Monday, June 30, 2014

Supremes: Stop in the name of ... Religion

The four liberal justices aren't happy about honoring religious freedom. They may need to go take a pill:
In a highly anticipated decision on Monday, the Supreme Court has ruled that companies cannot be required to pay for contraception coverage for their employees if it violates their religious beliefs. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the justices found that "closely held" private businesses have the same rights under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act as non-profit organizations. 
Read more here.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Ignorance Indefatigable: Jerry Coyne Surprised by Divine Impassibility

Jerry Coyne claims to have "spent several years reading theology before [deciding] that it was a mind-numbing and largely worthless exercise." He also claims to have made "extensive incursions into theology and science."

Now Coyne is certainly not a respectable commentator on religion and its relation to science. A certain lack of intellectual rigor for a non-academic is inevitable. But he is a blogger who has something a following online, and he is known as a hanger-on of the New Atheist movement. His ineptitude when it comes to religious matters, then, is a case study of the low intellectual standards of the New Atheists.

I've previously offered several examples in which Coyne shows that he doesn't grasp the most basic claims of Christian theology. Coyne's descriptions of what Christian theology shows pretty clearly that his "years of reading theology" is a fib.

Consider these examples:

  • Coyne claims that Augustine and Aquinas don't think God is the source of being. In fact, Augustine said that God is being itself, "the absolute fullness of being and thus the sole primeval source of all being ...." Likewise, Aquinas held that God is "ipsum esse subsistens" (subsistent being itself).
  • Coyne thinks that the doctrine of the Incarnation says that "God turning himself into his son ...." But Christians don't believe that Jesus Christ is the Father made into human form. This sort of thing has always been rejected as a heresy related to Sabellianism. (Sabellianism was condemned as a heresy upon its appearance around the turn of the Third Century.
  • Coyne claims that "the theological notion of original sin didn’t arise until several centuries after Jesus supposedly lived ...." Coyne's years of studying theology didn't acquaint him with Romans or I Corinthians, apparently.

Divine Impassibility: A Pervasive Christian Doctrine

Coyne has recently been adding more weird claims about theology. In a post entitled "An Eastern Orthodox priest says I know nothing of God," Coyne seems determined to demonstrate that, in fact, he knows nothing of God.

The doctrine that God lacks emotions and is unaltered by the world is called "Divine Impassibility." Impassibility is one of the major attributes Christians believe God has.

The doctrine of Impassibility is grounded in the Scriptures and was formulated at least as early as the Second Century AD. Those who did not believe in it were deemed heretics. Patripassionism, a school that taught that God the Father suffers, was condemned in the Second Century AD.

The doctrine of Divine Impassibility is pervasive in Christian theology: it was held by every major theologian before the modern period and affirmed in official church proceedings such as the Nicene Council.

Surprised by Divine Impassibility

Given Coyne's claims to have spent "years" studying theology, one would think he would be familiar with the doctrine. But Coyne states that he has never heard anyone say that the Christian God does not have emotions. In responding to an Orthodox priest who mentions impassibility, Coyne says:
"In other words, God completely lacks emotion, nor is He altered by the world. Well, Fr. Kimel, that’s a new one to me. You’ve managed to find one theologian who says that."
Coyne apparently thinks few Christian theologians hold God to be impassible. But, of course, every major patristic and medieval theologian held this view. Here are some theologians, just off the top of my head, who believe God is impassible:
  • Augustine
  • Thomas Aquinas
  • Martin Luther
  • John Calvin
  • Origen
  • Ignatius
  • Justin Martyr
  • Cyprian
  • Tertullian
  • Theodoret
  • Gregory of Nyssa
  • Basil the Great
  • Gregory Thaumaturgus
  • Eusebius
  • Anselm
  • Bonaventure
  • Duns Scotus
  • Rufinus
  • Ignatius
  • Irenaeus

The notion that God is without emotion is a central aspect of theism, Christian or otherwise. You can find the notion of divine impassibility in Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus.

This alone would suffice to show that Coyne never spent "years" studying theology. Even had Coyne not shown the basics of Christian theology to be news to him in his previous posts, this would be enough.

A New Trend in the Sciences: Making Things Up

So let's recap. Jerry Coyne claims he has spent years reading theology. Then Coyne goes on to say that he's never heard anyone say that God is impassible. But divine impassibility is held by every major orthodox theologian up to the eighteenth century. It's rejected as a heresy at least as far back as the second century!

Coyne is just making things up. This, it turns out, is the new trend among scientists. Marc Hauser, a famous evolutionary biologist at Harvard, was discovered to have fabricated research data. Hauser's career, incidentally, was largely focused on claiming primates had many human-like cognitive functions.

Another recent case, also at Harvard and also involving a biologist, involved an influential paper in stem-cell research written by Haruko Obokata.

I've wondered in the past how Coyne, as a trained biologist, could have total disregard for the data and for intellectual rigor when it comes to matters of religion. Perhaps, though, it is the case that his sloppy reasoning, refusal to revise his views in light of contrary evidence, and his fabrications concerning his past work are actually bad habits that come from certain sectors of the sciences.

A few years' training in the methods of theology might do wonders for the quality of Coyne's thinking.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Roadmap for an Argument for the Existence of God

By Thomas M. Cothran

This is the second in a series of posts setting out an argument for the existence of God.

This post sets out the initial roadmap for the argument for the existence of God that will be set out in later posts. The particular argument I will be using is derived from Robert Spitzer’s New Proofs for the Existence of God and W. Norris Clarke’s The One and the Many. Both are simplified versions of Aquinas’ Second Way, and they do not rely on any particular metaphysical view of the world. Thus, one does not need to accept Aquinas’ metaphysics to find the argument compelling.

The argument will proceed in five major steps. The first step is a proof for the thesis that at least one unconditioned reality exists. As we will see shortly in greater detail, an unconditioned reality is one that does not depend on another reality for its existence. It is an absolute reality that transcends the order of space and time.

The next steps will be as follows: 2) an unconditioned reality must be absolutely simple, 3) an unconditioned reality must be infinite in all perfections, 4) an unconditioned reality is absolutely unique (i.e., there is only one unconditioned reality), and finally 5) unconditioned reality is the creator of all that is.

My plan is to devote a single post to explaining each step of the argument, and perhaps additional posts to consider any objections. I may modify the plan as we move along.

An angry mob of tolerant people

The following opinion piece ran in the Danville Advocate-Messenger, my hometown newspaper last Sunday. I don't see that it has been put online yet, so here's the text:

There is nothing sillier than an angry mob of tolerant people.

In late May, the Danville City Commission passed the so-called "Fairness Ordinance." But as soon as the ordinance was passed, supporters began complaining that all their demands had not been met, and to began their vilification campaign against those who had opposed it.

On Brass Band Festival weekend, a full editorial page in the Advocate-Messenger was devoted by ordinance supporters to the argument that, in allowing Sunrise Children's Services to continue to follow its deeply held religious convictions as it helps abused and neglected children, the City Commission betrayed the cause of tolerance and diversity.

"Tolerance and diversity," in case you haven't noticed, has become the banner under which socially liberal special interest groups are now allowed to trample on the rights of those with whom they disagree.

"Tolerance," in the postmodernist political lexicon popular in faculty lounges of  at places like Centre College (where much of the support for the ordinance seemed to be based), no longer means actually accommodating the views of those with whom someone might differ. Instead, it means stamping out the beliefs of those it finds intolerable.

And "diversity" no longer means encouraging the proliferation of an abundance of different viewpoints, but precisely the opposite.

Tolerance and diversity advocates who supported the "Fairness" ordinance began their campaign by attacking Sunrise Children's Services, accusing it of "bullying" for refusing to roll over and play dead when ordinance supporters tried to impose demands on Sunrise that conflicted with their religious principles.

Those who have been paying attention to what actually happened can be forgiven for wondering, first, why, after declaring that they were trying to make Danville more welcoming, supporters of the ordinance tried to run an orphanage out of town. And second, why they think anyone would believe them when, after publicly beating up on Sunrise, they turned around and accused the Sunrise of bullying.

[NOTE TO FAIRNESS SUPPORTERS: When the mean people come and try to throw the orphans out, it's the mean people who are bad, not the orphans]

The central argument of those now complaining that the Commission didn't comply with every jot and tittle of their narrow-minded agenda is that because Sunrise receives most of its funding to help needy children from government, it should come under the restrictions of the measure.

Those making this argument seem to assume that, if someone takes government money, they therefore do not enjoy the protection of the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.

Really?

Perhaps such an assumption appears self-evident to the local Tolerance Police, but it is hardly self-evident to anyone else.

Do we give up the First Amendment right to freedom of speech when we accept government funds? Do we give up the right to peaceably assemble if our paycheck comes from the taxpayers? Do we give up the right to petition the government for the redress of grievances if we enjoy state financial support?

Of course not.

Why would we think that we give up the right of free exercise in accepting government support any more than any other right?

The next move of the local Diversity Patrol was to punish their political enemies. They started a petition calling on Mayor Bernie Hunstad to resign. Hunstad's crime? Not only had he opposed their ordinance, he had the nerve to use information from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with whom ordinance supporters disagreed.

Seriously? Just because you don't agree with tolerance and diversity dogma you forfeit your right to serve in public office?

There can't possibly be anything said in Heritage Foundation documents more outrageous and narrow-minded than what ordinance supporters have said in this newspaper.

It's hard to determine whether the mob mentality now on display by ordinance supporters is vindictive or just petty, but in either case their attempts to violate basic religious freedoms and punish their political enemies are making a mockery of their own stated principles.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Cheney vs. Obama: A plague on both their houses

Dick Cheney is right about Obama, Rand Paul is right about Dick Cheney, and Dick Cheney is wrong about Rand Paul.

When, in his recent Wall Street Journal column, Dick Cheney said "Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many," he was right about Obama. The problem is that the exact same thing could be said of Cheney himself. Cheney belongs on the stool right next to Obama over in the political corner there with a dunce cap similar to the one he's prescribing for Obama.

Rand Paul is absolutely right in saying that the Bush administration, with Cheney in the supporting role, is more guilty than Obama for what is now going on in Iraq.

There was no good reason for going into Iraq in the first place. The reasoning started out as part of the response to the Twin Towers disaster, but when the Bush administration could not make that plausible (mainly because Saddam Hussein, for all his other faulths, had nothing to do with it), it changed its excuse midstream and claimed the reason for going in was because of WMDs.

And we know how that turned out.

Is Obama incompetent in foreign policy? Of course he is. But Cheney is the last person to put out there to criticize him. He unwisely helped make the war Obama is fecklessly trying to get out of. It's the pot and the kettle thing.

Cheney and his neoconservative cronies really believed that we could just go in to Iraq and install an American-style democracy, hand over power to it, and ride off into the sunset. But no reasonable person even at the time thought this was plausible.

Saddam Hussein was obviously no friend of the U. S., but he at least kept Iran in check. The older U.S. policy was to play Iran and Iraq off against each other, never letting one get the clear upper hand. Then had their hands full with each other, making it less likely they would bother other countries.

But, thanks to the war for which Cheney is now partly responsible, we now we have a situation where the balance of power in the Middle East favors Iran, always more of a threat to the U.S. than Iraq. In fact the Shiites now have majority control in Iraq. By one account, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki was literally hand-picked in Khamenei's office!

We go into Iraq, sacrifice thousands of American lives to hand over Iraq to Iran as a client state?

If Cheney is going to have any credibility on this issue at all, he should explain in what way the decision to go to war with Iraq (his policy) was successful.

Until then, he is in no position to criticize either Obama or Rand Paul.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Introductory Remarks to An Argument for the Existence of God

by Thomas Cothran

It is commonly assumed that there is no compelling argument for the existence of God. However, the argument for the existence of God is more compelling than almost any other argument about the fundamental nature of reality. The existence of God is more easily and convincingly demonstrated than the existence of other minds; the independent or objective existence of objects; or the real existence of subatomic particles.

In order to back up these claims, it is necessary to set out an argument for God’s existence. This is the first in a series of posts setting out an argument for the existence of God. The argument I will present is a form of the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument itself is hardly new. It dates back to ancient Greece, and its characteristic reasoning was set out in the Medieval period.

The form of the cosmological argument I will present, however, is primarily derived from the work of Robert Spitzer and W. Norris Clarke. Spitzer and Clarke both offer stripped down forms of the cosmological argument, which require less philosophical background knowledge than the more classical formulations of the arguments. This has the benefit of being more convincing to those who don’t want to spend years studying metaphysics. But it also has a downside: the arguments, though they do demonstrate the existence of a divine creator, say less about that creator than do the classical arguments. 

The next post will give the first step of the proof. Before considering the proof itself, we should think about the nature of the certainty of arguments in general. Here are several levels of certainty an argument can attain.
A: Absolute certainty. No rational person could harbor any doubt, however small, as to the argument’s conclusion. There is no objection that has not been completely accounted for in the argument.
B: Satisfactory certainty. The argument is so convincing that no rational person could be unpersuaded. A reasonable person may be able to identify some doubts about the conclusions of the argument, but those doubts are so small, and the weight of the argument so great, that it would be irrational to deny the conclusion. 
C: Relative certainty. A reasonable person can be certain that conclusion of the argument is better supported than any alternative. The argument is not airtight, but it is sufficient to establish that the conclusion is superior to any alternative. 
D: Reasonable disagreement. The argument is sufficiently compelling that a reasonable person could reasonably believe the conclusion of the argument to be true. It is not so compelling that it would convince every rational person. 
E: Moderate support. An argument does not compel one to a conclusion, but it nevertheless furnishes grounds that tend to support a conclusion. 
F: Bad arguments. The argument does not establish its conclusion, nor does it furnish any ground that might lead a reasonable person to think the conclusion more likely.
Arguments can be more or less certain. It is a strange feature of the debate about the existence of God that many people presume that the arguments must be A-type arguments. If the God argument turns out to fall below the A-level standards, it is judged to have failed. For almost all other issues, however, we accept B or C type arguments as sufficient. Let me give an example.

Suppose that the argument from contingency (that is, that the contingency of things implies the existence of God) presents a dilemma. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the theist shows that either there is a God or that things in the world came into existence without a cause. But the atheist, who accepts the dilemma, concludes that the theist has not show with absolute certainty that the world didn’t just pop into existence without a prior cause. The atheist then concludes that the theist has not demonstrated the existence of God.

Let’s assume arguendo that the dilemma holds and that the theist has not established the first possibility to an A-level certainty. There may still be very compelling reasons to suppose that things cannot come into existence without a prior cause. Even if there is no mathematico-deductive proof of that thesis, it could still be the case that the theist has shown the conclusion to be compelling enough to convince any rational person.

The point is this: A possible objection does not mean that the argument is not convincing. One cannot offer an absolutely certain argument that we are not brains in a vat, for example. But arguments do not have to be absolutely, deductively certain to establish their conclusions. No major scientific theory rises to A level (or even B-level) certainty, for example. That does not mean they should be rejected.

In my view, an argument can be made that establishes that the existence of God is satisfactorily certain (B). Parts of the argument, such as the argument for the existence of an absolute, non-physical reality, rise to A-level certainty. But I will leave it to the reader to judge how certain the argument is for themselves as this series proceeds.

This article was originally posted  on Interstices.

Friday, June 20, 2014

The Eclipse of Everything (and how to avoid it)

I have a new article in Russell Moore's new journal Canon and Culture. Here is an excerpt:
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger once said that we live in the “age of the world picture.” One of the things he meant was that the way we think about things has now become an external object of contemplation rather than being simply the way we actually think about things. We now not only think a certain way, we think about the fact that we think a certain way, and so we want to talk about it.
This is why we Christians write books and have conferences about “worldviews.” Whereas once we had a worldview, we now want to talk about the fact that we have one—and presumably that some other people have a different one. Who are the people who we expect to read these books and come to these conferences? If they are people who already think the way we think they should, then why do they need to come? And if they are people who do not already think this way, then why would they want to come. 
What did we know before we knew we had a “worldview”? How did we think when we didn’t know how we thought?
Read more here.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Eight Thumbs Down!

Eight Thumbs Down!. The US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works held a hearing today on "climate change". A lot of it was business as usual, starting with the opening statement from Senator Barbara Boxer: We should all know we must take action to reduce harmful

http://ift.tt/12rPG2v

Thursday, June 05, 2014

Sex is Not Complicated: Binaries and other road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia

The level of intellectual absurdity people are willing to engage in to justify their ideological beliefs about sex and gender is really something to behold.

Here is where we have come in the debate over sexuality: While your sanity is automatically called into question if you hold to traditional beliefs about sex (as well as basic reproductive science), you can basically believe anything you want if it comports with a permissivist view of sexuality.

Anything.

Any evidence for the traditional view of sexuality is immediately suspect, while any assertion, no matter how preposterous, is to be admitted without question into the discussion if it supports the permissivist view.

Reason, evidence, testimony, all are road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia.

In Slate magazine, Jillian Keenan writes in her article "Sex is complicated," of how she called a few scientists one day who told her that all that stuff that you learned in science class in the 8th grade is wrong.

Science? Wrong? I thought that was what those Evil Conservative Republican Science Deniers do?

Now if you missed science class that day when they discussed "calling a few scientists on your cellphone" as a legitimate research technique, you might want to bone up on it before reading Keenan's article. As it turns out, this kind of methodology is characteristic of her approach to the topic in general.

The proximate cause of her article was a piece by Kevin D. Williamson of National Review magazine in which he argued against the  “delusion ... that transcends the biological facts in question." Keenan's response to Williamson's argument about the biological facts in question was to question the biological facts.

[NOTE TO SELF: Add "biological facts" to the list of things that are road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia.]

Keenan admits that her biological education is not good, which is why she took to her cell phone to execute the rigorous research program that yielded the conclusions outlined in her article:
My biological education peaked at age 3, when the boy next door and I played doctor and discovered that the differences in our hair length weren’t our only physical differences.
Based on a reading of her article, the trauma of this experience had lasting effects.

But what Keenan figured out by the age of 3 (and what anyone who grew up in even remote proximity to, say, household pets also figured out) has now been called into question in the interests of gender politics.
A new book, Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome, even makes the case that we should abandon the term “sex chromosomes” entirely, because it encourages an “empirically wrong” binary understanding of sex.
A "binary understanding of sex"? Since when do scientists give Derridaean readings of scientific questions? [ANSWER: Whenever the topic turns to sexuality]

When Paul Gross and Norman Levitt wrote Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science a few years back, scientists―even politically liberal ones (like Gross and Levitt themselves) cheered them on. There was legitimate science, which was good, and politicized science, which was bad.

That, by the way, is still a good binary (as opposed to a bad binary, a distinction which is also a good binary).

In those days postmodernist claptrap was universally reviled by the people who discussed scientific questions, even those having to do with sex. Now, however, when it comes to the birds and the bees (one wonders if that is still an acceptable binary), Higher Superstition rules.

[ADDITIONAL NOTE TO SELF: Add "revulsion against postmodernist claptrap" to list of things that are road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia.]

In fact, Keegan's article is just one of many examples one could cull from the ideological bestiary of modern gender politics that demonstrates how the once lofty ideals of science have been co-opted by postmodernist ideologues with the seemingly sheepish cooperation of the same people who once professed an opposition to politicized science.

In fact, come to think of it, they still express an opposition to politicized science, but only when that so-called "politicized science" is in express support of the science we all believed in before politicized science changed it.

[ONE MORE NOTE TO SELF: Add "opposition to politicized science" to list of things that are road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia.]

Here is Keenan herself, offering a textbook example of politicized science:
Even those of us who distinguish between sex and gender, who understand that gender is a cultural construct, too often reduce sex to a binary. But when we dig into the science of sex, it turns out that the fundamental categorizations we take for granted—male and female—are not fundamental at all. The assumption that there are only two sexes is wrong. Sex, like gender, is a construct—and it varies.
The constructivist idea that human characteristics like sex did not originate (nor is it confirmed) by science. It originated in the faux sciences like sociology and psychology and education theory―in other words, among the same people who think that science itself is a social construct.

In fact, just watch those who have forsaken their lab protocols for political slogans who say that sex is a social construct scatter like roaches when you suggest that they apply the same interpretation to their own discipline. They're fine to give a constructivist reading to sex and gender, but try to apply it to their own field of study and they'll all faint dead away.

This is what the philosophers call a "performative self-contradiction": When you want to apply a certain criterion to everyone else but yourself.

One of the "binaries" that sexual revolutionaries like Keenan no longer apparently accept is that between "A" and "not-A," otherwise known as the Law of Non-Contradiction. Although central to logic, it poses an insurmountable problem for gender politics.

While saying on Tuesday that homosexuality is inborn (in other words, not culturally constructed), they will say on Wednesday that gender is culturally constructed―the only apparent difference being that on Tuesday it is politically convenient to hold the thesis and on Wednesday politically convenient to hold the antithesis.

Let's just call it the postmodern sexual dialectic: The ability to hold two mutually exclusive beliefs about the same thing at the same time without batting an eyelash.

One more binary bites the dust.

And who are the scientists Keenan quotes as she slouches toward Gomorrah? Well, apparently Keenan's cellphone can only reach scientists who happen to agree with her. There's JoAnne Keatley, the director of the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health. Now there's an open mind just waiting to ... well, just waiting to stay open to any opinion as long as it doesn't conflict with progressivist ideology.

And then there is Melissa A. Wilson Sayres, a "geneticist who studies sex chromosome evolution" who thinks she has proved that male and female are sexual constructs because "The Sambia people of Papua New Guinea, who have high rates of hermaphroditic conditions, have three different words to describe three distinct sexes."

The "Sambia people of Papua, New Guinae"? Really? This is our new model for progressive views on sexuality? Get out!

My first thought here was to point out that if we are now taking cultural tips from this particular tribe in Papua New Guinea, why not take dietary tips from them as well―the only trouble being that one of their favorite food groups might very well be homo sapiens.

Well, then, in preparation for writing the previous paragraph, I clicked over to my Google Chrome to do a search on the "Sambia people of Papua, New Guinea." I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny if the same people Sayres was extolling for their progressive views on sex were actually cannibals."

As it turns out, not only were the Sambia cannibalistic, but, I swear, the first hit I got on a Google search was this article: "The Social Construction of Gender: Female Cannibalism in Papua, New Guinea," by Ilka Thiessen, in which Thiessen asserts, "In Papua, New Guinea, gender identity has been described as the strict segregation and oppression of women."

Didn't catch that part in Keenan's article? Just read it again and you find that ... well, it isn't there.

And then there was this:
However the imagery of cannibalism can give us new insights into a gender identity in which gendered substances are exchanged. Culture creates boundaries that imply division, though sameness is experienced. This social experience is projected onto the body. In the act of cannibalism, substance and power are exchanged, and women and men cooperate for the common goal of transcendence. The difference between the sexes, then, cannot be understood within the framework of hierarchy ... Gender identity reflects an ideology, not a bodily function.
Now this may give a whole new meaning to the slang expression, "man eater," but does this mean what I think it does? If so, I'm now even more worried than I was before I wrote this post about what might be next on the progressivist menu.

[FINAL NOTE TO SELF: Add cannibalism to the list of things that are not road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia.]

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Was the man Susan Rice says "served ... with honor and distinction" a deserter?

Soldier from Bergdahl's unit, writing in The Daily Beast:
After we redeployed, every member of my brigade combat team received an order that we were not allowed to discuss what happened to Bergdahl for fear of endangering him. He is safe, and now it is time to speak the truth. 
And that the truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.
Read more here.

100% Liberal: Nobody but us champions of tolerance and diversity here ...

100% Liberal.

There has been not one single conservative commencement speaker among the top 30 universities in the past two years. Zero. Zilch.

The thing is, these universities are not even trying to look fair anymore. This is unapologetic liberal bias laid bare for all to see.

Read more here

Monday, June 02, 2014

Diversity for thee but not for me on transexualism

Nobody has yet explained to me how you can decide your sex any more than you can decide what species you are. But that's one of the bedrock assumptions of leftist ideology: You can actually change reality through political proclamation.

Here is Kevin Williamson, beset by the Tolerance Police for his unacceptable views on transsexualism:
Critics suggested not only that I be fired for my views but that I should be prosecuted for them, and that the government should ensure that such views are not published. Live-and-let-live is not the Left’s way, never has been, and never will be. It is not sufficient that transsexuals should be free to act on their delusions — the rest of us are expected to participate in them with unreserved enthusiasm, and the Left is willing to use the state to compel us to do so. To simply believe otherwise and to share those views in print is in the minds of many on the Left not only a social transgression but something that should be a crime.
Read more here.