More sophisticated thinkers than Cline have presented variations on this position (a current apostle is MIT philosopher Daniel Dennett). Kolakowski identified this position as either typical of or inevitable for positivists.

Naturalism is one of the primary competitors for our allegiance in the intellectual wars of modernitiy. It is pervasive, and its assumptions and implications are mimicked both in the media and in government bureaucracies.

I prefer to leave my stupidities on view. It keeps me humble. As if. Still I find them Amusing.

I can’t remember if I left you a link to my article on Tribalism so there it is. I discuss the Judeo Christian origins of civilization (I left out the Greeks) and I cover why tribalism, which is embedded in Islam, is against civilization.

If we focus on the tribalist (uncivilized) aspect we can leave religion out of it.

Sex with animals? The Komhenni prescription is standard Islamic jurisprudence:

Man Marries Goat.

Making him marry the goat is an example of Islamics legislating from the bench. LOL.

Tribalism is, in its political nature, pretty much in accord with the devine rights of kings. Surley the culture of “the devine rights of kings” is not one libertarians can support.

How about revealed law vs natural law?

We ought not hate the ills of our own society so much that we cannot recognize that there is worse, much worse, out there.

BTW such hatred is a common failing of utopians.

[Tribalism and Islam are complementary systems rather than mutually exclusive causal agents, which is why I removed your first pronouncement–it conradicted the rest of your post]

To say that man is not a monkey is to deny our genetic heritage.

Our politics is monkey politics (mostly). The alpha male struggle is an exemplar.

Our science and technology is all man.

As for intimacy with “fauna,” perhaps we should be careful with anthropological realities.

It is frequently forgotten that “Muslims” are neither a race, nor a nation, nor an ethnicity. Nor do they all reside in the same street. I hope Americans do not assume that a Bosnian, a Kurd, a Yemeni, a Pakistani, an Indonesian, a Hui [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_China], or a Somali are all one and the same people with the same set of beliefs, traditions, practices, etc. It’s a vast geography on which countless beliefs, relics from ancient times, are mixed in multiple ways with Islam.

Being a Muslim (or the practitioner of any belief system, for that matter) does not involve loading a computer program in the brain which then renders everybody associated with that set of beliefs a robot, blindly following any and every inanity uttered by anybody who pretends to be anybody in its community.

I know nobody in my surrounding who’ll consider the abominable vulgarity quoted as anything remotely Islamic.

These days, if anybody known to be nominally Muslim so much as relieves himself in a street corner at night after a drunken evening in the pub, we end up with “news” in the blogosphere that “Muslims are urinating on streets.”

Granted, the Muslim geography has countless ills which it fails to account for. Nevertheless, it is distressing to see people who consider Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” as blatantly “anti-Semitic” to then go on and use the same logic with Muslims: that if anyone from that group so much as acts in a despicable way at one time in one context, then the whole group can be considered replicas of that worst example.

A Turkish saying: Friends will look at your pretty face, foes will notice your dirty feet.

Another one: Friends speak bitter.

Perhaps it’s time that a balance is struck between the two extremes.

My significant other commented once, after he first moved in with me, that I seemed to treat the (then two) cats more as roommates than as pets.

I am also aware that cats seem to be able to read the price tags on cans of food. 😉

You are no doubt aware you are no equal to your cats. As Mark Twain pointed out, cats have not forgotten that they were worshipped as Gods in ancient Egypt. I have an all black one here who is the spitting image of the Egyptian Cat-God. He is well aware of this. We’ve little choice but to treat him accordingly. 🙂