Thursday, December 10, 2015

[BTT007] The Time Before Time

 Previous: [BTT006] What Does the Bible Say About Time?

            “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
            Before the mountains were brought forth,
            Or ever You had formed the earth and the world,
            Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.

            You turn man to destruction,
            And say, “Return, O children of men.”
            For a thousand years in Your sight
            Are like yesterday when it is past,
            And like a watch in the night.”


            -Psalm 90:1-4

Before the mountains were brought forth. Before the Earth and the universe it inhabitants. Before atoms, before energy, before Time, there was God.

God is an eternal being, not a temporal being like us. He had no beginning, and He will have no end. Our universe and its specific form of Space and Time do not apply to God. He sees “the end from the beginning and from ancient times things that are not yet done” (Isaiah 46:10). We might well add that the past is not a closed book to God either; while the past is inaccessible to us, God is an Omniscient God, fully able to see the beginning from the end.

We see from these verses that there was “something” before our universe existed, a Time Before Time. Scripture makes frequent reference to what existed before “the foundation of the world.”

Now, when we say there was “a time” before Time, we do not mean it in the same sense we might say “there was a time before the United States of America.” When we refer to “the time before the United States of America” we can use the conventional picture of a time-line: at this point on the line the USA came into being, but here on this earlier point, it did not exist.

When we talk about the “time” before our universe, we are not talking about points on a timeline at all. We are not even talking about a point on a different timeline. We are talking about the paper onto which the line was drawn. The Time Before Time was not just a larger, longer timeline extending infinitely into the past, it was the absence of Time as we know it.

In a certain sense, this Time Before Time is older than our universe. It did, after all, exist before it. In another sense, concepts such as “older” and “before” do not properly apply to it, since these words presuppose our universe's structure of Time.

It is entirely appropriate to say that Rome is older than the United States of America. There was a city of Rome long before 1776, or even before European colonization of the Americas. Rome begins on this point of the timeline, long before the USA. This is the common usage of “older” and “younger.” But these terms presuppose a shared timeline - in fact, they do not make any sense without a shared timeline.

Let me give an example by way of a question: Which is further North, Mt. Everest (the tallest mountain on Earth) or Mons Huygens (the tallest mountain on the Moon)?

Give up?

It is very easy to compare latitude of two objects on the same planet. Mt. Everest is located 27 degrees north, while Mt. Kilimanjaro is located at 03 degrees south. Therefore, Mt. Everest is unquestionably farther North than Mt. Kilimanjaro.

However, Mt. Everest and Mons Huygens do not share a common concept of North. They are located not simply at different latitudes, but on separate systems of latitude. It is like this with our Time and the Time Before Time. They are not just different points on the same line, but completely different systems of measurement.

I realize that this may be a bit abstract, so let's talk about a more concrete issue. How are we supposed to understand the relation of angels to time? We know that God is an eternal being who is not limited by Time, but angels are created beings. Do they operate according to our understanding of Time?

Job 38:4-7 seems to indicate that angels existed before our physical universe. God asks Job:

             “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
             Tell Me, if you have understanding.
             Who determined its measurements?
              Surely you know!
              Or who stretched the line upon it?
              To what were its foundations fastened?
              Or who laid its cornerstone,
              When the morning stars sang together,
              And all the sons of God shouted for joy?”


Here we have an image of the very first moments of our universe. God is “laying the foundations of the earth,” setting up the architecture which underlies our universe while the angels sing and shout for joy.

Genesis 1 at no point specifically refers to God creating angels. It does mention the creation of stars, and we might be tempted to take the reference to “the morning stars” in Job 38 to mean that angels were created along with the physical stars. However, the stars were not created until the fourth day of creation. Angels could not be present at the first day of creation if they were not created until the fourth. So clearly, the “morning stars” of Job 38 are not the physical balls of fire in the sky, but angels metaphorically described as stars.

It seems most likely that angels were already in existence when our world was created. What is not clear is just what relationship they have with Time. If they were created before Time, it would seem logical for them to not be bound by its rules.

And yet, Scripture seems to indicate that Time does have an effect on angels. In Daniel 10, an angelic messenger, a “glorious man” is sent to interpret Daniel's visions. This angel describes his experiences with the language of time:

“Then he said to me, 'Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia. Now I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come.” 
- Daniel 10:12-14 (emphasis mine)

The prince and kings of Persia in this passage are often said by theologians to refer not to human royalty, but to demonic spirits claiming to rule “the kingdoms of this world.” Although there are some who object to this interpretation, I think an angelic conflict is a much more likely theory than a human king with the power to oppose an angel.

Whether or not this confrontation was between angels and fallen angels or angels and supernaturally powerful humans, it lasted for twenty-one days. And we have no reason to believe that these were metaphorical days. In Daniel 10:2-3, Daniel describes himself as fasting for three full weeks, that is, twenty-one days. The twenty-one day struggle between the glorious man and the prince of Persia lasted for twenty-one literal rotations of the earth, for twenty-one “evenings and mornings.” Angels and demons do seem to be, in some sense and in some contexts, bound by the laws of Time.

One possible way to understand this is that they are bound by Time only when they are interacting directly with our universe. That is to say, the glorious man may not have been affected by Time until he was sent to minister to Daniel. This would make a certain sense; after all, human brains understand things according to forward-moving linear Time. If you want to speak to a human, you need to make some accommodation for how they perceive the world.

Alternately, angels may operate according to some sort of parallel system of Time of their own. Call it an "Angelic Time," which operates independently of our universe's laws. No matter what theories we may speculate with, Scripture does not give us a clear answer.

Based on these basic teachings of Scripture, I have developed three main theories about angels and time:

1). Angels have their own system of Time, which is similar to ours but not based on our universe's laws of physics.

2). Angels have no system of Time, but rather work with Time when interacting with human beings.

3). Angels did not have a system of Time until our universe was created by God, at which point they began to use our system of Time.

While none of these arguments are in direct conflict with Scripture, I do not think any one of them has any significant amount of Scriptural support. All we can say for certain from Scripture is that angels can operate according to our universe's structure of Time, not that they must.

I think the principle of angels operating in accordance with our world's concept of Time may also be reflected in how Jesus operated within Time during His earthly ministry. While Jesus was fully God when He walked among us, part of His humility was in living as we live. In Christ, God bound Himself to Time, incarnating His eternal being into a human body that was born, aged, and died.

In other words, He submitted Himself to the operation of the very Time which He Himself had created. Jesus did not only submit Himself to the Law of the Old Testament that all humans were slaves to, He submitted Himself to the Laws of Time and Space. It should then not surprise us that angels also work within human Time when ministering to humans such as Daniel.

While it is not exactly clear to what extent angels are bound by Time, it is very clear how God is. Or rather, how He is not. With the exception of Jesus intentionally humbling Himself to live as a human among humans, God is not bound by Time. The divine being of God is eternal, from “everlasting to everlasting.” God was God before our Time existed, and He is in no way bound by its ebb and flow.

Peter refers to Psalm 90 in 2 Peter 3:8, where the apostle writes, “But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” The exact meaning of these verses has been much debated. I remember talking to one pastor who claimed it meant God literally perceives periods of 1,000 years as if they only take 24 hours!

Clearly, this is not what Peter is trying to say. Both Psalm 90 and 2 Peter are, in fact, speaking of God's patience towards human beings. In the next verse, Peter says “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” Psalm 90 shows God's concern for humans, as God cries “Return, O Children of Men!”

While some of us may pray that the Second Coming would come soon, to take us from the heavy burdens of this world, God in his patience waits for all to come to repentance. A single day, a thousand years, it makes no difference to God. A day is not literally a thousand years for God (or vice-versa), rather, Time and our perceptions of it are not binding to God. A thousand-year wait or a one-day wait; it makes no difference to the God who plans patiently for our salvation.

There are a few more passages dealing with the “foundation of the world” and the Time before it that I would like to discuss.

In discussing the Beast from the Sea, Revelation 13:8 says that “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” This shows us that God's plan of salvation transcends Time - the names written in the Book of Life have been there “from the foundation of the world,” not after the Fall or after the resurrection of Christ.

Just as the names in the Book of Life were ordained from the foundation of the world, so was Christ's divine mission. 1 Peter 1:20 says of Christ, “He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.”

The foreordination of Jesus as the Savior of mankind explains how our names could be written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world. Ephesians 1:4 says “...He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” We were chosen before the foundation of the world on the basis of Christ's foreordination as Savior.

There are many more Scriptures that refer to the Time before the foundation of the world, but I think it is sufficient to establish the following points:

1). God is eternal, existing before Time.

2). As the creator of Time, God and His works are not bound by Time.

3). Angels existed before Time, but seem to operate according to its principles when dealing with humans.

4). The plan of salvation existed before Time and is not bound by it.

We will talk a little more about how salvation relates to Time a little later on, but first let's talk about the creation of Time.



Next: [BTT008] The Beginning of Time

20 comments:

  1. OT:

    Ohmygud, ohmygud!


    Zulu King: Blacks Destroy S. Africa

    http://newobserveronline.com/zulu-king-blacks-destroying-south-africa/

    A part of that story:

    King Zwelithini said the former white rulers of South Africa had “built a powerful government with the strongest economy and army on the continent.”

    He went on to say that the white government had “a mighty army, and that the South African currency and economy had shot up” under the National Party government.

    “But then,” he continued, “came this so-called democracy in which black people are destroying the gains of the past. The economy that we are now burning down.”

    Addressing himself directly to black people, King Zwelethini said that “you do not want to build on what you had inherited. You are going to find yourselves on the wrong side of history.”

    “History will judge black people harshly as they have failed to build on the successes of the Afrikaners,” he said, before continuing to explain that “black people loved to use matches to burn down infrastructure” built by the white government.

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  2. OT again.

    Check out the Chinese poster for the new Star Wars:

    http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2015/12/more-sjw-racial-problems-for-star-wars.html?_sm_au_=iMVSqkjVTLNGFGqJ

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  3. Lol to both - you managed to beat my SJW friends to the Star Wars poster. Normally they're a lot faster to find things to be outraged about.

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  4. I'm not sure that the first one was anything to laugh about. They are destroying a country. Democracy isn't always a good thing. Not if the majority of the people are unable to maintain the country properly.

    Whites in the USA are set to lose their majority status sometime in the 2040s. Their majority voting status will be lost some time after that. After all the evidence I have shown you, do you think that will be a good thing?

    How many times have Latin American countries economies been destroyed due to their people electing hard-core socialists? We will still be better off then Western Europe, though. The people entering Europe are much worse.

    I have seen some data that shows that Asians are starting to become the largest group of immigrants to the USA. This may or may not be a good thing for the economy. It will depend what Asians are coming. Asia is a big place and only the North East Asians (Japanese, Chinese, Koreans) have a higher IQ then Whites. Even if it was mostly North East Asian, it still could be bad due to them voting for bigger government. It would also just lead to more Balkanization. Still better them then most other groups, though.

    You really should sit down and watch "Make the World Flat" this weekend:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ-e5XjlmZA

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  5. I've been reading "The 10,000 Year Explosion" and it's been interesting material. After all, if the influx of Neanderthal DNA into Homo Sapiens was so important in building Europe/North East Asia, who's to say that "race mixing" won't end up being a good thing too? Even if we accept the "sub-species" premise, we have good evidence that mixing with even more genetically strains of human works out well.

    It's far from a settled issue that race determines government. Russia -> majority White -> USSR. China -> majority Han -> CCCP. Can't blame the Blacks and Hispanics for Socialism, yo.

    A hundred years ago, Communism was still a viable system. It turned Russia from a backwater into a major industrial power. Same thing with China. When you see a system of government turn two pre-industrial societies into major world players almost overnight, it starts to look pretty attractive to South American nations looking to step up.

    Obviously, Communism/Socialism didn't pan out as expected. But are you really trying to tell me that there aren't plenty of White folk still clamoring for them?

    Okay, I'm putting "Make the World Flat" on my video rotation for the week. Done.

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  6. "After all, if the influx of Neanderthal DNA into Homo Sapiens was so important in building Europe/North East Asia, who's to say that "race mixing" won't end up being a good thing too? Even if we accept the "sub-species" premise, we have good evidence that mixing with even more genetically strains of human works out well."

    The Neanderthals had LARGER brains then we do! Of course mating with them boosted IQ!

    http://news.softpedia.com/news/Neanderthals-were-too-smart-to-survive-15264.shtml

    Mating with bushmen will depress your offspring's IQ.

    "A hundred years ago, Communism was still a viable system. It turned Russia from a backwater into a major industrial power. Same thing with China. When you see a system of government turn two pre-industrial societies into major world players almost overnight, it starts to look pretty attractive to South American nations looking to step up."

    Bullshit. Russia was already starting to industrialize under the Tzar. Before WWI, Germany was starting to get worried that Russia would become to powerful over time if their progress remanded unchecked. The Communists starved millions of people to death in both Russia and China trying to industrialize. Funny how the west managed to industrialize under capitalism without starving anyone to death. The great leap forward was a huge disaster for China. China didn't start becoming economic powerful until the late 1970s AFTER it started to embrace capitalism. The Soviet non-millitary economy was smaller then Belgium's! Also, Russian's have lower IQ's then Western Europeans.

    "Can't blame the Blacks and Hispanics for Socialism, yo."

    I can blame them for their voting patterns and their failures to build successful countries (except Chile, thank you Pinochet).

    "It's far from a settled issue that race determines government."

    Yes, but where did ideas like democracy, republics, self-rule, human rights (FREE SPEECH for one), limits on executive power, jury trail with a presumption of innocence, abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, and free market capitalism all arise? The Zulu Empire? Indochina? Come on! Every group of people have had BAD ideas, but where did most of the GOOD ideas come from?

    "Obviously, Communism/Socialism didn't pan out as expected."

    Oh, their were plenty of smart people who saw that it was going to be a mess. There is no good way to price things, so the economy couldn't work right without those signals. To much of one thing, not enough of something else. No motivation for people to work except for fear which provides diminishing returns over time as people just get fed up with it.

    The stupid people you are thinking about were the leftists who believed Walter Duranty's lies that he wrote at the New York Times. He STILL has his Pulitzer Prize! If that doesn't show that the establishment is run by leftists who don't care about the truth and only care about their narrative, I don't know what does!

    "Okay, I'm putting "Make the World Flat" on my video rotation for the week. Done."

    Good.

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  7. "Okay, I'm putting "Make the World Flat" on my video rotation for the week. Done."

    When do you think you will be able to watch the whole thing and post about it? Where? Will it be here in the comments or will you do a full post about it? Or maybe a number of posts due to all the information and ideas it goes over? If you end up agreeing with some or all of it, will you be afraid to say that due to social pressures?

    I really think that people who talk about HBD are today's Galileoes.

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  8. "The Neanderthals had LARGER brains then we do! Of course mating with them boosted IQ!"

    Yes and no. Sperm Whales have the biggest brains around and yet it would be difficult to say that they are meaningfully more intelligent than humans.

    Even if Neanderthals had larger brains AND higher IQs, they clearly couldn't compete with ol' homo sapiens. Mating with a bushman could potentially depress my children's IQs. It could also potentially make them more fit for their environment.

    "Funny how the west managed to industrialize under capitalism without starving anyone to death."

    Russia was industrializing under the Tsars, but arguably Communism sped it up. More importantly than the historical "What Ifs," the point is that there was a common perception that Communism sped up development. We know better now, of course.

    "I can blame them for their voting patterns and their failures to build successful countries"

    Okay, cool. Just not for the most destructive ideologies to ever lay waste to the lands of man.

    "Yes, but where did ideas like democracy, republics, self-rule, human rights...etc."

    Persia, mostly. Although I'll grant you that the Europeans did a great job of refining it.

    Remember, agriculture and cities were initially terrible ideas. Early farmers spent more time working for less calories in a more diseased environment than hunter-gatherers. Great ideas (including shitty ideas that eventually bear fruit) arise in response to environmental pressures. As long as you can get away with just being a hunter-gatherer, you're going to get away with just being a hunter-gatherer.

    "Make the World Flat"

    I'll probably start working in arguments from it in our comment discussions as they strike me as valid, but remember, reading the "other side's" materials is step one for me. Step two is going to be reading dissenting opinions. Genetics is far from my specialty. That's why I gave the ~1 year estimate before jumping in.

    "I really think that people who talk about HBD are today's Galileoes. "

    Of course, Galileo's math was terrible. He still ended up being right about the Sun-Earth thing tho!

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    1. "Yes and no. Sperm Whales have the biggest brains around and yet it would be difficult to say that they are meaningfully more intelligent than humans."

      Not relative to body size they don't. The brain also has to handle basic body functioning, not just reasoning.

      "Even if Neanderthals had larger brains AND higher IQs, they clearly couldn't compete with ol' homo sapiens."

      Did you read the link I gave you?

      http://news.softpedia.com/news/Neanderthals-were-too-smart-to-survive-15264.shtml

      They couldn't communicate as well as us do to the physical characteristics of Neanderthals' hyoid and the fact that their larynx was stouter. So it took much longer to transmit information to each other. It would be like having a group of smart people who didn't speak each other's languages and could only communicate with each other using really bad simplified english. Then they had to compete with a less smart group, but that group all could fully understand each other. The less smart group could better work as a team and pass new information and ideas much more quickly.

      Plus we outnumbered the Neanderthals 10 to one when we entered Europe, most likely due to the Neanderthals having a harder time surviving in Europe due to it being much colder. Humans coming from Africa and the Middle East would have been able to grow a larger population, then when they moved into Europe, they genetically swamped the Neanderthals.

      If you look at the racial groups' average IQs and their average brain sizes, they line up. So NE Asians have larger brains then Whites, who have larger brains then Latinos, South Asians, and North Africans, who have larger brains then Blacks. So IQ correlates with brain size. There is only one exception to this rule, and that is Eskimos. Eskimos have the largest brains of all, but have an IQ in the lower 90s (I think). This is due to them being really good at navigation. They can navigate formless ice sheets that anyone else would become hopelessly lost on. The mental abilities needed for good navigation requires a lot of brain space. This is why males have larger brains then females even relative to body size, even though the average IQ between males and females are pretty close to the same (Some tests show males have a two to three point advantage on average, but some tests show equal average scores). Males needed larger brains due to needing to navigate.

      It is the same with other mammals that need to navigate large distances, they tend to have larger brains. So whales, dolphins, and elephants all have large brains partly due to how much they move around.

      Delete
  9. "Mating with a bushman could potentially depress my children's IQs. It could also potentially make them more fit for their environment."

    The bushman's environment? Maybe in the past. Today we don't live like that, and the bushman are killed in large numbers by other Africans. Before I went to Africa, I had to get a bunch of shots. When I was there, I took anti-malaria pills every day, wore sunscreen and bug spray, and slept under a bug net. So due to white tech, I could deal with the environment. Who explored and mapped the world? The north and south pole? Who entered outer space and walked on the moon? Bushmen? It seems white people are able to use their minds to figure out ways to adapt to the harshest environments.

    "Okay, cool. Just not for the most destructive ideologies to ever lay waste to the lands of man."

    No, for Islam we can blame the Arabs, and for Communism we can blame the Jews. ;-) Africans don't need an ideology in order to be destructive.

    ""Yes, but where did ideas like democracy, republics, self-rule, human rights...etc."

    Persia, mostly. Although I'll grant you that the Europeans did a great job of refining it."

    Bullshit! Persia did not invent those ideas! Cyrus the Great was pretty tolerant, but he was still the total ruler. What do you think would happen if one of his subjects told him to fuck off to his face? Did Persia end slavery?

    "Remember, agriculture and cities were initially terrible ideas. Early farmers spent more time working for less calories in a more diseased environment than hunter-gatherers."

    But the people who were not farmers and lived in the cities could work on other things, and advance civilization. I am pretty sure we went over this back under the Vox Day post.

    """Make the World Flat"

    I'll probably start working in arguments from it in our comment discussions as they strike me as valid,....."

    So you have now watched it and think that it made valid points? Why would you work in arguments from it in our comment discussions if I already agree with it?

    "but remember, reading the "other side's" materials is step one for me. Step two is going to be reading dissenting opinions. Genetics is far from my specialty. That's why I gave the ~1 year estimate before jumping in."

    That is what you should do. I just wanted to know your thoughts as of right now after watching "Make the World Flat." Where there any parts you agreed with more then others. Any parts you disagreed with? Anything that surprised you? I understand that you may adjust your views in the future based on new info. The guy who made that video has adjusted some of his views on economics since then.

    "Of course, Galileo's math was terrible. He still ended up being right about the Sun-Earth thing tho!"

    Well, I am sure there are some details that today's HBDers are wrong about. There are disagreements on things like if group evolutionary strategies are real or not. I don't know enough about that to have a view one way or the other. Darwin was wrong about some details, Newton was wrong about some details, but Evolution and Physics are real, and they changed the way we think about the world. HBD is real, too. The reason economic and education policy always fails in the US is because the government acts on a 'black slate' egalitarian view of different groups of people. They enforce policy with the view that any variation in outcome = racism/sexism. That is part of the reason the housing bubble happened due to the government forcing banks to have affirmative action in leading. That is why "No Child Left Behind" was such a mess for schools.

    End of posts.




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    1. "That is part of the reason the housing bubble happened due to the government forcing banks to have affirmative action in leading."

      I thought I would link to a review of the new "The Big Short" film by Steve Sailer. "The Big Short" is based on the book of the same name and is about the housing bubble. Anyway, Steve Sailer knows more about the housing bubble then most movie reviewers do, so he gets into that as well.

      "In reality, the essential cause of the Housing Bubble in what Lewis dubbed the Sand States—Florida, California, Arizona, and Nevada—was that the quantity of population was climbing fast enough due to Third World immigration to seemingly rationalize the higher prices, but the quality of the increasingly diverse population was declining. But under the rules of political correctness, nobody was allowed to articulate this in public. Instead, George W. Bush lectured his federal regulators that the real problems with the mortgage market were instead that racist rules about down payments and income documentation were redlining minorities out of their American Dreams."

      Read the whole thing here:

      http://takimag.com/article/the_bubble_hollywood_style_steve_sailer/print#axzz3uXdL4JFB

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  10. Hey, check this out:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3362448/Shocking-footage-reveals-rodents-boiled-alive-stripped-fur-turned-Chinese-RAT-KEBABS.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline

    For some reason (most likely due to the animal cruelty) it reminded me about this great post from the War Nerd that is a book review about an Ethiopian growing up and later being in the Ethiopian/Somali wars.

    http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-from-hyenas-belly-to-canadian-bitch/all/1/

    I think it shows how different people's minds work differently. Different levels of empathy. I think a lot of it is cultural, but I would guess that some of it is genetic, too.

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  11. Chinese state media hits back at claims of racist 'Star Wars' poster:

    http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/08/asia/star-wars-china-racist-poster/?iid=ob_article_organicsidebar_expansion&iref=obnetwork

    Check out the Chinese cartoon near the bottom of the story of President Xi Jinping's visit to Zimbabwe.

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  12. Neanderthals didn't make it to the moon, even though they were (possibly) more intelligent than Homo Sapiens. Why? Because intelligence isn't always the most survivable trait.

    Human-Neanderthal hybrid did better than pure-bred either. 10K Explosion theorizes it's because the Neanderthal's pack hunting adaptations led to more social behavior, while the HSes were better adapted for making tools.

    And again, if it's raw intelligence that's at play here rather than some mystic quality of whiteness, one would expect North East Asians/Ashkenazi Jews to be the first in space. Clearly, there's more to success that pure g factor.

    Persia was first for freedom of religion. Greece was first for citizen oligarchy (aka, democracy). The Magna Carta was meh - basically only limited the king's power in favor of the nobility. Still set a good precedent.

    What do you think would have happened if you told Victoria to fuck off to her face?


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  13. Also, about the Star Wars kerfuffle incident - "The assumption that our citizens would be less interested in a movie with prominent black characters doesn't prove we're racist! It just proves our marketers are operating under the assumption that we're racist!"

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  14. "Neanderthals didn't make it to the moon, even though they were (possibly) more intelligent than Homo Sapiens."

    Well, people with Neanderthal DNA did.

    "Because intelligence isn't always the most survivable trait."

    I think for an individual, intelligence is an important trait for their own survivability. I agree that intelligence isn't always the most survivable trait for a group long term if the group is also highly pathologically altruistic. Right now in Africa, the death rate for children is still much higher then in Europe, so an individual African is more likely to die young then an individual European. However, as groups, the Africans are having way more children then are dieing off. Throughout most of history, the black population of Africa was pretty low. It only started to really take off after Europeans arrived and improved agriculture and healthcare. Blacks had a hard time even competing with wild animals before the white people showed up. Today Africa still receives a great deal of aid from the outside world, and many Africans are moving to Europe to feed off of European welfare.

    In Europe they are having less children. So you have a case where the less intelligent people are able to breed like crazy and have most of their children survive long enough to reproduce themselves in a large part do to feeding off of the more intelligent population that takes care of them thought welfare and aid. At the same time, that more intelligent population is starting to get smaller. If the more intelligent population, as a whole, ever gets fed up enough to cut off the less intelligent populations, well, things would get really messy. You see much the same outcomes within the USA. The welfare state is dysgenic.

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    1. "And again, if it's raw intelligence that's at play here rather than some mystic quality of whiteness, one would expect North East Asians/Ashkenazi Jews to be the first in space."

      Well, Ashkenzai Jews have helped really advance the hard sciences. I don't trust many of them in the so called 'soft sciences' though, but there are a handful of pretty good ones there, too. The Chinese made a ton of scientific advances in the past as well (though they did have a huge population to draw from). I could see some plausible alternate history story-line were the Chinese were the first to space and the Moon that I just can't see for blacks. I think that Core Europeans are generally more inventive as a group, though.

      "Clearly, there's more to success that pure g factor."

      I never said there wasn't. Government structure matters a hell of a lot. So does individuality. Also, the IQ of the people around you. You are most likely better off with an 95 IQ living in a country were the average IQ is 100, vs having a 100 IQ living in a country were the average is 95. The smarter population makes things better even for the lower IQ people. With more innovation and productivity as a whole, even the stupid people's lives improve. Even people in countries with 70 IQ averages have I-Phones, thanks to the innovation of countries that have higher average IQs. If the high IQ countries are flooded with stupid, violent people, they would have to spend more resources on dealing with them then on other things. Say goodbye to the space program.

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  15. "Persia was first for freedom of religion."

    Well, that is partly true. Many peoples of that time thought that gods were geographically based. They weren't offended by people worshiping their own gods in their own lands. Babylon had captured many of the statues of local gods and held them hostage as a way to try to keep their subjugated peoples in line. Cyrus took a different way to gain local support. When he took Babylon, he sent the statues back to the places that they came from. Doing this helped him gain support from the newly conquered areas.

    "Greece was first for citizen oligarchy (aka, democracy)."

    Yeah, also Rome established their first Republic about the same time.

    "What do you think would have happened if you told Victoria to fuck off to her face?"

    OK, first off, lets go though were this line of argumentation started. I said:

    "Yes, but where did ideas like democracy, republics, self-rule, human rights (FREE SPEECH for one), limits on executive power, jury trail with a presumption of innocence, abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, and free market capitalism all arise?"

    You said:

    "Persia, mostly. Although I'll grant you that the Europeans did a great job of refining it."

    I then pointed out that your "Persia, mostly" comment was wrong. I said:

    "Bullshit! Persia did not invent those ideas! Cyrus the Great was pretty tolerant, but he was still the total ruler. What do you think would happen if one of his subjects told him to fuck off to his face? Did Persia end slavery?"

    None of those ideas that I listed were first implemented by Persians. Not one. I asked what would happen if someone told Cyrus to fuck off. Why? To show that free speech was not implanted by the Persians. I NEVER said that all of the reforms I talked about happened everywhere equally among Europeans, only that we have them to thank for those idea and implementations. Things that were developed NO where else until Europeans showed up. There are some exceptions for things like self-rule, but for the most part, all those things came from European peoples. The idea of free political speech arose first among European thinkers, and was first implemented by Europeans in America. (Maybe the Netherlands, not sure) America today is one of the few countries that has true free speech. The UK, Canada, France, and Germany don't have free speech. They have free speech lite. The governments there are way to censorious for my taste. Still better then most places, though. I am free to tell Obama, and Bush before him, to fuck off. All day, everyday. USA! USA!

    One of the things that worries me about the immigration levels that we are seeing in the western world is that most of the people (as a group) coming in do not support free speech to the same level that white people as a group do.








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  16. "Also, about the Star Wars kerfuffle incident - "The assumption that our citizens would be less interested in a movie with prominent black characters doesn't prove we're racist! It just proves our marketers are operating under the assumption that we're racist!""

    I though you already agreed that Asians were by and large, racist.

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  17. "Because intelligence isn't always the most survivable trait."

    Wanted to add something here. Yes, intelligence isn't always the most survivable trait. Wolves are smarter then dogs, but dogs are more genetically successful in overall numbers due to partnering with humans.

    I wonder if you would like to live in a world populated by a bunch of stupid people? What would the USA look like if the average population IQ was 85? Or 70?

    Anyway, something interesting about wolves, coyotes, and dogs interbreeding:

    http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/a-new-species-is-evolving-right-before-our-eyes-an-ultra-successful-mix-of-wolves-coyotes-and-dogs/

    I think wolves, coyotes, and dogs are more genetically alike then the human races are (I read it somewhere but can't find the source right now). Yet they have vastly different behaviors and intelligence levels. Even between dog breeds.

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