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Question: How Old Is Atheism?

Yeshayahu Leibowitz noted well, there have been believers and unbelievers in every age.

I posit the true age of atheism started symbolically with the evil French Revolution and de Sade. Indeed, the first people to defend atheism in writing appear to be Matthias Knutzen, Kazimierz Łyszczyński, Jean Meslier, and Baron d’Holbach. (Since “atheism” per se is possibly incoherent, I use the word in the colloquial sense of those publically identifying as such.)

Preternaturally-biased Wikipedia has two articles on the history of atheism claiming it’s both quite old, and quite popular since ancient times.

Nonsense.

Let’s see. Was Adam Harishon an atheist? Ah, I doubt it. He spoke to Hashem as a prophet. So did his children. Enosh started idolatry.

In Tanach (Scripture) it’s unclear there was even one atheist. Even such verses as אמר נבל בלבו אין אלהים in Tehillim 14 and 53 refer to what stays in the heart (as Chazal say, Iyov sinned by Birkas Hashem in his heart) and might refer to denying Divine Providence alone, etc.

Amalek is misotheistic; he hates Hashem. Even Amalek doesn’t deny Hashem’s very existence!

Even pagan societies often recognized One, de-emphasized special “Creator-God”, but focused on deifying their own Henotheistic Mazel\Sar. There are many hundreds of words for Him across numerous cultures, such as the Chinese “Shangdi“, and even the Egyptian “Aten”. As the Psalmist says ממזרח שמש עד מבואו מהלל שם השם, see Menachos 110a “Elaha De’elaha“.

Atheists say every young child is an atheist (and cows are atheists too, presumably!). Well, if we speak of intellectual discourse, they can’t say too much about “Juice!”, either. And if we speak of the weak “Sensus Divinitatis“, that’s there from the start, including presuppositionally. (Although I do suspect they cry more because we can’t teach them much about Emuna yet.)

Skipping to less ancient times, the very fact “Atheist” was an insult, not a proud mantle, shows just how “popular” it was in generations past. Indeed, this means we cannot know “Theodorus the Atheist” was one since this title was given him by his enemies (OK, bad example).

Wikipedia deceptively includes the names of people who denied the truth of various false deities. But by that ridiculous measure, Avraham Avinu, a literal “iconoclast”, was an atheist, too…! (Not to mention אבנימוס הגרדי.)

Here’s an example:

“Little is known for certain concerning his philosophical views or the nature of his alleged atheism. All that is known for certain on the point is that Diagoras was offended by the worship of the Athenian national gods.”

Then why mention him here at all? To poison the well!

And again from Wikipedia:

In the fourth century BC, he points to Plato, as the philosopher imagines a believer chastising an atheist: “You and your friends are not the first to have held this view about the gods! There are always those who suffer from this illness, in greater or lesser numbers.”

That’s “gods” plural, so stop wasting my time! Mishlei says, 17:28: גם אויל מחריש חכם יחשב, אטם שפתיו נבון.

Even by the low standards demanded of modern historians of ancient times (because their work is near-futile), identifications are strictly tentative.

As for “the Epicureans, who were often called “Atheoi” in antiquity, and the atheistic writings of Xenophanes of Colophon“, this may be because they denied Divine Providence, and endorsed hedonism, as we explained elsewhere.

The word “Emuna” itself translates better as native or adopted “loyalty” than anything else (as in ויהי ידיו אמונה), and philosophers are on the wrong track, see Rabbi S. R. Hirsch’s “The 19 Letters”. The supposed “Belief in\Belief that” distinction is unclear because, on the one hand, humans anthropomorphize everything so belief in Avoda Zara becomes a strange “relationship”, while, on the other hand, we simply cannot deny our knowledge.

The words “Kafar ba’ikkar” (as by Adam Harishon) mean nothing more than denial of Divine Providence, as seen in Sanhedrin 45b: מה מקלל זה שכפר בעיקר, and in the Haggadah:

רשע מה הוא אומר, מה העבודה הזאת לכם. לכם ולא לו. ולפי שהוציא את עצמו מן הכלל כפר בעקר. ואף אתה הקהה את שניו ואמור לו, בעבור זה עשה השם לי בצאתי ממצרים, לי ולא לו. אלו היה שם לא היה נגאל.

Sure, there were some ancient atheists (Indian “Carvakas” maybe? Al-Ma’arri?).

And so says the Ramban, Shemos 13:17:

הנה מעת היות עבודת גילולים בעולם מימי אנוש החלו הדעות להשתבש באמונה, מהם כופרים בעיקר ואומרים כי העולם קדמון, כחשו בה’ ויאמרו לא הוא, ומהם מכחישים בידיעתו הפרטית… ומהם שיודו בידיעה ומכחישים בהשגחה…

And the various “proofs” brought in Sha’ar Hayichud of Chovos Halevavos and other works were obviously in demand. But there weren’t a large number of atheists. Foolish knavery has since increased exponentially (Yeridas Hadoros).

By the way, we referenced the above article in our free, special ebook on answering atheists. To receive the full Hebrew ebook, subscribe to Hyehudi’s Daily Newsletter here.

How Come Israel Never Gets Government Shutdowns?!

When Government Shuts Down

By 

Mises.org

January 22, 2018

[Editor’s note: As we face another so-called government shutdown, some may recall that we’ve been down this road before. In this 1996 article, Lew Rockwell explains that government “shutdowns” are neither as unpopular or as troublesome, as the media and Washington politicians assume.]

According to official history, the 104th Congress doomed itself when it shut down the government to force its budget priorities on the president. People got up in arms and demanded that government be reopened. This taught the people and their representatives a valuable lesson. As much as we may complain, we truly need big government. Today, we all agree with the White House vow to never allow the government to shut down again.

Of course, everything about this story is nonsense. Shutting down the government was this Congress’s most noble act. Though the freshmen, who forced the closing against the leadership’s wishes, didn’t properly prepare for the inevitable response from the media and the bureaucracy, they were on the right track. It may have been the only principled act in two years of political compromise.

Moreover, nobody has produced a shred of evidence that the government shutdown was as unpopular as the media claimed it was. It was asserted daily, but never proven. Oh sure, we heard about how people couldn’t get passports, couldn’t get into Yellowstone, couldn’t see the Vermeer art exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. But what’s most startling is that the central government—which consumes 40 percent of the national wealth—wasn’t missed much at all.

There was a fiscal illusion at work. At issue was a budget authorization that entitled government to spend money before it was there to spend. But government could have reopened, and run based on present receipts. That way the budget would be immediately balanced. Everyone claims to want pay-as-you-go government, but nobody suggested this as an option. They acted as if debt finance is part of the natural law.

There is still more to learn about government during shutdowns. Consider what is known as the “Washington Monument Ploy.” When budget cuts are threatened, visiting hours at popular monuments are cut back. A budget cut is voted by Congress, or an insufficient increase, and moments later an official-looking official asks the assembled tourists to please disperse. Thanks to those greedy Congressmen, we’ve been denied essential funds.

The media are there to record every word, and conduct interviews to be broadcast on national television. Average people tell the reporter, “my family and I came all the way from Sacramento, but because of political bickering, our vacation has been ruined,” etc. The lesson is clear: Congress had better vote every dime the president demands or the People will strike back on prime time news. Sadly, this ploy works time and again.

Behind the scenes, the whole scenario has been orchestrated. There are very few things the federal government does that people directly benefit from. Among them are issuing passports, delivering the mail, running monuments and museums, and maintaining national parks. That’s precisely why they take the hardest hit.

Now, in running the Washington Monument Ploy, the White House has to be careful not to cause it to backfire. For example, if the mail stopped being delivered, the public might revolt against the Post Office itself, and fuel demands that it be privatized. The trick is to shut down services that affect a minority conspicuously, in ways the media can dramatize, but not generate anger against government itself.

What’s behind it all, of course, is the desire to keep the largess flowing, not to serve the public. If the feds wanted to serve the public, and Congress wasn’t authorizing new spending, they could divert money from services people don’t need (“Social Services for Refugees and Cuban/Haitian Entrants”) to those they do need (passports). Even better, a truly beneficent leader would simply give away control of monuments and passport offices to private entities to run for profit.

Here’s the irony. The services that people need most from government are the very ones that could easily be run privately. This follows by definition: if people want something, an entrepreneur is glad to make a profit providing it. On the other hand, the services people don’t need shouldn’t exist at all.

From a strategic standpoint, the government has the incentive to hold onto privatizable services like national parks because they are useful in times of government shutdown. It monopolizes some services just to keep the public from thinking they could get along without the government.

This is more than just a budget trick; it goes to the heart of nearly everything government does. Even at the local level, when budgets are cut, the first thing to get the axe are extended hours at the public library. Then the most popular periodicals themselves are canceled. Government, in its malice, gains more benefit from withholding useful services than providing them.

This is the very opposite of how private business operates. When a business has to cut costs, it looks for waste and inefficiencies, but it is loathe to cut consumer services. In fact, it might improve them if doing so is likely to bring in more revenue. Sticking it to the consumer would only create more losses and drive the company toward lower profitability.

With government sabotaging any attempt to cut its budget by cutting services people want, how can government budgets be successfully cut? There’s no easy answer—ideally the person doing the cutting would have massive power over the bureaucracy—but here’s the first step. All so-called essential government services should be privatized. That way government would no longer be seen as economically or socially essential.

Let’s start with the Washington Monument. There’s no excuse for not handing it over to a private company or association to run, just as Mount Vernon is run privately. Those who say it can’t be done haven’t noticed how many people visit that political temple every year.

But isn’t this monument a public good that people should have full access to? Granted. That’s why we need private enterprise, which always focuses on the public, to provide it. The same is true of the mails, national parks, passport offices, the Smithsonian, or any other good or service the government provides that people regard as necessary to their well being.

The advantage would be obvious. During the next government shut down—let’s hope it comes soon and stays long—the bureaucracy would have fewer means of demonstrating that we really need them. They will be reduced to showing how awful it is that the Indian and Native American Employment and Training Program has been shut down.

All of this presumes that government has no other means to fund itself during emergencies. Unfortunately, that is not true. During the 1995 shutdown, Treasury head Robert Rubin conspired with other government-financial elites to run the government on money looted from civil-service pension accounts, although this is illegal.

Then the bureaucracy gave Congress a sock in the chops by forwarding unearned back pay to the entire government workforce. The whole shutdown ended up as a paid vacation for the most despised class in the country. If anything about the shutdown inspired public anger, it was this above all. Sadly, the opposition party took the blame, and then let bygones be bygones.

The lesson of the government shutdown is not that people want it to stay open, always and forever, but that the world doesn’t fall apart when Uncle Sam takes the day off. Let’s give him the next century or so, see how the people on their own can restore prosperity and liberty. With no taxes to pay, there’d be plenty left over to pay even exorbitant admission fees to the Washington Monument.

From LRC, here.

Hyehudi.org Editor: Unapologetic Meanie

A disciple and vigorous popularizer of a certain living rabbi wrote me this:

.. Please desist from denigrating any Torah sage, never mind accusing him of heresies or such like. Having to be exposed to such things is a terrible experience and should be enough to reduce anyone to tears.

But the magic word “Please” failed. There is no scarcity of Jewish websites made of sugar and spice and all things nice.

I responded:

… What if I am, in fact, correct? Being “exposed to such…” I see whom you fear and whom you don’t.
Rhetoric aside (two can play that game!), I notice their own popularizers cannot defend them against a startling array of obvious issues, noticed even by someone puny like me.

Doesn’t the BP Scandal Prove We Need More Government?!

Nope.

First of all, what happened?

Wikipedia gives us the highlights:

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the BP oil disaster, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the Macondo blowout) is an industrial disaster that began on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect.

Killing eleven people, it is considered the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and estimated to be 8% to 31% larger in volume than the previous largest, the Ixtoc I oil spill. The U.S. government estimated the total discharge at 4.9 million barrels. After several failed efforts to contain the flow, the well was declared sealed on September 19, 2010.

Reports in early 2012 indicated that the well site was still leaking.

A massive response ensued to protect beaches, wetlands and estuaries from the spreading oil utilizing skimmer ships, floating booms, controlled burns and 1.84 million US gallons of oil dispersant. Due to the months-long spill, along with adverse effects from the response and cleanup activities, extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats and fishing and tourism industries was reported.

Oil cleanup crews worked four days a week on 55 miles of Louisiana shoreline throughout 2013. Oil continued to be found as far from the Macondo site as the waters off the Florida Panhandle and Tampa Bay, where scientists said the oil and dispersant mixture is embedded in the sand. In April 2013, it was reported that dolphins and other marine life continued to die in record numbers with infant dolphins dying at six times the normal rate.

Numerous investigations explored the causes of the explosion and record-setting spill. The U.S. government September 2011 report pointed to defective cement on the well, faulting mostly BP, but also rig operator Transocean and contractor Halliburton. Earlier in 2011, a White House commission likewise blamed BP and its partners for a series of cost-cutting decisions and an inadequate safety system but also concluded that the spill resulted from “systemic” root causes and “absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur”.

In November 2012, BP and the United States Department of Justice settled federal criminal charges with BP pleading guilty to 11 counts of manslaughter, two misdemeanors, and a felony count of lying to Congress. BP also agreed to four years of government monitoring of its safety practices and ethics, and the Environmental Protection Agency announced that BP would be temporarily banned from new contracts with the US government. As of February 2013, criminal and civil settlements and payments to a trust fund had cost the company $42.2 billion.

In September 2014, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that BP was primarily responsible for the oil spill because of its gross negligence and reckless conduct. In July 2015, BP agreed to pay $18.7 billion in fines, the largest corporate settlement in U.S. history.

There have been similar leaks and almost-leaks at nuclear plants, and the like. The government prefers using bogeymen to scare us since these can be safely shut down and interchanged as needed. Serious emergencies merely reduce the public trust in the state. Indeed, there are several ongoing threats (such as massive debt and entitlements, the accumulating space debris Commons problem, the anti-population growth people) which are ignored because they serve no positive political purpose.

Private companies have no motivation to disclose them, either. And, again, the government has no interest in forcing them to.

If the government puts an unpopular defendant on trial, the result is foreknown. If the government played a role in enabling the crime, through moral hazard and government-quality regulation, the result is even more obvious. If the judgment is a question of paying fines to the employers of the judges, even more so.

When decisions pertaining to the public weal are socialized via government or private-public collusion, the true factor is only the bureaucratic refrain of “How can I keep my job safe?”

Thomas Sowell: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

So that’s how we do it…

Making business government-like means we will get more of those kinds of deception we have grown to know and resign ourselves to.

Lessons will never be learned, either.

I don’t have the latest Block “Defending” book, but here’s a summary of his comments on the BP spill via Lewrockwell.com:

British Petroleum is a good hard case because everyone knows about the accident in the Gulf of Mexico, the 200 million gallons of oil that was spilled, and that BP has been vilified by the media pundits and politicians because of it. Block begins by calling the people at BP heroes in part because they do the dangerous work so we can comfortably drive across town at 10 cents a mile.

Block asks if BP knew the dangers of deepwater drilling. Of course they did, but government regulations prevent shallow water drilling near the shoreline and provide incentives to drill in deep water far out at sea. Meanwhile, government regulators were not doing their job, goofing off, taking bribes, and they failed to upgrade safety standards to account for the new deepwater drilling.

As BP was vilified for negligence and as the oil continued to seep into the gulf, the U.S. government turned down offers of assistance from foreign companies that specialized in such spills and who had more experience than U.S. firms. Ships from foreign countries also offered their assistance, but like after Hurricane Katrina, the volunteers were turned away. Block argues persuasively why such disasters are very unlikely to happen in a libertarian society and that this tragedy was the result of government intervention.

Recent US and World Media Omissions

7 Huge News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2017

By Carey Wedler
The Anti-Media

January 2, 2018

2017 was a chaotic year filled with violent protest, threats of nuclear war, ongoing Cold War-style accusations of collusion with ‘the Russians,’ and widespread allegations of sexual harassment. Establishment media outlets like Washington Post and CNN took it upon themselves to protect American democracy from the Trump administration, but in typical fashion, many of the most vital stories of the year — the ones that reveal the true nature of corruption and power in the U.S. — received little to no attention.

Here are the top underreported stories of 2017:

1. The government continued its push to spy on you indiscriminately — When Edward Snowden revealed to the American public the extent of the federal government’s surveillance programs, the country was outraged for a few fleeting moments. But the issue of privacy violations has largely faded into obscurity since then, even as the government’s push for these policies continues. Before leaving office, Barack Obama granted more surveillance authority to federal agencies, and once Trump took office, his administration began pushing to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has not only swept up the records of foreigners but also American citizens. As the ACLU has summarized, Section 702 of FISA allows the government to engage in “mass, warrantless surveillance of Americans’ and foreigners’ phone calls, text messages, emails, and other electronic communications.”  It was passed in 2007 and reauthorized in 2012 but is set to expire on December 31 of this year. Congress’ worked this year to push through a renewal with tepid reforms, though it now appears lawmakers may fail to reauthorize the bill before it expires on New Year’s Eve. Nevertheless, the ongoing push for data collection presses on. In September, Trump nominated Adam I. Klein, a surveillance, and FISA advocate, to chair a governmental board in charge of holding the government accountable for its surveillance activities.

2. The media and government selectively informed the public about North Korea — North Korea has dominated headlines for months, with the media consistently warning of imminent danger and repeatedly fear-mongering about the perceived threat. What has been grossly underreported, however, is not only the U.S. military’s historical decimation of the North Korean people but also the North Korean regime’s willingness to engage in talks. North Korean officials have repeatedly stated they are willing to compromise on their weapons programs if the U.S. backs off its military grandstanding. As the North Korean ambassador to the U.N. told Reuters in November:

“As long as there is a continuous hostile policy against my country by the U.S. and as long as there are continued war games at our doorstep, then there will not be negotiations.”

The Reuters headline, however, read, “North Korea rules out negotiations on nuclear weapons” – as if the notion of the U.S. halting its military drills is simply not an option.

This detail scarcely highlighted in the mainstream conversation, with outlets like the Washington Post also running headlines and stories that drum up the regime’s unwillingness to halt the weapons development.

3. Just as in the Obama years, the civilian death toll from American military operations was swept under the rug — Despite some mainstream reports on the mass casualties the Trump administration has incurred durings its ramped up operations in the Middle East, overall, concerns over the loss of innocent life remain lost on the American public. Though Obama dropped over 26,000 bombs during his last year in office — a massive number — the Trump administration dropped over 20,000 in its first six months. Roughly halfway through the year, over 2,000 civilians had died, and in the battle of Mosul, alone, over 3,200 died as a result of the U.S. coalition, contributing to a total of between 9,000 and 11,000 civilian deaths.

4. Police violence continues — Aside from several high-profile instances of police brutality, including the brutal shooting of Philando Castile, a legal gun owner (the officer was acquitted of all charges and received a settlement from the police department),  and the recent instance of a cop forcing a pet owner to behead his own dog, mainstream attention on the system problem of police misconduct has been quiet this year (especially compared to 2014, for example, when protests in Ferguson, MO, drew ongoing national attention). At the same time, President Trump encouraged officers to be rough with suspects and continued to assert his unwavering support for law enforcement, claiming anti-police sentiment is “wrong” and “dangerous.” He also reinstated the federal government’s program of granting military gear to local police. Meanwhile, American police continue to kill civilians at staggering rates, with estimates ranging between 976 and almost 1,182 for 2017. The number of cops killed in 2017 was the second-lowest in 50 years, according to data from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

5. Establishment media neglects to inform audiences of the U.S. role in international chaos —Just a few weeks ago, CNN ran a disturbing story detailing the growing slave trade in Libya, where human beings are subject to gruesome conditions and auctioned off as property. Though the story itself received widespread attention (and the Guardian covered it earlier this year), CNN left out one key detail from the narrative: the problem exploded after the Obama and Clinton-backed NATO toppling of the country’s former leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011, a detail the Guardian reported in April. Following the power vacuum left in the wake of that operation, Libya has become a haven for terror groups and horrifying activities like slave trading and rape. The media’s widespread omission of this fact prevents a thorough understanding of the ramifications of Western intervention in countries that are outside their jurisdiction (some outlets, like Newsweek, did highlight the Obama administration’s role in the growth of the slave trade, and to Fortune’s credit, the outlet acknowledged the problem was exacerbated following Gaddafi’s “fall,” though it failed to note how he ‘fell.’ Similarly, CNBC noted that “conditions have worsened since 2011, when former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown,” but failed to mention who instigated the overthrow.).

6. The world moves on from the American empire — As U.S. foreign policy continues to create unintended consequences, other global players are moving to lessen their dependence on America and the U.S. dollar. From Venezuela to Pakistan and Iran, countries are opting to conduct their oil transactions outside the long-dominant American currency. In addition, they are forming alliances. For example, Turkey, which has for years been somewhat of a U.S. ally, has strengthened ties with Russia. Iran and Qatar have mended ties, and even staunch U.S. ally Saudi Arabia is hedging its bets by building up business ties with Russia and China. The E.U. has also signaled its intention to become less dependent on the U.S., moving to create its own army.

7. Weed keeps winning! — Despite all the terrible news and seemingly unending flow of negativity, cannabis continues to make gains, and though the stories about individual developments have mounted in the mainstream, the breadth of the evolution is difficult to fully capture. Though the federal government has continued making huge numbers of arrests for the plant, the public’s support for legalization keeps mounting. Further, multiple surveys conducted this year show Americans strongly prefer cannabis as medicine over traditional pharmaceuticals. One analysis conducted by UC Berkeley and Kent State found “Ninety-seven percent of the sample ‘strongly agreed/agreed’ that they are able to decrease the amount of opiates they consume when they also use cannabis” and “81% ‘strongly agreed/agreed’ that taking cannabis by itself was more effective at treating their condition than taking cannabis with opioid.” Further, police are facing harsher scrutiny for their weed busts as the Internet schools them when they attempt to brag about cannabis-related arrests on social media. Despite the lobbying efforts by Big Pharma, police unions, and prison guard unions, the plant continues to enjoy increasing popularity and skyrocketing profits. This positive story demonstrates the ruling establishment’s continuing loss of control even as it struggles to keep its power over individual freedom.

Copyright © 2017 Creative Commons, The Anti-Media

From LRC, here.