It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God, I don’t want there to be a God

 I recall a question on a final exam near the beginning of my graduate studies at Caltech: Which of the biological macromolecules is apt to have been the first “living” molecule, and why? If that sounds like Greek to you, relax. I promise to write in plain English. All you need to know is that the question is about how life began, posed with the unstated assumption that it began by ordinary molecular processes. That assumption had been ingrained in biological thinking for so long that it went without saying. Every student in the class understood this, but I understood it more critically than most did. I knew the expected response to the test question, but through my critical lens, that response seemed scientifically questionable. So I had a choice: Do I go with the flow, or do I push against it?

I decided to give the expected answer in full and then—for extra credit—to state why I found that answer unconvincing. I explained why, contrary to the consensus view, I didn’t think any molecule has what would be needed to start life. As shrewd as that seemed at the time, I learned when my exam was returned (with points deducted) that we students were expected not only to know current thinking in biology but also to accept it without resistance. We were there as much to be acculturated as educated.

I had learned my lesson. The stream of scientific consensus flows with an almost irresistible current.

Almost.

AWKWARD SCIENCE

Of all the controversial ideas to come from modern science, none has brought more awkwardness than Darwin’s idea of evolution through natural selection. We know natural selection means “survival of the fittest,” which in one sense isn’t at all controversial. Indeed, Darwin’s observation that fitter individuals are apt to have more offspring is so obvious it hardly needs to be stated. But how can something with so little content—a truism—possibly explain the astounding richness of life?

The biggest question on everyone’s minds has never been the question of survival but rather the question of origin—our origin in particular. How did we get here? Even if you think natural selection is the answer, you have to admit to a degree of internal conflict over the matter. Francis Crick acknowledged this conflict, at least implicitly, when he cautioned that “biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”1 So if Darwin’s claim is true, then it’s a truth we all find ourselves doubting—at least subconsciously—and if it’s false, then we’re to be commended for doubting it. Awkwardness clings to it either way.

In fact, though you won’t see this in any textbook, Darwin implicitly conceded something that adds to the unease surrounding his theory. All six editions of his book On the Origin of Species include a few paragraphs in the conclusion where he addressed the widespread rejection of his theory by his scientific peers. He began with a question: “Why, it may be asked, have all the most eminent living naturalists and geologists rejected this view of the mutability of species?” The answer, he thought, was their closed-mindedness. Sensing little hope of opening more than a few of those minds, he decided to “look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.”2To Darwin’s own great surprise, this near total rejection of his theory turned to near total acceptance within just a few years. Up to the publication of the fifth edition of his book in 1869, his original gloomy assessment of the reception of his work wasn’t in need of revision. Then in 1872, a mere three years later, the sixth edition followed those original paragraphs with this commentary:

As a record of a former state of things, I have retained in the foregoing paragraphs, and elsewhere, several sentences which imply that naturalists believe in the separate creation of each species; and I have been much censured for having thus expressed myself. But undoubtedly this was the general belief when the first edition of the present work appeared. I formerly spoke to very many naturalists on the subject of evolution, and never once met with any sympathetic agreement. It is probable that some did then believe in evolution, but they were either silent, or expressed themselves so ambiguously that it was not easy to understand their meaning. Now things are wholly changed, and almost every naturalist admits the great principle of evolution.3What would cause such a sudden reversal of scientific opinion? Did a new scientific discovery appear in the late 1860s or early 1870s—potent enough to convince the skeptics that Darwin was right after all? Clearly not, as Darwin surely would have cited such a decisive finding. But if science itself wasn’t the cause of the change, then what was?

Whether he intended to or not, Darwin reveals here that peer pressure is a part of science, happening behind the scenes as the various scientific interests compete against one another for influence. If it’s a plain historical fact that the experts didn’t side with Darwin in the early 1860s, then why would he have been “much censured” by his peers for saying so? It’s as though his colleagues wanted all mention of opposition expunged from the record now that this opposition had faded. Darwin resisted the pressure applied to him on that occasion, but what if others, perhaps under even greater pressure, were less able to resist? Might the earlier inability of some scientists to express their support of Darwin’s theory—the silence and ambiguity of expression Darwin referred to—have been the result of peer pressure too? And if so, then might the sudden change in Darwin’s favor have been more like a change of power than a change of minds—a sudden reversal of the stream’s flow?

We have good reason to consider this possibility. The question of what controls the stream—why it flows this way and not that, and why it changes when it does—is every bit as important now as it was back then. If yesterday’s scientists were influenced as much by human factors as by data, wouldn’t this be equally true of today’s scientists? And if it is true, what does this mean for the received wisdom of our day, which holds the evolutionary view to be the only one worth taking seriously?

As we think more about how science works, we’ll see that those rare people who oppose the stream are the ones to watch.

HEROIC MISFITS

Thankfully, every generation has had a handful of rebels who are compelled to do just that. A countercurrent of awkwardness flows from these misfits in refreshing waves. Among the most beautiful examples of this I’ve come across is a man named Thomas Nagel, a professor of philosophy at New York University. He’s a highly unusual atheist, the author of a superb wave-making book titled Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False.4

By way of background, the flag that has flown for many generations over the academy of higher education is that of a broad school of thought known as materialism.5 The meaning here isn’t the common one (an obsession with flashy cars or expensive clothes) but rather the view that matter—the stuff of physics—underlies everything real. Even if they don’t use this term, atheists tend to subscribe to the materialist view of reality, believing God to be a product of the human imagination, which they believe to be a product of material evolution. Theists, on the other hand, believe the reverse—that the material universe was brought into existence by God, who is not material. Both views accept the reality of the physical world, but one sees this as the only reality whereas the other doesn’t.

People on either side of this divide might think constructive dialogue is hopeless because everyone on the other side has fallen prey to wishful thinking. In practice, however, I find that atheists are more inclined toward this. Atheists have a pronounced leaning toward scientism, which is the belief that science is the only reliable source of truth. It’s entirely understandable, then, that belief in God might look to them like wishful thinking—as though people of faith have let their hearts overpower their heads. Although people of serious faith (myself included) know this to be a misconception, our holistic understanding of human belief and behavior certainly does include the heart along with the head. We fully acknowledge that emotion can get in the way of clear thinking, but since we see this as a very general condition of humanity, we would never offer it as a particular weakness of atheism, the way so many atheists offer it as a particular weakness of theism.

TWO -ISMS WORTH REMEMBERING

materialism:

the belief that physical stuff underlies everything real

scientism:

the belief that science is the only reliable source of truth

Returning to Thomas Nagel, as you may have guessed from the title of his book, he isn’t your typical atheist. Most significantly, he roundly rejects the simplistic scientism that so many atheists still cling to. His atheism is heart-driven, and he isn’t afraid to say so:

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind.6

As a first-rate philosopher of the mind, Nagel actually changes the debate with this candid version of atheism. In light of his example, thoughtful atheists no longer have the luxury of assuming their worldview just works somehow—that dead molecules somehow formed simple life, and that simple life somehow formed us, despite all the apparent difficulties. Nor do they have the luxury of dismissing every argument against atheism on grounds of religious bias. Thoughtful theists, for their part, can no longer assume that atheism necessarily breeds contempt for faith.

Nagel is living proof that the awkwardness of bare-naked honesty doesn’t compare to the reward of engaging seriously the matters that concern us most—a principle that will serve us well as we begin our journey together. You need no special training to join this expedition. All you need is a healthy dose of curiosity and a healthy tolerance of the good kind of awkwardness—the kind that comes from challenging claims that ought to be challenged.

THE BIG QUESTION

Again, that one big question of our origin unites us—not because we agree on the answer but because we should all agree on the importance of finding the answer. Throughout history, it has been the foremost question of people searching for understanding: What is the source from which everything else came? Or, to bring it closer to home: To what or to whom do we owe our existence? This has to be the starting point for people who take life seriously—scientists and nonscientists alike. We cannot rest without the answer, because absolutely everything of importance is riding on it. To know where everything came from is to know where we came from, and where we came from has everything to do with who we are, and who we are has everything to do with how we ought to live.

THE BIG QUESTION

To what or to whom do we owe our existence?

If all goes well, our journey in this book will take us to the answer. We’ll know we have arrived when we have an answer that not only rings true but also distinguishes itself as the one answer that rings true. There should be no credible alternative.

A map will be helpful as we begin. My aim over the next four chapters isn’t to answer the big question but instead to show where we should be looking for the answer. Chapter 2 will introduce the intuition that creates internal conflict in all of us by tugging against Darwin’s claims. This design intuition, as we will call it, is the very intuition Crick wanted us to suppress. Chapters 3 and 4 will be a short account of the unexpected lessons I learned while seeking a scientific solution to this internal conflict. These lessons weren’t about the proteins I was studying but about the people I interacted with along the way—really, about people in general. With those lessons in hand, we’ll see in chapter 5 that the answer we’re seeking is to be found not in technical science but in something much more familiar—something I call common science. There will be plenty of glimpses of technical science along the way, but all of these will be presented with the nontechnical reader in mind. In the end, we’ll see that mastery of technical subjects isn’t at all needed in order for us to know the answer to the big question. Common science will be perfectly adequate.

The next section of the book—chapters 6 through 9—will be a journey through the important aspects of common science. The point of chapter 6 will be to provide a better understanding of what life is and what it isn’t, which will prove helpful as we progress to the matter of where life came from. Chapter 7 will be a common-science refutation of the idea that natural selection explains how life came to exist in its countless remarkable forms. With natural selection off the table, chapter 8 will be an exploration of searching, showing that the many inventions needed for new life forms to evolve would have had to be found accidentally. Chapter 9 will finish the section by showing why invention can’t actually happen that way. The intuition that Crick wanted us to suppress will end up being confirmed instead.

But all this only tells us what the answer to our question isn’t. To arrive at a satisfying understanding of what the answer is will require us to continue our journey a bit further. In chapter 10 we will revisit the question of what life is, viewing it this time through the lens of invention. The following two chapters, 11 and 12, will serve as a reality check, first by considering carefully whether we have overlooked anything in rejecting the evolutionary explanation of life and then by asking whether the scientific community’s defense of evolution looks more like a “science thing” or a “culture thing.” Finally, chapters 13 and 14 complete our journey. There we examine the nature of life and humanity more deeply—leading to a clear picture of what the answer to the big question is—after which I offer a glimpse of what I hope biology will look like in the not-too-distant future, after a great many people join us on this journey.

Undeniable 

How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed 

Douglas Axe

Karolina Lanckorońska

 PREFACE

The publication of Karolina Lanckorońska’s memoir of struggle and survival in Poland during World War II is an event of great interest. Poland, during the Second World War, was the site of two catastrophes: the Holocaust and the war of occupation and conquest against the country as a whole. While the human dimension of the Holocaust has been made indelibly vivid through a body of powerful personal testimony, the other aspects of the Polish war are known to American readers, at best, as remote history. Lanckorońska’s narrative, written mostly during the war years, gives us rare insight into some of that history’s complexities, while introducing us to a fascinating story and an extraordinary personality.

Lanckorońska’s personality may initially seem distant from us in its social formation and almost stern code of behavior and honor, but it grows both more familiar and more deeply impressive as she moves through her dramatic and unexpected journey. Countess Lanckorońska was an aristocrat with a cosmopolitan background and strong proclivities for the scholarly life. Through the vicissitudes of Polish history, her ancestors settled in Austria at the end of the eighteenth century. During her formative years, her family was involved in the highest echelons of Austrian life, while keeping the Polish side of their identity intact. The young Countess Lanckorońska seemed to choose Poland as her homeland out of an affinity for that country’s people, culture, and sensibility.

The outbreak of the war found Lanckorońska in Lvov, where she held the post of professor in Renaissance Italian art—the first woman in Poland to achieve this rank in her field.

Her decision to become engaged in the resistance movement, which arose in opposition to the Soviet and Nazi invasions, seemed to follow unhesitantingly from her convictions and affiliations. Her descriptions of working in the underground, with its dangers and its ethos of solidarity, make for some of the most fascinating sections of the book. Her activities in Soviet-occupied Lvov were mostly humanitarian, but her network of contacts was wide. As the danger of discovery became apparent, she had to flee, ironically enough, into the Nazi-occupied Polish territories where she walked a dangerous line between legal and illegal activities, organizing relief efforts for prisoners of the Nazi regime throughout occupied Poland. Her native German helped her in dealing with Nazi officials, whom she confronted with shrewd perceptiveness and uncompromising honesty. In one case, this exasperating combination led one of her Nazi interlocutors, Hans Kruger, to confess to—or boast of—the murder of twenty-three professors from the University of Lvov. (Lanckorońska later tried to make the knowledge of this terrible war-crime public, but was ignored by the German authorities). During the war, she was to some extent protected by her highly placed international connections, but eventually her refusal to disavow her loyalty to Poland led to her imprisonment in Nazi jails and incarceration in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück.

Lanckorońska’s account of these events is unmarred by any excess, self-pity, or sentimentality; but she was driven by some powerful motives. Her youthful ambition was to be a nurse; and the instinct to help, heal, and serve clearly remained potent at the time of her most severe ordeals. In Ravensbrück, she refused the “privileged” treatment of a special solitary cell, choosing instead to share the fate of her fellow inmates, whom she tried to succor in all available ways. Her preferred duty was working in the sick bay and with the so-called “rabbits” who were the subjects of odious medical experiments. But she also gave informal lectures on art and European history to women who, even on the eve of death, seemed to be hungry for the nourishment of mind and spirit.

Indeed, this is where Lanckorońska’s memoir meets with such Holocaust testimonies as Primo Levi’s account of his time in Auschwitz. Like Levi, she was sustained in her bleak setting by memories of art and by literature. Like him, she took all of the world’s culture as her province. Unlike Levi, however, she had actual access to books, and  the readings she requested ranged from Shakespeare to Herodotus and, astonishingly, Mein Kampf (know your enemy!). Her breadth of perspective gave her deep and sometimes poignant insight into the behavior of Ravensbrück’s victims. For instance, when she noticed that women condemned to execution frequently asked to have their hair done, she recalled Herodotus, who described how the Spartans at Thermopylae combed their hair with great care before a foredoomed battle.

In other respects, Lanckorońska’s resilience was also derived from a set of attachments and beliefs which may seem to us old fashioned but allowed her to behave with a selflessness and courage that amounted to a form of heroism. She was a patriot in the true sense of the word, but her love of her homeland was untainted by nationalism, if that suggests a belligerent or insular attitude. She was also a believing Catholic, whose devotion was compatible with genuinely enlightened views and encompassing sympathies. She abhorred discriminatory provincialism, claims to racial superiority, and the ethnic stereotyping that went on even in the desperate world of Ravensbrück. Rather, she judged people by their capacity for self-discipline, generosity, and selflessness, and by how much or little they complained—in other words, by the qualities of their character.

Her own character was underwritten by values that were so internalized as to be part of herself, and that withstood the test of every adversity. After the war, Lanckorońska decided to live in exile, as it became evident that Poland would come under the Soviet sphere. She went on to live to the great age of 104 and established important institutions for the study of Polish culture and art. She clearly felt that the Poland she had fought and hoped for had been, in the end, bitterly betrayed. Her moving and illuminating chronicle is evidence that, during Poland’s greatest trials, she never betrayed what she saw as its best ideals—or indeed, herself.

—Eva Hoffman

INTRODUCTIONDoes one deserve special credit for devoting all one’s strength to doing what one does for love of it? I think not.1Karolina Lanckorońska (1898-2002).

The last representative of the clan Lanckoroński of Brzezie considered that the family history, dating back to the fourteenth century, imposed duties upon her rather than privileges. During the time of Poland’s noble Commonwealth,2 the Lanckorońskis played an active role in political life. They were appointed Deputies and Senators in the Polish Parliament (Sejm) and held various offices and functions such as Bishop, Provincial Governor, Chancellor or Mayor, not to speak of General or Chief of Staff.3 Karolina Lanckorońska was born in the nineteenth century (1898) and lived for the whole of the twentieth century, not only witnessing but participating in many historic events. The main theme of her life throughout was service to Poland and Polish culture.

In the nineteenth century, Vienna, capital of the Habsburgs, became the principal seat of the Lanckoroński family. When Antoni (1760-1830), a deputy in the Four Year Sejm and loyal supporter of the Constitution of the Third of May, moved to Vienna after the Third Partition of the Polish Republic, he was there accorded the office of Austrian Chamberlain and appointed Speaker of the State Sejm. His  son Kazimierz (1802-74) took his seat in the Upper House, and his grandson Karol – father of Karolina and distinguished recipient of the Order of the Golden Fleece – was appointed Chief Steward at the court of the Emperor Franz Josef I. Throughout the nineteenth century the Lanckorońskis became slowly embedded in the governmental fabric of the multiethnic monarchy.

The life of the last of them, Karol Lanckoroński (1848-1933), renowned collector and amateur art historian, encompassed the rise and fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. A greatly respected owner of extensive properties in Galicia, the Kingdom of Poland and Styria, he was highly regarded for his academic pursuits as well as a passion for collecting, with a vigour worthy of the Renaissance era. His collection of paintings in the Lanckoroński Palace comprised one of the richest private art collections in Vienna.4 Through his marriages, twice to Austrians and for the third time to a Prussian, Małgorzata Lichnowsky5 (sister of Karol Maximilian Lichnowsky, German ambassador in London from 1912 to 1914), to all appearances Lanckoroński was ‘completely at home in the life of the Court and of the highly exclusive Austrian aristocracy’.6 Poland’s place under the rule of the Habsburgs he saw as part of a three-nation federation, but the world of his political illusions vanished with the death of the Emperor and the subsequent collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Though closely bound up with German and Austrian culture, he nevertheless achieved an enormous amount for Polish culture and learning. His work in this field was acknowledged by the government of independent Poland with the award of the Great Ribbon of the Order of Polonia Restituta. When, after his death, his beloved daughter Karla (Karolina) was tidying the room, she found lying open on his bedside table a copy of Poland’s national epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz.

Lanckoroński avoided trying to influence the inclinations or choices of his children in matters national or political. Antoni, Karla and Adelajda, who were reared and educated in Vienna, felt their closest affinity with the culture and history of the old, pre-partition Poland and the new Poland now struggling for independence. At the time of the First World War, when the Chief Steward of the Habsburg court was experiencing the death of the Emperor in 1916, his eighteen-year-old daughter Karolina, with youthful enthusiasm, was collecting photographs of the Polish Legion, leaflets and Eagle badges, while supporting the central figure, ‘Brigadier’ Piłsudski. She also spent some time nursing sick and wounded Polish soldiers in a convalescent home (Faniteum) built by her father. She read with deep emotion Forest Echoes and Faithful River, novels by Stefan Żeromski. At the same time, dearest to her heart was the poetry of Juliusz Słowacki, of which she memorised lengthy extracts.

By the end of the war, the secondary-school student was showing distinctly academic leanings. As a voluntary attendant, she began to follow the university lectures in Vienna by the well-known art historian Max Dvořák. In 1920, having graduated from the private secondary school ‘Zu den Schotten’, she enrolled at Vienna University as an art-history student. Her choice of subject was as self-evident as her childhood contact with art had been unforced. The family collection of paintings in the Vienna palace, supplemented by visits to various European museums, had a considerable influence on her lively imagination.

Equally, in the family’s summer residence at Rozdół in Galicia, where she used to spend the holidays, Karolina saw not only portraits of her ancestors, but examples of Polish art. The walls of the Rozdół palace, indeed, were hung with paintings by – among other artists – Jan Matejko, Arthur Grottger, Józef Chełmoński and Jacek Malczewski, who was virtually ‘court painter’ to the Lanckorońskis. Karolina was not at her happiest in the vast, neo-baroque Vienna palace, as she recalled years later: ‘For more or less seven months of the year, we eagerly looked forward to the longed-for visit to Rozdół where we stayed from June to mid-November, when we returned to Vienna. The important feast of St Karol [Charles] – name-day of both my father and myself (as well as father’s birthday) – we always celebrated at Rozdół where, in the dining-room according to family tradition, on that day the chairs of the celebrants were decorated with flowers.’

It was there, in fact, that she passed the happiest hours of her childhood, climbing trees and swearing childish oaths in their shade. While still a student, observing evidence of a neglect in public health care, she took to ‘chasing’ after the sick. On her return to Vienna she resumed attendance at art-history lectures and studied the works of her favourite artist, Michelangelo. From time to time her father expressed discontent with his daughter’s student lifestyle, arguing that ‘women of the Renaissance [. . .] were educated and did not run to catch a tram at eight o’clock in the morning, clutching a briefcase’. But even before obtaining her doctorate, Karolina was thinking about her future. The desire to devote herself to the service of others, the attraction of nursing and her interest in medical matters led her to visit the School for Nurses in Warsaw.

In the end, however, following the kind advice of the Rozdół  doctor, Tadeusz Rawski – ‘a far better and wiser man than most’ – she opted for an academic career. On the strength of a dissertation entitled ‘Studies relating to Michelangelo’s Last Judgement and its artistic descendants’, which she had been preparing, supervised by Max Dvořák (after whose death she completed the thesis under the guidance of Julius von Schlosser), Karolina was accorded her doctorate in the history of art, at the University of Vienna on 21 May 1926.

The same year Dr Lanckorońska paid a lengthy visit to Rome, where she devoted herself to researching Italian art of the Renaissance and baroque periods. The material she gathered on that occasion bore fruit in her subsequent learned works. She was librarian of the Rome branch of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU), where for several years she was in charge of the art-history department, organising among other things collections of books and photographs, partly consisting of her father’s bequests.

Karol Lanckoroński died in 1933, leaving behind properties in Galicia, which forged a further link between the Lanckoroński family and Poland. Karolina herself inherited Komarno and settled permanently in Lwów. Her academic interests played no small part in this decision – namely a possible university career. In 1934 she was elected a member of the Lwów Scientific Society and, in October, the governing board of the Jan Kazimierz University supported her request for admission to the oral examination to qualify for the assistant professorship of modern art, expressing the unanimous opinion that ‘the acquisition of Dr Lanckorońska by the Jan Kazimierz University as Art History lecturer is highly desirable’.

The same year – as a private lecturer – she began giving lectures and conducting classes. Her examination thesis based on her dissertation, entitled ‘The decoration of the Church Il Gesù in the context of baroque development in Rome’, was received with unanimous acclaim on 13 December 1935 by the Council of the Humanities Department, and on 13 January 1936 by the Senate of the Jan Kazimierz University.7 That was how Dr Karolina came to be the first woman in Poland to obtain a professorial appointment in the field of art history. Now she was able to devote herself wholeheartedly to what she most earnestly desired: the work of teaching and research at university level. However, as she used to say, her happiness was short-lived.

Her wartime memoirs begin with the outbreak of the Second World War and the invasion of Lwów by Soviet forces in September 1939. With emigration as a possible option, she chose instead the ‘destiny of  the belated grandchild’ of her valiant forebears and refused to leave Poland while the country was occupied by foreign armies. At the turn of the year 1939-40, she was still teaching art history at the university. However, it was not long before she was actively engaged in the underground resistance. In January 1940 she swore an oath of allegiance to the underground Union for Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, or ZWZ). The heart-rending, tragic events of that period – the deportations to the heart of the Soviet Union, the kidnappings and anarchy, the climate of human despair and helplessness – she has tried most faithfully to record in her memoirs. Numerous arrests of members of the Lwów underground, as a result of informers’ reports to the authorities, brought about Karolina’s hurried escape from Lwów in May 1940. As soon as she arrived in Kraków, she resumed her contacts with the underground. On the orders of Colonel Tadeusz Komorowski, commanding the Kraków regional branch of ZWZ, she undertook various duties, including the translation into German of appeals designed to demoralise the German forces. These notices were then pasted on billboards and walls in the city. Chiefly, however, she was engaged in the activity of the Polish Red Cross, in which as a nursing volunteer she brought Samaritan help to sick and wounded prisoners-of-war released from the German Stalags and Oflags. In that capacity she witnessed ‘many deaths and many burials’. In the second half of 1941 the Main Council for Relief (Rada Główna Opiekuńcza, or RGO) entrusted to Karolina Lanckorońska the care of all prisoners in the whole German-occupied territory of Poland – the so-called General Government. She dedicated herself totally to this assignment. Her excellent knowledge of German, her aristocratic descent and her steadfastly courageous attitude towards the Germans helped her to operate effectively. Collective action organised by her for the supply of extra food in prisons, and the procurement of parcels and other assistance for approximately 27,000 prisoners, were instrumental in saving the lives of many of those in captivity.

In January 1942, as an official of the RGO, she travelled to Stanisławów. Having learned of mass murders carried out by the local Gestapo (German secret police), she sent an immediate message to General Komorowski – at the time commanding underground resistance units in the Kraków area. Although officially appointed the RGO Commission’s Manager for the Stanisławów region in March, with German agreement, Karolina ran into problems, arousing ever-increasing suspicion about her activities, especially on the part of SS Hauptsturmführer Hans Krüger.

On 12 May 1942 she was arrested during a committee meeting of the RGO in Kołomyja and was later taken away to the prison in Stanisławów. While she was being interrogated, her persecutor, Krüger, exasperated by the unflinching demeanour of his prisoner, her display of Polish spirit, and convinced that a sentence of death awaited her, confessed to the murder of twenty-five professors of the Lwów colleges of higher education. Thus she became the first witness in the case of a crime that has remained unpublished to this day. What Krüger had not expected was intercession by members of the Italian royal family to Hitler’s Gestapo chief, Heinrich Himmler himself. This led to her death sentence being quashed. A few days later, on 8 June, the Countess found herself in jail in Lwów. There, while undergoing interrogation by SS Kommissar Walter Kutschmann, she gave an account of her interrogation by Hans Krüger in Stanisławów and, at his request, wrote a fourteen-page report in which she revealed (among other things) Krüger’s confession to the murder of the Lwów professors. The text of her report reached Himmler himself and he was surely responsible for having the ‘chauvinist’ Polish countess sent to Ravensbrück, the women’s concentration camp. On 27 November 1942, with an SS escort, she left Lwów and Poland for ever.

After a short spell in a Berlin jail on the Alexanderplatz, she was transported on 9 January 1943 to her appointed quarters in Ravensbrück. On arrival in the camp, she was allocated the number 16076. As a result of repeated representations by the International Red Cross, she was placed on her own in Sonderhaft, or ‘special confinement’. This ‘favour’ Karolina regarded as humiliating and, at her own request, she was sent back to the camp as an ordinary prisoner. ‘There are things going on in there,’ she wrote after leaving Ravensbrück, ‘which people cannot bear to hear about, things the human mind cannot comprehend.’

The memoirs present us with heart-rending documentary descriptions of scenes in the camp life of the women prisoners, of their terror and suffering, faced with disease, torture and death. The atmosphere of constant tension is almost palpable. Against this background, some outstanding women prisoners of invincible character succeeded in redeeming human dignity amid the dire conditions of the camp. They managed to organise meetings, lectures and discussions on subjects pertaining to actual normality, so proving that ‘in countless cases, all this nameless brutality, all these cruelties can neither break nor destroy, nor even harm the human spirit’. Karolina Lanckorońska, in fact, has devoted to such women brief character studies and portraits from  memory – sketched, as it were, in passing. She herself conducted art-history lessons for the ‘rabbits’ – that is to say, women who had been subjected to dangerous medical experiments.

A month before the end of the war, on 5 April 1945, as the first Polish woman to be freed, Karolina was released from the camp with a batch of 299 French women prisoners. This was the result of intervention by the President of the International Red Cross, Professor Carl Burckhardt. Along with many others, the final scene in Ravensbrück will be certain to lodge in the reader’s memory: Karolina’s farewell to her fellow prisoners, when, in deference to a prison superstition, she turns to take a last look at the camp as she passes through the gates.

In Switzerland, Karolina Lanckorońska handed over to Professor Burckhardt her report on the situation of women prisoners in Ravensbrück. She also published an account of her recent experiences in the columns of a French-language learned periodical ‘Souvenir de Ravensbrück’ (Revue Universitaire, 1945, vol. 2), and in German, ‘Erlebnisse aus Ravensbrück’ (Schweizerische Hochschulzeitung, Jg 19:1945/46 Heft 2). At the same time she began writing her Wspomnienia (Memoirs).8 Travel to Italy and an encounter with soldiers of the Polish Army 2 Corps, who were unwilling to return to a Communist Poland, confronted her with a new and unusual task. At the wish of General Władysław Anders and with the rank of Public Relations Officer, 2 Corps (later Lieutenant, AK [Armia Krajowa], or Home Army, as Poland’s wartime resistance was officially known), Karolina undertook to organise educational studies for about 1,300 former soldiers of 2 Corps. Her acquaintances and pre-war academic contacts made it possible for Polish students to attend Italian universities and colleges in Rome, Bologna and Turin. Later she was instrumental in promoting similar activities in England and Scotland.

In November 1945, with Father Walerian Meysztowicz and Polish émigré professors, she signed the founding charter of the Polish Historical Institute in Rome. Closely involved with this ‘small nerve centre of free Polish learning’, Karolina devoted herself entirely to publishing and organising activities to promote Polish culture. Many years later, speaking about her determination and options at the time, she had this to say: ‘Poland’s destiny guided my inclinations to such an extent that I felt obliged to abstain from my beloved art-history research [. . .] It seemed to me then – and I believe I was right – it was the only painful sacrifice of my life – that the service of Polish culture at  that time required of me not the study of Michelangelo, but work of a completely different kind. It was clear to me that the need was to dedicate all my energy to researching and publishing the sources of Polish history to be found in the archives of the West.’9 Under the aegis of the Polish Historical Institute (financed by the Lanckoroński Foundation) were published twenty-eight volumes of an annual review devoted to Polish history, Antemurale, and seventy-six volumes in a monumental series of sources, Elementa ad Fontium Editiones, as well as the Acta Nunciaturae Polonae. It is difficult to appreciate the scale of activity initiated in 1967 by the Lanckoroński Foundation in promoting Polish learning and science.

Karolina Lanckorońska, who dedicated her whole life to the service of Polish learning and culture, also displayed the traditional patriotism of a Polish citizen. She inherited from her father a unique collection of paintings, which, as the last of her line, she presented as a gift in 1994 to the royal palaces in Kraków and Warsaw, ‘in honour of the Free and Independent Republic’. When the monthly periodical Znak (The Sign) distributed a questionnaire to distinguished personalities in the field of culture, asking ‘Polishness – what does it mean?’, Karolina Lanckorońska replied succinctly: ‘Polishness is for me the awareness of belonging to the Polish nation. I consider we should do everything possible to provide concrete proof of this awareness, though I do not understand the need to analyse it.’

Karolina Lanckorońska’s fundamental activity consisted in the promotion of intellectual life with ceaseless vigilance in order to ensure that Poland’s learning and culture remain in the sphere of European and world culture. She died in Rome aged 104 on 25 August, 2002.

Lech Kalinowski and Elżbieta Orman

PROLOGUE

This memoir, intended for possible publication after my death, was written during the years 1945-6, following my liberation from German captivity.1 It was originally intended for publication in English, and I had a few extracts from the book translated and sent to two publishers, both of whom rejected them out of hand on the grounds that the text was ‘too anti-Russian’. A few years later I sent the specimen extracts to two other English publishers, who also turned them down, this time on the grounds that they were ‘too anti-German’.

My memoir is meant to be a report – and only a report – of what I witnessed during the Second World War. I know that others have lived through a great deal more than myself. I was never in Auschwitz or Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, I also know that every first-hand account contributes fresh detail to the picture of those years. I have made nextto-no textual changes, despite the fact that in some places I refer to things nowadays familiar to a wide public and better described elsewhere. I leave it to my publishers to decide on any possible future ‘abbreviations’, since it is impossible for me to assess, let alone rework, the contents of a book written more than fifty years ago. My one stipulation is that any omissions should be limited to matters of detail and include nothing that bears on the general atmosphere that engendered this memoir. I am confiding the editorial task in the first  place to Professor Lech Kalinowski and Eli Orman. They may like to involve other friends in their discussions about any ‘cuts’.

K.L. 

Rome, 20 February 1998

Michelangelo in Ravensbrück 

And more confused Retards?

Professor Joseph W. Holden of Maine, a former justice of the peace, gave numerous lectures in New England and lectured on flat Earth theory at the Colombian Exposition in Chicago.

A Russian Physicist Boris Fedorovish on many science shows courageously admits what many others wont... On of the popular now "From Day of Russian science", he says ready for conversation and debate where he will be defending flat earth. (Most strange is that, he is usually supporter of official science)

Boris Fedorovich Boyarshinov, Russian thermophysicist, researcher: Achievements include research in methods of heat and mass transfer depression and and intensification in combustible gas flows, modeling of heat-mass exchange processes and of the reaction zone characteristics, finding organized structures in the boundary layers with chemical reactions, creation of several diagnostic methods and apparatures; 3 patents in field. - but also Doctor of Science in Physics
http://prabook.com/web/person-view.html?profileId=446485


In 1515, a Polish *Priest named Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that the Earth was a planet like Venus or Saturn, and that all planets circled the Sun.
George Ellis, a famous cosmologist, in Scientific American, "Thinking Globally, Acting Universally", October 1995 =
"People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations,” Ellis argues. “For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations.”

Ellis has published a paper on this. "You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.”

"The new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong and we're the center of the universe, or maybe the data is simply incorrect"
- Lawrence Krauss, 2006

"Without Dark Energy, Earth must be literally at the center of the universe, which is, to say the least, unusual" - Lawrence Krauss, 2009


"..established consensuses / preys on our greatest weakness, which is the confirmation bias / get everyone to agree on facts," says Muller
- does not sound like proven Science or critical thinking.. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2699262-shaqs-flat-earth-jokes-are-no-laughing-matter-for-scientists


Max Born said in his famous book,"Einstein's Theory of Relativity",Dover Publications,1962, pgs 344 & 345:

...Thus we may return to Ptolemy's point of view of a 'motionless earth'...One has to show that the transformed metric can be regarded as produced according to Einstein's field equations, by distant rotating masses. This has been done by Thirring. He calculated a field due to a rotating, hollow, thick-walled sphere and proved that inside the cavity it behaved as though there were centrifugal and other inertial forces usually attributed to absolute space. Thus from Einstein's point of view, Ptolemy and Corpenicus are equally right.

"But when I was a student, I saw that experiments of this kind had already been made, in particular by your compatriot, Michelson.
He proved that one does not notice anything on earth that it moves, but that everything takes place on earth as if the earth is in a state of rest."
– Einstein May 1921

Gravitation

 

The "law of gravitation" is said by the advocates of the Newtonian system of astronomy, to be the greatest discovery of science, and the foundation of the whole of modern astronomy. If, therefore, it can be shown that gravitation is a pure assumption, and an imagination of the mind only, that it has no existence outside of the brains of its expounders and advocates, the whole of the hypotheses of this modern so-called science fall to the ground as flat as the surface of the ocean, and this "most exact of all the sciences," this wonderful "feat of the intellect" becomes at once the most ridiculous superstition and the most gigantic imposture to which ignorance and credulity could ever be exposed. In the "Story of the Heavens," by Sir R. Ball, it is stated on page 82 (first two quotes below) and page 101 (3rd quote below):

"The law of gravitation, THE GREATEST DISCOVERY that science has yet witnessed."

"The law of gravitation WHICH UNDERLIES THE WHOLE OF ASTRONOMY."

"The law of gravitation announces that every body in the universe attracts every other body with a force which varies inversely with the square of the distance."

"Popular Science Recreations" by G. Tissandier, pages 486 and 487, contains the following:     "Gravitation is the force which keeps the planets in their orbits."

"Every object in the world tends to attract every other object in proportion to the quantity of matter of which each consists."

Professor W. B. Carpenter, in his work "Nature and Man," page 365, says:

"'The laws of light and gravitation,' wrote Mr. Atkinson to Harriet Martineau, 30 years ago, 'extend over the universe, and explain whole classes of phenomena,' and this explanation, according to the same writer, is all-sufficient, 'Philosophy finding no God in nature, NOR SEEING THE WANT OF ANY.'"

C. Vernon Boys, F.R.S., A.R.S.M., M.R.I., in his paper, "The Newtonian Constant of Gravitation," says:

"G, represents that mighty principle under the influence of which every star, planet and satellite in the universe pursues its allotted course. Unlike any other known physical influence, it is independent of medium, it knows no refraction, it cannot cast a shadow. It is a mysterious power which NO MAN CAN EXPLAIN, OF ITS PROPAGATION THROUGH SPACE, ALL MEN ARE IGNORANT . . . . . I cannot contemplate this mystery, at which we ignorantly wonder, without thinking of the altar on Mars' hill. When will a St. Paul arise able to declare it unto us? Or is gravitation, like life, a mystery that never be solved?"—Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, March 1895, p. 355.   

Professor W. B. Carpenter, in his paper "Nature and Law," published in the "Modern Review" for October, 1890, says:

"The first of the great achievements of Newton in relation to our present subject, was a piece of purely Geometrical reasoning. ASSUMING two forces to act on a body, of which one should be capable of imparting to it uniform motion in a straight line, whilst the other should attract it towards a fixed point in accordance with Galileo's law of gravity, he demonstrated that the path of the body would be deflected into a curve . . . . . The idea of continuous onward motion in a straight line, as the result of an original impulsive force not antagonised or affected by any other—formularised by Newton as his first 'law of motion'—is not borne out by any acquired experience, and does not seem likely to be ever thus verified. For in no experiment we have it in our power to make, can we entirely eliminate the antagonising effects of friction and atmospheric resistance; and thus all movement that is subject to this retardation, and is not sustained by any fresh action of the impelling force, must come to an end. Hence the conviction commonly entertained that Newton's first 'law' of motion must be true, cannot be philosophically admitted to be anything more than a probability . . . . . WE HAVE NO PROOF, AND IN THE NATURE OF THINGS CAN NEVER GET ONE, OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE ATTRACTIVE FORCE EXERTED BY THE EARTH, OR BY ANY OF THE BODIES OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM, UPON OTHER BODIES AT A DISTANCE. Newton himself strongly felt that the impossibility of rationally accounting for action at a distance through an intervening vacuum, was the weak point of HIS system. All that we can be said to know is that which we learn from our own experience. Now, in regard to the Sun's attraction for the Earth and Planets, WE HAVE NO CERTAIN EXPERIENCE AT ALL. Unless we could be transported to his surface, we have no means of experimentally comparing Solar gravity with Terrestrial gravity; and if we could ascertain this, we should be no nearer the determination of his attraction for bodies at a distance. THE DOCTRINE OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION THEN, IS A PURE ASSUMPTION."

In "Letters to the British Association," Professor Bernstein says:

"The theory that motions are produced through material attraction is absurd . . . . . Attributing such a power to mere matter, which is PASSIVE BY NATURE, is a supreme illusion . . . . . it is a lovely and easy theory to satisfy any man's mind, but when the practical test comes, it falls all to pieces and becomes one of the most ridiculous theories to common sense and judgment."

The following extracts are taken from "A Million of Facts," by Sir Richard Phillips:

"If the sun has any power, it must be derived from motion; and if acting on bodies at a distance, like Jupiter on his moons, or the Earth on its moon, THERE MUST BE AN INTERVENING MEDIUM TO CONDUCT ITS MOMENTUM THROUGH ITS SYSTEM."   

"It is a principle never to be lost sight of, that circular motion is a necessary result of equal action and reaction in contrary directions; for the harmony would be disturbed by variation of distance, if the motion were rectilinear. The same action and reaction are therefore only to be preserved by reciprocal circular motion. NO ATTRACTION AND NO PROJECTILE FORCE ARE THEREFORE NECESSARY. THEIR INVENTION MUST BE REGARDED AS BLUNDERS OF A SUPERSTITIOUS AGE."

"If the bodies came near while moving THE SAME WAY, there would be no mutual REACTION, and they would go together for want of reaction, and NOT OWING TO THAT MECHANICAL IMPOSSIBILITY CALLED ATTRACTION."

"To accommodate THE HYPOTHETICAL LAW OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION to the phenomena of the Planets, astronomers have preferred to change the mean density of matter itself; and the Earth, for comparison, being taken at a density of 1,000, to accommodate Mercury to THE ASSUMED LAW, it is taken as 2,585; Venus, 1,024; Mars, 656; Jupiter, 201; Saturn, 103; and Herschel, 218. Consequently, we have the paradox, that Jupiter, 1,290 times larger than the Earth, contains but 323 times more atoms. Saturn 1,107 times larger, but 114 times more atoms. Even the Sun, according to these theorists, is but one-fourth the density of the Earth! There may be differences, but chemistry and all the laws that unite and compound atoms, are utterly at variance with so rash and wild an hypothesis."   

"It is waste of time to break a butterfly on a wheel, but as astronomy and all science is beset with fancies about attraction and repulsion, it is necessary to eradicate them."

                           C
A O — — — — — l — — — — — O B     

"If there are two bodies, and it is required to move A to C, the force moving A to C must proceed from the side A. Either some impact, or some involvement of a motion towards C, must act at A to carry A to C. The modern schools, however, assert that B may move A to C, and A move B to C; and this is mutual attraction!! Hence it is necessary to believe that B acts on the side A, where B is not present; and that A acts on B on the side B, where A is not present. In other words, A is required to be where it is not, and also be in force at A, so as to move B to C! All of which is absurd."

"If in any case A and B approach, it is not because A moves B towards itself, or B moves A towards itself, but owing to some causes which affect the space in which A and B are situated; and which causes act on A at A, and on B at B . . . . the statement that A moves B, and B moves A, is ignorance, and is what is meant by attraction. It is also worse than ignorance, to justify idleness by asserting that the true cause is indifferent; or to justify ignorance, by asserting that it is unknowable!!"

"This reasoning applies to every species of Attraction, whatever may be the pomposity of equivocal terms in which it is described. Universally, bodies cannot push other bodies towards themselves."

C — — — — — O A   B O — — — — — D     

"If A and B are said to repel one another, and that B makes A move to C, and A makes B move to D, we have to bear in mind, that while A is moving to C it is in force only in that direction, and cannot, therefore, be moving B towards D. In like manner, while B is moving to D, it is in force only in that direction, and cannot, therefore, be in force in the contrary direction so as to move A to C." Every species and variety of Attraction and Repulsion are therefore absurd.      

"MATTER IS IN ALL CASES THE CONDUCTOR OF MOTION. If a body moves, it is because it is the patient of some sufficient momentum of body or matter acting ON the side FROM which the body moves, and only in force in that direction." "Some adopters of attraction, &c., talk, by false analogy, of drawing, others of pulling, lifting, &c. La Place INVENTS gravitating atoms, and gives them a velocity of 6,000 times that of light, which in some way (known only to himself) performs the work of bringing the body in; others IMAGINE little hooks! As to drawing, pulling, &c., it behooves them to show the tackle—the levers, the ropes, &c."

"In spite of all the learning, ingenuity, and elaborations of men, confessedly very able, if there is not and cannot be any action of the nature of attraction, and if the phenomena ascribed to it are local effects of palpable local causes, and if all the phenomena and involvement maybe clearly explained on different principles, then it may be to be lamented that so much ability and character should have been wasted, while a respect for truth and sound reasoning demands that the whole should be FORGOTTEN AS A DREAM, OR DEMOLISHED AS A CARD HOUSE."

Professor Airy, in his "Lectures on Astronomy," 5th Edition, page 194, informs us: "Newton was the first person who made a calculation of the figure of the earth on the theory of gravitation. He took the following SUPPOSITION as the only one to which his theory could be applied. He ASSUMED the earth to be a fluid. This fluid matter he ASSUMED to be equally dense in every part . . . . . For trial of his theory he SUPPOSED the ASSUMED fluid earth to be a spheroid. In this manner he INFERRED that the form of the earth would be a spheroid, in which the length of the shorter is to the longer, or equatorial diameter, in the proportion of 229 to 230."

The "New Principia," by N. Crossland, contains the following:

"In ascending a hill we experience a hard struggle, and feel more fatigued than when walking on level ground. Why is this? The Newtonian attributes this to the attraction of gravitation of the earth, against the pull of which we have to contend; but if he would be consistent with his theory that the attraction of gravitation diminishes inversely as the square of the distance from the centre of the earth, we ought, in defiance of experience, to feel it to be less laborious to ascend a hill than to promenade the same distance on level ground, because as we ascend we recede from the centre of the earth; therefore the force of gravitation ought to diminish in a corresponding degree. The Newtonian can only get over this difficulty by a species of scientific quibbling. According to the definition of weight I have given, the solution of the problem is perfectly simple. In ascending a hill a man comes in conflict with the law that the natural tendency of any body is to seek the easiest and shortest route to its level of stability. He chooses the very reverse, and must therefore endure the consequences of acting in opposition to this law. At every step he has to lift his own weight, and the higher he mounts the more he feels the influence of the law which he defies. His easiest and more direct course to obey the law of weight is to remain where he is; the next is to descend to a lower level.   

"The attraction of gravitation is said to be stronger at the surface of the earth than at a distance from it. Is it so? If I spring upwards perpendicularly I cannot with all my might ascend more than four feet from the ground; but if I jump in a curve with a low trajectory, keeping my highest elevation about three feet, I might clear at a bound a space above the earth of about eighteen feet; so that practically I can overcame the so-called force (pull) at the distance of four feet, in the proportion of 18 to 4, being the very reverse of what I ought to be able to do according to the Newtonian hypothesis.

"Again, take the case of a shot propelled from a cannon. By the force of the explosion and the influence of the reputed action of gravitation, the shot forms a parabolic curve, and finally falls to the earth. Here we may ask, why—if the forces are the same, viz., direct impulse and gravitation—does not the shot form an orbit like that of a planet, and revolve round the earth? The Newtonian may reply, because the impulse which propelled the shot is temporary; and the impulse which propelled the planet is permanent. Precisely so: but why is the impulse permanent in the case of the planet revolving round the sun? What is the cause of this permanence?

"We are asked by the Newtonian to believe that the action of gravitation, which we can easily overcome by the slightest exercise of volition in raising a hand or a foot, is so overwhelmingly violent when we lose our balance and fall a distance of a few feet, that this force, which is imperceptible under usual conditions, may, under extraordinary circumstances, cause the fracture of every limb we possess? Common-sense must reject this interpretation. Gravitation does not furnish a satisfactory explanation of the phenomena here described, whereas the definition of weight already given does, for a body seeking in the readiest manner its level of stability would produce precisely the results experienced. If the influence which kept us securely attached to this earth were identical with that which is powerful enough to disturb a distant planet in its orbit, we should be more immediately conscious of its masterful presence and potency; whereas this influence is so impotent in the very spot where it is supposed to be most dominant that we find an insurmountable difficulty in accepting the idea of its existence. Fortunately for our faculty of locomotion, the Newtonian hypothesis may be rejected as a snare and a delusion.

"It is quite amusing to watch Newtonians and Darwinians floundering about in their attempts to expound the mysteries of creation. Their theories are as ridiculous as the fashion which once prevailed for Della-Cruscan poetry, and they ought to be treated with equal severity.

"It seems quite possible that during the last two hundred years we have been living in a sort of scientific fool's paradise, and that universal gravitation is a gigantic Newtonian mare's nest.

"As a theoretical scientific guide we must give up Sir Isaac Newton as useless and misleading, and allow his reputation to retire into private life.   

"In Knowledge of the 17th and 24th Feb., 1882, there appeared a discourse on The Birth of the Moon by Tidal Evolution, by Dr. Ball, the Astronomer Royal for Ireland, which I should say is without exception, the most delusive and absurd contribution ever made to so-called science. At one time I thought that 'Parallax,' who told us that the earth was a flat plane like a plate, was the most misguided man in the kingdom, but I now believe that he is quite entitled to take rank in scientific wisdom, and to sit down on an equality with the Astronomer Royal of Dublin."

I have quoted at length on this important matter, and the evidence here produced, besides very much more in the same direction, for which I have not the space here, shows clearly that THERE IS NO SUCH FORCE AS GRAVITATION IN EXISTENCE ANYWHERE.

One of the world's so-called great thinkers, J. S. Mill, is quoted in Professor Carpenter's "Nature and Man," page 385, as saying:

"Although we speak of a man's fall as caused by the slipping of his foot, or the breaking of a rung (as the case may be) the efficient cause IS THE ATTRACTIVE FORCE OF THE EARTH, which the loss of support to the man's foot brings into operation."

If a man is not "deeper" than to believe what this "deep" thinker has left on record in this matter; if he has no more brain power than to accept the foregoing statement, I would strongly advise him to cease thinking altogether, and thus save the few brains he has. It is simply astounding that men, who in business matters are sharp enough, are as dull as bricks and as credulous as children when the awe-inspiring subject of gravitation, "that grand masterpiece of astronomy," is the theme. To ask the reason why, or to venture to suggest that the assumptions of the "learned" require some sort of proof to back them up, never seems to strike moderns who believe in this monstrous humbug. A. Giberne, in "Sun, Moon, and Stars," page 27, says:

"If the sun is pulling with such power at the earth and all her sister planets, why do they not fall down upon him?"  

A very proper question, truly. And when this question is propounded to astronomers, they cannot give an answer worth recording. They simply do not know how to answer the question without stultifying their common-sense. But the above writer thinks it can be answered, so says:

"Did you ever tie a ball to a string and swing it rapidly round and round your hand? If you did, YOU MUST HAVE NOTICED THE STEADY OUTWARD PULL OF THE BALL."   

The "steady outward pull of the ball" clearly implies that the ball has intelligence, and knows just what to do so as to prevent its hitting the hand of the operator. The "outward pull" of a ball which is fastened to the hand of the operator by a string, is clearly impossible. If the operator ceased to impel it round and round his hand by the mechanical attachment and the power he exerts in swinging it round, the ball would seek its level of stability and fall to the ground. And, as this illustration is used to teach what gravitation is, and how it acts, we shall just follow the illustration to its logical issue, and see where the theory is. The illustration implies that BETWEEN ALL THE BODIES IN THE UNIVERSE, THERE IS A CONNECTING LINK, which keeps the "body" that attracts attached to the "body" that is attracted. This connecting link, in the case of the ball, is the string. Now, we could readily understand gravitation if this illustration conveyed to us by the ball and the string were a correct representation of fact. But, we very naturally ask, what is the connecting link? Of what does it consist? And of what do all the connecting links between the sun and the myriad orbs of heaven consist? Would not the "strings" get somewhat entangled? Has this connecting link ever been observed anywhere? The answer to these pertinent questions is that THERE IS NO CONNECTING LINK in existence. When the "missing link'' is produced, we are prepared to admit all the gravitation theorists teach on the subject. Until then we shall continue to regard it as the myth it undoubtedly is. But we are not done with the illustration yet. The "ball and string" device sets forth that the "body" that attracts is not only connected with the "body" attracted, but that the former IS THE MOTIVE POWER OF THE LATTER—that the sun is the power which compels the earth to revolve round it, even as the motive power of the ball is the exertion of the hand of the operator. Without the connecting link the earth would fall (according to the astronomers) in a rectilinear path for ever. But what these wise men do not see, and which is a necessary part of the theory, as represented by the ball and string idea, is that the motive power also must come from the sun. Without this motive power and the connecting link, the whole of the theory falls to pieces. THERE IS NO MOTIVE POWER IN THE SUN TO CAUSE THE EARTH TO REVOLVE AROUND IT, AND THERE IS NO CONNECTING LINK BETWEEN THE SUN AND THE EARTH TO KEEP THE LATTER IN ITS POSITION, consequently the theory of universal gravitation has no existence in fact.

"He who cannot reason is a fool; he who will not reason is a bigot; he who dares not reason is a coward; but he who can and dares to reason is a MAN."

If the reader can and dares to reason, let him reason this matter out and discover whether astronomy as drummed into children's heads at school, and vauntingly displayed, with many pictures, from public platforms, has one inch of standing ground, or one reason to offer as an apology for its further existence and power to befool mankind longer. These are strong statements, but not stronger than the facts warrant.   

"The Story of the Heavens," by Sir Robert Ball, is not only an authoritative treatise, which it is, coming from such a recognised exponent of the "science"; but a fulsome account of general principles and details in popular form. As a literary production, it possesses considerable merit, and its good English entitles it to the respect and consideration of all its readers. But as a contribution to science, it is the most absurd and unreasoning conglomeration of nonsensical and impossible ideas I have ever read. On page 110 of this book, we read that:

"Kepler found that the movements of the planets could be explained by supposing that the path in which each one revolved was an ellipse. This in itself was a DISCOVERY of the most commanding importance."

To explain anything by a supposition, and then to label the supposition a discovery is ridiculous in the "domain of science" and a marvel of literary ingenuity.

On the same page, the first law of planetary motion is enunciated in these words, "each planet revolves around the sun in an elliptical path, having the sun as one of the foci," and on page 112 the ellipse is shown with the sun in one focus. Throughout the book, however, the other focus is not mentioned, and it is very evident from the diagram that if the sun were of sufficient power to retain the earth in its orbit when nearest the sun, when the earth arrived at that part of its elliptical path farthest from the sun, the attractive force (unless very greatly increased) would be utterly incapable of preventing the earth rushing away into space "in a right line for ever," as astronomers say.

On the other hand, it is equally clear that if the sun's attraction were just sufficient to keep the earth in its proper path when farthest from the sun, and thus to prevent it rushing off into space; the same power of attraction when the earth was nearest the sun would be so much greater, (unless the attraction were very greatly diminished) nothing would prevent the earth rushing towards and being absorbed by the sun, there being no counterbalancing focus to prevent such a catastrophe! As astronomy makes no reference to the increase and diminution of the attractive force of the sun, called gravitation, for the above necessary purposes, we are again forced to the conclusion that the great "discovery" of which astronomers are so proud is absolutely non-existent. The law of dynamics, assisted by geometry, makes it, as the learned say, "mathematically certain" that no such force as gravitation exists anywhere in the universe. As another has well said, its invention must be regarded as a blunder of a superstitious age.   

If the earth were the globe of astronomical invention, and if gravitation were needed to keep it in its path around the sun, it is easily seen that gravitation must be circular, as then and then only, would the attraction be equal in every part of the path, and so cause the earth to describe an exact circle throughout the year. Astronomers say that the earth moves and not the sun. And that this movement of the earth causes the seasons. And further, that the movement of the sun which we see is really caused by the movement of the earth. If, therefore, the sun appears to make an exactly circular path every day of the year, there might be some ground for the astronomers' supposition of gravitation. That the sun's path is an exact circle for only about four periods in a year, and then of only a few hours at the equinoxes and solstices—completely disproves the "might have been" of circular gravitation, and by consequence, of all gravitation.

It has long been pointed out that gravitation, if it existed at all, must be circular, as the following from Drapers' "Conflict between Religion and Science" page 168, shows:

"Astronomers justly affirm that the book of Copernicus, 'De Revolutionibus,' changed the face of their science. It incontestably established the heliocentric theory. It showed that the distance of the fixed stars is infinitely great, and that the earth is a mere point in the heavens. Anticipating Newton, Copernicus imputed gravity to the sun, the moon and heavenly bodies, but he was led astray by assuming that the celestial motions must be circular. Observations on the orbit of Mars, and his different diameters at different times, had led Copernicus to this theory."

That the paths of the orbs of heaven are not exactly circular disproves the theory of gravitation entirely.

It is impossible to make a ball tied to the hand with a string revolve in an elliptical path, circular motion only being possible. So we may consign the illustration, together with the thing it is intended to illustrate, into oblivion. The volume already quoted, "Sun, Moon, and Stars," states, on page 73, that:

"Comets obey the attraction of the sun, yet he appears to have a singular power of driving the comets' tails away from himself. For, however rapidly the comet may be rushing round the sun, and however long the tail may be, IT IS ALMOST ALWAYS FOUND TO STREAM IN AN OPPOSITE DIRECTION FROM THE SUN."

Here we have an acknowledged failure of the law of gravitation, which is said to be universal. Now comes a declaration which supports my contention that gravitation is non-existent.   

In "Science and Culture," by Professor T. H. HUXLEY, page 136, the following statement is made:

"If the law of gravitation EVER FAILED TO BE TRUE, EVEN TO THE SMALLEST EXTENT, for that period, the CALCULATIONS OF THE ASTRONOMER HAVE NO APPLICATION."

After such an "authoritative" declaration, we may well dismiss the subject, and we are fairly entitled to conclude, with such a consensus of evidence against the commonly received "view" of gravitation, together with the application of the principles of sound logic, that GRAVITATION HAS NOT AND NEVER HAD ANY EXISTENCE, and the idea of such a force must be relegated to the limbo of mythology.

ZETETIC COSMOGONY:
OR
Conclusive Evidence
THAT THE WORLD IS NOT A
ROTATING—REVOLVING—GLOBE, BUT A STATIONARY PLANE CIRCLE.
By Thomas Winship

• In a flat earth model, there is a definite up and a definite down. In a heliocentric model, everything is "relative" (such as people in Australia walking upside down but they feel right side up). Gravity is in fact a theory. If you read Newton's work, he has a lot of "what ifs" "maybes" and "possibly's" throughout. There is no mathematical equation for gravity and if there was it cannot be demonstrated to prove its accuracy. In fact, it has never been demonstrated that an object with less mass is attracted to another with more mass, or that the smaller object would orbit the larger. Taking your cell phone and dropping it on the floor is does not prove a magical force called gravity exists. it only proves that your phone is heavier than the air molecules surrounding it. Anything more dense than air will fall and anything less dense than air will rise. Why aren't helium balloons dragged to the earth? Because the balloon itself is too light? But if we take out the helium, it falls to the ground.. seems like gravity has a mind of its own. Take a rock with equal mass to that of a log of wood. The log will float and the rock will sink. This is bouyancy at work. The rock is more dense than water.. it falls. The log is less dense than water, it floats.

I can sit here all day and come up with a list of exceptions to gravity but that probably won't change your mind. However, I'd like to note that gravity does not adhere to the scientific method which is something that can be observed, demonstrated and repeated.

Show me a ball with water sticking to it. Show me water bending due to gravity. Show something orbit another object or even the most minute attraction (easy test would be a lead ball and a marble in space).

In the flat earth model, gravity is not required. The globalists simply needed an explanation to silence the critics asking how water sticks to a ball. The earth holds trillions upon trillions of gallons of water to the underside, firm in place, yet bugs, fish and just about anything else is free to move freely. Rivers, must flow uphill over the curve before reaching the ocean.. ehhhhhhhhhh really? Ascending several miles uphill I might add. You're free to believe in fairy tales but I say show me the experiment that can be reproduced outside of "earth is ball" because there's enough evidence to show this is a Masonic hoax (otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation). If gravity is a law or a fact etc.. you should be able to produce a scaled to size experiment. You cannot. Nobody can. If you're OK with that, then we should be able to agree that gravity is NOT a fact nor is it scientific (even if the entire 'scientific' community agrees.. I don't give a rip. Majority opinion doesn't make something fact nor true). Cheers.

Rockets Push Off Air

https://flatearthtextbook.blogspot.com/

• 

Siegfried Verbeke, Unsung Hero of Revisionism

Siegfried Verbeke was there when he was needed, and when it mattered. Every time.

First, some background: In 1994, the German authorities were hell-bent at choking all efforts to publish new, trail-blazing revisionist research. The 1993 German original of my expert report on the chemistry of Auschwitz (Holocaust Handbooks, Vol. 2) induced the German thought police to put me on trial, the main proceedings of which started in November of 1994. The publication of the German original of my anthology titled Dissecting the Holocaust (Holocaust Handbooks, Vol. 1) appeared that same month, resulting in house searches and confiscations all over Germany in an attempt to annihilate that book. A detailed article of mine on fraudulent forensic research about Auschwitz, conducted by a Polish team of pseudo-scholars, led to another criminal investigation against me. Wherever an article of mine appeared during 1995, it resulted in the offices of the respective periodical being raided, office equipment getting seized, the affected magazine issue being confiscated and destroyed, and everyone involved investigated for saying things Jews hate.

In the summer of 1993, I had launched another anthology project, a response of several leading revisionists to a book by French pharmacist-turned-historian Jean-Claude Pressac. The resulting anthology now carries the title Auschwitz: Plain Facts (Holocaust Handbooks, Vol. 14). It reached maturity in 1995, but at that point in time, no German publishing outlet was willing to touch anything I had written with a ten-foot pole. It was a safe recipe to get a visit from the Dezernat Staatsschutz, the branch of Germany’s police proudly carrying on the Gestapo’s tradition. So where would this book see the day of light? Who would dare put his name and address on it?

Riding to the rescue came a knight in shining armor: Siegfried Verbeke, a Dutchman from Antwerp, Flanders, and owner of a copy shop with the ability to produce paperback books. Already in 1993, he had published a Dutch and French translation of my expert report on Auschwitz, although without asking me first (hence, he translated an outdated text…). Learning about the rising tide of persecution against me, Siegfried got in touch in 1995, offering his help. I asked him whether he would take on the risky project of publishing the new book. He eagerly agreed, and so it was issued under the imprint of the not-for-profit organization he had established ten years earlier: Stichting Vrij Historisch Onderzoek, or V.H.O. for short, meaning Foundation for Free Historical Research. Siegfried’s brother agreed to have his name put on the book as the responsible editor. And so it was done.

The operation turned into somewhat of a mess when I left Germany in early 1996, impeding communications between Siegfried and me for a while, until I had finally settled in England for good in the summer of that year – or so I hoped. What used to be an obscure Flemish outlet was subsequently lifted to worldwide prominence. In 1997, I launched a German quarterly periodical officially published by V.H.O. and bearing that foundation’s name in its title: Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung: Quarterly for Free Historical Research (VffG). Siegfried and I managed to acquire the contact lists from several aging German revisionists, such as Thies Christophersen and Udo Walendy. With this potentially solid customer base, we then launched a magazine- and book-publishing enterprise that took off nicely. VffG soon had some 1,000 subscribers, advertising V.H.O.’s range of books and brochures at the end of each edition.

Later in 1997, after dabbling with html and the internet for a few months using AOL’s service of permitting subdomains, I bought the rights to the three-letter domain name vho.org. This put V.H.O. on the map as a multi-language revisionist outlet online, for everyone to see, and most importantly out of reach of the Gestapo. While Siegfried had no skills in the computer and internet departments, he was enthusiastic about what I was doing, making sure VHO.org got all the attention it deserved. When the Flemish media reported about this evil denier in their midst in May of 2001, initiated by a police raid triggered by a French search warrant, Siegfried proudly wore a t-shirt with the simple message “WWW.VHO.ORG” on it (see the image to the right). Journalists photographed him that way, and this image made the rounds in mainstream media, leading to traffic spiking on our site. He printed simple stickers with the same message, which people in Europe bought in bulk and stuck to utility poles all over the continent. Mimicking this, others started simply spray-painting this domain name on random billboards. Just mentioning the domain name led to criminal investigation in Germany for stirring up the people. It also led to media publishing photographs of these disfigured billboards, again helping us out greatly.

We had fun!

Since I was hiding in England under an assumed identity, and Siegfried was fronting for me in Flanders, communication with my customers was cumbersome and often heavily delayed. Siegfried collected incoming mail and forwarded it to me, and I sent outgoing letters to him, to be put in the mail in Antwerp. In the long run, this was not a good business model, and so in early 1998, we parted ways. I established my own publishing outlet, Castle Hill Publishers, yet operated the vho.org site as before, whose online store then featured both Castle Hill’s offerings and those of VHO.

A disagreement between Siegfried and me on how to run the web site and what products to sell through Castle Hill Publishers’ online shop led me to take legal control of the domain name in the summer of 2000, which up to that point had been registered by me in Siegfried’s name. Siegfried remained oblivious of my domain-name heist, which at that point in time was still rather easy to pull off. In fact, I suspect he never even knew that he had been the formal owner at any point in time.

This change of ownership in 2000 turned out to be a blessing for him in 2005. During that year, Germany initiated a major crack-down on international revisionism. Ernst Zündel was deported from Canada, I was deported from the U.S., and Siegfried got arrested in Belgium due to a German arrest warrant. The German authorities wanted to blame him for everything connected to www.vho.org. From a German prison, I managed to collect evidence proving that Siegfried had not owned the site since summer 2000, and I signed an affidavit stating that he has never been involved in anything concerning the site anyhow. He merely advertised it. Since “propaganda offenses” expire in Germany after five years, and Siegfried got arrested five years and a few months after the change of ownership, the German authorities had to let him go – and focus their zeal on me instead.

Between 2005 and 2009, www.vho.org went partially dormant during my time in prison, being run by a volunteer who had assisted me in running the server and any software installed. After my release, he quit, but I was not in a position to do much with it either while living in Europe, within the Gestapo’s reach. After immigrating permanently to the U.S., my focus turned entirely to a close cooperation with CODOH, and vho.org became a mere static repository of revisionist items posted since its inception.

During my prison time and the forced dormancy of vho.org, Siegfried’s focus gradually shifted to a close cooperation with French revisionist Vincent Reynouard, with whom he had been working since 1997. For example, they pursued several video projects together, most notably on the Einsatzgruppen executions behind the Eastern front (all in French: La “Shoah par balles” (ep. 1); La “Shoah par balles” (ep. 2); Le mythe de la “Shoah par balles”).

When Vincent needed help in 2015 to dodge a one-year prison term imposed by the French authorities, and a sheer endless string of further prosecutions, Siegfried was again there to help. His wife allowed Vincent to live in a small house she owned in the suburbs of London. That was the beginning of Vincent’s years in British exile, which ended only in early 2024 with his extradition to France.

Even many seasoned revisionists or afficionados of revisionism may never have heard of Siegfried Verbeke. He usually avoided the limelight but was a decisive mover and organizer in the background during the 1990s and into the late 2010s. Health issues finally forced him to slow down in the 2020s.

He passed away on June 28, 2026, at the age of 85. Another dear friend and comrade in our struggle for freedom and truth entered the eternal hunting grounds.

See also the birthday presentation below created on occasion of Siegfried’s 80th birthday.

By Germar Rudolf

https://codoh.com/

Women can destroy any society to which they belong simply by refusing to be wives and mothers

 

Second Thoughts from an Ex-Feminist

The Goddess that Failed: Feminism’s Unending War Against Men, Families, and Civilization Itself

Janice Fiamengo
New English Review Press, 2026

Janice Fiamengo, born 1964, is a retired professor of English at the University of Ottawa. Entering the academy as an impressionable young woman in the 1980s, her initial acceptance of feminism must have been almost a foregone conclusion: “I have felt its euphoric exultation and its self-flattering conviction of moral purity,” she admits. She studied all the standard feminist texts and for many years took the validity of their analysis for granted. But The Goddess that Failed is not her personal story. However her disillusionment came about, she began speaking out against the movement in 2012. Her work can be followed online at The Fiamengo File. https://substack.com/@fiamengofile

The author does not blunt her message with any assumption that there must originally have been a good, moderate, or reasonable feminism that was later hijacked, betrayed, or taken to excess by wayward followers. She reminds us, for example, that the campaign for women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom over a century ago escalated from heckling politicians and smashing shop windows to arson attacks on homes and churches. Some suffragettes concocted letter bombs out of phosphorous and sulfuric acid. One threw a hatchet at Prime Minister Asquith:

Through all the destruction of property, threat to livelihoods, and physical harm to innocent bystanders, the suffragettes saw themselves as sacrificial heroines. Like many terrorists, they envisioned their cause as pure enough to justify nearly any level of violence…. They were successful in their campaign at least in part because the men they castigated as villains couldn’t bear to deal firmly with their maudlin claims and dangerous acts.

Fiamengo knows that a crucial element in feminism’s success has been the strong natural bias in favor of women that characterizes both sexes: a synergy between female in-group preference and the male protective instinct. There has been some objective research on this timeless phenomenon. In 1994, for example, psychologists Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic reported that both male and female research subjects were more likely to ascribe positive traits to women than to men, with the bias measurably stronger in women; they christened this the “women-are-wonderful” effect. Later studies found women’s in-group bias four and a half times stronger than men’s. In 2019 British psychologists Martin Seager and John Barry developed the concept of “Gamma bias” to describe “unconscious prejudice against men and boys,” as observed in the tendency of both men and women to sympathize more with women than men.

Such studies are valuable, but as with much of social psychology, they merely confirm something that has always been widely known: men are expected to put the needs of women and children first. As Fiamengo points out, feminists could never have achieved the success they have if men were remotely similar to the selfish brutes they depict. Even half a century of feminist fury has been unable to do away with men’s natural bias in women’s favor.

The other side of male bias in women’s favor is what the author calls “the empathy gap”—the often-shocking inability or unwillingness of many women to empathize with male suffering. She recounts that after the sinking of the Titanic, a group of women survivors organized to build a memorial to the men who had sacrificed themselves in the women’s favor:

Some feminists refused gratitude, noting that men had built the ship and therefore could be expected to take their lumps when it proved faulty. Some proclaimed with fury that women suffered daily under men’s cruelty; a single day of suffering and death paled by comparison.

During the First World War, thousands of British women participated in a mass-shaming ritual of their menfolk, accosting any man they found in civilian clothing to present him with a white feather as a symbol of his cowardice. They accompanied the gesture with rehearsed speeches making clear their furious contempt: “Why don’t you fellows enlist? Your King and Country want you. We don’t.” This went on for the entire duration of the war, and feathers were even given to wounded men on leave or underage boys. One sixteen-year-old was so mortified by the bullying that he lied about his age in order to enlist and was promptly killed. Fiamengo also mentions an officer awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery; that same day he changed into civilian clothes only to be given a white feather by some female passers-by: “He accepted without a word and, as a curiosity, put it with his V.C. He remarked to a friend that he was probably the only man who ever received on the same day emblems of bravery and cowardice.” The man later died at the front.

Such attitudes continue to this day, as feminists brag online about “bathing in male tears” and exult over various instances of male suffering.

The similarities between feminism and Marxism have long been noted: indeed, as far back as 1884, Friedrich Engels explicitly drew a parallel between wives and the oppressed proletariat. Most importantly, feminism shares the Marxist mental gestalt whereby society is envisaged in terms of conflicting innocent and guilty groups. As Fiamengo observes, this leaves feminism unable to affirm any universal principles of justice: “it is incapable of extending empathy to whose it has been taught to see as oppressors” or “of demanding accountability from those it has been taught to see as victims.” Because of this inability, “one of feminism’s biggest lies has been its declared aim to overthrow traditional Western gender arrangements in order to liberate men as well as women into an equal partnership.”

This last remark is a useful reminder: in the more optimistic days of early “second wave” feminism, back in the 1970s, the movement did indeed claim to seek the liberation of men as well as women from traditional arrangements. Female careerism, e.g., would supposedly ease the burden upon husbands to be sole providers for their families. Such talk has now largely disappeared.

The parallel with Marxism is instructive here as well. Officially, socialist revolution was supposed to liberate the bourgeoisie as well as the working class from the “alienation” that characterizes capitalism. The sons of capitalists would one day join hands with the sons of the proletariat in order to build the classless society of the future, and the unfortunate but necessary stage of “merciless class struggle” would barely survive as a memory. But Marxist practitioners such as Lenin quickly became too preoccupied with killing the class enemy to worry much about healing him of his capitalist alienation.

A similar development can be observed in feminism as well: an involuntarily divorced husband would not make much headway in family court by appealing to the supposed feminist goal of reducing his burdens as a provider. “The last thing aimed at by feminism,” Fiamengo notes, “is the liberation of men from their traditional roles and obligations.” Feminists alternate opportunistically between their explicit egalitarian ideology and appeals to traditional notions of male duty; logical consistency is not important to them.

For this reason, close analysis of feminist doctrine is perhaps of less use in making sense of the movement than a look at the psychological rewards it provides to adherents. A relevant 2020 study involving researchers from America and—perhaps not accidentally—Israel identifies what it calls “TIV,” the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood, as a stable personality trait involving a chronic, deep-seated feeling of being a victim across many different relationships and situations. Fiamengo summarizes:

Passionate belief in one’s victimhood creates an identifiable personality type, one that ruminates on grievance and interprets all experiences through the victimhood lens. Belief in victimhood need have no correlation with actual experience of victimization. The victim personality is characterized above all by a strong need to have one’s suffering recognized. With this need comes a conviction of immaculate morality, a resulting inability to accept criticism or disagreement, and a profound lack of empathy for those perceived as enemies. The researchers also found that people with a victim personality believe themselves justified in taking revenge on those who appear to oppress them. Even when presented with facts and evidence to rebut their beliefs, they are unwilling to relinquish their worldview, which becomes intimately associated with their sense of self. Anger at others and the belief in innocent victimhood create a toxic stew of self-righteousness and moral blindness.

Fiamengo notes that many young women experience something like a religious conversion upon “finding” feminism: “adherents feel washed clean, reborn, filled with purpose and zeal…. All of life’s dissatisfactions make sense and can be blamed on the oppressive system. Nothing is one’s own fault.”



Caption on Fiamengo’s website: Feminism Cannot Be Reformed

Obviously, not all women are feminists. American conservatives have long taken comfort from the well-attested finding that a majority of women express reservations about the label. But all radical movements involve a small, hard core and a far larger and fuzzier periphery, and feminism’s periphery now extends deeply into Western society. Fiamengo writes that, while she tries to maintain the distinction between women and feminists, this can sometimes be difficult.

A 2020 Pew poll found that only 19% of American women say the term feminist describes them “very well,” but another 42% say it describes them “somewhat well.” So that makes 61% unwilling to distance themselves from feminism unambiguously. A closer examination of the other 39% would probably reveal plenty of feminist influence as well. As the author notes, most women now take for granted that they belong to a “historically oppressed group,” and accept as a matter of course that special legal protections and government programs should promote their advancement and well-being. People cannot be marinated in an ideology their entire lives without coming to believe that at least some of its claims must be true. Fiamengo also mentions the phenomenon of “confirmation bias:” applying a feminist lens when viewing the world helps one see evidence supporting it while screening out contradictory information.

The author is under no illusions that feminism can be reformed:

Even today, half a century after the implementation of equity hiring programs as well as ceaseless female empowerment campaigns in schools and universities, many women are still angry and many men still trying to make amends. It must be stopped. We will never reach a point where feminists decide to call off the gender war, accepting that men have done enough for them. There will never come a point where the suffering of boys and men matters more to feminists than their own power.

Women can destroy any society to which they belong simply by refusing to be wives and mothers. Feminism brings such a refusal about by directly undermining women’s ability to love. No less than other hostile forces discussed on this website, it is a deadly threat to European Civilization.

F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
From replays:

StrathClydesays

I’ve studied this issue for a few years and have come to a few conclusions.
Firstly, as the authoress of the book states, there is no ‘correct’ Feminism. Feminism in all it’s guises and methods is a disease. But it’s also a disease caused by a precedent.
Secondly, it is incorrect to lay the blame for Feminism at only the doorstep of the Jews. As with many ‘issues’ of our age, the soil was first ripe for it’s poisoning. Beginning in the 19th century, men of the West began the process of becoming feminized. We advanced our civilization and societies too fast. Treitschke, was one of a number of commentators writing in the end of the 19th century who complained of it in his time and place. This feminization of the White race was enormously exacerbated in Europe in particular by the dysgenic processes caused by two fratricidal world wars. These were wars the scale of which had no precedent, and as such, the dysgenic results also has no precedent in terms of scale (though there were precedednts in a smaller scale following, for example, Greece [5th cent. BC] and Rome’s own [1st cent. BC] fratricidal wars). British-Italian social philosopher Anthony M. Ludovici wrote of it extensively following the First World War (see ‘Man: An Indictment'[1927] and Woman: A Vindication'[1929]). David S. Jordan’s book, ‘War and The Breed’, written specifically on the topic of the dysgenic cost of the industrial slaughter of the First World War is also very much worth reading.
Thirdly, and directly connected to the above, women did not simply ‘adopt’ Feminism and declare war on men. Women are built as reactive creatures, and throughout the entire history of civilization, men have always been the tone-setters, the arbiters. Or at least, they’re meant to be. But Nature deplores a vacuum. The men became feminized, lost too many of the old masculine qualities, the women became masculinized and – most crucially – the women (at the collective-unconscious level) subtly lost respect for their menfolk.
Lastly, the most profound conclusion I have come to is that Feminism and many other aspects of recalcitrant behaviour exhibited by females (“the women are out of control”) are all efforts towards provoking men in order to elicit a response from men that may befit the default masculine nature of their ancestors – one of God’s/Nature’s great attempts at ‘resetting’ for the sake of returning to a healthier equilibrium. The problem – for many, many decades now – is that men have not been responding the way women/Nature/God would prefer and have instead been accomodating women’s displeasing unwomanly behaviours (the ‘tests’) and worse, giving them more extensive opportunities to displace us and undermine masculinity that remains in our civilization.
The women give the ‘tests’, but the men have been failing them, again and again and again (“Refugees Welcome”). The modern phenomenon of White women actively seeking out new arrivals right off the boats (often at cost of their lives – proof they are acting at an unconscious level) is a classic example of this GOADING that I am talking about. These women – unconsciously, making use of the ‘skills’ gifted to her by nature/God, are trying to provoke a reaction from the menfolk by using the interlopers as pychological weapons; they are trying to trigger a reaction that would result in the resetting of the national fabric to a status that is more conducive to a safer, healthier and more beneficial state for all the natives through extirpation of the interlopers. But the men are not doing this and the women willc keep performing these ‘tests’ until the men finally colectively respond, respond in a manner that is strictly exclusive of the trends of modernity or the wishes of foreigners. In their soul, Womankind understands that it’s the menfolk who determine the course of civilzation and whether the race thrives & multiplies or declines and dies out.
“The women are out of control” Because the men have lost the will to control them.
Feminism is more about men than women.

F. Roger Devlin:

I agree that women are unconsciously hoping for us to take charge and restrain them. But this is difficult when doing so is considered “violence against women” and gets you jailed. So many men are simply shunning them altogether instead.

 https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/