Zionism

[Alexis Jacobi]

And we’re trying to build a society where truth—not inherited delusions—is the foundation for justice, peace, and progress.

Oh? Who are these marvelous people? My daughter Miranda wishes to know.

[BigMike]

And we’re trying to build a society where truth—not inherited delusions—is the foundation for justice, peace, and progress.

Oh? Who are these marvelous people? My daughter Miranda wishes to know.

Marvelous people? Why, Alexis, we’re the ones who don’t need bedtime stories to get through the day.

Tell Miranda not to worry—she’ll recognize us by our refusal to blame invisible forces, worship ancient goat-herder fantasies, or wax poetic about “collapsed metaphysics” as if that’s some tragic Shakespearean drama instead of intellectual progress.

We're the folks who outgrew the fairy tales and decided to face reality as it is—no divine puppeteer, no chosen people, no prophetic end-object. Just atoms, energy, and cause and effect. Terrifying for some, liberating for others.

But I get it—it’s hard to give up the comforting idea that your tribe has a cosmic mission. Much easier to pontificate about “will” than to admit you’re just a ripple in the deterministic ocean like the rest of us.

Hope that clears it up—for you and Miranda.

[Atla]

I used to be religious too (a Christian). Then I turned seven and it just fell away.

[Alexis Jacobi]

No, Mike, it is that you are so wedded to specific reductions that you can only see the world through one absolutist lens and around this you have constructed an imperative, absolutist ideology. The way I see things has far more nuance. So the fact is that I avoid you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I used to be religious too (a Christian). Then I turned seven and it just fell away.

But you kept up with reading the entrails of sacrificed rabbits, yes? There is hope, Atla!

[Alexis Jacobi]

Why, Alexis, we’re the ones who don’t need bedtime stories to get through the day.

Fine, except that in your case you have switched bedtime stories for a whole other set of fantastic tales and other investments.

[BigMike]

No, Mike, it is that you are so wedded to specific reductions that you can only see the world through one absolutist lens and around this you have constructed an imperative, absolutist ideology. The way I see things has far more nuance. So the fact is that I avoid you.

Ah yes, the “nuanced” way of seeing things—where metaphysical dreams get treated like intellectual currency, and cause-and-effect is too “reductive” to be taken seriously.

Alexis, let’s be honest: you avoid me because the scientific worldview doesn’t need your theatrics. You toss around words like “will,” “myth,” and “imperative” as if dressing them up makes them real. But behind all that flowery ambiguity is a deep discomfort with the fact that the universe doesn’t care about your stories.

I deal in facts, not flattering illusions. You cling to ancient projections and call it nuance. I stick to what’s observable, measurable, and falsifiable—and that, apparently, is too much reality for your myth-addled worldview.

So sure, keep “avoiding” me. Just don’t pretend it’s out of intellectual principle. It’s because the mirror of determinism doesn’t flatter your mythology.

[BigMike]

Why, Alexis, we’re the ones who don’t need bedtime stories to get through the day.

Fine, except that in your case you have switched bedtime stories for a whole other set of fantastic tales and other investments.

You’ve got some nerve, Alexis. Really—you sit there, wrapped in layers of metaphysical fluff, and casually wave off the entire scientific enterprise as just another collection of “fantastic tales.” Do you even hear yourself?

You’re taking on people like Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Dirac, Curie, Hawking—as if their life’s work, grounded in rigorous observation, mathematics, and physical laws, is somehow on par with the tribal poetry and fire-and-brimstone hallucinations of bronze-age mystics? These were minds who shattered ignorance, not peddled stories. They revealed the underlying structure of reality—gravity, evolution, quantum mechanics, relativity—not myths about who begat whom in the desert.

You call their findings “reductionist” like it’s an insult. As if peeling away layers of delusion to expose the actual mechanisms of the universe is somehow less valuable than dressing the world up in esoteric symbolism and calling it wisdom. Reductionism is just clarity. Sorry it’s not as romantic as prophetic curses and chosen tribes.

You invoke nuance, but what you’re really doing is trying to escape the discomfort of truth. Science doesn’t need to make things feel profound—it shows what is, whether or not it flatters your inner theologian. And what you call “investments” in science are actually results: bridges that don’t fall, medicine that works, satellites that orbit, and explanations that don’t require belief—just understanding.

So let’s not pretend for one second that your metaphysical dream-casting belongs in the same league. It’s not nuance, Alexis—it’s evasion dressed up in poetry.

[Alexis Jacobi]

…

You’ve posted the same thing at least 50 times!

Having already explained to you and numerous times what I object to in your ideology and your manner, and since you clearly don’t agree, why do you press the issue?

I am not the man you seek for your epic battles.

[BigMike]

…

You’ve posted the same thing at least 50 times!

Having already explained to you and numerous times what I object to in your ideology and your manner, and since you clearly don’t agree, why do you press the issue?

I am not the man you seek for your epic battles.

Oh please, Alexis—don’t flatter yourself. You’ve never once pointed to anything specifically wrong in what I’ve said. Not a single scientific principle I’ve referenced has been falsified by you—not once. Instead, you wave your hands, mutter something about “reductionism,” and dismiss the entire foundation of modern science as fantasy.

Meanwhile, you have nothing to back your counter—no data, no falsifiability, no causal framework. Just vague mysticism, name-drops, and a talent for dodging anything that might require intellectual honesty.

You call me repetitive? That’s rich coming from someone who’s been recycling the same smug, empty spiritualist posturing for years.

You’re not “not the man I seek”—you’re just not capable of engaging. You’re stupid enough to call evidence-based truth a fantasy, crazy enough to think your metaphysical rambling is insight, and arrogant enough to pretend that makes you wise.

I press the issue because you keep pretending your nonsense is on par with reality. It’s not. You're not subtle, Alexis. You're just lost.

[BigMike]

So the fact is that I avoid you.

You’re not avoiding me, Alexis—you don’t even know where I am. What you’re avoiding are my arguments, because they slice through your flimsy mysticism like a scalpel through paper.

You posture as if you’re taking some principled step back, but the reality is simpler: you’ve got nothing. You’re cornered by facts, by logic, by cause and effect—and rather than face that, you retreat behind vague language and theatrical self-importance.

You’re not avoiding the man. You’re fleeing the mirror.

[seeds]

Why, Alexis, we’re the ones who don’t need bedtime stories to get through the day.

Fine, except that in your case you have switched bedtime stories for a whole other set of fantastic tales and other investments.

Yes.

Not the least of which is his religious-like faith in science and the processes of "Determinism" of which he offers not the slightest hint as to how those "Deterministic processes" were initially imbued with the teleological impetus (i.e., the initial "cause") that led to the "effect" of an unfathomably ordered universe.

Furthermore, as a perhaps trivial (but amusing) sidenote, when BigMike says things like this,...

The intensity you attribute to Jewish identity or Zionist ambition isn’t metaphysical. It’s the result of centuries of trauma, persecution, tribal cohesion, religious conditioning, and evolving geopolitical strategy. It's no more mystical than gravity,...

...it demonstrates his naive over-confidence in science which can be exposed and deflated by one simple question to AI Overview:

Is the true ontological status of gravity still a mystery to science?

AI Overview's answer:

Yes, the true ontological status of gravity remains a mystery to science.

Like all hardcore materialists, BigMike's "faith" in the creative powers of his stumble-bumbling "god" of Chance and Determinism, puts to shame the most devout Jew, Christian, or Muslim.
_______

[BigMike]

Why, Alexis, we’re the ones who don’t need bedtime stories to get through the day.

Fine, except that in your case you have switched bedtime stories for a whole other set of fantastic tales and other investments.

Yes.

Not the least of which is his religious-like faith in science and the processes of "Determinism" of which he offers not the slightest hint as to how those "Deterministic processes" were initially imbued with the teleological impetus (i.e., the initial "cause") that led to the "effect" of an unfathomably ordered universe.

Furthermore, as a perhaps trivial (but amusing) sidenote, when BigMike says things like this,...

The intensity you attribute to Jewish identity or Zionist ambition isn’t metaphysical. It’s the result of centuries of trauma, persecution, tribal cohesion, religious conditioning, and evolving geopolitical strategy. It's no more mystical than gravity,...

...it demonstrates his naive over-confidence in science which can be exposed and deflated by one simple question to AI Overview:

Is the true ontological status of gravity still a mystery to science?

AI Overview's answer:

Yes, the true ontological status of gravity remains a mystery to science.

Like all hardcore materialists, BigMike's "faith" in the creative powers of his stumble-bumbling "god" of Chance and Determinism, puts to shame the most devout Jew, Christian, or Muslim.
_______

Oh, Seeds, thank you for the comic relief.

You think quoting an AI chatbot about the "ontological status" of gravity somehow invalidates the entire framework of physics? That’s like dismissing a car engine because you can’t explain why combustion makes the wheels turn—while you're still being driven to your destination at 100 km/h.

Here’s the difference between me and your mystic tribe: I don’t need to invent a creator or purpose just because we don’t yet know everything. That’s your move—filling gaps in understanding with magical thinking. It’s classic “god of the gaps” reasoning, dressed up in pseudo-philosophical language and dripping with unjustified smugness.

Science doesn’t claim to have every answer—it just has the best ones so far, based on evidence, not wishful thinking. Gravity works, whether or not we’ve nailed down its ontology. Planets orbit. Tides rise. Apples fall. And meanwhile, your lot still can’t point to a single falsifiable mechanism for your divine daydreams.

As for “religious-like faith” in science? That’s projection. I accept that everything has a cause because that claim is repeatedly and consistently supported by every observation in nature. It’s not “faith” to trust a method that delivers airplanes, vaccines, and the internet—it’s basic rationality.

You accuse me of worshipping Chance and Determinism? No, I simply understand that randomness and necessity are the twin engines of natural complexity. You just can’t stomach that there’s no celestial overseer behind it all, so you call that understanding “naïve.”

Naïve is insisting the universe needs a daddy figure because you’re uncomfortable with cause and effect doing the heavy lifting. My views don’t put religious devotion to shame—they reveal it for what it is: a coping mechanism for minds afraid of a universe that doesn’t revolve around them.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Sorry, I am still interested in talking about Zionism. It is an important topic. Did any of you marvelous people hear what Rabbi Yaakov had to say? I cannot help but see Zionism, which developed among secular Jewry in Europe, as (allow me to put it this way) a desperate survival strategy. The catastrophe in Europe — the loss of life, the loss of place, the intense existential insecurity, produced a sort of madness which had been developing for decades, but post-Emancipation: Never again would these Jews allow such a fate to befall Jewry. Jewish God be damned.

European Jews had no other option except to realize that God abandoned them. God betrayed them. And when they interiorized what had happened (Shoah has the same sense as Nakba) they really had few options: to come to see that this God Yahweh was either a merciless nut job or a figment of the imagination.

Who (among Jewry) could any longer sustain the notion of the Biblical, historical Jewish God? And also consider this: that this God teamed up with Nazis and a general European antipathy to Jews, Jewish will, Jewish tendency to get to the head of the class. If you read Jewish postwar literature the psychic rupture was shattering.

Zionism is, in this sense, a rebellion against Jewish history and Jewish fate. “We will take matters into our own hands” say the Zionist-atheists. And in that sense cease to be historical Jews.

What many Gentiles do not understand — why would they? — is that the United States represents for world-Jewry an opportunity that had never, ever been presented in history. Jews are highly historically conscious. They recognized the opportunity and seized it.

It is an unfortunate fact that Israel was predicted to be a huge mistake by (many) Jews themselves. Everything was foreseen.

The extreme violence unleashed against those who perpetrated the 7th of October had all the resonances of psychotic, paranoid, uncontrollable fear and extreme anxiety. The attacks on Gaza were genocide-like, but with destruction at that level how do you measure the will to retribution?

Israeli Jewry is in an existential trap. And how horrid, how utterly unlivable it is to feel at a fundamental level that your very existence is threatened. That there is no “ground” for you. That God Himself is in effect your enemy and the agent of your destruction.

Religious Jews have all sorts of mechanisms to quash or limit this ever-present anxiety. The structure of the faith is itself a fortress. Secular Jews are in a different situation. They are only quasi-religious and in this sense quasi-Jews. They will not sit by while their own flesh and blood is being attacked.

But Israel, established by conquest, was a deep historical mistake. How this situation gets resolved now is anyone’s guess.

The best laid plans of mice and men …

"You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit. 31 Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat of it; your donkey shall be torn away from you, and will not be restored to you; your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you will have none to save you. 32 Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and yearn for them continually; but there will be nothing you can do. 33 A people whom you do not know shall eat up the produce of your ground and all your labors, and you will never be anything but oppressed and crushed continually. 34 You shall be driven mad by the sight of what you see." (Deut 28:30-34)

[Atla]

I used to be religious too (a Christian). Then I turned seven and it just fell away.

But you kept up with reading the entrails of sacrificed rabbits, yes? There is hope, Atla!

I prefer real things over imaginary things. Don't try to understand this - you can't.