It’s official: the most common name for baby boys born in England and Wales is now Muhammad.
The fertility rate among Muslims in Blighty is close to 3 children per woman, while the rate for actual Brits is below 2. (Replacement-level fertility is 2.1 children per woman.)
For centuries — and most recently, in the memories of those still living — the doughty British have defended their island home against conquest by force of arms. But where jihad by the sword would, even now, surely have failed, Islam has found a subtler, but equally effective weapon: jihad by obstetrics.
Britain, like the rest of de-Christianized Europe, is a cut flower. Was this inevitable? It’s tempting for me to conclude, as I suggested fifteen years ago, that this is the necessary consequence of post-Enlightenment secularism, and the corrosive nihilism that scientific materialism carries as its psychological payload. Why fight for your nation and people if you can’t justify their existence on austerely rationalist grounds? What makes natalism worth the trouble if nothing has any intrinsic meaning anyway?
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The name Muhammad has been the most common name for years if you include all the various spellings. Mohammed, and its various iterations is way ahead. Bear in mind though, that every family calls their first born son some variation of the name.
There’s no reason England cannot follow the lead of Spain.
Islam is only growing due to higher birth rates. Muslims breed like bacteria, and you can only believe this crap if you’re indoctrinated from birth. If it weren’t for this, Islam would wither and die just like every other religion has in the face of the brutal Darwinian onslaught.
Putting more of your descendants into the next generation is pretty much the whole game when it comes to Darwinian competition, so saying “well, if it weren’t for that…” kind of misses the whole point, I think.
In the 15-year-old post I linked above, I argued that having a compact and easily comprehensible religion (such as Islam) that provides a solid foundation and instruction manual for a cohesive social order –complete with compensation in the afterlife for obedience and good behavior — is, in fact, a Darwinian advantage for groups that adopt it.
So when it comes to the actual “brutal Darwinian onslaught”, it’s far more likely to be widespread atheism, not religion, that’s maladaptive. Wherever Christianity is dying out, birthrates are down. (And deaths of despair are up.)
Even in a purely memetic frame — the ideological “onslaught” of Darwinistic materialism vs. religious belief — if your memeplex causes you to go extinct, it loses. (Just ask the Shakers.)
In the UK, we now can see, right before our eyes, this Darwinian truth revealed in head-to-head competition. Q.E.D.
An inclination toward religious thinking is heritable, but religion itself is memetic. It says a lot about life that lies are needed to perpetuate it. When we find out too much, we stop playing. Ergo, a propensity for atheism, for critical thinking, is unlikely to be selected for. On the contrary, evolution will favour those inclined to comforting delusions. What is the utility of unbearable truths? I don’t know. All I know is that we, or at least I, do not wish to be deceived. There is something inherently unpleasant about deception and dishonesty.
Having been more or less an atheist myself for most of my life, I’ll suggest that one way around this problem is to move beyond being so sure that atheism is the only possible result of critical thinking, or that the nonexistence of God is an “unbearable truth”. (It may instead just be an unbearable falsehood.)
Why did you delete your comment? Was it to make me look like I’m talking to myself? Very bizarre. But no, evolution is not an elaborate hoax. Take a gander at the disturbingly simian sub-Saharans. That’s evolution in real time, staring you in the face. The implications are unconscionable to most people.
No, that was a mistake – the comment was in a “pending” state for a few minutes; I’d posted it prematurely by accident. Sorry. (Normally replies don’t come in so quickly.)
To be clear: I didn’t say evolution was a hoax.
But the implicit implication is that evolution is a hoax, because you cannot have God and evolution. The two are mutually exclusive. Heck, even without evolution, you still can’t have a benevolent God. This world is like a giant Rube Goldberg construction, one that ultimately achieves nothing. It’s ridiculous.
I understand the temptation to believe that, because I used to believe it myself. And when it comes to this sort of thing, you are of course welcome to believe whatever you like.
I’ve moved on.
(I’ll add also that when I look at the world, at life, at consciousness, at music and high art, and at existence on all its scales, I see much, much more than a meaningless “Rube Goldberg construction”.
But hey, eye of the beholder, etc.)
The depth of human suffering nullifies all of that. Dignity is our most cherished illusion. In order to sustain it, we must forever pretend that we are something more than the sum of our parts. Evolution is a horrific system. No higher power would choose to create sentient life through such a gratuitous and wasteful process. It makes a mockery of us.
Not much I can say to you, except that I’m sorry you’ve decided to nail that door shut. I don’t know how old you are, but your grim certainty, and the stubborn and prideful satisfaction of bravely enduring unbearable “truths” (unlike those weak and foolish theists), may wear off as time goes by. (Mine has, and I hope yours will too.)
Even moving only as far as genuine agnosticism makes room for what I’ve called a kind of non-Euclidean geometry of the soul, and even in the absence of positive faith in God, freeing oneself from the negative faith that undergirds the nihilistic bleakness of scientific materialism is wonderfully refreshing, and comes at no cost whatsoever.
I’m 32. I don’t feel prideful or brave, just bewildered. I lost interest in life about ten years ago. I think humanity is finished. I know I certainly am.
AS, I’m deeply sorry to read this. You are so young; please don’t give up hope. Try to let yourself be open to the idea that more — vastly more! — is possible than I think you imagine. There’s nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
If an individual receives a consistently negative impression of life during their formative years and is denied any chance at forming romantic or even platonic relationships with other people their own age, that will embitter them for life. Humans are incredibly fragile creatures. Pathetically so, in fact. We long for a recreational existence, not whatever this is. My disbelief in God begins with the answer to a very simple question: if I were all powerful, would I create a world like this? The answer, of course, is a resounding no.
I recall from when I was about 12.
Dad explaining something to me as I asked, “why do those birds do that?”
And Dad simply saying, “Evolution will take care of that.”
I’m about a month older than Malcolm. My Dad (and Mom) generally equivalent in age – more generally ethnicity except that I’ve more than his smattering of German.
But the more relevant thing is that both our dads were MDs – my Dad following WWII and Korea service graduating med school in ’58. Last century as I understand those things.
Back then it wasn’t uncommon to discourse with people, neither ridiculing or dismissive that either or both or, neither, were both scientifically trained (and inclined) but in the the same moment was “religiously inclined.”
My Dad being Presbyterian, Mom “deep water” Baptist, since Presbyterianized. (It’s a Scots thing.)
Anyway I’m just butting in here to say I personally don’t “eye a stakey ere abit.”
…
Back to those birds.
At that [1968] time the roads in my neck of the woods were mostly gravel and vehicle speeds were generally far less than the “hold my beer” standards of today [2024]. (Insects incidentally smeared far far more back then that insects seem to do since our “big chem companies” introduced endocrine disruptors to control “buggery problems” – S’why back then there was also gasoline station owner employees to wash windshields. And yes there’s a wordplay too.)
Anyway when I was 12 birds very commonly nested in very close proximity to motor vehicles. Now in my 68th year it’s quite infrequent that I see, say meadowlarks, anywhere near asphalt.
So what was it? Was it either evolution or simply birds removing their heads from their asses?
Reveal oneself with thine wisdom.
Way to derail the conversation with your indecipherable waffle, JK. I assume you are the resident schizo around here.
AS, there’s no need to come to my house and insult my guests. I don’t know what you want in this world, but you aren’t likely to achieve it by gratuitous rudeness. If you can’t behave yourself in here, you should leave.
As for your comments about my friend JK: I’ll suggest once again that you you would do well to open yourself to the possibility that there is more before your eyes than you imagine.
Nothing he said made a lick of sense. Can you honestly say you understood a word of that? I sat here reading the thing, waiting for it to come to some kind of point, but it never did. It was just a random stream of consciousness.
Well Autis, you put me in mind of a certain Musey.
But yeah you’re correct to a point. I left aside what the birds were doing that set my 12 year old self to ask “Why they do that?”
Problem (as you recognized) and I only later reflecting was that indeed, that was stream of consciousness.
I don’t have regular access to internet – which makes it problematic for engaging in converses and correcting my oversights in anything like “real-time.”
But then I did recall making mention of bugs (insects) splattering the leading surfaces of roads traveling motor vehicles (which, in a former world, gas station employees would then “get rid thereof, of the evidence” – by means buggy or foul).
I prayed after returning to my home after leaving that comment that so befuddles you that – you’d make the leap that the birds behaviors likely (well okay; maybe) bore some resemblance to whatever the bugs obviously were doing.
Now it ought be obvious that in the “brains department” the average fowl is orders of magnitude smarter than the average six-leg but carrying that some further, Dad’s explaining “Evolution will take care of that” I can see how some degree of befuddlement could be the result of trying to follow along with ‘ol JK. So:
What the birds were doing in the days of my wee youth was, leaping into the airborne and kamikaziing into the leading surfaces of vehicles. It’s a characteristic of birds that they’ve evolved beyond suicidially divebombing cars and managing to carry forth the various species of their brethren, and sisteren.
If you’ve further explanatories needed I’ll probably manage to get back online by Saturday or so.
Or, you can place my initials in the handy archives box [see near top of site] click on Search and discover the amazements.
Carry on.
You’re just making it even worse, JK.
Ah c’mon Auti, get with the season. Put a smile on your face and get with it.
Change your dour outlook and then maybe, just maybe, you’ll find yourself working up from Auti Sarcas to a more hard-charging go-getting and raring-to-go Auti Murphyicas!
I mean. Whaddaya got to lose?