strategies to countering The Cult, but if we aren't creating sanity bubbles and aren't raising families in them, then we will have effectively joined the cause of madness in any case. The best rebuke to abnormal times is to find a way to live normal lives.